Perfume / Cologne

i love it. did you have the femme version? i'd like to try that. really wish the weather would warm up here so it'd feel more apt to wear.

Yes I suppose it is. I think it's just called Roma, not "Roma for Women" or something. Now I wonder what Roma for Men smells like. Probably better, because I like woodsy and spicy and citrusy smells.

ALSO BREAKING NEWS I learned that someone I know socially works at a fragrance house compounding scents for everything from personal care products to laundry detergent!!!

He said there's a chemical they use that smells exactly like potting soil but it's proprietary. Now I'm curious.

ASK ALL YOUR QUESTIONS and I shall endeavor to get answers.

Honestly for those of you who wear scent, how many hours of the day does it last you? When I'm out of the house for 12 hours I feel like any scent I use is only going to be there for half the day--the other half I'm going to smell like my lunch plus sweat from running up and down the stairs at school.

i make frags "stretch" a bit by putting jojoba/avocado/almond oil on my skin before spraying - the fragrance melds with the oil and seems to stay present for longer

it's tricky because a lot of the ones that really hang around all day are the most cloying

I don't own more than one bottle of cologne at a time, so I usually go for broke
I wear Creed "Virgin Island Water" it is the second-best smell
Frederic Malle "Bigerade Concentree" remains the best smell, if I date a man I will buy it for them
Creed "Millisme" was circulated for a time but it faintly smells like urine
Creed "Vetiver" is nice enough but boring over time
Le Labo "Bergamot" was worn for a while but then all my NYC gay friends poached it and now it's in bathrooms at the Ace
I bought Creed "Aventus" for my manager and she loves it

i read something about how creed claims to have lineage back to napoleon and george iii but no one can find any evidence of them existing before 1975 lol

Very plausible. Still love more of their stuff (Aventus, Silver Mt. Water, Millesime Imperial) than I dislike (Green Irish Tweed).

"Virgin Island Water" is also a fantastic smell, but one I wouldn't feel at all guilty opting for an imitation thereof.

Went down the wormhole of a Fragrantica thread on Creed 1975 claims, and my main takeaway was ... you either love or loathe Creed.

found the creed scents nice but incredibly strong. one squiff of it and i felt drenched in scent.

the roma, yatagan, kokorico, philosykos, tam dao, and timbuktu samples are coming, so i can check those off. also ordered moschino uomo?, dsquared he wood rocky mountain wood, and the lalique homme lion and hommage a l'homme for the heck of it.

they didn't have the mugler cologne, which i really wanted to try for summer, but i figure it'll pop up sooner or later.

lalique lion and moschino uomo are on my wishlist -- actually ordered another moschino frag for my bf, fresh couture. supposed to be v floral and citrusy and probably v good for this high spring weather.

also snagged gaultier's fleur du male as it's been mostly unavailable everywhere and i think it's discontinued. reviewers say it's a strong herbal white flower nuke and has godlike longevity so looking forward to it. will write more once it's finally here.

lmao ok omg

https://www.fragrantica.com/news/Dove-Men-Care-Line-Minerals-Sage-9408.html
http://themuse.jezebel.com/here-is-my-secret-to-smelling-kinda-good-1795018063

they determined that having real-sounding artificial frags like the "every man jack" or whatever brand is cool

JPG fleur du male came in and omg this is so good -- smells like a white florals explosion for the first hour then fades into a delicious dirt and fresh green hay note that lasts literally until you shower, and even then there's still a hint of it.

moschino fresh couture is really nice too but totally different, like flowery bubblegum-flavored soda but not cheap or cloying. definitely feels like a "going for a walk in tank tops and shorts" kind of frag. the bottle is real cute too:

http://www.sephora.com/productimages/sku/s1865096-main-Lhero.jpg

tam dao and philosykos are pretty straight-up good. i get the whole fig tree deal from the philosykos - fruit, leaf, wood. can't separate the woods in the tam dao but but it seems more sandlewoody and the rose isn't really distinct on skin but i can pick it up fine out of the vial. would like to compare the l'artisan premier figuier extreme to the philosykos since it can be had for less than half the price discounted, but if i were just buying a few decent things instead of dicking around with everything that looked interesting i'd get the tam dao and philosykos.

