Masque Milano Lost Alice, created by Mackenzie Reilly, is a 2021 gourmand launch in the Opera collection. Let’s use the company’s copy here because, well, it is perfect..
IV – I LOST ALICE
A frabjous olfactory journey into too much black pepper, white roses (painted red), mad tea and carrot cakes.Act IV Scene I
The inspiration for Lost Alice comes from Chapter Seven – A Mad Tea-Party, where one could almost smell the Hatter’s tea, milk, bread and butter, served in a bucolic setting. Add some scones to complete a very Brit cream tea, and the magic is complete.“SMELL ME” (Head Notes): Bergamot, Ambrette Seed LMR, Clary Sage France LMR, Too Much Black Pepper*
“DRINK ME” (Heart Notes): Carrot Heart LMR, Orris Concrete LMR, English Tea, White Roses (Painted Red)
“EAT ME” (Bottom Notes): Sandalwood India LMR, Broom Absolute Italy LMR, Fleur de Lait (Steamed Milk Accord)
* …and, no, the black pepper is not too much. It is balanced to perfection!
Steamed milk, tea, iris. This is Lost Patty because I think this is the best thing Masque Milano has done, and I’m a big fan of several of their perfumes – though usually they seem more dense or earthy – something other than this. This is a puff of milky tea sitting in the garden bed of iris. I don’t know if there is some kind of bready note in there, but it feeeeeels like there is! Little bready scone sitting on the side peeping over the teacup.
I sprayed this on without reading ANY of the notes, which I’m attempting to make my new way of sampling perfumes, just so I get a olfactory tabula rasa. I sniffed once, started walking, stopped and took another big whiff to make sure what I smelled is what I smelled.
I have this category of perfumes I call “addictive.” MFK BR540 is in there, as is Byredo Gypsy Water, Hermessence Vetiver Tonka… even the invasive culture weed, Glossier You. They have that something that makes them so sniffable. Some of those I like, some I don’t really get the widespread love, BUT they all make me want to sniff them over and over again.
Lost Alice is that – and one I love. Milky tea iris, who knew? On these, I never know if other people will have the same or similar reaction to it. Is it just some memory for me? I can’t imagine what, I’ve never put milk in my tea, but I love those smells and iris, so perhaps just the heady combination. It is lovely, and I wish someone would do all the perfumes of the characters in Alice in Wonderland.
Update on my vertigo. Went to ENT doctor this week. Y’all were close on the labyrinthitis. Symptoms are the same, except that comes with hearing loss. He is fairly sure it is vestibular neuritis, which is basically a middle ear thingie gets a migraine and sends the vestibular response all whacky – up/down/sideways are all confused. He gave me a prescription and said that if/when it happened again, take the pill, and it should suppress the vestibular response and take away all the crazy symptoms – or the worst of them – until that inner ear inflammation goes away and all is right with the world. Often it is sickness, like the flu or measles, etc., but I haven’t been sick, and I don’t think I’ve ever been sick when this happened, but I do have allergy problems, and it tends to show up either after I start getting congested. Which comes first? Don’t know.
Best part about this, guess what the drug is that helps me through it (hopefully!)?
Valium. I have an emergency supply of valium. I have no words I can put here except it makes me bust up laughing every time I think about it.
Oh, double update on the garden. And this is the bonehead thing. In front of my house, i have this lovely stone things that I kept thinking were full of shredded bark. I was moving something, and I moved enough of the mulch away and went, Lord, that is dirt. These are fabulout built-in stone flower boxes on both sides of my step. Well, now they are flower boxes because I ran out and got some nice shady/partial shade/partial sun flower and filled them up! I was using them to hold my packages that get dropped off!
Winners of The Nue Co Forest Lung samples are – Rina and Tiara. Just click the Drop Us a Note at the top, send me an email with your address, remind me what you won. I will give you a quick reply “Got it!” email so you know it didn’t wind up in my spam filter and get the sample out to you. Congrats, I hope you love it!
So will give away two samples of the charming little Masque Milano Lost Alice to two commenters drawn at random.
