Belladonna - Twyla Perfumes

Details: 
Belladonna
Twyla Perfumes & Apothecary

Notes: 

Bright and lovely on the surface, Belladonna hides underneath her sparkling top notes a sweet and deadly poison fruit; deadly nightshade apples and ripe blood-red and purple berries with a hint of citrus, cutting sharp as a blade through the corrupt sweetness. Apple accord, raspberry (natural isolate), guava leaf, apricot, saffron, lemon myrtle and white musk.

A very wise man once said that purple is a fruit, and that's what I get when I sniff this - a big hit of fruity purpleness. It's sweet berries with a faint orange-y note and raspberry adding a tiny bit of astringency, not much. There's a creamy note in the dry down that I don't love - it almost-but-not-quite smells a bit turned. I wonder if that's the apricot - I love Twyla's apricot note in other perfumes but I know a few people really disliked it. 

Sillage was lowish on this - it's quite subtle. Longevity was medium - I applied very early in the morning and it was almost gone by lunch time.

Rating: 
2/5


Day 176!

Swimming Horses - Twyla Perfumes

Details: 
Swimming Horses
Twyla Perfumes & Apothecary

Notes: 
Water lily accord, ginger lily, magnolia, seaweed absolute, choya nakh, white musk accord, and ozone.

I had no expectation of liking this. I bought it because it has seaweed absolute and choya nakh, which is 'the aroma of roasted seashells' and I just had to smell that. I was actually a bit scared of it at first, because I had a horrible thought that it might be fishy.

It's not fishy, thankfully. In the vial it's very fresh and light, almost nothing - ozone, I guess. Once applied it's more beachy. I hate the beach, not least the smell, but this was actually... not unpleasant. To me it smelled like fresh clean air with just a hint of something floral in the breeze. This was a sample from before Twyla increased the strength of her perfumes, and it disappeared fairly quickly on me - within a couple of hours. It's not a bad perfume if you like that sort of thing, but it's not for me.

I gave this sample to my friend Jacquie, who loves these kinds of ozone/seaside perfumes. Her reaction after applying to her wrist: "Oh, this is nice!" *sniff sniff* "Oh wow, I really like this!" *sniff sniff* "Oh my god, I LOVE this!" So there you go - if you like those kinds of perfumes, check this one out.

Rating:
Me: 2/5
Jacquie: 4.5/5

Day 128!

Mad as Birds - Darling Clandestine

Details: 
Mad as Birds (prototype)
Darling Clandestine

Notes: 
Mad as Birds is a sweet, cool, garden-dew fragrance with notes of pear and mint and amber and marigolds. A multitude of different scent elements and weeks (months!) of methodical alchemy make Mad as Birds no ordinary scented oil mix—it's a truly inimitable fragrance. 

A few weeks ago in the middle of the really hot spell towards the end of summer, I was stuck in the house and bored and read a Facebook post on Darling Clandestine's page offering a special deal of 3 full size (specific) bottles and a 'bitsy' (Evonne's version of a sample - though really it's not that much shy of a full size bottle of, say, BPAL) of a prototype of Mad as Birds, a perfume that had been available in the past but was now reformulated. I had no idea what the notes were in any of the perfumes in the deal, and I'd never bought anything from Darling Clandestine, but I decided on a whim to grab it anyway. White wine spritzers may or may not have been involved.

In the bottle, Mad as Birds smells green and fresh, with a tiny hint of the mint discernible and a slight wine-ish note. This might just be me - when I was little my grandpa was always making wine out of weird things like bananas and pears, and since then I've always thought pears smelled slightly alcoholic.

Once I applied to my skin the pear was more distinct and true to its fruitiness, and I have to say, I really liked it. Am I actually coming around to fruit? Noooooo! The green note (is that marigold? I don't know what marigold smells like), still with that little dab of mint, keeps this perfume light and bright; I would have liked to have had this in the above-mentioned heatwave. The fragrance doesn't change all that much throughout, though the dry down is a bit deeper, with the amber darkening it all just a touch (not too much, though - it certainly doesn't scream "Hey, I'm amber!" as many others do). Sillage was medium, as was longevity. I had this on from early evening and could still smell it when I went to bed. In the morning there was just a tiny faint hint of it left.

Note: As this is a prototype, it may or may not be the same version as the one currently available on the website.

Rating: 
4/5 I don't feel like I need a bigger bottle of this at the moment, but I am glad I have more than a standard size sample. I have hardly any 'summery' perfumes, so this is something a bit different for me.

Day 78!

Dirty - Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Let's all pretend we can't see that dead ant.

Details:
Dirty
Sin & Salvation
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Notes:
A wonderful antidote to an all-nighter oozing with drunken, addled perversion and debauchery. A fresh, crisp white linen scent: perfectly clean, perfectly breezy.

Well, it smells like what it says it smells like - clean laundry. In the vial I get washing powder, a slightly lemony generic floral. Once applied it is more floral than anything else, but there is a fruity note in there somewhere - something like nectarine. I can only catch that note if I bring my wrist up really close to my nose and sniff.

The smell doesn't really change at all. The throw was minimal and within a couple of hours it had disappeared completely.

While I find 'clean' scents inoffensive, I don't really get why people want to walk around smelling like freshly washed laundry. I seem to be in the minority though, as many companies have some version of this scent.

Rating:
2/5 Meh. I don't hate it, but I find it kind of pointless.

Day 8!