call me Bliss

9 by Sarawen Perfume Art

The Official Product Description Sez:
9 – Doctor Who inspired

Primary notes: leather, chocolate, oud, musk, dragonsblood, coffee

Did you miss these? I missed doing them. I had a flood of goings-on and needed to take a break, but I’m back in it – and to make it more fun and interesting, there are a few scents from a new maker in the mix? I’ve tested one of them today, in celebration: 9, a scent from Sarawen Perfume Art inspired by the first Doctor of the modern reboot of the famous BBC series.

I was both excited and nervous, opening this one; I so very much wanted to like it, particularly since it’s inspired by one of my favorite fandoms, and by a regen of the Doctor that I particularly love and wish there could have been more of. As it was, I was delighted by the mere packaging. A sample size from Sarawen is 1.5mL, where most perfume oil samples are only .75 to 1mL, and rather than being in the standard skinny glass vial it’s an adorbs squat-and-fat number with a screwcap. I have to say, I dig this vial in a big way. Screwing off the top beats those pop-em-out ones, even with the attached wand, by miles.

But you’re not here for the packaging, even really good packaging – you’re here for the smells.

I opened the bottle and took a whiff. LEATHER. That leather jacket! That hits the nose first, and strong, like burying your face in it. It was immediately backed by something darker, almost woody; The Doctor’s Sorrow. Following on their heels were fainter but distinct scents of chocolate and coffee – perfect for the Doctor that calls every disaster fantastic, and dives with all energy into turning it into something good.

Already I was pleased, and on the skin it went. LEATHER. Also, Chocolate, leather, ozone, leather, leather, and did I mention leather? The leather doesn’t dominate, exactly, but it’s a running thread in and out and around all of the scents, and clinging closest to it in that omnipresence is the ozone smell. I could almost taste it, the way that it tastes when you put your tongue across the two contact points of a nine-volt…. what? Don’t give me that look, I can’t be the ONLY kid who ever did that. suffice to say it’s a very distinct smell, like copper and electricity and energy. I can only imagine that it’s what the Time Vortex must smell like, and it would make sense for the Doctor to have it clinging to him.

Once it dries on the skin, it goes very subtle, caught in faint whiffs; leather here, chocolate there, a smidge of ozone clarity cut off by a wee zing of coffee. It remains subtle but lasts for hours, and I kept catching myself sniffing at my skin all day, and once I held it to my ear, just to see – hear – if I could catch the round rhythmic scree of the TARDIS coming in for a landing in miniature in the valley of the lines on my wrist.

Some of the scents I’ve been trying, I like. Some I could take or leave. A rare few I actually wash off and don’t want to contemplate wearing again.

This one is on a very short list of Scents Of Which I Intend To Buy A Full Size Bottle. I’m very tempted to get the entire Blue Box Sampler that contains sample sizes of the scents Sarawen has created for 9, 10, and 11. More 9 is awesome, and I truest that 10 and 11 would probably be just as amazing.

Orion by Possets Perfume

The Official Product Description Sez:
The first unabashedly masculine Posset, and the first of The Constellations, Orion is probably the most recognizable star set out there. Possets rendition is woody in extremis but not obnoxiously loud. Very masculinely charming, outdoors in a very sophisticated way, a hard outside with a very warm heart. This one features Oude, rare and unexpected woods and smoked vanilla. Very sexy. If it were a person, it would be Oliver Mellors from Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Characteristics: woody, sophisticated, masculine, spicy, home scent, long lasting.

I was eager to open this up. With a name like Orion, I had all sorts of imaginings in mind – something cold and sparkling as space with a belt of scent through the middle, perhaps, or something lushly wet and vegetative and earth to recall the primordial hunter of legend.

Then I opened the bottle, and it… confused me.

It hit my nose as what I could only term as dry-rub spices – onion and garlic, sugar and salt, oregano, paprika. It’s the kind of thing you’d get in a pre-mixed shaker to put on steaks and chicken to grill, or perhaps run across made fresh in a steakhouse. There was a little something else behind it, a cedar woodiness with a layer of moss. This was far from what I was expecting, and trying not to feel like a plate of steak tips, I put it on.

The scent changed hugely on the skin. The big front note was the sweet, creamy smoothness of cocoa butter, cut through with white pepper, followed by wood and salt and wet mossy log. The dry-down lost the pepperyspices scent entirely, until I was left with a hint of the cocoa butter sweetness, the salt, and the wet wood. I was completely at a loos as to what this could be likened, until I plaintively held out my wrists to SecretAgentLoverMan to inhale, and rattled off the things I was smelling and my frustration at attempting to draw a contextual association.

Boardwalk, he said, and I looked blankly at him. He looked wide-eyed back at me. “That’s RIGHT!” he declared, “You grew up here, with public beaches that you don’t need to pay to get upon!”

