Candy Samples

By March

I ate all the pumpkin pie.  It’s time to get into the candy, isn’t it?

After reading Joe’s beguiling review of L’Occitane’s new Immortelle de Corse EDP, I took a trip to the mall to smell it.  Immortelle and honey are two of my fave fragrance notes.  And … well… okay, I got the honey, although it didn’t hang around too long.   I got no immortelle at all.   Sadface.  Instead it became an odd bread-like thing on my skin, sort of like L’Artisan Bois Farine only sweeter, and then vamoosed shortly thereafter.  I’ll stick with my wonderful imported-from-Europe bottle of Honey & Vanilla LE they did last year.  I still miss their Honey & Lemon.  And there’s always Miel de Bois.

While I was there I tried the L’Occitane Labdanum EDP (both this and the Immortelle are part of their Voyage en Mediterranee collection).  This got raves on their website.  Gah.  AMBER AMBER AMBER.  The online reviews say “spicy and not too sweet,” but, man, was it sweeeet on me.  Like any other potential scrubber, of course this one lasted for hours.  But I’m clearly in the minority on this one.  The men were loving it (for themselves.)

The Different Company de Bachmakov came out a million years ago (2009? 2010?) and I sniffed it then and thought it was kind of a snooze, and forgot all about it.  I’ve been playing with it recently; notes are cedar, bergamot, shiso leaves, coriander leaves, freesia, nutmeg and craie douce.  It’s kind of a cold tea fragrance.  It should be right up my alley but I hate the top – that coriander/herb combo reaches out and strangles, for about ten minutes it smells like peppered urine on me.  And I don’t mean in a good way, either.  Then it settles down into a really pretty scent – dry spicy tea.  I think of it at that point as somewhat in the same vein as Prada Infusion d’Iris – an office-appropriate background fragrance that doesn’t bore the crap out of me.  For something fairly subtle, it’s tenacious.  I got a full eight hours out of it.

The next two were in my package from Neil Morris, I have no idea what the notes are and I’m going to amuse myself by not finding out.

The Darkness of Trees reminded me of why it’s always good to give a NM scent time to set itself up on the skin.  I sprayed it expecting a fir forest, got something entirely different and strange, thought ugh, and waited.  Then I spent 45 minutes trying to place the smell.  I found it.  It is the exact smell of the inside of a summer cabin at sleep-away camp in the mid-1970s.  It’s mostly fresh-sawn lumber and forest (not pine forest, just the woods) with a hint of dirt and old cotton mattresses.  If I’d custom-ordered this from CB I Hate Perfumes, CB himself couldn’t have done it better, and it would be called Summer Cabin 1973.  I highly doubt this is what Neil was dreaming of, and it’s wonderful.

Finally, Tea House – hehehe, I know why you perfumistas are loving this one.  Tea, hay, and a hint of leathery barnyard, like the barnyard JAR scent or that vile Miller Harris Jane Birkin thing, dialed way down.  I have zero interest in smelling it on myself.  On a man, however, I would be on that like a duck on a junebug.

Neil Morris notes for those of you who can’t find these on his site – “Midnight Shadows is available now, even though it’s not yet on our site. If someone wants a sample all they have to do is go to our VAULT section and order ANY vault sample. Then in the comments section at checkout, write that you’d really want Midnight Shadows. The same for FB’s. Order any VAULT FB and tell us in the comments section you want MS instead. That’s it! We’ll hopefully be adding it soon but till then this works fairly easily.”

And for those of you who might have missed it in Thanksgiving travels, I posted on Neil’s Midnight Shadows last Weds.

Samples: the mall for L’Occitane, Neil Morris, and Anita for de Bachmakov.