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.

Luxuria - Arcana Soaps

First sniff: 
Vanilla musk. It reminds me a bit of Ava Luxe Love's True Bluish Light.

First applied: 
Still vanilla musk, lovely and smooth but with a light watery element - not sure what that note is but it's familiar. I don't love it there but it does do a nice job of making the vanilla musk a little cooler and more summery. There's a resin note too, making this perfume weirdly dark and light at the same time.

After 30 minutes: 
The resin has receded and the vanilla musk has warmed up now, really reminding me a lot of LTBL. The watery note is still there but barely - what the heck is that?

After 3 hours: 
It hasn't changed much from the 30 minute mark, just faded some. I can't smell the resin at all really anymore, and the watery note comes and goes but only barely. I'm undecided about whether I need a full bottle of this but I do really like it.

Longevity: 
About 6 hours or so.

Actual notes/description: 
Lust. Wild, carnal musk with blond tobacco, vanilla, dark resins and sugared peach.

Peach! That's what the watery note was! That's weird, because normally I really hate peach. I did not hate it here.

Availability: 
Arcana Soaps
Limited Edition - The Hieronymous Bosch Collection 2014
Note: As of this writing, still available at Arcana's eBay store (link above - email directly for international shipping) and The Soap Box Co. Not sure how long it is sticking around for, as Arcana limiteds vary from blink-and-they're-gone to still kicking several years later.
Full size, sample size only available from The Soap Box Co as of this writing.

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!

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!

Black Forest - Solstice Scents

Details: 
Black Forest 
Valentine's Day 2012 (now permanent)
Solstice Scents

Notes: 
Agarwood, Nagarmotha EO, Tobacco Absolute, Dark Chocolate, Chocolate Mousse, Cocoa Absolute, Maraschino Cherries, Black Cherries, Hay Absolute, Sandalwood EO, Whipped Cream & a drop of Pink Peppercorn Essential Oil

I have plunged face first into enough black forest cakes in my life to know what one smells like, so I was surprised to find that this perfume was nothing like I expected. In the vial, it’s quite dark. The chocolate is very bitter and leaning a little to the masculine – it’s not at all foody. On the skin, the cherry comes out strongly, and that’s more the classic gourmand cherry note I would expect, but the darkness of the chocolate tempers its sweetness. I thought I was going crazy because I could smell something smokey, and I couldn’t imagine how on earth that was worked into a black forest cake, but when I looked up the notes, there it is – tobacco absolute. And lots and lots of wood. Ah, so that’s what gives it all that depth. The wood comes out much more in the dry down, when the cherry has pretty much disappeared, but that bitter chocolate still hangs around in the background.

This is a unisex scent that leans quite masculine, and I’d say it’s the perfect chocolate perfume for people who don’t like chocolate perfumes. You will definitely not walk around smelling like cake wearing this (not that that’s a bad thing!). The sillage is medium – it is strong at first but the dry down is closer to the skin. Longevity is good – I could smell it for a good 7 hours or so, and the following morning (I applied early evening) I could still smell traces of the woodiness on my wrist. 

Rating:
3/5 I like it quite a lot, but even though it’s different from most other chocolate scents I own, I still have too many chocolate scents. I doubt I’d buy this in a full size.

Day 83!

Belle Epoque - Black Baccara

Details: 
Belle Epoque
Black Baccara 

Notes:
Inspired by Marchesa Luisa Casati, one of the most fascinating women of the 20th century and the Queen of the Belle Epoque. This blend captures the decadence of the time period and the sensory delights that might have surrounded the eccentrics of high society. A feminine yet bewitching blend featuring an unusual combination of florals and gourmands. Deep florals of hyacinth, geranium, carnation and a touch of rose make up the floral bouquet, which is blended with a decadent brew of tobacco, chocolate, vanilla, anise and black pepper. As the scent unfolds on your skin, you may also catch glimpses of strawberries and rum as it settles into a complex chocolatey floral. Belle Epoque is a soft, yet extremely seductive and enchanting blend reminiscent of vintage perfumes of days gone by.

