September’s marinade centers on fragrances that transcend literal description—the ones so deeply embedded in memory they work whether you can smell them or not. These are meditations on atmosphere over notes, exploring everything from windswept shores harboring corrupt inns to woodland paths where forest spirits might dwell.
I know I said no more free Patreon posts, but I realized I probably need to give people a taste occasionally, to see what they are missing…
You’ll notice this roundup looks different – some reviews are just glimpses, with full versions available on my Midnight Stinks Patreon. I’m experimenting with this format because while this blog draws readers interested in all sorts of weird and strange things, not everyone who follows me here is necessarily obsessed with whether something smells like “the Crypt Keeper’s signature ice cream flavor” or “a vampire with a bizarre sweet tooth stumbled into a Precious Moment gift shop.”
The Patreon is a dedicated space for fragrance obsession – where the actual scent nerds congregate and where I can dive into the more challenging, uncomfortable perfumes that need proper context. It’s become this wonderful community of people who specifically want to geek out about whether a perfume conjures “goth California Raisins” or makes you wonder if “someone fed all their perfect girlfriend material into an AI machine.” The full reviews live there because that’s where my fellow stinkers actually want to explore the full spectrum of olfactory weirdness with me.
Marissa Zappas Carnival of Souls An involuntary grimace quickly smoothed into polite blankness, a gagging masked by a throat-clearing. “Is everything ok?” “Oh, it’s nothing, I’m fine” and proceeds to throw up in mouth just a little, not too obvious. Honeyed floral cream turning sour, saffron like dried grass mixed into warm milk that’s started to separate. Coconut cream sweet and plasticky with oddly-spiced grave dirt patchouli sediment settling at the bottom. An eerie seriousness that doesn’t land and instead evokes a wobbling, wonky naiveté, dewy-eyed and desperate so much as to be repellent. I’ve found everything I have tried from Marissa Zappas too subtle, too fleeting, stories in which the characters and plots are instantly forgettable, leaving you wondering if anything ever happened at all. Carnival of Souls continues this pointless parade of almost-perfumes.
4160 Tuesdays Rhubarb & Custard No tart fruitiness, no bright rhubarb sharpness but rather waxen vanilla cream, powdery musk, the ghost of an Avon moon pomander. Unctuous citrus-like-but-not sweetness filtered through something fatty and cozy and comforting, maybe cheesecake, maybe childhood. Motion sickness of the soul as memory unlocks behind glass. The queasy pleasure of nostalgia in a bottle. I wrote more about this scent for my Patreon folks!
Arcana Wildcraft The Stars Aldehydes, electric, immediate; sharp brightness dilating your pupils involuntarily in a dark room. Charles Burchfield’s Orion in Winter translated into scent: stars throbbing with impossible light, night sky crackling with energy. Meadow grass electric chorus, alive, buzzing, participating in the same frequency as hyperaware consciousness. Three in the morning and your mind is racing, a thousand moth wings, each drawn to multitudinous flames, darkness reaches its deepest saturation point, clocks hold their breath. Not anxiety, not exhilaration, but a secret third thing that my typo revealed to me just now: axhilirating [axhilirating: adj. the specific exhilaration that contains within it the seeds of its own anxiety; excitement at the precise frequency of existential dread.] Fairy lights threaded around the orange tree, infused with the spirit of the fruit; juiced, bulbs and strands and all; gulped in a single breath, time hiccups, everything shifts and blurs, cold light pooling in your lungs like a chandelier of stars, like the crushed peal of a high, clear bell, like swallowing the click of diamond high heels on marble. Something plasticky, glassine and strange—this entire thrumulent, glintiform experience sealed in a clear envelope, preserved for examination later, when you’ve had proper sleep and can make sense of this crackling complicity with life the universe and everthing, when standing in a winter meadow looking up at burning stars felt less like metaphor and more like a language that you, the only person left in the world awake and alive, can speak.
Chanel Paris – Deauville Iced lemon slices in a cut-glass bowl, encased in ice; fresh, crisp herbs soaking in ice water, subtle as a lacy front or two. The memory of a glass of sweet white wine, a honeyed, floral Gewürztraminer wisp; round, rich, luscious, and strangely absent for all its suggestion. Somewhere between charming and refreshing, gentle with a glint in its eye; Not overly polite yet definitely inoffensive, nothing weird you can put your finger on, but there’s a phantom shimmer, a flickering presence, an impossible-to-name thing, which makes it either perfectly frustrating or frustratingly perfect.