the kokorico, i can't settle on an opinion even though it's a really compelling scent i keep sticking my nose to. there's some kind of discordance between the fig leaf, patchouli, and cacao notes (can't really make out the cedar and vetiver), and i'm getting a sort of ghost floral note like a desiccated rose, even though that's not in there. the notes don't seem to be blending together to make a composite scent, but they're stepping on each other in a manner that the notes i though were familiar by now are slightly unrecognizable as their true selves, like the fig leaf is an evil doppelganger of the fig leaf i smelled in other scents, and so on. i think this is what people who live inside david lynch films wear, there's something sinister going on here that maybe you shouldn't have let in but now it's marked you. nb just my impression.

the lalique pour homme (lion) i think is really nice for something that's not that exciting. seems very traditional and self-possessed

roma and yatagan are as clouds described, can't add anything.

moschino uomo? is a nice musky scent but i'm not getting the citrus as strong as i'd hoped for or any of the notes in particular. it's a soft scent so maybe i'll have to empty out the whole sprayer.

i cut off the lion comment - it seems traditional and calm and centered but also upbeat and optimistic. the lavender and vanilla soften each other up, neither one is heavy or overbearing, just kept at a pleasant volume, but the citruses and vanilla interact to give it an orange creamsicle vibe that perks things up a bit.

lalique is such a good price on discount sites atm, wish i wasn't broke or i'd buy it

i think i'm gonna try and collect most of the guerlains? habit rouge, vetiver, insolence, l'heure bleu, samsara, shalimar, mitsouko, heritage. i could probably just stop collecting with those 8 frags.

i used to like vetiver a lot.

clouds where in the world do you live

chicago, why?

Samsara and Shalimar are my faves for the lack of flowery smells but I cant wear them because they've been my mom's signature perfumes as long as I can remember so Dry Idea it is.

Try food smells - vanilla - fruit - cinamon - moke

I can donate the vetiver to your nascent collection, wondered if your are stateside. Need your addy but my ilx web mail goes into the void so uh we'll figure something out.

omg email me girl! i'm d o m i n y c o r e y @ g m a i l. com (no spaces obv)

holy shit y'all

http://www.luckyscent.com/search?gsearch=essential+13

can I borrow $90 plz?

I don't even want to own them I just want to smell them once or maybe twice

what kind of frags do you like?

gosh I don't even know at this point, I haven't fucked w them in a v long time. At this point I wear CdG Amazingreen once every few months and also a combination of Demeter Dirt + Grass (often just Dirt tho)

i'll bet you would like l'occitane eau de l'occitan, i was wearing at work and my supervisor walked by and was like "it smells like a BARNYARD in here! but in a good way!"

My bf wears the shit out of L'Occitane Bavx and Cade and maybe the Cedrat? I wish he liked sandalwood but he hates it.

baux is sooooo fucking good, that's gonna be one of my winter scents this year for sure

stevie give guerlain vetiver a sniff and tell me what you think!

― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Monday, March 16, 2015 8:49 PM (two years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Apparently I have been trying to re-home my bottle of Vetiver for a while. This is a good sign that it is time. All yours, clouds--I'll e-mail ya shortly.

<333

i got amazingreen because it was on sale and i figured i should just go for it because if i got a sample first it's be gone at that price if i liked it. it is really sweet, i assume there's an overabundance of calone, but it doesn't feel blue or aquatic to me either, just dewy. i really get the gunpowder accord, which cuts against the sweetness. other than that it just seems green; i can't pick out the green pepper from the palm leaf or ivy or vetiver or whatnot.

i get how ppl think it's generic and mainstream because the sweetness always stays on top so there you go but also i can't see it as a legit populist fragrance because that gunpowder accord is a bit too earthy and off-putting for that sort of thing. i also like the bvlgari aqua marine for the same reason, in that there's a battle between the stank-monster seaweed note and the sweet citrus/ floral notes that never resolves.