This perfume is so tightly blended that I struggled to pick out any specific notes. It smells like an expensive, slightly old-fashioned perfume of the type I could buy in the less tizzy section of the David Jones perfume department. One of those ones that has a classically heavy cut glass bottle. In the vial it's floral - nothing stands out, just a bouquet, as the decription says. Once applied I thought I could detect vague snatches of something smokey now and then, but every time I tried to sniff it properly, that note disappeared. After 20 minutes or so the perfume deepened - I guess the chocolate and vanilla warmed it up, but I honestly could not detect either of those notes in themselves. It was just... a warmer, deeper floral than it had been minutes before. Several hours later they become more apparent - it's still a floral blend, but the chocolate and vanilla are there, faint though they may be, and the rose has finally dominated the other flowers. I did not get either strawberries or rum. Sillage is quite high when wet, it almost made me a bit headachy at first, and I don't know whether this was more caused by the cold I am currently getting over, but for the first 10 minutes or so after I applied this I was sneezing like a mofo. It lasts quite a long time - I have had it on now for about 6 hours and it's still chugging along. It's definitely an 'older' perfume; I could see this being more suitable for someone 35+ than a teenager or young person.

Rating: 
3/5 I do like this, but it's nothing amazing.

Day 80!

Madame - Nevermore Body Company

Details:
Madame
Nevermore Body Company

Notes: 
Madame’s golden days of Cabaret brings back the warm and sophisticated, yet subtle blend of apple and oak, with a spice mahogany bouquet, soothing hints of vanilla, cinnamon and dark wood, ripe tones of sweet figs and infused with a blend of tobacco, black tea and fruit spices.

 In the vial this is fruity and sweet, exactly the kind of thing I don't like. Once I applied it, it smelled sour - the apple, I assume. I'm not sure what fig smells like exactly, but I was testing another perfume with a fig note the day before and there was a similar sour note in that one, so I'm guessing that's adding to it. To be perfectly honest, this smells a bit like cat pee on me. I almost scrubbed it off, but it was quite close to the skin and didn't have much sillage at all, so I left it on for a while to see if it would change. It does eventually, and dries down to a fairly pleasant, mildly spicy vanilla base. It's quite a significant morphing, actually. The longevity is medium - I could faintly smell it after 6 hours, but only if I had my nose right up to my wrist. I wouldn't wear this purely because I really dislike the opening notes of it, and the vanilla base is nice, but nothing unique.

Rating: 
2/5

Day 25!

Black Lace - Black Baccara

Details:
Black Lace
Black Baccara

Notes: 
Dangerously sexy, Black Lace is a unique and incredibly seductive blend. It has a heavenly backdrop of vanilla which dances with amber, tobacco and cinnamon. Timeless and captivating, this blend stands out for it’s vanilla augmentations; a vanilla which is more seductive than it is sweet, more sexy than confectionary. 

In the vial I smell vanilla, but as the notes description says, it's not a sugary sweet kind, more of a deep, warm vanilla. Once I applied this I could not stop sniffing - it's delicious.

Once it dries down it deepens (the amber, thankfully not jumping out and going nuts but staying well in the background), but it doesn't change all that much. I can't smell the cinnamon, there's just a warm, slightly sweet spiciness to the vanilla.

There is, however, one problem I have with this perfume:

See that redness? It's hella itchy. I assume it's the cinnamon, though that's odd because I'm not normally sensitive to perfume ingredients or really much of anything, and I have no allergies that I know of (other than hay fever kind of things). I thought (hoped) maybe it was something else, but I tried Black Lace again on the other wrist and it did the same thing. So sadly, as much as I love the smell, this is not meant to be. :-(

Rating:
4/5 High score for the fragrance - a lovely warm, grown up vanilla.

Day 20!

Black Lace - Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Details: 
Black Lace
Dark Delicacies 13th Anniversary Concoction
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Notes: 
The embodiment of Victorian funereal elegance. A delicate sugar-spun vanilla cream cotton, stained by tobacco and incense, Indian musk and drops of cognac. 

I like this perfume quite a lot, but I don't have much to say about it. It's one of those 'everything mooshed together' blends that BPAL does sometimes. It works, but nothing really stands out to me. In the bottle, it smells like incense. Once applied, it's a vanilla musk, and on me that's pretty much it. I don't get the tobacco, the cotton, or the cognac. I do like vanilla musk though, so it's not such a bad thing.

Rating: 
3/5 Not quite a 4, because I don't find anything remarkably unique about it, but still a very nice scent.

Day 15!

*Apologies for the delay on this one. I'm on holidays at the moment and having trouble keeping track of what day it is - I messed up my schedule dates.