Mark BuxtonWood & Absinth The phrase “fresh and clean” makes my skin crawl, probably because I associate it with people who make cleanliness feel like a personality trait, who turn basic hygiene into aspirational lifestyle content, who kind of make you feel like a slob just by existing. Meanwhile, I hate to shower (I do it, but I don’t like a single second of it!) and generally resent having to participate in hygiene theater; the whole thing is exhausting. Wood and Absinth sidesteps this entire obnoxious charade. Saponified anise, woody-soapiness that hits the sweet spot of ease; herbal bitterness like the toothpaste I’d choose because mint grosses me out, because the sight of someone working gum in their mouth makes me want to puke, because what’s wrong with breath that smells like bagels and lox anyway. This is uncomplicated, which I mean as praise—not complex, not trying to conjure memories or transport you somewhere else, just a reliable background scent for everyday wearing when I don’t want to think about it, but I also want something that smells like me. Wood, water, bitter leaves; simple, straightforward ingredients that coalesce in a scent that is ….what would I call this? An unfussy staple, slightly elevated? A functional fragrance, unembellished but not boring? This is a competent perfume that might benefit from a less clunky summation, but I’m not sure if a fragrance that’s merely competent deserves much more work on my part.
DSH Perfumes Prophecy My immediate reaction to Prophecy: “This is an incense for the GIRLIES.” Not austere or monastic or churchy or smoky-sacred; this is more of a “burn this stuff in the background of your IG reels while Hozier sings something brooding about desire and divinity and you arrange rose quartz crystals on your nightstand” vibe. Pastel tarot deck spirituality. De-saturated dragon’s blood. A dreaming without a dreamer, that ethereal mystical atmosphere floating free, no deep spiritual practice required. An outer light reflected or an inner light unveiled, either way it’s been retouched for social media, aesthetic enlightenment run through a vintage Lightroom filter. Creamy, almost fruity, almost floral incense—except not quite incense; aureate suffusion that smells like how luxe body cream feels. Whipped honey vibe; you could take a juicy bite of this tawny chunk of resin. Baby’s first incense, but I can see how it becomes A Whole Vibe, build an entire aesthetic around it. The DSH site notes that it’s a bestseller, which makes perfect sense…it works well enough for what it’s trying to be, but it’s too sweet, too fluffy for me. My prophecies need a bit more doom and gloom.
Reviews for all three scents from Poesie’s Persephone Uncrowned collection can be read by members over on my Midnight Stinks Patreon. Someone on Reddit yelled at me about these reviews!
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Angst Psychic shockwaves of cognitive estrangement – what demented pleasure to recognize beloved scents transformed into their shadow selves. Of the two wolves inside me, this delights the freak who admires a perfumer capable of subverting grapefruit and ginger so thoroughly. Grapefruit distilled to its most accusatory elements; ginger gone a bit septic, medicinal rather than spiced. The feverish chaos of sickness made olfactory, an eerie parade of familiar notes whose expressions now exude subtle paranoia, discomfort, distrust. The landscape of unease settles: coniferous shadows lean too close, fruit-sour brightness concentrated to vinegar and bitter quinine, the delirium and dread of existence seeping through pores like chilled and electric, frantic fever sweat. It dries softer, and tangier and fizzier; a jittery-prickly rose-gold ruby panic shrub.
Orto Parisi Seminalis is another one that can be found as a Midnight Stinks Patreon review. It might be a bit triggering, and just dropping in here if you’re not expecting it feels like a not cool thing to do.
And finally some first impressions of some very kawaii, extremely literal and hyperrealist Asian dessert fragrances from Mochiglow. This, too, can only be found on my Patreon.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
I designed a Magic: The Gathering card for a perfume today—Witchly Mixologist, complete with mana cost and flavor text and everything! The full story of how Winter Nights by Dasein became my olfactory black/green deck, is waiting in the Midnight Archives feature for Midnight Stinks Patreon subscribers today.
Engraving of a Young Girl Smelling Flowers, Mary Ellen Edwards
Note: These brief impressions are just the surface layer of what each fragrance evokes for me. Over on my Midnight Stinks Patreon, you’ll find the full stories behind these scents—where Xinū VetiVerde becomes a complete botanical horror narrative about zombie apocalypses and colonial privilege, or how Mischief Academy’s Hansel & Gretel transforms into a meditation on Instagram envy and curated domesticity complete with $400 balayage and Williams Sonoma measuring cups.
You’ll get the atmospheric deep dives, cultural rabbit holes, and personal tangents that turn a simple fragrance review into something closer to creative nonfiction. Plus behind-the-scenes glimpses into my creative process, archival reviews from two decades of fragrance writing, and the kind of deeply personal observations that don’t quite fit in public blog posts. The free tier disappears August 1st, so if you’ve ever been curious about how a scent can become a fairy tale retelling or why certain fragrances remind me of mean girls with MBAs in witch she-devilry, now’s your last chance to peek behind the curtain before these musings become members-only territory.