Reading Cinnamon’s post this week about rain and needing summer memories to get her through it and Musette’s post about the things that feel like home, I’m thinking there are perfumes that you get right away because something in them you perceive as beautiful but it also hits a pleasure memory. Do you agree? Disagree? Another theory on how people can feel very differently about the same smell?
Please enter me if it isn’t too late! I love All things Alice, my parents gifted me with the book when I was about 8 and I’ve been obsessed since.
Oh yes, many of my favorite scents are ones that hit pleasure memories 🙂 but frustratingly, I often can’t place the memory attached to the scent.
As someone who loves everything about Alice in wonderland – original books, movies, imageries… and who loves yeasty, milky and rosy notes… to say I am intrigued is an understatement. I would love to be entered in the draw!!!
I think familiarity shapes much our sense of beauty and comfort… I see it everywhere in perfume, art, furniture, even facial features!
Even it’s negation, may be a form of influence in itself.
I don’t “look like” Amuage Gold. Or Fracas. Yet I feel familiarity and ease around both these big beauties… I wear them like a I would an ornate heirloom piece, very “me” despite not really “me”. Maybe because they remind me of scents that wafted behind my beloved women – mother, grandmother, aunts, great- aunts… most of them long gone now, alas…but their presence and memory oh so strong and vivid…and present.
I love the scents of Iris and tea so I completely understand why you had such a visceral reaction to this scent! Add in a charming Alice tea party reference, and what’s not to like!?! I’m so glad you got the dizziness properly sorted out! It pays to have a real expert figure out what’s going on, and not just well-meaning friends on the internet. Hoping that the Valium does the trick for you from here on out whenever you’re feelin’ loopy!
Oh, but you guys got me on the right track, and I stopped thinking of it as some random thing that happened to me and decided I should have it looked into. I’m so glad you guys helped with that!
That sounds great — and the company’s marketing material is actually good. Those basic notes — the steamed milk, iris and tea — had me at hello. I’ve checked a number of places here and not sure any stocks MM. Will have to look farther afield.
As to the right away fragrances: Tauer l’Air — first time I put it on my wrist my brain just went ‘oh, yes’; Lostmarch Lann-Ael — just totally scrumptious, warm and comforting, but also insanely attractive. There are others I love but those two were just immediate brain fizzes.
Lann-Ael, OMG, I miss that one so much. I think all the Lostmarch things are gone too, but that thing was insanely delicious, I couldn’t stop myself from sniffing it when I put it on. I wish I had thought to rathole 3-4 bottles of it.
Yes, this one sounds sooo fun. Please do enter me. Love the Alice references.
And I have definitely experienced certain perfumes feeling like home and hitting some kind of scent memory. They’re often not the ones I would expect either. POTL Luctor et Emergo is one of those. It feels like good feelings about family holidays!
Do you know, is POTL gone now? I’ve been trying to find another bottle for six months, and it is listed as out of stock everywhere. Am guessing they stopped making it. I wish someone else would pick it it, It is one of those addictive, homey scents for me too.
It’s still on the Netherlands website but says it doesn’t ship out of that country.
I love Alice in Wonderland, especially the Mad Hatter’s tea party and now I’ll know exactly how it would smell sitting at the table. You’re lucky to have the old planters. I’m always looking for them.
Well, they are built in. I think they redid the front walk and steps at some point recently, before I bought it, and added them. But filled with tree shavings, I thought, oh, that’s nice. It never occurred me to plant something there, which is just weird for me.
It’s funny how smell memories can stay with us. I used to get a smell memory of a room where I once took ballet lessons as a child many years ago and while I hardly remember the lessons, that smell was easily identifiable many years later.
Glad to hear you’re feeling better-ish with the vertigo and yes! Def try the hot sauce with the squirrels as they don’t like the ‘flaming hot’ bird seed not one bit.
So that nasty cholulu sauce? My ex-husband loved that, and I could not figure out how anyone ate it! 🙂
I love all of the tie ins with the name and the scent, it is clever and intriguing! And the valium made me laugh too, at least you won’t care about the migraine/vertigo for a bit if it doesn’t work, but I’m hoping for you sake that it solves the vertigo for you, it’s just debilitating. Thanks for your always fun review.
