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Thursday, October 9, 2014

Review & Recommendation: 6 Darling Clandestine Falloween 2014 scents

So earlier I made a huge purchase from Darling Clandestine (DC) and got a bunch of fall scents among other stuff. 


Evonne is reopening just for Falloween, and they're only available for about a week! So here are reviews for 6 Falloween scents I got to help you decide what to get:

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Electricity So Fine

"A night-black canvas of artemisia absinthum and mosses and blackest tea and port wine, splashed with an electric sizzle of sparkling violets."

There's a cool, powdery smell to this, as well as something tart that I can't place since it's so well blended -it's either a fizzy soft drink or some red fruit. After the fizzy soft drink wins and it smells like a cool powdery scent mingled with the scent of Coke that has gone flat for days (which is typically stronger and richer than the scent of fresh Coke), only it still has that bubbling fizziness tickling your nose.

Unfortunately, after an hour, the scent dries down and soft drink smell disappears and I can finally identify the cool, powdery scent -it's violets. It ends up smelling like powdery violets. It's more of a dark, almost bitter violets rather than the old lady violets though.

TL;DR: Fizzy Coke that has gone flat for days with cool, powdery violets.

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Falter 


"Startling, misty, herbal, with notes including avocado and ozone and clary sage."

It starts of as this amazing fresh, green scent but then became clay on me. Like the unscented clay mask I've put on my face before. There's a hint of something sweet and heavenly, but it's drowned out by the clay mask smell.

After 1-1 1/2h the scent dries down and I got a whiff of what I think this scent is supposed to be like. The clay smell calmed down and the resulting scent is clean, sweet, fresh and cool scent with a lotion type of creaminess. It smells like a calming balm a facialist at a luxurious skin care centre would gently smooth over your skin to soothe any puffiness..and proceed to charge you $200 for the treatment.

Now relax and try not to think about how much you're getting charged for this...
Image courtesy of goodfongshui.wordpress.com


Unfortunately, by this time, the scent is pretty weak on me. I think I'll try aging this since the dry down is really awesome.

TL;DR: Clay mask turning into a fresh, clean calming balm.

Overview: I think this is the first scent with avocado I've ever seen. The avocado's so well-blended, it doesn't really stand out though.

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Spurn 


"Fierce and passionate, with bright bursts of pomegranate, tempered with aged wood and haunted by marigolds."

There's this berry-like tartness mixed with a cool, leafy smell that makes me think of an autumn wind, but makes it smell slightly like a berry-ish shampoo. It's definitely one of the fancy shampoos you can only get from salons at a price that makes you think it's made of unicorn tears, though. The only thing saving it from smelling like a berry-ish shampoo is that slight "dirty" smell of dried leaves. After about 5-10 minutes, there's the smell of fried butter that makes me wonder if this scent was supposed to be a caramel scent instead of a berry scent. Certain caramel notes smell like sugared plums on me, and while this smells a bit different from the usual sugared plums I get, it's still close enough that caramel may be a possibility. The fried butter unfortunately clashes with the berry, so I had to figure out if it was supposed to be caramel -I made my boyfriend guinea pig again.

It's still berries on him, only the scent on him is more of a refreshing fancy berry tea (the kind that costs as much as a meal and comes with mint/basil/shisho leaves, a medley of actual berries, chia seeds and pomegranate bits) with a waxy floral scent to it. 

Well, this is actually a pomegranate tea. Recipe's here, courtesy of familyspice.com
TL;DR: Depending on skin chemistry, either high-end berry-ish shampoo with dried leaves, or fancy berry tea with waxy florals.

Overview: I'm trying to think if I've encountered marigold before before I decide to list it under my death notes. I strongly suspect it's behind that scent that goes waxy on my bf and shampoo-like on me.


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Squander


"Deep and decadent, with rich fruitful notes including clove and nutmeg and sandalwood and ripe red apple."