BPAL x bloodmilk Dreaming Mandragora Baptismal linen, lavender-pressed and yellowed, moth-eaten sweetness. Fae changeling cradled in lace and linen, ruffled sack of secrets. Mound of dirt spiced and sweet, loam and leaf, twig and root. Old earth magic’s powder-soft pretense, Lacunae of child, empty rosewood coffin, pile of dust and twisted hay. The pores of the earth opening, breathing, exhaling; mulberry-stained fingers emerge. Blinking in the light. Tiny, grasping, changed. Crawling home to hollow hills.
Aesop Rōzu A rose I immediately enjoy is a rare creature indeed, and this one conjures the fierce tenderness of Yosano Akiko’s verse. I don’t know how this extraordinary poet would feel about this fragrance, but we are channeling her today for these impressions.
Ancient wood smoke
drifts between scattered fog.
Morning bell echoes—
I taste metal on my tongue,
spring’s sharp, necessary cut.
Green leaf floating in
the temple’s shallow puddle
reflects my true face.
A mantis waves its thin arms
in mock benediction.
Thorn-pricked finger traces
rose oil, crimson poems
on sleep-soft limbs,
bitter sutras cannot wash
this sweetness from memory.
Villa Erbatium is a Korean brand I’m not familiar with, but their romantic gothic aesthetic suggested something …different? than what Allegria delivers. With its airy powdery vanilla, cloying sweetness and “clean” conformity, Allegria is the fragrance embodiment of weaponized beige, Christian girl autumn energy in a bottle (there’s nothing autumnal about it, it’s just aggressively calling to mind this “Christian girl autumn” photo that I remembered seeing on reddit.) It’s the olfactory equivalent of overpriced artisanal laundry powder and “fresh linen” candles lit for LuLaRoe parties or some shit, the sort of aroma designed to be so universally appealing it becomes suffocating in its blandness. This is the scent of people who insist on “clean” makeup and chemical-free foods, that elitist purity obsession wrapped in aggressively neutral vanilla that clings to your skin and sinuses like the slimy feeling you get about that shady spiritual cleansing program your friend wants you to join but you’re pretty sure it’s a weirdo sex cult with a side of pyramid scheme. There’s something about this that smells like enforced wholesomeness and suburban respectability that almost immediately becomes that predatory wellness-to-exploitation pipeline that’s so specific and creepy. The combination of spiritual manipulation, financial scamming, and sexual predation really nails that particular kind of modern cult operation. Wow, this escalated. But I smell what I smell.
Heretic Midnight Toker Peak pixie dream girl Peter-Pan collared Zooey Deschanel ModCloth dress, honey-apricot-jasmine preciousness, infantile heliotrope Alice & Olivia floral babydoll cast-offs set alight, smoldering in the gutter. It wasn’t a cleansing fire, not a redemptive flame. Sort of like a nasty garbage bin blaze, destroying evidence of your cutesy, kitchsy crimes. Embezzling from a cupcake boutique, or stealing someone’s vintage typewriter collection, or you did an identity theft or two to afford your overpriced mason jar cocktail with artisan bitters obsession. Some real twee shit. A burnt-out, acrid sweetness “like ew gross” scratch-n-sniff sticker layered atop already barfy one, something bad compounding something worse.
One Day Thai Soda Limey effervescence, lacto-fermented tang. Enzymes and culture, whey-sharp brightness, ginger root and sugar, bacterial starter. Lemongrass stalk steeped in Rose’s lime juice. Makrut lime leaves crushed between fingers. Raffia tote discarded, sandals kicked off. Umbrella shade, cold citrus fizz, slow whirring ceiling fans. Paperback novel pages soft from humidity, airport-bought and quickly abandoned. Cafe corner, afternoon nowhere. Electric effervescent amnesia. Fleeting fizzy forgetfulness fun Fun FUN.
Régime des Fleurs Green Vanille Cold, coiled, calculating. A soupçon of weaponized sweetness. Wilhelmina Slater corner office with floor-to-ceiling glass walls, fashion dungeon once her interior decorator works their dark magic. Absinthe-laced champagne vanilla, green and subtly herbaceous, aromatic poison in crystal stemware. Dusty-woody-musky shadows, slithery spice as hissed threats between bathroom stalls. Mean girls who devoured high school bones and all used losers’ broken phalanges to pick their teeth; earned their MBAs in rancid witch she-devilry and leveled up into the cuntiest of lady bosses; perfected the art of smiling while sliding knives between ribs and stabbing square in the middle of the back while smiling with their perfect veneers. Creamy almond undertones, just enough sweetness to mask bitter herbs. Fake pleasantries/ menacing undercurrent, espionage in every conversation, veiled threats disguised as small talk. How’s business this quarter? How are your kids? I’ll cut a bitch. I’ll strike when you least expect it. More canapés?