i got a bunch of samples too but i'm not gonna dig them out to go through them all now. off the top, i got the escentric molecules escentric 01, and like mh said upthread, the iso e super effect is more pronounced when it's used with other notes. i should probably have gotten the molecule 01 to compare, but i was afraid i wouldn't smell anything at all.

i got l'artisan premier figuier and tea for two, too. diptyque philosykos over the l'artisan but you can get the l'artisan for cheaper and they're both olivia giacobetti creations but in this case i figure go for the gold. the tea for two is like the gucci pour homme II without the violet leaf note so it's warmer but i like both so i dunno.

i also got l'artisan passage d'enfer and seville a l'aube (i dug through all my samples) and they're ok. passage is a modest incense fragrance, and the seville is really strong with orange blossom and beeswax. orange blossom smells like dish soap to me but here it's kept in check by the beeswax. neroli i like; one's an absolute and one's an extract of the same flower but i forget which one's which. like the beeswax note enough because i wanted to see if it's different from a strictly honey note and it is so i'm gonna try the lanvin avant garde which is also predominantly beeswax plus tobacco and ginger and the other usual suspects.

then i got bottles of lalique lion and aramis tuscany. the lion is baseline boring. just lavender, citrus, cedar, vanilla, the most basic of basics, but of the highest quality. to me it's an assurance that you can weather all the bullshit. all you need is love, love is all you need. the tuscany has a leathery, citrusy opening that's one of my favorite things ever, but it doesn't persevere and it turns into an azzaro pour homme clone, which i already have. i don't remember if i had a bottle of tuscany back in the day or just the sample vial but it's a memory scent for me, a cousin to armani pour homme, so i'll brook no quarrel.

also, clouds, do you have or have you smelled the habit rouge yet? i wanted to try it again in the winter because i figured my reaction was tempered by trying it out in warm weather when it would have been pushed in odd directions by the heat, but i forgot to try it again last winter. in the summery broil the powdery rose aspect bloomed irrepressibly, but i figure under more temperate conditions it would be more of a piece. also the heritage, have you smelled it or is it a want to try thing? also, how's the vetiver?

i went to perfumania and perfume outlet at the nearest outlet mall and they had so many outre things, compared to the usual mall shops. givenchy xeryus rouge, reyane insurrection pure II, muelhens 4711, ferrari uomo, mercedes benz intense, things that exist in the interzone between the upmarket and mainstream with the chanel and the mugler and the downmarket discount stores with the guess and the tim mcgraw and the diesel. for an hoir i told the sales associate everything i knew about fragrance from the internet and she told me a bunch of shit i knew not to be true so there was a stalemate.

*hour*. sorry, signed jameson.

I loled at the tim mcgraw quip and on second thought did a google and now I'm horrified to known that tim mcgraw cologne actually exists

oh goodness aqva atlaniqve was one of the worst frags i've ever encountered. i absolutely hated it.

i also got aramis tuscany and that has been one of my daily scents with grey flannel and l'occitan. i love how that turmeric/cumin-y funkiness seems to be at odds with the soapy moss but it all just harmonizes so well and is unassumingly brilliant.

habit rouge l'eau is like amaro montenegro meets rose-flavored bubblegum. too weird to wear every day, better for going out drinking or a friend's wedding reception or pottering around the apartment.

atlantiqve is gross, because sauvage, which is what things smell like now. i want to regard designer scents as cultural products that olfactorily summarize the zeitgeist (cf la male, ck one, joop homme, eternity, drakkar noir, polo green, these things feel like places in time) but this seems like a bad direction to be heading towards. i tried the prada luna rossa carbon because the coal and metallic notes made it seem like a cdg type of thing, synthetic and industrial, but it's just too amboxan-dominant in the us-too sauvauge lineage. sauvage might be good for other ppl to smell on you distantly in the ambient aura sense, which is really import-int and often overlooked because spraying something on yr wrist and sticking yr nose in it is only part of the gestalt, but i don't like it on myself and find it obtrusively pandering and unbalanced and that's really saying something since i'm pretty sure i don't know what i'm talking about generally and i figure if other ppl like a thing then that's what they should have but jesus would cast out sauvage from his presence and i'm not some kind of apostate. i got d&g the one because i thought i should catch up to what's going on since i checked out 25 yrs ago but the ambroxan really dominates. i love versace man (2003, i'm liking the 00s) even though there's an abundance of ambroxan but the tobacco and saffron notes are like the sober friends who get on the karaoke machine and sing "a miracle of love" after the ambroxan goes through three sweaty rounds of "bulls on parade" and thinks he's killing it. the aqva marine is gross because of the seaweed note but it's the kind of stinky i like, even though it's from the same year as the d&g.

