Twitter perfume impressions, part 1

[pengwern]

 

Something I did with the cut worked until I tried to make edits, at which point it sprang out of control like Feanor leaping into a Finwion argument. 

surrender to chance's violet sample pack, or, violet leaf agonies:


• mancera aoud violet: jesus FUCK this is vegetal in the way of an acrylic painting of an aggressive bunch of celery done with a palette knife. like sniffing chemical paint. like I thought kernside violet was bad enough
• lush/gorilla kerbside violet: I cannot believe that this can seem the better scent in comparison but aoud violet’s done it. anyway this is also a horror - some kind of plastic evaporating its poisonous way up my nasal cavity. Someone on fragratica said kerbside violet smells like fanfiction kisses, thunderstorms and all. I’m happy for them but if this is what kisses are like I will roll myself into an ace flag burrito.
• serge lutens bois de violette: I quoted the gorgeous Perfumes the Guide review over on tumblr -- [Its rotation takes place around the center; the stained-glass mandala is perfected by a violet gem around which everything dances. I remember stepping out of Lutens’s purple shop into the perpetually quiet walled gardens, armed with this purple smell with a purple name, thinking I was carrying the most precious object in the world.] G O S H. On my hand, a patch of desiccating epidermis. Is it just that I hate and am overwhelmed by musk or has all Lutens stock been capitalismed into cleaner fluid. Twenty minutes later it smells like strolling down the yarn aisle at Michaels with a smear of musk, which is not awful, to be sure, but like. am I creating an olfactory hallucination of violets or is the horrific green/purple oilslick of gorilla violet on my other hand wafting by. An hour later bois de violette is dusty carpet potpourri, a fate common to several serge lutens perfumes I’ve tried :< reviews for them tend to be along the lines of ‘the most sublime experience of my LIFE’ :< (although in the 2018 perfumes the guide, a recent lutens begins, “This review will therefore take the form of a eulogy.”) Hour and half: the violet is finally peeking out.
• demeter violet: dusty, like a porcelain doll’s lavender-coloured dress you find in antique store
• god I love my borsari violetta di parma. Candied to the point you can see the pyramids of powdered sugar from where the lozenges were dusted — the closest to the violet scent I wanted
• And the scent that started all this - tocca violette (discontinued ofc) fresher, greener than borsari, but still true and sweet. I’m so into the look of the bottle. (ETA I bought a full bottle and the perfume that made me fall in love is back. Either the sample tubes had gone off, or it needs to be sprayed?)
• van cleef and arpels feerie also has a ridiculous/adorable bottle + a violet drowning in the typical fruit syrup! my reasonable workday scent with a reasonable (read:huge) sillage that even my near-smelling nose can detect at intervals
• annick goutal violet: violet, violet leaf. well balanced. if only I haven’t been traumatized by the violet leafs elsewhere.

Pinrose perfume set:


• Pinrose: wow am I still not familiar with the basic colors that perfumers use. Very similar to jo malone velvet roses and oud; clearly what I thought was oud is in fact cloves. (ETA: maybe that's the rose???? I no longer know what roses are.)
• Pillowtalk Poet: anosmia? anosmia!?? my nose is working but as so many others on fragrantica have said, non-existent. I hate musks but could smell none of it here. The barest hint of powder thirty seconds post application
• Tambourine Dreamer: wafting white flowers. something stuffy at the bottom, which must be the musk, but huge sillage just from the rollerball.
• Cuddle Punk: the fuck is a cypress? Sweet fruits, a little searing note in the back. On the other arm, the roses and lily of the valley (pinrose/tambourine dreamer) are making friends. Also, cuddle punk sounds like someone taking the --—punk genre naming too far.The cypress is floating up twenty minutes later. Muguet seeping everywhere. Pillow poet continues inaudible
• Gilded Fox: I had a sample of this before and stand by my assessment: you know those chocolate flavoured mousse yogurt. I do smell the vetiver this time but it has far to go. Vetiver to cut the cloying cocoa was a good idea in theory (compare Vetiver Tonka) but here it’s...like, there’s a branch of vetiver, booked to go on stage with the rest of the chocolate body butter band, but it’s decided to decorously tuning up in a separate facility
• Merry Maker: fruit.
• Garden Gangster: nice citrus, but how long will it stay :0 (an hour, which is enough)
• Treehouse Royal: starting out great. They're right, it is the beginning to hermes jardin en mediterranee.
• Secret Genius: something sweet. caramel oh ofc. and that concludes my whirlwind run! I like three, one is invisible, two are usable, the last four are meh.


Brief Hermes interlude:


• Vetiver Tonka: not gourmand on me, but the sharp clarity of vetiver does get wrapped in something smooth and deep. also hideously expensive and unavailable at discounters, I say, broad noodle tears streaming down my head
• Galop I keep trying, thanks to the marveling review from the 2018 Perfumes the Guide. uh...I get neither roses nor leather, but it’s a very unique scent and not unpleasant. I want to describe it with colors. — tbh the fascination comes from the brand and snazzy bottle. same with twilly. be cheap be cheap :O (it's not >O<)
• Twilly I do have samples of, and it’s similarly unmistakable. Tuberose and ginger.
• Jardin Sur Le Toit: yup, apples. A shrill citrusy note like the one in Monsieur Li.