Xinū VetiVerdeBubble bath in the heart of the tropics. An army of the undead approaches. Pink satin negligee, frayed lace, damp skin. Powder, rouge, perfume, genteel botanicals dabbed behind the ears, an ornate imported mirror’s humid surface reflects palms and liana and strangler figs pressed against swollen shutters. Lush growth, wild abundance, birds of paradise fills every window; just inside the steamed glass, a pale, wilting orchid of a woman, a fragile, cultivated existence inside that’s already starting to decay. Rosy citronella, refined for cocktail parties instead of protection. Grassy twigs distilled into cut glass crystal atomisers rather than bundled for kindling. Bamboo like the idea of bamboo, clean and serene and watery-green, nothing left of the sharp-edged, invasive reality splitting the foundation outside. The whisper of bodies that no longer remember their names, thronging with un-life, powdered pollen dusting limbs, numbing nerves, severing synapses, only a mindless floral directive: bloom, spread, consume; crawling corpses crowding at the threshold. The tub fills, overflows, she’s sinking beneath the flowery froth, a strange sluggishness creeping through her body, a sweet lethargy replacing thought, an ecstasy of subsummation as awareness dims, a blissful relinquishing to the blooming collective as the door splinters inward.
Mischief Academy Hansel & Gretel isn’t the fairy tale witch’s honest death trap, it’s the modern bougie kitchen witch with her artisanal wooden spoons and Williams Sonoma measuring cups, making traditional German Christmas cookies in a kitchen that costs more than most people’s annual salary. This fragrance captures the amber-patchouli sophistication of expensive cashmere and gingery-warm spices, Pfeffernüsse cardamom, Lebkuchen honey and almonds, Spekulatius cinnamon, but it doesn’t smell like food. Instead, it smells like the memory of those scents clinging to someone who can afford to live that perfectly curated Instagram life. You’re pressed against the phone screen at 2am, desperately wanting to be the person in that sweater, living in that snow-globe perfection where baking feels like meditation rather than labor. As it dries down to woods, ambroxan, and synthetic musk, the cozy fantasy fades into something sophisticated but hollow: the olfactory equivalent of lifestyle porn that leaves you with that gnawing inadequacy that follows every scroll session. This has nothing to do with candy houses or literal hunger; it’s about manufactured desire, the trap of wanting a life that exists primarily in filtered light and carefully staged moments. The scent itself is genuinely lovely, but smelling it feels like window shopping for an existence you can’t afford.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
I’m starting something new on my Patreon—digging into two decades of perfume reviews you may have missed. Kicking off with Mémoire d’une Odeur, the Gucci that taught me I could still be completely wrong about what I wanted from a fragrance. Come see why this quiet, melancholic beauty has become my companion for those betwixt-and-between moments.
As I transition away from free content on Midnight Stinks, I wanted to give everyone a taste of what’s coming. This kind of deep dive into my fragrant past, alongside fresh discoveries, scented correspondences, and the occasional delightful surprise, is exactly what subscribers can expect. If you’ve been on the fence about joining our little community of stinkers and weirdos, now’s the perfect time to see what you’ve been missing—and what you’ll continue to enjoy as a member of this strange, perfume-obsessed family.
Mary Pickford, wearing a kimono, writing at a desk, c.1918 / Hartsook Photo, S.F. – L.A.
Hello, dear devotees of all things olfactory, I have some news about my Midnight Stinks Patreon. I shared it over there already, but since many of you found that space through this here blog, I thought it best to share the news here as well.
I need to have a heart-to-heart with you about some changes coming to our little fragrant corner of the internet. As of August 1st, I’ll be removing the free tier option from Midnight Stinks. I know change can feel jarring, especially when it affects something you’ve grown accustomed to, so I want to be completely transparent about why this decision feels necessary.
The numbers tell a story that’s become impossible to ignore: I currently have 40 paid members with a total 175 subscribers altogether, bringing in about $218 per month. Meanwhile, I’m about to lose my day job of nearly 20 years – the income that’s been allowing me to treat this passion project as exactly that, a project where financial sustainability took a backseat to creative freedom and community building.
For years, I’ve been essentially subsidizing Midnight Stinks out of my own pocket, which felt fine when I had the security of steady employment. I loved being able to offer free content because fragrance should be accessible, and some of my most treasured community members found me through that free tier. But as I face this major life transition, I need to be honest about the reality: I can’t afford to lose money on something that brings me, and hopefully you, so much joy.
This isn’t about getting rich off perfume reviews (clearly, given those numbers!). It’s about creating something sustainable that allows me to keep doing what I love: diving deep into the weird, wonderful world of fragrance and sharing those discoveries with people who understand that a single sniff can transport you to fabulous, fantastical realms.
I’ve agonized over this decision because I know it means some people who’ve been part of our community may not be able to continue the journey with us. That breaks my heart a little. But I also believe that what we’ve built here, this space for stinkers and weirdos to geek out over scent without judgment, has real value, both for me as a creator and for you as readers.
