Unquiet
Things

Though I have not been sharing perfume reviews on social media this month, I haven’t stopped smelling things and writing about them! I have been especially busy over on the Midnight Stinks Patreon, with these 5 am empty world ruminations being the most current post over there.

Anyway, here are the twenty or so fragrances I tickled my snoot with this past month…!

Aura from Folie À Plusieurs unfolds like a luminous apparition undulating above an endless expanse of sun-baked desert. The opening is a radiant display of warm, peppery ginger and cool, effervescent citrus in an almost holographic way, reminiscent of the way heat ripples above scorched sand—an olfactory mirage. As the initial brilliance settles, there are the cracked and tangled limbs of aromatic woods, the sun-bleached, tenacious timber that survives in arid climes. Incense weaves through these notes, adding an ethereal smokiness, and the vetiver in the base provides a rooty- woody-earthy anchor, amplifying the overall dryness. Ambroxan lends a diffusive quality, creating an expansive halo that seems to pulse and shift with radiance. Aura is a masterful, mesmerizing study in dryness and light that captures the magic of that liminal space where earth meets atmosphere, the mundane touches the divine, and is a testament to the raw beauty of desolate landscapes and the mystical lights that sometimes grace them.

Hexenhaus 23 from Hexennacht is a portal to a fantastical bookstore, softly sagging wooden shelves brimming with magical tomes that smell of mythical desert spices, ancient toadstool-peppered woodlands, and Byzantine basilicas shrouded in clouds of incense, transporting you to the far-away places detailed within their arcane pages. Yet, to access this literary paradise, one must first traverse a basement with an air of enigmatic antiquity – hints of damp stone, the faint tang of old pipes, and the musty whisper of long-forgotten herbs create an air of thrilling mystery, history, and secrets. Hexenhaus 23 is a shape-shifting scent, each inhale a new chapter in an olfactory grimoire, the scented stories of a thousand enchanted realms.

The most wonderful Flannery Grace Good returned from Italy with a bounty of fragrance samples for me from the house of Culti. Apparently, these perfumes have not been sold in the US yet, so this is a mysterious treat! I first tried Tessuto, which I believe is Italian for tissue, or fabric–and it really does conjure a gorgeous gossamer unfolding, a drapey silken or linen scarf unfurling, the memory of its wearer cocooned within. Soft, fluffy cotton flower and delicate jasmine honey entwine with satiny woods and silky musks with subtle wisps of incense in the dry down for a scent that presents a more diffused, hazy interpretation of conventional “clean” fragrances. This is a quiet–almost casual– companion for those who find beauty in simplicity, but which occasionally catches you off guard with its understated elegance.

Kayali Invite Only Amber smells like spotting wonky, off-brand Spirit Halloween costumes in July. As in they attempted to capture the unparalleled autumnal opulence of Hermès Ambre Narguile, and put an orange spray tan on a white gourd and said, “ok, this is good enough, let’s call it Luxe Hookah Honeycomb or Fancy Tobacco Haze or maybe something really dumb, like Invite Only Amber.” It’s like a honeyed saffron cotton candy miasma, a saccharine amber simulacrum from a seedy midsummer carnival that leaves you longing for the rich, resinous depths of October’s golden hour.

Two scents from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab…

Treasure is a bright, gorgeous, golden sweetness, like citrus caramelized by a fiery sunset, beneath which something pearlescent and powdery swirls, rootless blooms born in twilight skies. Seafoam and honey, dissolving at dusk. Salt-weathered driftwood etches washed ashore speaks to liminal spaces between sea and shore, day and night, memory and dream…

…Which brings us to Dreamer of Dreams, wherein loamy lavender blooms, sweetly earthy and aromatic, an amethystine herbaceousness intertwining with the bittersweet floral tang of sour plums. These notes swirl and eddy, pulling you deeper into murky waters of consciousness. From these violet-clouded depths, a sparkling citrusy brightness pierces, as if through deep water, guiding the dreamer upward. But as dreams are wont to do, the scene shifts abruptly. The light turns sharp and piercing, transforming into a pair of eyes – emerald as new leaves, stinging and keen. They cut through the dreamy haze, a surreal beacon in the depths. And just as reality seems within grasp, the scent dissolves into phantom wisps of frankincense smoke, curling impossibly through the watery realm.

I’ve been sitting on these reviews for these two new collabs from BPAL x bloodmilk for over a month now, and in doing so, it looks like both scents have sold out! But I know in the past they have restocked various fragrances, so who knows, we may see them again…

LETHE is the languid escape endlessly downward, deep into the cool, indifferent embrace of shadows, past the mists, the driftwood, the cypress knees. A dream of the sovereign of a rain-soaked realm, their heart a stony tomb where green waters slowly pulse, instead of blood. An eerie, emerald luminescence, the quietude of forgotten things, and the mordant astringency of embittered ghosts clutching pale flowers of the dead.

