Gibbon's Boarding School - Solstice Scents

Source

First sniff: 
Leather. This is some kinky kind of school.

First applied: 
Leather, musty wood and something like... lime? Is it bay rum, maybe? It makes me think of pirates on tropical seas. This is quite a masculine scent. Something about it is verging on fly spray - maybe that limey note is making me think of citronella.

After 30 minutes: 
There's not much change, but it's a bit more mellow now, and less fly spray-ish. This would smell nice on a man but it's not really my thing.

After 3 hours: 
Much softer, it fades considerably after the first hour. Kind of a generic man scent now - a bit woody but really mellow.

Longevity: 
About 6 hours but very muted after the first hour.

Actual notes/description: 
Dusty wooden desks, paper, carefully hidden tobacco pouch, dying fire, dried leaves, leather chairs, Autumn breeze.

Availability: 
Solstice Scents
Limited Edition - Foxcroft's Autumn Festival 2014
Full size and sample size.

Jack and The Devil - Solstice Scents

Source

First sniff: 
Leather, chocolate... or maybe a deep vanilla?

First applied: 
Leathery tobacco and vanilla. Very masculine but smooth. There's some patchouli there too but thankfully it's not crazy.

After 30 minutes: 
The patchouli is prominent now, unfortunately. The tobacco is also stronger - this has become even more 'manly' than when I first applied it. It's probably awesome on a bloke, but not my kind of thing at all.

After 3 hours: 
The patchouli has mellowed at last and it's quite a smooth, masculine vanilla amber now. Again, I'm sure this would be amazing on a man but it's not something I would wear.

Longevity: 
About 6 hours.

Actual notes/description: 
Vanilla, tobacco, oakmoss, amber, patchouli, pumpkin and soft spice.

Availability: 
Solstice Scents
Permanent (was originally part of a limited edition Fall collection)
Full size and sample size.

Logical Delusion - Sarawen Perfumes

Details:
Logical Delusion
Sherlock Holmes Collection
Sarawen Perfumes

Notes: 
A dangerous and cunning blend of poisoned tea, tobacco, and gunpowder, with a hint of nag champa and absinthe. Beware, Holmes! This is a unisex fragrance that borders towards masculine and is inspired by the character of Moriarty from the world of Sherlock Holmes - it is the perfect foil to my Holmes' fragrance, 'Logical Deduction'!

Well, there's definitely tobacco - straight up that's mostly what I could smell in this one. I did get a whiff of the tea in the background every now and then but the tobacco dominated so it was hard to find. In the dry down, the absinthe was discernible occasionally, but like the tea, kept getting pushed back by the tobacco. This is an extremely masculine scent to me. It was pretty strong with high sillage and lasted for a good 8 hours or so. I almost scrubbed it off at one point because it was so potent it was starting to give me headache. A little dab of this is plenty.  

Rating: 
2/5 If you like very manly perfumes you might be into this, but it's too much for me.

Day 196!

Snake Oil Salesman - Enchanticals

Details: 
Snake Oil Salesman
Enchanticals Perfume

Notes: 

"Hurry, hurry, step right up! Find it here and here alone, the one, the original Snake Oil Liniment direct from the Santa Rosa Mountains. What does it do you ask?! It heals the sick, and grows hair on your head, rub it on your belly and watch it shrink overnight. Got a headache? Muscle aches? Just rub a bit on the affected area an VIOLA! Pain be gone! This stuff cures all that ails ya, and if you act right now, you can be the one millionth and oneth happy customer who has purchased this miracle ointment!" Ok, I'm lying but I think you might like this one! A sultry unisex fragrance created with tons of love and essential oils like this: Blended together are ancient cypher's, incense accord with frankincense, Egyptian sandalwood, a shot of whiskey, spices like ginger and cardamom, and a bunch of deep dark secrets that well, if you told you I'd have to kill ya ;)

In the vial this is a spicy incense; applied to skin I can smell ginger and what I think might be cloves. Some kind of strong spice, anyway. It's quite masculine and dark. After a couple of minutes it took a horrifying turn and became... fertiliser. I'm not kidding. You know in Spring when the council comes out and lays fertiliser in all the nature strips and it's kind of fresh and country-ish but also gross and manky at the same time? Yeah, that. I thought maybe I was imagining things at first - that I'd stepped in something and that's what I was smelling, but nope, definitely fertiliser.