Moving forward, all of my fragrance content, reviews, musings, and olfactory obsessions will be available to paid subscribers. I’m committed to making sure that investment feels worthwhile, continuing to bring you the same blend of poetic reviews, dark humor, and genuine passion for all things smelly that drew you here in the first place.
If you’ve been considering upgrading to paid support, now would be a perfect time. If budget constraints make that impossible right now, I completely understand – we’ve all been there. And who knows? Maybe our paths will cross again when circumstances change.
Thank you for being part of this strange, beautiful community. Thank you for indulging my midnight musings about molecules and memories. Thank you for understanding that sometimes we have to make practical decisions to protect the things we love.
Here’s to sitting in the dark together, breathing deeply, and experiencing some v.
With gratitude and just a touch of melancholy, S. Elizabeth
P.S. – All existing free subscribers will continue to have access to previously published free posts, so nothing you’ve already enjoyed will disappear.
Over on Patreon today, a peek into my monthly marinade: a small curation of fragrances from my collection, usually organized around a theme that reveals itself as I’m writing about them.
This month’s theme is “Beautiful Misfits,” celebrating the glorious outcasts in my perfume cabinet: scents that exist in their own universe, the ones that are categorically confusing and fundamentally odd in ways that make you go “wait, what?” Spiced florals masquerading as sandwiches, classics harboring alien DNA, sweet lullabies smuggling existential dread, garden gnomes in designer suits trying to navigate corporate buzzwords—these are the weirdos, and I love them for it.
If you want to read the full post with all the reviews and dive into these olfactory oddities with me, you can find it here: The July Marinade: Beautiful Misfits. This is a free post for all to read. However…
…Aside from buying my (sadly non-perfume-related) books, supporting my Patreon is the best way to support me and my writing—it allows me to continue exploring the weird corners of the fragrance world and sharing these discoveries with you.
Nearly NoonA melancholic’s cream-stained regency morning dress worn well past midnight, white muslin and satin grown heavy with torpor, lace-trimmed cap askew over hair unwashed and unpinned for days. Yesterday’s rice pudding congealing in bone china teacups, spiced cardamom linen sachets tucked into untouched pillows, the intimate smell of unwashed scalp beneath crumpled muslin caps. The ontological vertigo experienced by a doppelganger’s reflection – am I the copy or the original, is this morning or evening, why does this chemisette smell like vanilla and the milky price of sweetness, the ghost of tiny, crushed wings. The sleepless moon, bedimmed and bedeviled, bears witness to another pale, faceless shadow in the window.
Arcana Wildcraft Otherworld Marble checkerboard chilled beneath wan feet, the beauty and horror of a centuries-long waltz. Longing, glamour-twisted, pale and thistledown silver. Silk slippers worn to bone, candlelight cold and shimmering, dreams translucent, yielding, disorienting. A flittering fae floral of twilight shimmers, shadows, and sighs. A paradoxical longing of vanilla, an amber just beyond the mirror’s reflection. Uncanny pollen encompassing the bleak chill of winter in summer’s blazing throat, spring’s sweet promise as the last autumn leaf drops with the dying sun. Morning light, iridescent and impossible, and dreams, everpresent, beyond recall. (I think this was limited edition or seasonal, but it may be back at some point?)
Oddity Delulu Beautiful foolishness, madcap delight. Coloring book fruit bowls come to life scribbled wild outside every line, Aladdan’s cave jeweled jello towers giggling, wibbling, sweet reckless audacity of spinning til dizzy-drunk, dress helicopter-whirling eyeballs pinwheel-wild. Mandarin acid-bright, cartoon citrus. Rhubarb’s pink bite. Blackcurrant shadows pooling, brief gravity, wry mordancy. Peachy fuzz osmanthus, vetiver’s tannic grip, a self-aware undertow of flat champagne effervescence, Tartness with sass-filtered sweetness, bright bright primary colors, slightly chaotic energy of cars shaped like pickles and animals wearing tiny hats doing important jobs, delightfully absurd, winking impish. Breathless, tumbling; catching joy by its wrist as it races past.
It’s a scent that combines the feeling of radical kindness and demented glee and calls to mind why I love the stories of shows like Steven Universe. As a matter of fact, I think the whole cast of Steven Universe smells like this, the way they can be simultaneously deeply caring and completely unhinged with joy. That combination of genuine sweetness with chaotic energy – it’s Garnet’s cool confidence meets Amethyst’s wild abandon meets Steven’s pure-hearted enthusiasm. The fragrance has that same quality of being deeply good-natured but never boring, sweet but with enough “edge” to keep it interesting.
I just read John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet and this is a scent that sort of makes me think of what he wrote here, “You can’t see the future coming–not the terrors, for sure, but you also can’t see the wonders that are coming, the moments of light-soaked joy that await each of us.”
