#l'aromatica

Hurrah! Got to the last of my three L'Aromatica samples that I had.

Desert Man is sun-bleached woods, sagebrush, musk, myrrh, sweetgrass.

In the vial, it's very sweet, almost soda pop, which I think is the sweetgrass? ngl I don't actually recognise most of these notes, but well. sweet. sweetgrass. There's something

Once on the skin, wet, it's... pretty much just still sweet, and possibly some myrrh as well??? It's sort of... a very summer, sweetly fresh sort of scent, if that makes sense, at the moment.

Drying down, it just gets sweeter and sweeter. I think I'm amping something, possibly the myrrh? Because it's definitely got the sort of sweet warmness I associate with myrrh, though probably the sweetgrass is not helping either. This is WAY too sweet for me ahahahaha whoop.

To be fair, also, it's been like a year since I first bought these samples. I think I actually tried Desert Man in store and liked it? But I'd tried a bunch of stuff at the same time that might have led to scent mixing. Either way, it's... definitely not working for me now, unfortunately.

Fortunately, I did not end up with the hilarity I got from Nick when I tried Bourbon tonight. Then again, Bourbon is a woods perfume, and like I said before, Loreto? A++ at woods.

Bourbon's notes are cedarwood, balsamic woods, pipe tobacco, clove, bourbon vanilla, cognac.

In the vial, Bourbon's weirdly almost soda sweet? over the woods! I don't know what be causing that. Not bad, just... curious.

Once I apply it to my skin though, the clove and cognac start coming out, mixing with the woods. Mmmm spiced woods. It's really delicious. The cedar is the more prominent of the woods at the moment. There's the sweetness of the balsamic woods a little, but for the most part right now, it's cedar and spice.

Drying, the spices start fading away and both woods come out more and more, until it's pretty solidly woods. There is, I think, the pipe tobacco as well, but it's very faint. I'm not sure whether I'm imagining things or not, or wrongly attributing a part of the scent to tobacco, but whatever.

Either way, this is niiiiiiice. And I'm regretting not having gotten a 5ml of Bourbon while the Black Friday/SBS/Cyber Monday sale was on. (I should have tested all these earlier, ALAS.) Well, I'll probably pick up a full size at Renegade SF if I can. (The sale would have covered shipping pretty much, so hey.)

A'ight, so. Loreto, the perfumist behind L'Aromatica is one of my favourite perfumists, not in the least because my custom from her is delicious and my go-to scent. She does some really nice woods. I've been meaning to review her stuff for awhile, but I tried a lot of her scents in-store rather than at home with a sample vial.

But I did finally get some vials! Of stuff the store didn't carry, but which I was curious about. And so after letting it sit for uh. like, a year, pretty much, I finally am getting around to testing them. (Yeah, I'm slow.)

So I'm starting with Nick. Notes are wet earth, pipe tobacco, pungent spices, wisps of incense smoke, mossy stones.

In the vial, Nick is pretty much green, with an almost peppery? herbal? tinge underneath it. Not a sharp green, thank gods, which I can't abide by, not that I was expecting a sharp green in the first place. I think that herbal-ness might be the incense smoke or even the pungent spices? There's something familiar about it, anyway.

Wet, on my skin, the moss definitely takes prominence, with the incense smoke and what I think? is tobacco lingering in the background. Okay, the more I sniff it, the more I wonder whether what's lingering in the background is mostly incense + spices, because it's... actually reminding me of Chinese herbal medicines. Not getting any wet earth so far.

And okay, the moss pretty much faded as it dried, and now that it is dry, all I'm getting is Chinese herbal medicine. And it is pretty much on point for Chinese herbal meds, which is kind of hilarious but alas not something I want to smell as. THIS IS KIND OF UNFORTUNATE I admit I was hoping more for the wet earth + pipe tobacco??? And I don't think the wet earth ever even came out, whoops.

This... is probably definitely a more typically masculine scent, yeah, with how the greenness of it came out before everything turned to herbals. But man, of all the things I was expecting from Nick? hahaha, that was not it, whoops.