Oooh apples! It's an apple scent with a bitter, cool, masculine scent. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Every other attempt at making apple masculine usually relies on playing up that warm, spicy Fall spices scent. This makes the apple smell cool, bitter and masculine. So while the usual masculine apple scents are young, hot, flirtatious men who probably walk around shirtless most of the time like Exhibit A over here:
You just know he's dying to take his clothes off.
Photography by UVPro Photography

Squander is a cool, suave and serious older gentleman who spends most of his life in a suit like Exhibit B below:
Jaime Lannister looks hot in a suit.
Image courtesy of justthedesign.com
After an hour, the scent takes a lotion-y quality to it on me.

This seems more of a masculine scent so I tried it on my boyfriend and holy crap it's intoxicating on him. While my skin chemistry muddles everything up, his skin seems to accentuate different scents. The   bitterness smells like the bitterness of leather on him. Leather is one of the notes that make my knees go weak so I'm a huge fan. While I got apple as the most prominent note, the apple takes a backseat on his skin, so the scent he got was a sweet and tart scent, with a spicy, burning zing that's almost like fireworks, and the seductive bitter richness of leather. I can't stop sniffing him, but he kept whining since he hates leather. I don't care, I'm going to keep ambushing him and forcing this perfume on him. It smells soooo divine!

TL;DR: Masculine apples.

Overview: Ok, the notes make it sound like an ordinary apple scent, but this is really not an ordinary apple scent. I'm not sure where the leather bitterness comes from, but it's definitely there on my guy. Oh, and I'm so in love with this scent on my guy, I actually ambushed him with this perfume. Turns out he was having a headache and the leather smell ended up making him nauseous. I still feel guilty.

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Vardogr


"This weird little concoction is truly a masterpiece. Oh, it's gooood. And weird. Dark, damp, herbal—mossy forest floors, sunken alleys, underground spaces—with a dozen unlikely notes including pure essential German chamomile, bitter black coffee, hazy Indian musks, sharp herbs and a whip of leather. It’s not for everyone. It’s strange. But oh my, is it fantastic."

There's a bitter smell like burnt coffee and something else that's a dank room and a luxurious office at the same time. Which is a weird, mind-blowing combination that only Evonne is capable of hitting. There's that old, dank room sort of smell -the kind with water stains and crumbling plaster. At the same time, there's a scent that makes me think of rich, dark furniture and leather.

Oh...

That's it. I got it! I know what this scent is...it's a formerly successful lawyer (it just seems lawyer-ish) who could no longer pay the rent for his swanky office, so now he's moving into a dank basement with all the luxurious furniture he still has..and he's chugging tons of burnt coffee because the coffee machine's screwed up. So imagine this:

Image courtesy of docxie.com


Stuffed into this:
This is actually for rent guys! Check it out here!
Image courtesy of 78main.wordpress.com

And add splashes of burnt coffee.

TL;DR: The basement office of an ex-successful lawyer.

Overview: There is no way I can identify all that...I got the leather and coffee though!

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Wither


"Unsettling, ethereal, with notes including ozone and blueberry and trampled leaves, soaked in black rum."

I smell that watery smell that some perfumers have as their "leather" note, only this is DC, so it's definitely not leather since her leather's sexy, naughty leather.  There's also a dried fruit smell that smells  a bit like dried apricots. There's this small lounge called Cheese & Caviar in Jakarta, where my friends always go for booze & cheese.

This smells captures that feeling. This is drinking something boozy while eating mild cheeses with a lot of dried fruits in a nice lounge with comfy leather sofas you just want to sink in. No idea why this scent makes me think of that since there's no wine or cheese scent in this.

TL;DR: Cool and slightly bitter watery scent that's vaguely reminiscent of leather, mixed in with something boozy and dried fruits.

Overview: Ok, there's no way I could imagine this scent from those notes. I still can't figure out what's causing that vaguely leather smell. I got hints of that in Squander applied on my bf too. I think this scent will smell better on a guy, but I'm still feeling bad about making my bf nauseaus with the Squander ambush (I spilled a LOT on him). So I guess I can't test it out on him :(



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