In PYTHIA, jeweled walls weep with myrrh, their tears an opulent, balsamic wash of whispers. Dusky plums, swollen with strange knowledge and light caught in limbo, stain the tongue a starless sigh. Honeyed and dripping, dreams incubate as thick syrupy glimmers, opaque with the remembrance of things you never knew you’d forgotten, only to be forgotten again and again and again. A narcotic lullaby, a lavish cosmic jest, this ambrosial abundance of oblivion

Zoologist Northern Cardinal I don’t know if I love this scent but I sure appreciate the very specific scene it evokes. This is the crisp chill of a winter garden seen through the warm glow of the kitchen window on an early December evening.  Behind the window, the tea kettle whistles, and the quilts are cozy, but beyond that frost-flowered pane of glass, the world glitters with icicles dripping from the eaves; the bird bath has frozen over, its surface a mirror of pale sky. The fragrance opens with a brisk burst that reflects the scene outside. A profuse, aromatic green note tells of evergreen boughs laden with snow and the tingly bite of frozen air catching your breath and filling your lungs. The snow crunches underfoot before your scuffed brown boot plunges through a six-inch crust of the stuff – a sensation echoed in the scent’s subtle leather undertones and earthy base notes of dormant soil. A beady-eyed, red cardinal glares at you from a fencepost before taking off in a flurry of flight, a scarlet flash against a hush of white, a burst of color that finds its olfactory equivalent in a vivid bramble of winter berries, bright and bittersweet. As the fragrance settles, it reveals woody notes, log piles, and weathered barns, staunch sentinels against the winter landscape. It dries to a musty green whisper, the brushing aside of a swath of snow to find a patch of deeply dreaming grass beneath a blanket of pristine crystalline silence.

Yellow Lemon Tree Dixit & Zak I am on a mission to find something similar to the lemon-ginger-glamazon-15-minute-long guitar solo of TRNP Lemon Blossom (by the time I finished my sample, it was discontinued!). Today, I am trying Yellow Lemon Tree from Dixit & Zak. This is …not it. This is a minute droplet of off-brand lemon extract dribbled into a bottle of embalming fluid with a soupçon of acetone and sold as niche perfumery with a price tag of nearly $300. NEXT PLEASE.

Dark Season from Neil Morris is a scent that calls for a bit of a storytime, and you can read more of that over on my Patreon. But to sum up, It is a scent of smoky woods/rich, dusty amber that smells of the dramatic tenebrism of all those old, spooky gothic novels and musty 19th-century weird fiction, of ancient landscapes and loam, the soot of pine logs, ghostly smoke and sifting snow in a strangely lit field, a somber ochre, an umbral amber, frost-rimmed branches scraping a scrim of leaden sky, footprints vanishing in freshly fallen snow, the creak of the wind whistling around standing stones, something terrible let loose in the dark, something that eventually fades until it’s nothing more than an unquiet feeling or a cold shiver on a warm day.

I received a sample of Chasing Autumn when I ordered Dark Season from Neil Morris, and I might love it so much more than Dark Season that it is actually making me feel disloyal. It brings to life the autumn I’ve always yearned for, living in Florida’s endless summer. It’s a scent that captures not just a season but a frame of mind and a state of being I’m perpetually seeking. Millais’ painting “Autumn Leaves” comes to mind – a twilight scene where young girls gather fallen foliage, their faces touched with a melancholic reverence for the changing season. The painting draws our eyes to a vivid pile of rustling leaves, with only a wisp of smoke hinting at a distant bonfire.

This fragrance, however, boldly brings that bonfire to the forefront. The fir and birch tar notes roar to life, evoking the crackling warmth of autumn nights I’ve only imagined. It’s as if Morris has taken that implied warmth from Millais’ canvas and made it the heart of this olfactory experience. The leather and coffee accords add depth, reminiscent of cozy evenings of the sort I feel in Emily Brontë’s poetry.

Emily Brontë’s “Fall, Leaves, Fall” echoes as I wear this scent. Her words are not just poetry but an invocation – a chant to usher in the coming winter. The line “Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree” feels like a spell being cast, and this fragrance embodies that mystical transition. Where Brontë’s poem is a call to the approaching cold, Chasing Autumn captures the very essence of that summoning.

ALSO this scent conjures the underlying atmosphere of Over The Garden Wall, stripped of its childish elements (I love those elements! But!) It evokes that sense of being lost in an autumnal otherworld, where mystery and melancholy reign supreme. The fragrance captures the essence of wandering through the Unknown, with its subtle menace and ominous presence lurking just beneath the surface of fallen leaves and shadowy forests.

Chasing Autumn is an homage to those flickering fires of autumn, allowing me to immerse myself in a fall feeling that exists more in my mind than in my subtropical reality. It’s a sensory journey to the autumn I chase year after year, never quite reaching but always dreaming of – a season both beautiful and slightly foreboding.

