Lila - Wiggle Perfume

First sniff: 
Lilacs - very floral, very perfumey


First applied: 
Yep, still lilacs - this is a super feminine floral, quite potent. There's a green note in there too but it's delicate, the flower takes centre stage. Old ladyish but in a good way.

First 30 mins: 
Considering how potent this is when first applied it fades pretty quickly. I applied this to my wrists, behind the ears and in the cleavage (the warm spot - shut up, you know it's true) and I can only smell it now if I get close to my wrist and sniff. Not sure if it's a natural perfume - those tend to fade on me in minutes - but it's a shame that something so pretty is so fleeting.

After 3 hours: 
Almost entirely gone. If I press my nose to my wrist I can just barely catch the last remnants of it.

Longevity: 
Maybe 2-3 hours. 

Actual notes/description: 
Okay, so you may have noticed that I've been adding a bit of lilac to everything this spring. I found an amazingly true lilac scent and I've become completely obsessed. I love the summery promise of lilacs, but I wanted to give it a different twist. I read somewhere that the name Lila means "night", and combining that information with its use in a wonderfully dreamy Morphine song, I felt inspired to create a deeply dark romantic lilac scent. Lila combines a rich and retro-fabulous lilac note with an inky black musk, touches of vanilla and black tea, dusky black rose, and a healthy kick of black pepper.

Availability: 
Wiggle Perfume
Discontinued

Pig & Pepper - Twyla Perfumes

Details:
Pig & Pepper
Twyla Perfumes & Apothecary

Notes: 
Cyclamen, raspberry, rose, milk accord, amber, mimosa, honey and pink pepper. 

Sometimes I have a week where everything seems like a dud, and sometimes I have a week where I like pretty much everything I test. I wonder if that's just chance or if there is a body chemistry thing going on. For example, I wonder if I'm having 'lady's days', my skin chemistry changes to make everything smell either really crap or really good. Interesting. Or maybe just creepy.

Anyway, this has been a pretty decent week and this is the third one in a row that I've tested and really enjoyed. In the vial I can smell rose, mimosa and honey, it's bright and sweet and a tiny bit fruity. Once applied the pepper gives it a bit of a spicy kick, and the raspberry adds a nice tart element to balance the sweetness. The amber is there in the dry down but doesn't amp on me for once - it just makes everything else smell a bit deeper. There's a creaminess that I attribute to the milk accord, and overall this is a lovely bright perfume that I'd probably wear more in the spring and early summer.

Sillage was medium, as was lasting power. I reapplied after about 6 hours.

Rating: 
4/5

Day 158!

White Rabbit - Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Details:
White Rabbit
Mad Tea Party
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Notes: 
Strong black tea and milk with white pepper, ginger, honey and vanilla, spilled over the crisp scent of clean linen.

In the imp I get spicy, gingery honeyed vanilla. The tea comes out once applied to my wrist, but it smells like a very weak, milky tea at first - more like just sweet milk, really - like how hot milk generally smells sweeter than regular cold milk. The pepper is there and it made my nose twitch a little.

The tea comes out more strongly in the dry down for a while and then the perfume is pretty true to the description, but not really my cup of tea (see what I did there!). I like it a lot more after an hour or so when it morphs again to a sweet honey vanilla - it's quite nice and pretty much stays that way. Sillage was medium to low - it stayed fairly close to the skin after the initial burst of activity on application for 10 minutes or so. Longevity was medium also - about 6 hours.

Rating: 
3/5

Day 142!

Clara - Twyla Perfumes

Details: 
Clara
Literary Ingenues - Spring Collection 2013
Twyla Perfumes

Notes: 
Clara - from the Nutcracker ballet. She inspired the little aspiring ballerina in me to many hours of practicing arabesques in the basement - leaving me with visions of flowers, dolls and sugar plum fairies dancing in my head! This lovely perfume is deeply sweet, wistful and dreamy, laden with sugared plums, a faint breath of Christmas roses and the sweet scent of sandalwood. Plummy, fruity and smooth - like the Christmas dessert wine I was allowed a little glass as a child - with just a touch of sparkle and spice. 
Plum accord, gardenia, sandalwood, bourbon vanilla, apricot, grapefruit, rose absolute, pink pepper and a teensy drop of sweet patchouli. 