my brother has aramis havana and it's also pretty good, like the tuscany. it's from 1994 but smells like deep 80s to me, maybe even late 70s. it's tobacco and patchouli riding on top of a soapy oakmoss, with some herbalness and spiciness. i couldn't really make out what it was supposed to be note-wise except old-school until i looked it up because to my nose it's kinda well-blended but i sprayed some on and forgot about it and it obliquely worked its way into my consciousness, falling on my head like a memory, falling on my head like a new emotion. in summary and in conclusion, it's ok.

i have the azzaro visit but the pepper has overtook the incense as the dominant note so i ordered bentley absolute and lalique encre noire l'extreme samples. also l'occitane eaux des baux, which i was wary of because i have soooo much stuff in which the vanilla punches all my dance cards, but this could be the one this time.

i also ordered samples of versace versus, geuerlain l'instant edp because i felt the edt sample i got last year was a little weak, cartier declaration (i had the declaration essence but not the original), and frederick malle bigarade concentree, which i hope i don't like too much because of price.

^^^^this guy, killing it

really interested in how you find the bentley as that's on my wantlist too (along with other stuff by lorson), azzaro visit also since i seem to have become an annick menardo fan.

baux is great, you won't regret it. i've been waiting for the weather to cool off before i get a bottle for myself.

visit is a bit much in the opening, there's a lot of pepper and bergamot and nutmeg and some ginger along with the incense. maybe the weather is too warm still and those notes are more subdued when it's colder. towards the middle it calms down and it's mostly incense and woods, and i get ambergris and maybe musk in the base. it's got a distinct incense note, more like an unlit incense stick rather than the smell of the smoke, and it's only about 20 bucks online, so there's that, but i still like cdg 2 man better for an incense fragrance.

it's a pretty good pepper and/ or incense frag for the price but i don't think it's essential menardo, compared to roma or black or kokorico.

eau des baux is so good i want to spray it on my body so i can walk around all day and smell it. it's that good! i can't as of yet pull out all the individual notes, like i couldn't even tell it has incense or cypress specifically, but i don't care. if it happens, it happens.

bentley absolute is is pretty much what i thought, a really resinous, oud-woody thing, dark but soft and rich, but when it dries down it turns into kenzo pour homme: there's that slightly plasticy oceanic note. i don't know what to think about that. the nose for the absolute is michel almairac, who did gucci pour homme I, lorson did the bentley intense (which has a rum note that's not in the absolute)and most of the other bentleys, just in case you were thinking of the intense.

versace versus uomo, i can't tell yet. i have a 1 ml vial, so i'm smelling it in concentrated form from smelling the stem and just dabbing it on as opposed to getting the ambient experience from generous spraying, but i get intense fruit notes off the top, specifically peach, which i've not encountered in a gentleman's fragrance. it's supposed to also be herbal and floral and woody and resinous and spicy and vanillic and tonka-ey, ie, transitional in that it's from that interzone period where it's still the 80s so it's expected to be heavy and butch but not really, looking towards an enlightened and liberatory esthetic, but not there yet, like where kevin and julie on the first real world season have to go round and round about racism because the term privilege wasn't something you could just drop and be done with at the time.

this smells like what it meant to be young in 1991, back to life, however do you want me, i just want to be close to you, you're unbelievable. some stuff that's old smells old and some stuff that's old smells like what it meant to be young when it was new.

nb i might change my mind when i get a better wearing of this.