Like the trooper I am, I stuck it out and thankfully after 20 minutes or so when it had dried down, the fertiliser smell faded and it morphed into a spicy resin, very masculine and not too bad but definitely not my thing. Longevity was low-ish to medium - it had gone completely in 4 hours. Sillage was high at first but didn't last long.

Rating: 
2/5

Day 154!

Conjure - Solstice Scents

Details: 
Conjure
Dark Spring 2013
Solstice Scents

Notes: 
A magical blend of Vanilla, Amber, Cedar, Spices & Cauldron Smoke. 

As with Manor, I can smell something a bit leathery in this perfume, even though it's not listed as a note. In fact, this perfume is vaguely similar to Manor - quite masculine but also a bit sweet from the vanilla and amber. The spice smells a little bit like ginger and maybe even some nutmeg. (I have whole nutmeg - nutmegs? nutmeg nuts? - in a jar in my kitchen and secretly I like to just stand there sniffing it - gorgeous).

The dry down is a smooth, smokey woody vanilla. I do like this, but I think it's a bit like Old Cedar Magus, just blokier, and since I already have a beloved full bottle of that I don't think I'd spring for this one. Sillage is medium to high - I was quite aware of it most of the day. It lasted a good while too, I could still faintly smell it 12 hours later.

Rating:
3/5

Day 147!

Private Eye - Solstice Scents

Details: 
Private Eye
Dark Spring 2013
Solstice Scents

Notes: 
Cocoa Absolute, Myrrh, EO, Pink Pepper EO, Black Pepper EO, Tonka Absolute, Buddha Wood, Tobacco Absolute, Coffee EO, Guiacwood, Rosewood, EO, etc. 

In the vial this smells like dark, dark peppery bitter chocolate. It's woody and I can also smell the tobacco, a very masculine and intense fragrance. Once applied, the first thing that came to mind is that scene from Withnail and I when they drive past the school girls and Richard E. Grant hangs out the car window and screams, "SCRUBBERS!" I don't know what happened but it just went immediately acrid on me and I hated it. It was sharp and bitter and although I left it on for over an hour hoping it would morph into something else, it stayed stubbornly that way. In the end I just had to get it off. Definitely not for me.

Rating: 
1/5

Day 146!

Vanilla Pipe Tobacco - Solstice Scents

Details: 
Vanilla Pipe Tobacco
Dark Spring 2013
Solstice Scents

Notes:
Vanilla Absolute, Tobacco Absolute, Tonka Bean Absolute and Sweet Clover Absolute.

For the longest time this perfume smelled like nothing but pipe tobacco. My grandpa - who died about 30 years ago - smoked a pipe, and this is the exact smell I always associate with him. It's funny how there's something I find comforting and warming about pipe tobacco smell, but if someone was standing next to me with a cigarette I'd be giving them stink eye.

After about an hour I could finally smell the other notes - well, not really specifically, it just morphed into a warmer, sweeter pipe tobacco. I wouldn't wear this as a perfume - I don't want to smell like I smoke a pipe - but I really like it a lot. Sillage was medium, longevity also medium - about 6 hours before it was too faint to really pick up.

Rating: 
4/5

Day 145!

Manor - Solstice Scents

Details:
Manor
Solstice Scents

Notes: 
Woody-Vanilla Musk, Vanilla Accord, Glorious Black Agarwood & Exquisite Aloeswood.

