Death (The Pardoner’s Tale) by Possets Perfume
The Official Product Description Sez:
The Pardoner tells a tale of how 3 men end up killing each other over treasure in an ironic story.
Suave, sophisticated and as final as Death. A dark vetevyr as you have never smelled it before, mixes with smooth thyme and a good jolt of black amber. A faraway touch of incense and a tiny amount of pure smoke. A beautiful offering of the perfumers’ art, would be at home on the Champs Elysees in Paris circa 1955.
A Pardoner was a man who was an itinerant preacher and who was allowed by The Church to sell indulgences so that the faithful could get to heaven more easily without a nasty detour through Purgatory.
O Death! O Death! O Death, won’t you spare me over for another year? (I’ve had the song in my head all day because of this perfume, I just had to get it out of my system.)
I’ve found that, if one thing could be said to apply to the Possets perfumes I’ve tested so far, they never end up smelling remotely like what I might expect, and of this Death is no exception.
The first thing that hit me when I opened the bottle was a sweetness with an edge. It was sharp to the nose, nearly acrid, and then smoothed out by a teasing swath of damp moss.
Wet upon the skin, in stark contrast, it smelled of tropical flowers – rich and heady and almost fruity, but covered in a layer of dust.
Once it dried down, the scent was of dusty mossy wood, with a hint of sweet rot, and carrying with it a sharp floral (lilac) tang. It was at this point that this scent became abruptly and unexpectedly meaningful. When I was a girl, I had a perfume that had been given me, a handmedown in a glass bottle with a rollerball applicator. I treasured this perfume, this golden liquid. I kept it in my pink jewelry box that played You Light Up My Life when I opened it while the little white-clothed ballerina permanently pirouetted in front of a tiny mirror, and I only took it out to put on for special occasions. Birthday, family Christmas parties, concerts, and so forth. At one point, it became lost, and I fancied I never would smell it again.
I smelled it in this. It smells of the lilac that grew outside my bedroom, of dust and sweet incense, and has a sharp tang I’d have attributed to alcohol if I didn’t know this contained none. It is a perfume that, if I’d not had that one in my childhood, I would call an old lady smell (albeit not unkindly.)
It elicited quite a bit of nostalgia in me for a fair part of today, but not of the sort that makes me particularly want to keep it. I think it shall be better suited finding a home one someone else’s skin, telling them newer tales.