Zoologist Macaque & Nightingale Review

Zoologist Macaque and Nightingale are the new releases from this brand in 2016.  Zoologist has become one of my favorite indie perfume brands – they just do everything with a sense of humor and joy.

 From the drawings  to the descriptions to what’s in the bottle and the sense of joy you get from the company’s founder, Victor Wong, what’s not to love?  Zoologist Macaque has notes of cedar, green apple, mandarin, olibanum, galbanum, palisander, honey, rosewood, ylang, jasmine tea, green tea, cedar moss, white oud and musk.  Created by perfumer, Sarah McCartney, taking its inspiration from the Macaque, its diet, surroundings, she combines tea, incense, fruit.  It is green, rich, pungent and unrelenting in feeling like you walked into a place that is wilder, rawer.  Pulsing with green life, it pulls you a little out of yourself.  A little cold and foreign in some ways, but warmed in its base, it takes two things and pulls them apart enough without severing them.  You know, I’m never entirely sure I want to walk around smelling like this at the office, but I’m so entertained and amused wearing this around the house.  Unique and original, two of the finest things an indie perfume company should be, that is Zoologist Macaque.

Zoologist Nightingale was created by Toomoo Inaba and has notes of Bergamot, Lemon, Saffron, Japanese Plum Blossom, Red Rose, Violet, Oud, Patchouli, Sandalwood, Moss, Frankincense, White Musk*, Labdanum, Ambergris* (* is synthetic notes).  The brief on their website describing the perfume: “Messengers of spring arrive, bearing gifts that bring smiles to faces dulled by winter’s chill. The joyous song of the nightingale accompanies vibrant fuchsia-colored aromas of Japanese plum blossoms as they spread, infusing the tepid air. It marks a fleeting moment of emotional awaking: to some a time for celebration and fresh starts; to others, a countdown to a departure for unknown horizons.”  Nightingale is lighter, more airy.  You can almost feel it taking flight, but there is a soft darkness that surrounds it – incense, oud, ambergris – that has a sweet earthiness.  Sweetly, softly sexy.  Others have described it as powdery, and it wasn’t like that on me or at least it’s not the kind of powdery I normally hate.

There is much to love in both, but it also led me to digging through my other Zoologist samples that I kept meaning to get to – Beaver, rhinoceros, Panda and Hummingbird.  Damn, I love this company, and I’ll cover the rest of these maybe next week.  If you haven’t tried anything by them, why the hell not?  From their Art and Olfaction award-winning Bat to their newest creations, there is something for everyone.

Winners of the Zoologist Macaque & Nightingale samples – grandmagaga, rosarita313 and lemoncake.  Just click on Drop Us a Note at the top, send me an e-mail, remind me of what you won and get me your mailing address. I’ll send you a quick e-mail to let you know I got your e-mail and it didn’t land in a spam filter and then get it on the way to you.  I only check Posse e-mail like once a week, so it can take a few days sometimes to respond there – which reminds me I need to go check that e-mail box.

Okay, so run over to the Zoologist site, take a look at what they have, then come back and tell me which ones you most want to try. I’ll give away a set of samples of the entire line to two commenters drawn at random.