When I test perfume samples I pull them out randomly (unlike bottles, which I use as the review of the day if it's just something I feel like wearing and I've not reviewed it previously), but sometimes I pull one out and it's a complete mystery to me. I can't decide whether I like it, I can't pick what it smells like, I just find it confusing and I can't write about it because it makes no sense to me. Manor is one of these perfumes - I have pulled it out several times this year, tested it for the day, found it baffling and put it back in the drawer for another time. I suspect it might be partially because it's a warm perfume and probably more suitable for cold weather, and since it's finally getting cold here in Adelaide, I'm starting to get my head around it a bit. I still find it a bit odd - for example, in the vial and throughout its lifespan on my wrist I smell leather, which is not mentioned at all in the notes. It brings to mind an old, antique Chesterfield. The wood is definitely there - this is very resiny - and the vanilla is not distinct to me as vanilla, but there's definitely something there sweetening it up a tad.

Manor is quite masculine, those who like the more unisex kind of perfumes might enjoy this. The sillage is fairly high for at least an hour or so, and it lasts a long time. I've been wearing it since about 9am (it's just gone 3pm now) and I can still smell it when I move my arm around. I still don't know whether I like it or not - I certainly don't hate it.

By the way, be warned those who wear light-coloured clothing - this is one that will probably stain - as evidenced by the yellow mark it left on my wrist.

Rating: 
Undecided. This one is another mystery.

Day 137!

Carny Wedding - Darling Clandestine

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!

Aequitas - Darling Clandestine

Details: 
Aequitas
Darling Clandestine

Notes: 
Yes. It's a fragrance inspired by the Boondock Saints. Smoke and blood and whiskey and damp alleys and leather and steel and gunpowder and sweat and denim and sweet wooden rosary beads and a bit of clover struggling up through concrete cracks. It is unisex and so, so, so sexy.

Aequitas contains highly concentrated German chamomile, so it's got a bit o' the green. And since it also contains real whiskey, the dark resins and lovely insanely green oil-bubbles tend to separate and settle at the bottom. Just give the bottle a shake, and the perfume turns the color of a luna moth. :)

I wore this for three days in a row trying to get my head around it and I'm still baffled. I can't really pick out any notes, it smells like... green. In the bottle I think I can smell the steel note and also the whiskey, but to be honest I could only pick out those notes once I knew they were there. It's very masculine - slightly too masculine for my tastes. Once applied it stays that way for quite a long time, but then a couple of hours later there's something floral about it - no particular flower, not particularly girly, but definitely floral. It's weird. I have no idea whether or not I like it. Sillage is medium, longevity is about 10 hours.

Rating: 
Undecided. I'm going to try it again in a month or so and see if I can make more sense of it.

Day 114!

Old Cedar Magus - Solstice Scents

Details: 
Old Cedar Magus
Solstice Scents


Notes:
Old Cedar Magus is an amazing blend of fresh cedarwood on a bed of mystical incense and soft vanilla. Excellent as a unisex woodsy scent... slightly smoky and very alluring.

One of the most powerful attractants (is that a word? it is now) for me is smell. I don't look at people in the street but if I walk past a man who smells good I will stop dead, whip around and stare as he passes by. He could have a head like a robber's dog but I'll still be attracted. Ironically, my last two long term relationships were with men who hated anything that smelled the slightest bit perfumy - one because he was a hippie skank and the other because he gets headaches from strong fragrances (and also because he was a bit of a borderline hippie skank, it has to be said).

All this is a long-winded Grandpa Simpson way of saying that to me, Old Cedar Magus smells like the PERFECT MAN. It's warm, inviting, a bit sexy but not in that Sex Panther kind of way (you know what I'm talking about).

In the vial it's a freshy woody scent, like walking through a forest in the middle of the day - green and a bit zingy. You know when you go out to the country and you throw your head back and breathe deep and go, "Aaaah, smell that fresh air!" and look around smugly at the people you're with while they stare at you wondering whether you're going to be that annoying for the whole trip? Yeah, that.