He, however, grew up in New Jersey, and with the aid of reminding me of a scene in the movie Lost Boys, he painted for me exactly the picture this scent was trying to offer. Of driving and driving toward the coast and getting out in a hot parking lot and walking to the boardwalk past a steakhouse; someone in the kitchen has dropped the white pepper, and there’s a burst of that and the spices in their cooking. Then you step onto the board walk, and the sun-hot scents hit the nose in a carillon riot of sweet and salt, the sugar of funnelcake and the suntan location of the passersby and on your own skin, and somewhere beyond it is a teasing breeze from off the ocean that has crept over the fences. Not until later, when the night has fallen and the lights come up and you’ve found a spot to jump the fence and run free down the beach, letting the dark surround and the lights fade away to the stars above, the salt wind wrapping around to welcome you while you step over a piece of mossy waterlogged cedar, and Orion’s belt glimmers high above, the hunter’s arrow pointing the way toward the freedom of the seaside night.

Sadly, the scent fades far faster than the image or the memory of such a night.

Outpost from Solstice Scents

The Official Product Description Sez:
Sugar Crystals, Spruce, Fir, Soft Woods, Bayberry, Mistletoe, Amber

A Best Seller! A beacon of light amidst cold, desolate wilderness. Pass through a copse of young evergreens into a warm cedar cabin and thaw out under a soft Afghan blanket by a blazing fire while sugared treats from the kitchen fill the air. Notes include sugar crystals, spruce, fir, a medley of soft woods including sandalwood, agar, cedar, aloeswood, patchouli, guaiacwood, bayberry, mistletoe and a touch of amber.

On opening the bottle, the scents that hit me were strongly organic; they hit the nose as clove oranges, lemongrass, tea – the kind of things one would consume at a remote and distant outpost cabin to sooth the spirit and stave off scurvy.

Hitting the skin, these scents shifted and yet remained: it was clove tea, sweetened with honey. The citrus tint of orange and lemongrass remained but it was as if were drinking said tea from a warm and polished-smooth-from-use wooden mug in front of a fire.

Now, some twelve hours later, the scent remains distinct upon the skin, but has shifted again to be almost entirely woody and sweet. The fire has burned down, leaving behind only the scent of the wood for tomorrow’s burn warmed and dried upon the hearth, and the remnants of powdered sugar in the air from a long-since-eaten dessert.

Jack and the Devil by Solstice Scents

The Official Product Description Sez:
JACK & THE DEVIL* ~ Vanilla, tobacco, oakmoss, amber, Patchouli, pumpkin and soft spice. Contains vanilla, tobacco and oakmoss absolute with patchouli essential oil and fragrance oils.

Jack & The Devil is part trick, part treat and all autumn delight! A blend of sweet vanilla absolute, dried brown tobacco leaf (absolute), green and delightful oakmoss absolute, warm amber, 2 different kinds of patchouli essential oil, sugared golden pumpkin and subtle spices.

I opened this bottle with both eagerness and trepidation; the generous patron who gifted me these many samples was ever so excited and curious to have me try it, and I wasn’t sure what I would be getting into. Off came the cap, and… Spicey! It hit my nose in a wash of peppery heat and sweetness, of cinnamon and old oranges and clove. Were I feeling unkind, I’d liken it to the seasonal crafts aisle in early to mid fall – but I am feeling kind, because it instead smells like what those aisles aspire to.

Wet upon the skin, it was nothing so much as donuts. Cinnamon donuts. Not day old half-stale grocery store numbers, oh no – the dank, rich, weighty spiced donuts I have only ever had on trips to visit my great grandfather’s farm in Maine. Cinnamon. Cinnamon! Peppery sweetness of cinnamon and pumpkin, and slowly burning thick wax candles.

The scents remained, but more subtly, after it dried upon the skin: Pepperspice/Cinnamon. Warm sweetness. Warm wax.

That scent has remained so all day, and it is definitively autumnal. Jack and the devil indeed – I can feel in this oil the Pumpkin King vying with the Lord of Hell for unsuspecting souls on All Hallow’s Eve.

Morgan Fay (or Morgan Le Fey) by Possets Perfume

Official Product Description Sez:
Dark and richly incense-filled, heavy with spice and not tame, Morgan le Fey is most unusual and supremely attractive. Flowers meet patchouli and collide with spices. Instead of becoming a confused mish-mash it contains a singular character and is captivating. If darkly romantic perfumes are your passion, try Morgan le Fey and don’t be surprised by its addicting properties.

Upon opening the bottle, it took me a moment to start picking out separate notes. It initially just hit as being thickly sweet. After the few moments that heady, full sweetness (which somehow managed to steer clear of cloying) revealed a hint of almost molassesy darkness at the center. These two main notes twined together, floral vying with woody.

Once upon the skin, I found it to be still sweet, but less dominantly so – the florals were losing the battle to that dark woodiness. It was heavily woody and musty – a grainy sort of a smell, reminiscent of cedar chest full of chamomile.

It was that last impression that stuck with me as I wore this throughout the day. What I found really fascinating was how the note changed according to the proximity of the scent to my nose. If I was just doing something with my hands and the scent wafted up, it was most definitely the floral sweetness, but if I actually put nose to wrist and inhaled, I got no flowers at all, only cedar.

Darkly romantic does seem a good phrasing to describe this one. My only complaint is that I wish it might have lasted longer (but then, isn’t that so often the way of darkly romantic entanglements?). 12 hours after application, my wrists give my nothing. I smell like only skin. Even so, I was still able to get a hint of cedar at dinnertime, so this is certainly a scent that could last all day with a single midday reapplication.