Me too, I wish there were more of that in the mainstream/niche houses. Lots of indies do it, but there are so many with sooooo many scents. I went nosing around the other day in a couple and was just overhwhelmed. Some of them have 100 perfumes or it seemed like it. That’s a lot to go through, and not always well organized. Eh.
This is what I think too – I just won’t care, which I think is actually what the Valium does, it shuts of your “care” button as far as balance and all the other things.
What a coincidence, making a carrot cake tonight for DH’s birthday! I love the book and all things cake and tea, so enter me please. I had a couple BPAL samples of their Alice line long ago, I think the one called The Dormouse was very cream tea.
Do you make great carrot cake? I never seem to get a great recipe, and very few bought carrot cakes are right. I love the Alice theme, I hope they or someone does more, lots of fertile ground to go into. Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts. I know some have played with some of those, but would love to see a cohesive collection. I didn’t know BPAL had done it, their stuff changes so fast, I gave up long ago.
DNEM because Musette but I just want to say
a. this post made me giggle with delight
b. I love ‘frabjous’ – Lewis Carroll (and Ogden Nash) had THE BEST WAY with words.
c. giggling about the flower beds! Been there!
d. An emergency supply of Valium? Everybody needs one of those!
xoxox
Sames. They get props just for going with Lewis Carroll as a reference point in the perfume and the marketing copy.
I feel so dumb about the flower beds. I mean, how did I miss that? You and March were here, why didn’t you TELL ME?!?!? 🙂
because we spent ALL THE TIME in the pool, trying to get on that damb bronco! xoxoxo
Oh, this sounds like fun! Thanks for all the notes and your walk-through of the scent experience. I’m also thrilled to hear you have a workable diagnosis/treatment for the vertigo. Just the thought of vertigo makes me feel faintly nauseated.
It really is. I wish you had your smell back. I don’t know that you’d love it, but it would be interesting to you.
Yeah, it’s not the worst thing I can imaging, but I don’t know how people who have constant vertigo do it. I get a bad dose for 16 hours, and I’m just out of my mind.
OOOOHHHH Patty! So tempting on the Masque Milano. Sounds terrific!
Yay for a valium stash. You are now a fully fledged 1980s woman about the house! Congratulations.
Also, YAY for finding new places to plant flowers.
Maybe we do register memories that draw us to particular fragrance. It would make a lot of sense.
Portia xx
It is really lovely. I do feel very retro now. Now I just need a couple of Milltowns to be completely fitting in my mid mod house. 🙂
The blasted squirrels were busy digging up one of my new stone flower box plants last night. I forgot, I had spilled bird seed in there, and my planting disturbed their snacking in that area, so they had to dig for the sunflower seeds. Well, I may be replanting flowers for a while in that box or putting hot sauce there. Does that deter squirrels?
you also need a caftan and a martini! xoxoxo
get some chicken wire and garden staples . Squirrels are heinous devils and will dig up just to be jacksnakes. Also get some mothballs – once the plantings are up and in decent strength, scatter some mothballs to deter the squirrels’ sense of smell. xoxo
Here’s to the valium – hope it does the trick for you!
Tea? Roses? Carrot cake is my favorite cake, partly for the cream cheese frosting. Lost Alice sounds intriguing.
Oh, same. Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting is the best, but I’m really picky about it, and people so often get it all wrong, and nothing is worse than a too sweet carrot cake with cream cheese, just sours my joy on first bite. An easy thing to make go all wrong.
I won! Will follow the directions above to claim. Please don’t enter me in this drawing as I cannot smell iris and have an aversion to milk with tea. Nice to know this isn’t something to put on my sniff list but do love the concept with the Alice tie-in. Valium… certainly didn’t have that on my “Patty’s ear problem bingo card” .
Go figure. I”m not sure why tea/milk/iris and break is on my list of love to sniff, but there you go. LOL, I know! I’m still laughing about it. Now I’m just hoping it works.