D’Annam Japanese Whiskey I don’t drink a lot of whiskey, I don’t know the difference between whiskey or scotch or bourbon or rye. But if we do have whiskey in the house, it is usually a Japanese variety. We like Nikka or Hibiki. I think they have a slightly smoky, caramel-y, sandwoody, vanillic, chestnutty…whiskeyness? I don’t talk about beverages as much as I talk about perfume, so obviously I’ve got some work to do if I ever want to become a whiskey reviewer, hehe.
SO, in this fragrance, imagine the aspects of those notes, but you’ve cooked all the alcholic stinging sharpness out of it. You stir in the tiniest bit of sugar, and then you hand whisk the shit out of it like people did with that viral Dalgona coffee recipe during the early months of the Pandemic. Now you have this pillowy whipped, frothy cloud of slightly smoky, caramel-y, sandwoody, vanillic, chestnutty whiskeyness minus the boozy aspect. And you wear it like a pair of cozy handknit fingerless cashmere mitts.
This is a lovely cozy wonder of a scent, but it is $380, and I am not sure it’s THAT lovely, cozy, or wonderful!
Atelier des Ors Lune Féline ExtraitA hooded figure watching from beyond the shadows, but shadows of what, and why in a place no shadow should be? The insidious intrusion, the confounding juxtaposition, the thing found in the wrong place. The stirring of things best left unstirred. Resinous orchid musk, feral balmy, rotting-earthed humidity. Milky murk, like looking through the eyes of the dead. Honeyed spices part buried, cinnamon-cardamom-disinterment deferred, the ground is wrong, a terror in the terroir. The boundless and hideous unknown, a carnal effluvium of the eerie and the weird, reinterpreted as a not-too-bad, funky vanilla fragrance. Actually, kinda lovely.
Serviette Byronic Hero An underripe raspberry swimming in an oversized leather jacket, smoking the wrong end of a cigarette. The raspberry has Chuck Bass’s face. The shadow it casts is an equally scrawny and pitiful rose. The rose has no face, and yet it is screaming, white noise, static, a broken radio. The jacket sleeves hang past invisible wrists, past the point where wrists should end. Chuck Bass raspberry has dessicated and wizened and shrunk up into a little freeze-dried mummy, aged before ripening, a little mummy-berry rattling around the ashtray of your skeezy older cousin’s El Camino.
Hilde Soliani Miss Tranchant Ramshackle wooden pier, salt-bleached planks sea wrack rot, shifting scrim of slate sky. Miss Akranes contest, bright bunting wilting in salt spray and sea mist, dripping gown and cracked rubber boots. Icy rain of butter and brine, each drop a tiny oyster on the tongue. Fishing nets of pearl grey silk tangled with kelp and hollow percussions of fish bones; the iodine tang of seaweed rotting in tide pools where lobster traps rust and seashell sibilance, gurgles, whispers, salted and cured. Sea glass teeth, crowns of crab shell, scepter of driftwood and whalebone. Something ancient stirs beneath the harbor, pageantry for drowned gods. What the tide brings in, the mayor photographs for the brochure. What it takes away, no one admits to their children. Velkomin til Akranes. Sjórinn heilsar þér svanglega.
BPAL x Haute Macabre Draconis Hollow spaces where the gods of splendor and shadows used to live. A decadence of dreams without a dreamer. If a knife’s edge could be lush, it would smell like this, if an abattoir were opulent. If danger pricked thrice and bled on velvet were cast into the void. Satiny plums that ripened in the dark between stars, balsamic amber thick as the silence after the trembling last hymn dies. Musky patchouli rising from earth that never knew sunlight, spiced powder that might have been clove, might have been wine, might have been the bloody tears of marble saints. The bitter richness of nothing, damask curtains drawn over windows that face nowhere. An empty reliquary, precious, hollow, gleaming with an absence of excess. A devastating, desolate indulgence.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
Here’s a hymn to welcome in the day Heralding a summer’s early sway…
I’d been wearingOrigins Ginger Essence for a decade of summers before I finally wrote about it in 2021:
“…like waking up on the first day of summer vacation and launching yourself out of bed with a whoop and a holler into the magnificence of a beautiful cloudless day, a sky so blue you feel you’re staring eternity in the eye, and eternity is having a pretty great day, too. The first day of knowing you’ve got two and a half months ahead of you where you have zero obligations and no one is making any demands of your time. As adults, we probably haven’t experienced that complete and utter and glorious freedom in a long time, and this bright, effervescent, zingy scent of spicy fresh-chopped ginger, and aromatic tangy citrus peels (and a nearby saucepan of simple syrup, just outside our peripheral vision) is as close as we might get to those storybook early summer holiday feels. See also all the lyrics from The Decemberists song June Hymn. “A panoply of song” is exactly how I’d describe this fragrance.”
I guess what I never included in that feel-good word salad is the shadow side of this bright, effervescent scent. There’s another story woven into this fragrance—one about loneliness, complicated relationships, and the particular kind of hope you conjure when you’re settling for far less than you deserve.
