Fragrance Friday

I got some Solstice Scents samples last week, so they're what I'll be talking about today!

Coquina (Summer Collection; sandalwood, orange blossom, clementine EO, beach sand, plumeria absolute, coconut, ginger EO, sea spray): I brought this with me to LA, and found it fit in perfectly with the palm trees and sun and bleached sand. The orange blossom is pervasive throughout, but fortunately doesn't pull soapy on me as so many do, and the sandalwood-sea spray accord gives it a very driftwood feel, which is softened by the plumeria and coconut, which make it very tropical. Altogether, Coquina is light, happy, sunny, and sandy, but thankfully never trite. I'm by no means a California girl––all the sun and people gives me hives––but Coquina lets me pretend I am, at least for a few hours.

Fragrance Friday: Solstice Scents, Part 2

For most of the past week I felt vaguely nauseated whenever I smelled perfume or scented products, which led to an unintentional embargo on perfume, candles, hand cream, and all those lovely things that usually bring me such joy. I felt better yesterday, though, and decided to ease my way back into the world of fragrance with the woodsy scents from Solstice Scents, as that family is one of my favorites. As before, these are scents that are primarily woody, not just ones that contain woods notes, since that would be...everything ever. Also, I tend to gravitate towards woods that aren't cedar, which tends to read a bit sharp to my nose, but Solstice Scents has several cedar-centric scents (unintentional alliteration ftw!), Attic (from the Autumn Collection) and Old Cedar Magus (from the core collection) that are undoubtedly lovely if you like that sort of thing.

Manor (musk, vanilla, aloeswood, agarwood): This is the very first Solstice Scent that I tried, thanks to a sample sent to me by Larie who can't do oud, and I fell in love with it. My feelings haven't changed with time! This is a beautifully simple, simply beautiful perfume that smells like oud (aloeswood and agarwood are both names for oud, and refer to two different oils used in the blend) and vanilla. The vanilla is just lovely, not too sweet, rich but not cloying, and the oud gives it depth and longevity. I plan to get the whipped soap of it when I use up my current one (Dark Ginger Spicecake!). I wore this a lot during the hell weeks before the end of the term, and it was supremely comforting and happy-making.

Spellbound Woods (vanilla, sandalwood, cedar, amber, incense): This is quieter than Manor, and also lacking in oud, but similar in that it's a softly sweet woodsy scent. I really love how it starts out, heavy on the sandalwood but still airy, but after an hour it becomes a little too sweet for me, like sugar cookies next to incense in a cedar holder. It's certainly nice, and I think many would love it, but it doesn't top Manor for me.

Fragrance Friday: Solstice Scents, Part 1

I'm going to be reviewing Solstice Scents fragrance oils the next few weeks, because I have a buttload of samples from them and don't want to review them all at once (for one thing, you would all unfollow me for being stupidly longwinded, and for another, I need more time to get acquainted with some of them). Today, I discuss the incenses.

I'm sort of neutral on incense scents in general. I didn't grow up going to church regularly, and the only church I did attend was with my aunt and uncle's family and I hated it and there was no incense there at all, so I don't really have the association of religion and spirituality and otherworldliness that many have with incense. I do, however, tend to like heavier, richer scents, and most incense perfumes fit the bill. Incense perfumes are anchored by frankincense and myrrh, but they vary wildly in how they combine those notes with others (for an excellent comprehensive guide to incense perfumes, see Perfume Posse's here). Solstice Scents has several incense-oriented perfumes, and many more that include it as a note, but I'm restricting myself to the incense-r-us scents I've tried (the only one I haven't is Scrying Smoke, which is just frankincense and myrrh).

Basilica (labdanum, frankincense, rosewood, myrrh, hinoki wood, sandalwood, galbanum, vanilla): This was the first incense perfume I tried, part of their main collection. It's, to my nose, the most traditionally incense of the three, though likely that title really belongs to Scrying Smoke. The opening is somewhat sharp, as most incense scents are to me, and almost bitter, but it softens quickly into a really nice, quiet, meditative blend of incense and woods, sweetened by a touch of vanilla. It's very wearable, quite unisex, and lasts about 8 hours on my arm. $15 for 0.35 oz