With Witch’s Spell thought I was getting the kind of craggy, forested woodland Vvitch you might find in a Roger Eggers film; this is instead more along the lines of a gloriously kitschy-campy hyper-saturated swinging ’60s meets ruffled Victorian boudoir of Anna Biller’s The Love Witch. Initially, it’s this heady, slithery, intoxicating coil of orange blossom, reminiscent of the almost narcotic allure of Elaine herself. It borders on desperately sweet, but with an edge that hints at something more complex beneath the surface (it made me think of tuberose with its indolic, waxy sweetness.) Cashmere and fir needle bring a cognitive dissonance, mirroring the film’s blend of soft femininity and underlying danger and patchouli and jasmine further amp up the fragrance’s vixienish va-va-voom qualities. The dry-down is powdery and somehow vulnerable, like the illusion of self-dissolving when you realize all you really want is just to be loved, but you keep accidentally killing your paramours with all of your love potion love-bombing. Note: Witch’s Spell is not listed on the site, but according to Neil Morris, the amount of offerings available would make the site unnavigable if they were all listed, so apparently you just order any “vault” perfume or sample, and in the comment section at checkout, simply tell him which unlisted fragrance you want, and he will substitute.

Vietnamese Coffee from d’Annam I really wanted to love this fragrance; I was so intrigued by the idea. But the reality of it is that it smells like sour coffee-breathed admonishments and secondhand smoke from your cranky mother when you’re wearing too much fruity-floral Ex’cla-ma’tion eau de toilette and several greasy layers of cotton candy Lip Smackers before heading off for your first day of junior high circa 1989. It dries down to days-old espresso shots sloshing at the bottom of a pink Caboodles organizer.

Green Star from Cocoa Pink. This is a weird one. I was intrigued by the notes of cypress and fennel list, and along with all the rest of the notes, it coalesces in a perfume that both repulses and obsesses me, like how your tongue continues to probe the bloody hole of a broken tooth and even as you gag at the coppery tang of blood and feel the unsettling discomfort, you can’t stop. That’s not a great analogy. This doesn’t smell anything like blood or broken-toothed phobias, but it does have the vague aspect of something that makes me dry heave whenever I encounter it. I desperately hate all forms of mint, particularly wintergreen with its camphorous confectionary qualities. Green Star, weirdly, and perhaps because of that licoricey fennel, does have this mentholated, candied sweetness. And yet it’s enrobed in this rich, slithery musk, and this gorgeous golden veil of gingery-amber resins and becomes something almost mystical, both sacred and profane. It’s a paradox that leaves me teetering on the edge of revulsion and reverence, and I’m compelled to both sing its praises while also resisting the urge to puke.

In Régime des Fleurs Nitesurf Neroli, many fathoms below the sky and sea, a candied grotto pulses with crystalline sweetness. Whipped orange blossom honey stalactites drip into luminous pools; sirens writhe in neon foam, their voices piercing shards of light. Hypersaturated quartz blooms dissolve in the damp and darkness, a bright ginger and glacé citron pollen strobing in the mist. Fossilized shells from conch and clam and sea snail scatter, their ancient forms crusted with sugared jewels, catching and refracting the shimmering glow. Every surface glistens with a rusk of candied brilliance, and time dissolves in saline musk in this underwater disco frenzy of sugar-coated excess, looping endlessly, eternally electric. This is the sweetness mermaids whisper, each to each, beneath the waves.

Lastly, I was influenced by one of the Japanese lifestyle YouTubers that I watch. It’s a couple; the channel is called Hige and Me, or Hige to Watashi, and they’re the kind of artsy, somewhat minimalist, very too-cool-for-school kind of individuals that I secretly want to be, except I am pretty much the exact opposite of them in every way. Anyway, they live in Tokyo, and she just went on a trip to Korea, and in a recent haul video she did, she shared some perfume she got from the brand Nonfiction. I was suckered in because, if I am being honest, I liked the way the bottles looked. I have only tried about half of them so far, and they’re all pretty subtle, but it’s the one I am wearing now that I really love. Santal Cream is very similar to Le Labo Santal 33 but less picklish, or so I hear. I have never actually tried Santal 33, so my experience is that this one is a very fuzzy, figgy woody scent. Gentle Night is a sour soapy aquatic with the underlying unpleasant effluvium of a mildewed laundry pile. Forget Me Not is a spicy, effervescent herbaceous scent, very green, almost crocodilian in its greenness. A crocodile slithering through a wild patch of mint. But it’s For Rest that has my whole heart. It opens with an incense-y citrus note,  a sort of shadowy yuzu–not smoky per se, but sort of dim lit and flickering. Hinoki can sometimes strike me as a little harsh, but combined with the nutmeg and peppery musk, I think it lends a bright, spiced sweetness here. This is really beautiful. It’s a scent that’s too earthy and grounding to be called mystical or mysterious, but it’s too interesting for me to think of as cozy or even mundane. Perhaps it’s a perfume that straddles both worlds in the sense that it’s somehow deeply familiar and surprisingly evocative, a scent that lulls you into a comfortable reverie even as it leaves you with a lingering sense of wonder.