Read the full story over at my Patreon today, where I explore how this joyful summer scent became intertwined with one of the most emotionally complex periods of my life. This post is available to all Patreon members, including those on the free tier—no payment required, just a quick sign-up to join the community.
Patreon support is one of the few ways I actually earn money for my writing. I’ve never monetized this blog and never will, and while I’ve published books, the reality is that small advances and piddly royalties mean I’m never escaping my day job—my last book came out nearly two years ago and still hasn’t earned out its advance. If you’ve ever found value in my words, whether here or anywhere else, Patreon is the most direct way to support the (often schmaltzy, mostly ridiculous) writing that matters to you.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
BEAUTIFUL DEATH from bloodmilk x BPAL
Aubrey Beardsley’s most depraved illustrations liquefied into something exquisitely quaffable. Jade and amethyst, narcotic and fatal. Shadowed mirrors tarnished and strange; a chandelier drowning in cobwebs; spider-bitten, bruised blackberry dread coiling low in your guts. Medieval torture devices materialize unbidden—Catherine wheels and iron maidens, promises of torment a perverse allure. The aromatic green menace haunting libertines and bohemians, emerald-tinted Victorian wallpapers slowly poisoning sleepers and dreamers beneath verdant, elegantly ruinous patterns. A harbinger of malefic ecstasy, a finger dipped in something that shouldn’t be touched, mustn’t be tasted, yet somehow cannot be refused.
BHELENA from bloodmilk x BPAL
A tableau vivant, marionette birch brooms sweeping in the sun past the face of a corroded moon; tears of resin wept by pine, coniferous shadows through stained glass windows, fragments of jewel-toned light escaping from behind black lattice. The peculiar, electric luminosity preceding a devastating storm—air charged with anticipation and dread simultaneously. Loïe Fuller’s serpentine dance as captured by Koloman Moser in watercolor and ink; her golden wings catching impossible light as she transforms from mortal to archangel before transfixed audiences. A wine-dark languor sweetened with just enough honey to make you mistake midnight for dawn.
Jouissance Parfums La Bague D’O A fluid-filled bag, a saline breast implant, as vessel for a single rose. An anemic rose getting a transfusion from a fainting couch. A human furniture type of installation, like someone standing naked, stock still, throat tipped all the way back, a lone rose arranged in their mouth. In an utterly sterile gallery.
Bath & Body Works Guilty As FigFig appearing as quick pencil sketch, half-erased; floating vanilla blossom clouds dissolving in May breezes; soft laundry musks in cotton tees worn threadbare from a hundred gentle cycles; the ghost of last summer’s jasmine tangling through the latticework of dreams; cyan swimming pool polaroids, chlorine filtered and faded.
Arcana Wildcraft Yggdrasil is a scent that immediately called to mind a passage I’ll never forget from Robert MacFarlane’s The Wild Places: “All travelers to wild places will have felt some version of this, a brief blazing perception of the world’s disinterest. In small measures it exhilarates. But in full form it annihilates.” An exhilarating, annihilating coniferous expanse. Primeval pillars connecting earth to heavens; green darkness sleeping, dreaming, without witness, beyond time; crystallized needles trapped in amber tears dripping slowly for millennia; smoke suspended in frozen-canopied cathedral stillness, heartwood rings marking winters too numerous to count; the forest’s indifference, wilderness continuing its slow communion with eternity while you stand mute and temporary and already forgotten.
Armani Privé Bois d’Encens: A peppery craggle of stones where incense once burned or might burn yet, vetiver roots drinking the ghost of unburnt smoke, cedar planks weathered by ceremonies that left no ash, flint poised, tinder arranged, the space between intention and flame where autumn’s last bitter breath meets winter’s sterile promise, austere echoes creaking through lofty spaces that know neither warmth nor chill, dusty light filtered through vacant windows, fresh in the way that morning air tastes sharp and sour before the sun softens its edges, the potential for incense hovering like a prayer never spoken aloud. Though at first glance, it might not be immediately apparent, Todd Hido’s photography comes to mind when I smell this – an atmosphere of ordinary spaces shedding their daytime purpose to become threshold places, a pause in time between being and non-being, a thing neither fully present nor absent.
Anne Carrot ribbons from a vintage peeler; cinnamon bark cracking under fingernails stained with garden soil, cream cheese clouds drifting heavily across late October skies, cake batter coating the back of a crooked wooden spoon, the vegetal beta carotene sweetness of autumn afternoons preserved in butterfat and spice.
Emma Scarlet seeds caught between perfect teeth; bloody berry stains bleeding through white cloth napkins, cake layers light as tissue paper; rouged lips brushing bone china; crumbs scattered across tatted lace.
