Unquiet
Things

I am posting these a bit early, because I am taking the next two weeks off from all things perfume-writing-related!

D’Annam Mooncake smells different every time I wear it, sometimes an approximation of golden syrup, sometimes a vaguely eggy center, sometimes honey’s thick, golden musk. I can’t speak to whether it’s accurate because I might just not like mooncakes? (I also find those egg custard tarts at dim sum restaurants kinda gaggy even though everyone else seems to love them, so maybe this is a me problem.) But then I am weirdly relieved to say it settles into Victoria’s Secret body spray territory. Whipped warm vanilla beaten into syrupy clouds, not exactly caramel or butterscotch adjacent, but some secret third vanilla thing, light and sweet and glazed donut-sticky, thoroughly slutty. This is what someone in a wish dot com sexy Tinkerbell costume smells like, and I mean that with complete affection. Cheap glitter and cheaper wings, body spray applied liberally in a dorm bathroom, going out to the club with lots of enthusiasm and exactly zero plan; that version of me never existed, but I was kinda jealous of her! Trashy, charming, the kind of scent that conjures nostalgia for someone else’s youth. I’m genuinely fond of it. I almost want a full bottle, except it is also pretty gross.

Regime des Fleurs Blood Spider Orchids This is an intensely sugared cinnamon and autumn fruit compote, with a bit of brooding, jasmine-y burlesque sultriness. Big Titty Goth Girlfriend harvest spice simmer pot. Too va-va-voom to be cozy, too cozy to be moody, too moody to be come-hither. Sort of like [Mae West voice] “Come up and see me sometime,” but it’s ultimately an invitation to drink boozy hot cider in the dark while rubbing each other’s feet and watching Over the Garden Wall on endless loop and streaming yourselves for freaky guys who are into that kinda thing.

Escentric Molecules Molecule 01 + Cistus Frozen smoke, ghost trails, crystallized vapor, memory of fire. Cedar’s bare branches, skeletal wood, stripped trees, winter forests. Lemon peel frozen mid-curl, preserved brightness, acid blade on ice, bone-white, moonlit. Amber trapped sap frilled and shivery-bitter, colorless, and pale. Glacial cold, silver sheen, mirror surface, morning rime coating everything. Muted, hushed, dulled edges, sound absorbed by snow. Edmund Dulac’s Snow Queen on her icy throne, layers of ice and shadow, laminated, frigid, still. Remote majesty, solemn dignity, the ceremony and sorrow of ceaseless winter.

Nos Republic Cor Serpentis is pallid astral berries translated through the cellular mimicry of a creature from beyond the stars, who’s only ever known the pale juice of celery. Gellid minerals, wibbly, rocky aspic. Acid rain-forest-ozone melting, morphing, form in flux, clouds with limbs, bark and branch lightning-struck, caustic drip. Lavinia Whateley as Virgil Finlay-starlady, but in a story wholly her own. Weirdness made manifest independent of limited human frameworks and someone else’s stunted stories. Invoking a wriggling, writhing Yog-Sothoth on her own terms, a ruin of her own making, an undoing of her own feeble design.

Poesie’s Sleighcation Winter 2025 Collection…

Birch Please Þvörusleikir energy! This lil dingus coming in from the cold into the steaming grass turf-roofed home, a little musky, woodsy, stealing a carved wooden spoon, sneaking into the Baðstofa where the family is mending by firelight with laps full of sheepskin for warmth – not exactly the best hiding spot, but here he is anyway. Cold clinging to him, outdoor sharp conifer and sweet sap meeting indoor steam, turf-and-timber warmth, the scent of gathered bodies and pelts.

Merry Gentlethems Wow wow nutmeg wow! Lots o’ nutmeg! But also a winking, waltzing salami? Anthropomorphized food, inexplicable sausages with faces, bizarre Victorian holiday postcard logic. That earthy/floral woody bouquet of that divisive spice -and-cured-meat combination, wrapped in a quilt, decorating a mantle. (I am late to the love of nutmeg, but if you think you hate it, grate it fresh and have another think!)

Pink Reindeer Club Midcentury Roald Dahl Tupperware party, James and the Giant Peach, except it’s a jar of marmalade. Cranberry ginger ale garnished with a jelly orange, glossy and bubbly, tart-ruby-bright.

Plaid Shirt Deconstructed avant-garde art-installation haute cuisine dessert brought to the masses via a food truck with a name like Essence & Element or some such. Menu item Untitled No. 3: Blonde gingerbread stripped spices, lemony and crystalline, rock sugar facets, edible crystal. Delicate green-fresh floral anise, fennel fronds just blooming, licorice-flower translucent sweetness. Precious, conceptual, demanding you meet it where it is (served from a window with a line around the block).

Arcana Knights Templar John Willie fetish illustration. Chained boots, exaggerated heels, high-contrast drama. Patchouli leading, dark earthy command, resinous weight. Cedar following, clean wood, crisp structure. Musk as polished leather bands, warm metal on skin, restraint as ornamentation. Patchouli’s opacity directing cedar’s transparency, composed control, intimate tension. Incense smoke chain links, insubstantial, immersive; a binding emblematic and allusive. Elegant constraint, sophisticated dominance, a study in control and compliance, rendered in resin and wood.

Aysha Hansen Ghost Lover The sleazy, dangerous-divine charm of an Anne Rice mummy. Bandages steeped in sullen honey, infused with bitter, bracing cardamom and burnished amber incense, the aromatic pique of peppercorns tucked in various orifices and cavities for an afterlife eternity. Smoky, intimate burial, earthly fortune pressed to pulse points, swaddling of intimate opulence for eventual resurrection, rapture, and ruin. The transcendent high of choosing violence, (inviting carnage / welcoming chaos / accepting inevitable devastation / choose your own adventure here) and yet… you would not kick it out of bed for eating crackers. Which is a phrase I thought of because this smells a little biscuity, too.

Aftelier Memento Mori The potpourri of a keepsakes box, dried flowers, brittle bouquets and boutonnieres, precious posies pressed between the pages of diaries and photo albums, sachets tucked among stored remnants and relics, and tokens of remembrance and reverence. Decaying roses in a dusty vanitas painting, blooms dried to powder, musky and musty, ghostly and haunting, sweet and acrid, baby-soft musk, rendered in pressed petals. The grief equal to the love, the tokens never equal to the weight they carry, entirely evidenced upon opening the box and releasing what’s tucked within.

If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have shared, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?