Once applied, the warmth comes out - a rich, vanilla resiny wood, mildly smokey, just delicious. The dry down doesn't change a whole lot, but the vanilla comes out more as it wears on. Solstice Scents' vanilla note is just so far beyond anyone else's that it's ridiculous. Go home everyone, SS has got this covered.

Longevity is medium - I finally stopped sniffing myself after about 6 hours because it got to the spritzer hour and more important things were afoot. Sillage is medium - you could keep it subtle with a dab, but if you splashed it about or, say, took it out in the street and threw it on random men, you'd definitely know it's there.

Sidenote: When I tried this on at first I happened to be listening to this song, and the combination of the two conjured up an immediate feeling of warm snuggliness. Weird how that happens sometimes.

Rating: 
5/5 Full bottle ASAP.

Day 86!

Creeper - Delightful Rot

Details:
Creeper
Delightful Rot

Notes:
Ssssss... That's a nice everything you have... A powder keg stuffed with sweet lime and grass, this scent is innocuous at first with a smoky, spicy undertone. 

My thoughts on this perfume:

*sniff* "Oh god, this smells like lemon floor cleaner. I don't want this on me - I wonder if I can put it back and pretend I didn't pick it out?"
"No, can't do that... okay, here goes. Oh god, it smells like floor cleaner and tyres! "
"Now it just smells like tyres."
"It's like a mechanic's garage. A similar note to '67 Chevy Impala, but not nearly as pleasant."
"That citrus is back again. Now it smells like the freshly cleaned toilet of a mechanic's garage."
"This is gross."
"Still gross."
*about an hour later* "Bearable. Smokey diesel oil. Not as awful as it began, but not my thing."
Sillage was annoyingly strong at first but not so bad when it finally morphed into something more mellow. Longevity was about 7 hours or so.

Rating: 
1/5 I resisted the urge to scrub, but only just.

Day 79!

The Shipman - Possets Perfume

Details: 
The Shipman
Possets Perfume

Notes: 
An aquatic as only Possets can do them. The tang of the seashore, rushes up against Lime Bay Rum and a good shot of ship's wax which was used to lubricate the wood aboard, and skin musk to keep it going for a long time. An outdoorsy fragrance with an unexpectedly smoky note, but still very pretty with a great deal of depth and fun to it. Not somber at all and more of a jolly scent. 

In the vial this is a lemony lime ozone scent, definitely not my kind of thing, but in for a penny, in for a pound and all that. Unfortunately, once I applied it to my wrist, this turned to some kind of hideous lime cleaning product scent and almost made me gag. I stuck it out for 20 minutes, hoping it would become something different on the dry down, but after that I could stand no more and had to wash it off. On me - definite scrubber.

Rating: 
1/5

Day 74!

Hasta la Muerte - The Morbid The Merrier

Details: 
Hasta la Muerte
Valentine's Day 2011
The Morbid The Merrier

Notes:
The innocence of lily and carnation, sweetened with vanilla absolute, smashed and marred by an undercurrent of heartless black spice.

This is one of the few perfumes I have left from The Morbid The Merrier, and it's never been a favourite. When I first bought it, I found it just okay, but nothing about it kept me going back. After a couple of years, this has aged quite well (interestingly, because the other TMTM scent I reviewed for this blog was the opposite). In the bottle, it's a sweet, very faintly spicy floral, mostly the lily with a dab of vanilla evident. Once applied though, the spice comes out and I get the carnation as well. It's so different from bottle to skin - almost like an entirely different perfume. This is what I'd call a unisex floral - you can definitely smell the flowers, but it's not girly. The spice makes it more deep and masculine.

I'm glad I pulled this one out - I really like a lot this time around. The vanilla stays in the background, just adding a slightly warm, sweet base as it dries down, but the carnation is the most definite note, there all the way through. Sillage is medium - like many carnation scents, it would be easy to go overboard with this, but subtly applied it's not too out there. Longevity is pretty good - I could still smell it 6 hours later.