Prada Infusions set:

• Amande: (almond) needs layering with something. VERY marzipan, if I ever get to try it again. 10 minutes post application there was this deep buttery moment, now negligible. The line is supposed to be sheer and low-powered, but this goes beyond ephemeral. 
• Iris cedre: soap, detergent, spray that decimates bacteria on any surface \o/....>-< It gets somewhere soft eventually, but there are 8ml of this thing
• Rose: citrusy rose, rather generic
• Vetiver: celery vetiver. I remember ducking into an air-conditioned store during one boiling summer day having sprayed this on, and it worked nearly as well.
• Mimosa: I mean, it's a mimosa. ......a nice mimosa?
• Iris: I should try decanting this into a spray bottle, because pouring it on isn't as effective as aerolization would be....I should try Atelier Cologne's Iris Rebelle again, since it comes in an affordable spray.......
• Fleur d'Oranger: <3 extremely serviceable orange blossom with no soapiness on my skin, and the white flowers in the mix tend to waft out with a sweet ringing note (I bought a set of the mini bottles online and would sit there, pouring the thing on as I read.)

L'Artisan Parfumeur:

• Seville a l’Aube: orange steeped in honeycombs (or the other way around) <33333 glorious drydown, midpoint, opening. Every so often, a bracing dash of petitgrain <333333333 I want a full bottle, eventually.
• Le Couvent des Minimes Eau Aimable: recommended as another creamy orange blossom, and it's nice, but shortlived and low projection. The difference is one of those sheer toned digital paintings vs a lush painted polymer clay/felt sculpture, and both in their time, but it's winter, my nose is stuffed, and I'd rather have the latter.
• Dzing: no circus, barn, or old books on me, just straightforward impression new handbag leather, tending to the sweet side. also the bottle is a cute heptagonal prism and has a lady riding a tiger, with the only unfortunate Mosca in the city its lack of staying power. L'artisan is a line that agrees with me \o/
• Fou d’Absinthe: I guess...this is what absinthe is? Cloves present at the start, now retreating (~20 min later). Some woods, probably the ones composing a dank spiral stairway, and not unpleasant at all. The smell of a restaurant I imagine I'd like.

Miscellany:

• ELDO Remarkable People: I think it's the one that gave me a fleeting rice impression, but the grapefruit is overwhelming and where in hell is the champagne :| It shares that quality with piguet bandit of causing a buzzing mid-nose bridge.
• Piguet Bandit: not instantly appealing for me, unlike...citruses...white florals...but it has uniqueness and the cachet of knife lesbean. If only the galbanum lasted longer. (also, $30 for like 50 sample vials, but where's the leather I was promiseddd what vetiver QAQ) If I had to assign a fabric -- fur, with designs shaved into it like those racing camels, dyed in rich tyrians and crimsons. The inside of a dwelling out on the silk road, braided, reinforced against the steppe winds?
• Guerlain Habit Rouge is the one I'd assign as its opposite - the luxurious guerlinade base, the citrus (maybe I should get it :? It's cheap (on the discounter sites) I love guerlains. oh,,,no,,,,, I tried habit rouge again on this, the day I ordered a bottle of shalimar...do....I love it better.......(they're basically the same thing except habit rouge is a cologne type thing and has elevated levels of citrus, basically all I wanted out of coty emeraude)
• Guerlain Insolence is a little slip of a thing of very slight consequence, kind of like watery hotel shampoo
• Amouage Bracken women: smells brilliant upon first spraying (weird fresh fruitish scent, whatever fern is supposed to be) but has an underlayer of stuffy powder that smells like someone else's body. Not -- repellent, but not me either. After a shower, the original thing I loved returns, but only as a skin scent. A plucked string vibrating in green.
• Bottega Veneta: I’d heard about this delicate leather and have repeatedly tested it on paper. On skin, — I’ve never smelled anything like it (ie bad) and can’t think of anything that might cause that scent. I can only imagine that if one gets cursed by something out of Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence? A chilly modern hex from there might cause an aura like this. Almost reminds me of a note from ELDO secretions magnifiques. There's clearly nothing marine in the notes, so I don't know what's going on. And where did the leather go QAQ (of course, I did spray it on a day when the cartilage in my nose was probably crackling from the cold.)

Comments

[pengwern]

\o/ I tried to do multiple cuts, but the indents went wild on me.

I seem to get color associations with perfumes more than anything else. (but believe me, aoud violet was...not helped by my constant resniffs in an attempt to confirm that it was just that bad.....plus it was the one I tried first on my inaugural order from sampling stores, so the impression was rather indelible. ;-; it must be some synthetic in use.)

I bulldozed through a huge number of Lutens in a fancy department store last tuesday (no gris clair though :<), and I have samples of Miel de Bois, iris silver mist, la myrrhe, douce amere, de profundis, 5 o'clock gingembre, chergui, ambre sultan, jeax de peau, and un bois vanille. Muscs Koublai Khan, when I sprized in store, was -- sweeter than I expected? The bois series seems to be variations on a theme, so that would make sense, but Chergui was rather stuffy - the tobacco, maybe.

Re sillage /o\ I barely saw anyone around because our lab had like two people ///o\\\ there I was, alone with all the test tubes, and a free-floating raspberry breeze ////o\\\\

I'm going to staple that quote to the inside of my eyeballs. When a series of perfumes share nothing BUT rose on fragrantica >_> -- Although it might still be some other accord. It's just that oud and rose are supposedly a common pairing, and I don't know if I've smelled a classic rose-oud. Oud is even a commonish material in Chinese culture - they make tchotchkes out of the wood, which I know I've encountered, but the distilled wood (and chemical substitute thereof) seems to be rather different? >____<

Oh, that's cool (re Whip). Galop is supposed to be another rose leather, and so is Pinrose pinrose, although the notes on fragrantica indicate cloves and ambers. Are there Tom Ford perfumes in your area? I got a leather sample set, and a bunch of other ones to try, but they do tend to have another prominent note (iris, tobacco, etc)

D: NOT IF I SCRUB MY SKIN OFF WITH PETRIFIED SOAP D: