Now that I’ve graduated school and have a job, you would think I would be less broke but that assumption is incorrect. Being a hedonist in a city is quite the balancing act, though I think I’ve been balancing it well, and my business school education definitely comes in handy when it comes to budgeting and restraint.
Because of my limited spending money, I think it’s worth taking the time to troll grey market sites and second-hand stores for gems. This time around, I stumbled around on Amazon and ended up picking out three that I thought would be diamonds in the rough.
And the end of the Ineke reviews is here! I especially enjoyed the last three letters of her alphabet, but I admire her talent and ability and can’t wait to take a peek into her Floral Curiosities collection. Florals are absolutely my cup of tea, and I’m sure she’s done as lovely a job at creating those as she did her alphabetical collection.
Whoever enjoy this scent probably takes their tea with cream, as the florals in it are backed by a definite creaminess and richness atop a little table of natural wood. This is a light, sweet scent, the lightest I think, of all of the selections in my little box, but bright and lush, with a scent similar to a ripe fruit. I think it’s a ripe banana, personally, but a ripe banana that’s still on its vine in someone’s garden somewhere foreign to me surrounded by other flourishing plants and you can still smell the tree on the fruits after you pick them, not the ultra-sweet piece of fruit someone’s been allowing to languish on a counter somewhere. It’s really very lovely and unobtrusive in a way all of the other scents besides Derring-Do have been. I would love to smell this scent on someone shy, as I think a fragrance like this garners quiet notice and, just like the smell itself grows on me as I wear it, indicates someone worth getting to know. This person may wear glasses, but they definitely wear cardigans and keep their arms close to their body.
This smells as though someone took an enormous amount of lilies and buried them in a stone garden and was immediately set on fire, and the scent is that moment as everything becomes really hot but nothing is smoking yet. It’s a very, very fleeting moment that is now preserved in my imagination by scent. The lilies are rooted in the stick labdanum and oakmoss and while it gives a nice, warm floral feeling, I really wish there was a little more dirt to round it out and make this the organic scent I was hoping this would turn into. This scent is sweet and fragrant and a little flirty, but I don’t find it sexy. This is more for the girl next door who wears fuzzy pastel sweaters and greets everyone with an enthusiastic “Hi!” Pretty, cute, and light-hearted.
Piano as an accompaniment to string today! I think I first heard this song when I was 16, though I don’t quite remember why. I try not to question discoveries of beauty.
Norihiro Tsuro’s Last Carnival, from the Acoustic Cafe album
Field Notes From Paris
Wet: lavender, coriander, citrus, leather, wood Dry: coriander, lavender, tobacco flower, patchouli, cedar, tonka bean, lime, maybe a little rosemary
This is my new sexy scent, directly in competition with all of the jasmine I adore. It’s incredibly delightful: deep, dark, and warm, as well as complex. It moves in a swirl like a gust of warm wind, something absolutely welcome in this frigid cold. Strangely, it’s the herbs, the coriander and the bit of rosemary I get that reminds me most of the coffee implied in the description, though the tobacco comes through and keeps the fragrance warm. I love that its sweetness is wholly tempered, and it gives it depth and dimension that I don’t normally come across. It reminds me of bedroom eyes on an attractive person, or simply a person you’re in love with, as love automatically makes them beautiful.
I wear this personally, and I think this is a scent that benefits from a little dancing and sweat, but it’s a beautiful scent and I can see it on a guy who isn’t afraid to wear purple, and is trained in some art or another, which he pursues with passion.
Mm, no soap in this one, and perhaps it’s because I was doing my homework while sipping a merlot, but this was a lovely pairing; both slightly sweet, the perfume sweeter, but both plummy, with a little bit of a bite. At first the image in my head was a tragically spilled glass of wine ruining some gloves on an expensive desk. It changed after a while into a woman eating fragrant pit fruits with her gloves still on over the same expensive desk, which is not really the appropriate table to be eating dripping fruit on. Which I guess it the point; it’s just a little inappropriate. And I like it. I may be biased since I’m a brunette, but this is a brunette lover’s scent through and through. Brunette, dark gem colors, hooded eyelids.
Derring-Do doesn’t smell like soap! I’m so happy. With the cedar and the aquatic notes I get from this, it seems like more of a masculine scent, if only because these are notes marketed within the male fragrance sphere. It’s warm and a little sweet from the floral and pepper notes, and while it’s a little complex right up to the nose, it’s fairly harmless from afar. Like an every man’s kind of scent, and not in a bad way. This would be quite welcome in an office full of Acqua di Gio and Ralph Lauren, but it probably wouldn’t really stand out. It’s warm and clean, and a scent that’s comfortable and inviting. Perhaps this would be best on a young man wearing a navy blue sweater vest.
It’s that musk again interfering with my enjoyment of this scent. It would otherwise be a rather nice cheerful, bright scent, but the musk makes it smell like a combination of Pledge and roasted tomatoes after two hours. Very strange. I don’t understand it very well, but it’s kind of tasty in that weird “maybe I’ll just take one bite” kind of way. It eventually gets softer and the peony takes over, and it becomes much less “odd tomato tart” and more “flower salad dressed with lemon vinaigrette” with pepper notes, and would probably smell fantastic on someone who uses a lot of cocoa butter on the daily.
I don’t know what type of musk Ineke uses, but the scents are all so soapy on me. This one’s a little less so, and the oakmoss I think really helps to counter the weird, soapy musk. The notes online don’t indicate any sort of citrus, but the lime for me is front and center, though I don’t know what freesia smells like. It reminds me of times on the slip and slide, the squashed grass and mud mixing with the smell of detergent or bubble soap or whatever was mixed into the water to give it a slick quality, but it’s definitely cleaner and prettier, as if we were engaging in the activity in a field of wildflowers.
This reminds me of a gift soap shaped in the form of a bouquet of purple flowers of all shapes that my family was once given. I loved that soap because it was purple (and not pink) and it smelled like flowers, which I had a vested interest in from a young age. I used to format huge guides of flowers, their pictures, and their meanings and print them out on our home printer. This is a nice memory of those times, but the musk makes this stay rather soapy on me, and I unfortunately can’t see myself wearing it. For those who don’t mind the soap however, it’s a really fresh lilac fragrance, a little creamy, not too sweet, and because of the soap, really quite clean.
I purchased the Ineke sampler a month ago, but it arrived the day after I moved back into my dorm so I wasn’t able to retrieve it until earlier this week, and I’ve already started to work on the reviews and how I want to structure my posts. I’m also pretty sure I just received my Imaginary Authors sampler in my school mail room, but I’ll have to check. I bought it for myself as a Valentine’s Day gift, and I’m hoping it’s worth the hype!
The next few weeks will probably be full of fragrance since I’m running out of time to do anything else, and sitting down and writing about fragrance helps relax me and get me away from all of the stress and the emotions and the ridiculousness. I feel like I’m already falling behind on some things and I have no idea how to make up that time.
Pomelo girl thoughts 