Rating: 
4/5 A forgotten gem.

Day 70!

Bar Sinister - Possets Perfume

Details: 
Bar Sinister
Possets Perfume

Notes: 
Green Bourbon vanilla extract, sweetbriar, a powerful green musk, and a very highly refined leather, a background of labdenum, and a high and intoxicating silk accord. If you were born to gentry, you might have a stripe running from right to left on which you would have some heraldic figure. That is if you were legitimate. if you were the love child of a powerful man, you might  have a coat of arms with the bar running from left to right and the same figures on it to show who your father was and why you were powerful. This wasn't always granted, but often enough to have the bar sinister be a feature in heraldry. All of the elements of illicit love at play here. Sultry sultry sultry.

In the vial and applied wet, this is a masculine vanilla, kind of boozy and musky, and there's a sharp green note as well. There is a resin note from the labdanum that is thankfully not overpowering - resin can amp on me sometimes and give me a bit of a headache. It just stays in the background warming up the scent and making it all manly mannish. Leather comes out more in the drydown, and the combination of that with the vanilla made this one compulsively sniffable for me. The whole time I was wearing this I was: *sniff sniff* "Mmmmm!" *sniff sniff* Mmmmm! I think this would do nicely with a smokey note too - I'm going to try layering it with something like Alkemia's Smoke & Mirrors once the heatwave is over (if it's ever over - waaaah!), and see what happens.

Sillage is medium - it doesn't throw itself around the room, but it's definitely there. It lasted a long time on me - upwards of 8 hours. And let me tell you, I enjoyed those 8+ hours immensely. *sniff sniff* "Mmmmm!" If I passed a guy in the street wearing this, I'd probably follow him home.

Rating:
5/5 Definitely a future full bottle purchase.

Day 68!

Cantina Band - Delightful Rot

Details:
Cantina Band
Delightful Rot Perfumery

Notes: 
A bawdy, raucous scent. A mix of smoky air and scuffed wood bar, dusty boots, aliens musks and the sweet molasses edge of rye liquor.

In the vial this is a smoky, booze scent. Applied to the skin the smoke and wood really come out. There's something about this I really like, though I'm not entirely sure what it is - the smell as a whole is just mmm.... it's weird because when I first got this order from Delightful Rot and opened up all the vials to sniff them, this was the one that made me reel back in horror. Yet smelling it now in the vial I'm all over it.

The smoke retreats considerably when it dries down, but there's still an edge of it there. Mostly it's a musky wood with the liquor adding an almost vanilla-like note. Very warm and snuggly - an aran sweater kind of perfume. Sillage and longevity were both medium - not overpowering but definitely noticeable.

Rating: 
3/5 I like it a lot, not sure if I'd have use for a full bottle of it though.

Day 56!

Bourbon Street - Deep Midnight Perfumes

Details:
Bourbon Street
Deep Midnight Perfumes

Notes:
Bourbon Street: The Lamplighter turns down his last alleyway, and you long to follow the scent of sexy bay rum touched with vanilla and musk. Originally created as a men's fragrance but popular as a unisex scent!

I'm really enjoying these blokier scents lately. Am I maturing or just getting old, I wonder? This is the masculine version of any number of vanilla musk scents out there, with the bay rum giving it a slinky smokey edge in the vial and when first applied. There's nothing really unique about it but I do like it quite a bit. Sillage is medium, but it doesn't last all that long - it was gone in a couple of hours.

Rating: 
3/5

Day 55!

'67 Chevy Impala - Delightful Rot

Details:
'67 Chevy Impala
Delightful Rot

Notes:
A man's scent. Bay rum, spiked with graveyard dirt, gunpowder, a touch of leather and a ring of salt, with an overtone of masculine musk. 