Juliet Cool, piney cardamom pods drowning in honey, an amber jar hurled and shattered across old ceramic tiles in a fit of pique, golden liquid pooling languorously in afternoon light; bitter tree nuts cracking between strong deft fingers, shells scattered underfoot, too warm and drowsy to care, mahogany armoires and sandalwood chests exhaling their precious oils into scorching rooms, siesta stretching endlessly beneath shuttered windows, a surrender to the shadow of the sun stretching across weathered terracotta walls.
Mathilda Fudgy coffee thick and dark; sandalwood incense drifting from small altars, a dusting of dark, aromatic grounds offered up as prayer, the sharp and bitter and sweet and unctuous drawing richer smoke from burning wood. Private, intensely personal ritual, the intimacy of small devotions.
Scout Perfume as lesbian pulp fiction blurb: Sharon was a good girl who loved innocent coconut cake… until she met Veronica and her jar of sinful candied cherries! What happens when the innocence of this sugar-sweet babe meets those luscious cherry-red lips? One taste of those syrupy, brightened fruits and Sharon discovers hungers she never knew existed. Will she return to her vanilla world of church socials and proper ladies… or surrender to the sticky-sweet decadence that Veronica’s red fingernails promise? A torrid tale of confectionery corruption and the dangerous women who seduce with sugar!
Burberry Hero Parfum Intense unfolds like dusty amber tobacco nestled in a mahogany humidor, cedar oils so intense they conjure a romance novel Fabio carved entirely from fragrant wood; golden resin pooling in the grain of his impossible biceps, abs you could grate cheese on if they weren’t made of aromatic cedar, pectorals broad enough to land a helicopter if they weren’t so heavily forested with sawdust, a sprinkle of black pepper like errant chest hairs poking through his unlaced pirate blouse. Thighs like ancient oak trunks offering not seduction but the domestic comfort of a Snuggie, strong arms thick as timber promising Calgon-take-me-away escape, the performative masculinity of rippling wooden muscles dissolving into something unexpectedly nurturing, pipe tobacco sweetness without the acrid burn, fragrant wood shavings soft enough to curl up against those carved shoulders. Fragrance as guilty pleasure romance novel, the kind you read alone in Cheeto-stained sweatpants: Johanna Lindsey’s never published ‘My Lumber Lord’s Love Log.’
Incense Rori feels like building an altar to the temple of dreams – not that it smells like any of these things individually, but the way someone in a dream can be your mother even if they look nothing like her, the golden balsamic woodiness conjures walnut and mulberry and rosewood; the creamy gentle spice suggests whipped orange blossom honey, marigold-infused sandalwood attar, ink perfumed with clove and honey and musk. Applied before sleep and still whispering the next afternoon, it becomes a nightly ritual for dream incubation, precious enough to justify its price not for special occasions but because sleep itself is the special occasion, the potent pantheon of dreams deserving its own sacred preparations.
Spilled Milk What happens when confection becomes performance art? Elaborate sugar sculptures dissolving under cascading cream; crystalline roses and spun-sugar ballerinas melting into sweet rivers, froth of sweetened milk cascading down intricately carved faces, delicate fondant flowers and buttercream architecture liquefying into pools of pure sweetness, warm dairy – heavy cream, whole milk, half-and-half – turning ornate edible masterpieces into sticky syrup.
28 Flower What does morning taste like to a garden? Cool rain drumming on greenhouse glass; greenery sap stuck to garden snippers left out overnight, wet soil between bare toes during morning garden rounds, the sharp green snap of stems cut too close to the root, spring water collected in terra cotta saucers placed under dripping eaves.
Linden Can an ineffable thing also be a platonic ideal? Tissue-thin blossoms suspended in pale morning light; bees’ dreams of endlessly circling invisible nectar sources, spring greenery touched with the faintest breath of honey, petals so delicate and precisely what linden should smell like that you can only point and say “there, that.” It’s everything it should be, and only just that.
Raleigh Gold What if opulence came in small, chewy packages? King Midas’ dried fruit mix spilling from golden bowls; dates and figs heavy with ancient sweetness, walnuts touched by gilded fingers, every dried apricot crystallized into amber, treasured delicacies hoarded in marble-lined pantries where sunlight never fades the jewel-toned preserved fruits.
Bon Parfumeur Myrrh Shadow 403 smells like the Crypt Keeper’s signature ice cream flavor, an inexplicable combination of sour medicinal powders and resinous, demulcent sweetness. Apothecary ice cream served in dusty parlors where softly spiced cola syrup was dispensed by skeletal hands, bittersweet olde-timey remedies dispensed, ironically, in a dusty tomb lined with crumbling marble shelves and cobweb-draped medicine bottles, stone walls saturated with the balsamic phantasmagoria of centuries-old incense. It vaguely recalls the whispery smoke and mysterious veils of Annick Goutal Myrrh Ardente – except Myrrh Shadow 403 emerged from the freezer creamier, sweeter, colder: mystical tree resins churned into midnight, ghoulish horror host gelato.
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