In the vial this is indeed a rich, fruity sweet wine - it makes me think of a particularly boozy Christmas fruit cake. Despite the fact that none of us liked fruit cake, my mum would still make one every year at Christmas, and this is what it smelled like while it was cooking. On my skin though, something very weird happened - I get a slightly orange-scented liquorice. I had not looked at the notes before testing (I rarely do, as I'm the highly suggestible type and I want to see what I can smell before being led down the path), and I just assumed there would be anise and orange in there, so I was pretty surprised to find they weren't listed. I was so confused I wrote to Twyla and asked her if they were there but not listed; she said there was a natural isolate with hawthorne that can be anise-ish, but was largely blackcurrant. Apparently not on me! Not complaining, because I love the smell of liquorice, and had I looked at the notes before trying I would have expected some sweet fruity concoction I probably wouldn't like.

The dry down is still pretty much liquorice on me for quite a long time - it never goes away, but it does retreat to the background eventually and then I mostly get the boozy vanilla and plum with a touch of the florals. There is a spicy note as well that I assume is the pepper. The patchouli is in the background, but very slight. It doesn't dominate at all and really just serves to add some depth to the base.

The sillage on Clara is medium, and lasting power is excellent (yay for the new strength blend!) - I could still smell it at the end of the day, though on a non-testing day I'd have reapplied in the middle of the day just to zing it up.

Rating: 
4/5 I don't know if the anise would come out on anyone else but it's something to be aware of if you're interested in this perfume but really hate that note, as many do. I'm undecided about whether to get a full bottle of this - I'm really tempted and it's only around for another week or two (until May 1**), but I'm trying to be restrained. *sigh*

Day 106!

**I'm going to review all the Twyla Spring perfumes consecutively as there are only 4 of them and they're not around for much longer. However, if any grab your attention and you try a sample and like it, she does have some dealio where you can buy a bottle up to a month (I think) after it comes down. You'd have to ask her for the actual details as I can't recall, but she's lovely and very approachable. 

Vaudeville - Nevermore Body Company

Details: 
Vaudeville
Nevermore Body Company

Notes: 
Freak shows, concert saloons, carnival show and Vaudeville captured in one fragrance of sweet chocolate base with spicy pepper, fresh brewed Espresso and a mouthwatering Merlot wine bouquet of wild grape, strawberry stems and a hint of spice.

When I test a perfume, I like to know as little about it as possible, as if I'm already aware of particular notes, I find that influences me and sometimes I start imagining I can smell them, even if I can't.Luckily, I have the memory of a goldfish, so when I order a perfume online because it sounds like something I'd like, by the time it reaches me, I've forgotten what the notes are. All this is a roundabout way of saying that what I got from Vaudeville, and what the notes tell me I should have gotten are two vastly different things.

What I expected from the name was a carnival-type scent, some concoction of popcorn, candy, fairy floss, etc. In the vial I can smell chocolate and wine. Once applied, I got an apple smell - sort of cidery and alcoholic. A couple of minutes later I sniffed again and got a big whiff of liquorice. Now, these are both notes I'd expect to find in a perfume called Vaudeville, but imagine my surprise when I looked it up and found neither of them mentioned. The alcohol can probably be explained away by the Merlot (though it really did smell distinctly apple-ish), but where's that liquorice coming from?

A couple of hours later it was almost gone - the sillage is quite low and the lasting power... meh. I reapplied and this time I got the coffee. I wonder if that's because now I knew the coffee was there? I swear I did not smell coffee the first time I applied it. How odd.

Rating:
3/5 Interesting, and I like it, but I don't think I'd buy a full size of it.

Day 41!