Details:
Carny Wedding
Darling Clandestine
Notes:
Carefully blended and infused by me in small batches in vintage glass wine bottles, this fragrance begins butter candy sweet and mellows on the skin to resiny wood and honeyed nectar. A multitude of different scent elements and weeks of methodical alchemy make Carny Wedding no ordinary scented oil mix-it's a truly inimitable fragrance.
Jeepers creepers - in the vial this is sweet and smokey with a slight hint of candy, and when I applied it to my wrist I got a big hit of smokey bacon! Not at all what I was expecting. I don't quite know what to make of this. I have found with the few Darling Clandestine perfumes I've played with that they never smell like the (often scantly mentioned) notes lead me to think they will. And don't get me wrong, I love the smell of bacon. It's just so completely unexpected. When the perfume dries down that note goes away though the smokiness stays in the background.
Regular readers will know that within my perfume obsession I have a little side obsession with any kind of carnival/fun fair/freak show kind of scents, but they are almost all within a family of notes - foody, sweet, sticky, etc. I had expected Carny Wedding to be perhaps a more artsy version of one of those, and it's just not like those at all. Do I like it? I don't know. It's intriguing, and it's not quite like anything else I have. And I like that Darling Clandestine perfumes are often a puzzle. As for whether I want to walk around smelling like this, I've yet to decide...
Rating:
Undecided. A mystery!
Day 132!
I laughed and snorted (totally lady-like) at the smokey bacon!! I have started to apply the 'Do I own anything like this' and 'Do I want to smell like this' criteria since I've been playing with all your samples, and I haven't yet come across something I couldn't make up my mind about. I will have to get samples of DC and this mystery bacon perfume!
ReplyDeleteI don't often come across scents I'm undecided about as I tend to have fairly distinct likes and dislikes, but sometimes it happens!
DeleteI don't think I smelled bacon in this per se, but it was smokey in a way that I just didn't like. Not like incense smokey or woodsmokey, but like getting intimate with someone who smokes. Which I just don't care for. One of the very few DC scents that didn't work for me.
ReplyDeleteI have since worn it again and I think it's somewhere between bacon and mesquite on me. But you're right, definitely not an incense or woody smoke.
DeleteDC really lives up to the "truly inimitable" part! I definitely wan't to try this one! ;)
ReplyDeleteIt sure does! There are a few I've dabbled with that have baffled me.
DeleteI have this sample and I like in on open and the dry down after an hour does nothing for me. I find most DC like this that I own. They are just not unique enough in character from one from the other especially on the dry down.
ReplyDeleteReally? I find the opposite - they are all very different on me, or at least those I've tried. I can never honestly say whether I truly like them though. I don't mind that - I find them interesting. :-)
DeleteI have this in perfume oil and solid (beeswax version) and I've found that after ageing significantly (I've had both of mine since late 2011, just after she did the second brew for carny wedding) the smoke mellowed! At first it was VERY smokey and I was a little confused, because I didn't expect it to be quite that strong. However now, it does have a caramel quality to it, and is much, much smoother. My solid smells more sweet than the oil does, maybe something to do with blending with the beeswax helps things along?
ReplyDeleteAh, thanks for the tip Eleni! I shall try putting some away for a while and see what happens. :-)
Delete