By Kilian won the Indie Fragrance Foundation Award for Amber Oud and Playing with the Devil, so perhaps I should have started with those two, but I’m on a jasmine kick at current, so this will just have to do until I go back.

Imperial Tea

Wet: magnolia, jasmine, green tea, water
Dry: jasmine, magnolia, violet, musk 

This one confused me when I sat down to review it. In the air, it turns into something closer to what jasmine green tea smells like. And I’ve sprayed it on other people and each time, I more or less received a black tea in a jasmine garden. Light, fragrant, tannic but not aquatic, and the jasmine took its place where it realistically would in a black tea: as a strong background character. Now it’s a green tea with jasmine and magnolia dropped in it, maybe a tablespoon of cream near a pond. I don’t take cream with my tea, so that takes the dry down away from the water and into the sun for me. It’s a great, uplifting scent, and not too sweet. I find it really comforting. This is perhaps for the librarian who doesn’t take sugar in his tea.

Love and Tears, Surrender

Wet: white floral, indolic jasmine, dandelions
Dry: jasmine milk tea, ylang-ylang, cedar, mulch

Mm, so I just read about the galbanum and petitgrain in this, and I’m almost positive they’re what leads to that realistic, piss-like under-bite to this. Does cedar, styrax and oakmoss together smell like mulch? Because the flowers I’m wearing are definitely still alive and feeding on something.

I feel like my head’s stuck in the roots of a jasmine bush in Asia because of the grassy and indolic facets of the jasmine, but it also reminds me of jasmine boba milk tea and I’m sure that’s due to the creamy ylang-ylang and soft lavender among other things.  It makes my nose feel funny. Now I’m light-headed, but it’s all good. I like it. Like really enjoy it. I sprayed this one a few times before as well, and this one was the one that earned me compliments like “That smells really good, is that you?” and “I need to give whatever that is as a present to someone.” It’s rather sensual and sweet, but still light enough not to trigger headaches. This is the type of scent you want to be rubbing into someone else’s sheets.