aromateur

As a former trespasser and avowed petty criminal I was set up to love this and I'm really devastated I didn't. This opens super interesting. I had a full 5-10 minutes just thinking "......Barbecue?" - and I wasn't mad about it! There was such a distinct, sticky, boozy wood, hot over the coals... and then it was gone, and I was left with a pretty run-of-the-mill smoky-oaky vanilla.

Memoirs of a Trespasser falls victim to something I'm finding a lot from IA as I go through this discovery set - strong, unique starts that fail to follow through, drying down quickly and becoming dull and muddled in the process. The vanilla in this case also calls to mind my issues with Kayali and their penchant for a kind of meaningless, inescapable vanilla fog.

While I do think MoaT and the rest of the IA collection have more of an identity to them, the base notes aren't there to back them up. Poetic, maybe. Are we all the same at our cores? Or will they prove to have something really special on their hands?

Santal really threw me for a loop.

The first spray was juicy, warm... not a dry sandalwood spice or heat, very lush. Everything seemed dedicated to highlighting the wood and top notes were used to just that effect.

As time went on and the heart notes came out I found it incredibly unpleasant. At one point my notes read "dog kibble-y," though I'd be hard pressed to say just what it was causing that. The red fruits listed seemed to want to rot. There was a good hour there where I was NOT having a good time.

By the 3 hour mark, though, it was practically imperceptible, and something almost aldehydic made itself known - herby, clean, light... could it be the patchouli? The saffron? Some aspect of vetiver I've never encountered before? Whatever it was, I kept sniffing. By 6 hours it was mostly faded, but occasionally I'd get a little whiff, a moment of strong sillage wafting up to me when I least expected it. It stayed well on clothes and surprisingly well on skin.

I wish I had more to say definitively about Santal. I have no idea how I feel. Maybe it has to be experienced to be understood. I'm probably coming back to it again - I want to understand just what the hell happened to me.

Lazy Sunday is a sage fragrance first and foremost. This is the only time I've seen sage really highlighted like this in the world of fine fragrance, and I'd love to see more head-on treatments of herbaceous notes like this.

It sprays on medicinal with a creaminess waiting below. No sign of the promised black tea, unfortunately. The medicinal sting quickly fades in potency and leaves an herbaceous musk.

After a few hours the softer notes begin to come out and envelop the herbal top. A woody base, very soft, very faint - reminiscent of the sandalwood treatment in a lot of Goldfield & Banks fragrances.

After 5 or 6 hours the black tea/cashmere/wood combo emerges, with surprising longevity for such a light frag. Ultimately I wouldn't want to wait that long if I was looking for a soft, tea-forward scent - I might point someone towards Pashm from Hima Jomo or the ever-growing catalog of tea fragrances on the market right now. But I highly, HIGHLY recommend this to any sage fan and anyone interested in herbaceous frags. They absolutely knock it out of the park with this.

The first actual INCENSE frag I've smelled, true to the complications and facets of an incense, and doesn't choke me out with smoke like my experience with Serge Lutens' l'Orpheline. This opens woody, spicy, smoky, resinous yet a bit green...

The honey shines in the dry down as a surprisingly animalic glaze, not too sweet, not overpowering. The sillage here is just right. I caught whiffs as I walked about my neighborhood, a bit dry, a bit sweet, always woody, always a warm reminder of an incense stick burning down over a wooden holder.

Absolute must try for any incense lovers, and a fantastic image of what honey can smell like when not confined to the gourmand category.

I came across this at Moko Scent in Sydney and skipped right past the 2ml to get a travel size. This is something special.

The chocolate here is most definitely dark. The initial spray goes on spicy and bittersweet, and the sillage is much more intimate than the strength of the scent might suggest. Over a few hours it brings out that warm, heavy chocolate depth, and at the 5 hour mark I began noticing a surprisingly green patchouli note. The animalics were warm and dry all the way through.

Now the 10 hour mark. Yes, it's still there. Faded. Amber-musk, very light on the amber, faint and not unpleasant, but not for everybody. This goes much more animalic than the gourmand top lead me to expect.

This isn't an everyday frag for me, and I wish the ginger was a bit brighter, but I really love the direction this goes and would recommend it to anyone into animalics.