Unquiet
Things

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 VetiVerde Bubble 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.

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