Manly men doing manly things. When I was 11 or 12 my aunt and uncle had a friend who was extremely masculine - I think he was a truck driver, and he could fix cars, had a motorbike, and wore neatly pressed Hard Yakka shirts with the sleeves rolled up and Blundstone boots. I had the biggest crush on him, even though he was probably in his mid-30s at the time. He smelled like this perfume - like a mechanic's garage - car oil, manliness and ability to fix things.

Once it dries down I can smell the bay rum (which I'm really starting to like generally as a scent note), leather and musk. This is an amazing masculine scent - I haven't been able to stop sniffing myself while wearing it. Having said that, I would probably never wear it - it's just too blokey for me. I feel like if I wore this I might grow testicles.

Rating:
4/5

Day 42!

Dee - Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Details: 
Dee
Bewitching Brews
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Notes: 
John Dee: master of science, alchemy and magic. Hermetic philospher in the schools of Rosicrucian Christian Mysticism and Platonic-Pythagorean doctrine, and Queen Elizabeth's astrologer, advisor, cryptologist and spy. With Edward Kelly, he created a field of study and work in Angelic Evocation, and isolated the Angelic language: Enochian. His scent is soft English leather, rosewood and tonka with a hint of incense, parchment and soft woods. 

I had an imp of Dee a couple of years ago and I remember I liked it enough that I was considering a full size bottle at one point. This time around I’m not so enamoured of it. In the imp and when first applied, it reminded me a lot of some kind of common 1970s cologne – the kind my dad would have been wearing back in the day. It’s a little bit sweet as well, like there’s cologne mixed with baby powder. When I looked up the notes I realised why – my dad used to wear English Leather and this is pretty much exactly what it smells like. When I smell this I think of terrible 1970s Cleo centrefolds (you’d have to be a 35+ Aussie to get that), dad shorts with socks and sandals, Abba, olive green and orange kitchen decor, and rissoles. It’s... well, it’s daggy. That’s pretty much it.

What I think of when I smell this perfume (that's my brother mid 1970s)

Rating:

2/5

Day 37!

Sherlock - Nevermore Body Company

Details: 
Sherlock 
Nevermore Body Company

Notes: 
Our new scent "Sherlock" is far from elementary"! With the rich floral aromas of an English garden experience the scents of damask rose, geranium, patchouli, sweet lavender all combined in a sweet blend of orange honey and smokey vanilla. 

This morning I received a package of perfumes and samples from Su, including a bunch that I had been itching to check out from companies like Nevermore and Darling Clandestine, so I've pushed all my scheduled reviews aside to slot this one in, as it's the first one I went for. In the vial I smell pipe tobacco, even though there's no specific mention of it in the notes. It made me think of my grandpa, who has been dead for 30 years. I wasn't terribly close to him - my mother is one of 15 children and there were A LOT of grandchildren, so he didn't have an awful lot to do with us individually, more collectively handing out lollies while we jostled each other aside to get to them, or yelling at us to stop climbing his jacaranda tree. But he smoked a pipe and always smelled of pipe tobacco. It was a nice little wander down memory lane opening that vial.

Once applied, it's obvious that the pipe tobacco smell is patchouli and something else, but not that awful hippie patchouli that makes some of us patchouli-haters. It's warm and comforting and smoky. There's a note of orange as well, not citrus, but that kind of orange you sometimes get in Christmas scents - I don't know what that is, being in a country that is hot at Christmas. Is that candied orange peel or something? When it dries down, the vanilla and floral come out, but it's still quite masculine. Manly vanilla and floral, if that makes sense. It's really lovely. I am really starting to appreciate some masculine scents more now that I'm branching out. They don't all smell like Lynx or CK One! I can't speak honestly about the longevity because I had a shower after about 4 hours and then reapplied it. It was still going strong at the 4 hour mark though, and I'd say sillage is medium. Not a head kicker, but not close either. You'd probably smell me wafting past you in this.

Rating: 
4/5 Lovely!

Day 21!