Unquiet
Things

L’Epoque Dreams and Nightmares Weirdly uneaseful lemons with a bit of pizzazz, some eucalyptus-pink-pepper zhuzhiness, a provocative piquance contrasted with a softly dank, earthy-woody-woolyiness. If the Misfits’ prickly-sour-chartreuse neon Phyllis Gabor was also the fuzzily balsamic-herbaceous The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Freaking gorgeous.

Liis Flower Glyph Kate Greenaway’s floral children’s illustrations as vintage minty-lime toothpaste, foaming mentholated margarita freezee pop, the spit-drip down the wrist before it reaches the elbow. Grass stains, bare feet, summer freckled. Ohio, age six. Periwinkles and snapdragons along the fence, the neighbor kid (a nasty little pervert) who made me look at his ding-dong underwater whilst in our above-ground pool, my eyes stinging from chlorine, pretending to look so that he’ll fuck off. Learning other families’ weirdness during a sleepover, the citrus-shaped soaps you get slapped for using, the processed powdery sweetness of bulk off-brand cereal in a bag, the unfamiliar plastic-honeyed scent of the air freshener that you once saw someone’s mother drinking.

Regime des Fleurs Wildly Fig. At some point in your life, you saw a bowl of plastic fruit in someone’s house. This is undoubtedly what it smelled like. Cool plastic, a synthetic verdancy, a sickly, muted sort of tang that if you encountered it in nature, you’d be like, nope, this is nature’s way of telling me to not put this thing in my mouth.

Choppova Lowena Hay Zhasmina! Sneaking out of the house in the 8th grade with my trouble-maker best friend, some combination of Samba and Exc!amation, Spring Break, Poison t-shirts, and the mini-est of miniskirts. Fruity-fizzy-hairspray-wine cooler nostalgia cocktail, neon bikinis without bodies or beaches.

Prin Emerald Curry smells like what you’d get if a perfumer juiced up the faded cover art for Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest, painted by the surrealist paperback visionary Richard Powers: drowned in green, a wet watercolor green pooling into the tooth of the paper, celadon blooming, chlorophyll bleeding, virescent, grassy and algal, wet-on-wet, fading at the periphery, granulating in the shadows. Lemongrass bright and soapy and sharp, makrut lime peel resinous and pithy, the aromatic ghost of it rather than the juice. The raw grassy bitterness of green chile flesh, no heat, just the verdancy. Cardamom piney and slightly medicinal. Holy basil drifting through, sweet-anise, almost there, already gone. A tangle of pale fronds, blossoms or spores or some secret mycological third thing. The tourmaline halo of private sylvan sun.

Kuoca is a Korean brand that recently reached out to me and sent me some of their fragrances …which was kinda wild, not that many brands sent me much in the way of PR anyway (though I am of course grateful to anyone who ever did!) but it’s really petered out since I left TikTok. I am grateful that someone still thinks I am relevant, ha! Anyway, I thought they were just going to send me a discovery set, so when I opened the box to find five full size bottles, I was shocked!

These are all fairly pleasant scents, though I will say some were less my cuppa than others. My favorite, which I’ve been wearing nonstop for the past several days, is Dark Tea Spiced with Marrakesh Smoke. It’s dry and a bit earthy with a charmingly world-weary smoky vetiver, and cardamom’s cool soapy-floral-piney wink. A close second is Grapefruit Brûlée, a fizzy, gourmand citrus soda, topped with mounds of chipped ice, with all sorts of aromatic leafy herbs frozen in the tiny shards.

The others include a matcha scent, a peach-forward perfume, and a coffee-and-floral fragrance; again, they were all quite nice, but not for me. And FYI, I just did a giveaway for some of these on my Midnight Stinks Patreon, so if you are not a supporting member, you’re missing out on stuff like this!

P.S. Are you a brand that appreciates thoughtful, articulate, creative reviews of your perfumes? Are you also ethical and not problematic, and I won’t be canceled by the internet for talking about your products? (I tell you, I’ve been burnt before and it sucks!) But if so, reach out and send me your stuff!

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