Like my previous order, each scent sample comes with a card with the scent description & notes. It's a nice touch, even though the environmentalist in me cringed a bit. It's definitely pretty enough to send straight away as a gift to someone without needing to repackage it to make it look nicer though!
The texture is like thickened lotion, but one of those lotion that's advertised to have a "watery touch". It doesn't feel heavy at all, and it's not sticky either –your skin has that slight dampness like after putting on a very light body lotion, and that's it. It does feel "watery" (not diluted, more like a fresh spritz) and if you look at the picture of the newly opened lotion (it doesn't come with any safety seal), you can see there's water condensation on the lid:
It's pretty much comfortable enough to go back to typing immediately right after using it, but like Haus of Gloi's (HoG's) pumpkin butters, it takes about 3-5 min before it feels like the lotion's really absorbed into your skin already. Moisture-wise, it's much more moisturizing than Solstice Scents' body butter, but less moisturizing than Haus of Gloi's.
As for the scent, it's at medium strength –you can smell it at around casual conversation distance but no further. I've only tried one scent, so I would need to try out more scents before I come to any solid conclusions, but I did notice that the scent I picked is different in body butter vs perfume oil form.
mixed with Indonesian herbal ointments. The herbal bit is far stronger in the body butter, and that's how it clicked in my head why it made me think of my friend's baby specifically. Like a lot of Indonesian babies, she gets massaged daily by her nanny with
, and gets slathered with ointments to prevent mosquito bites or ease the itch from mosquito bites. She also gets this hair tonic to help her grow more/better hair. The herbal bit is a combination of all those ointments,
and hair tonic, and it may be a bit off-putting for someone else who don't have the positive cultural associations with this sort of herbal smell.
Oh, and the reason she needs hair tonic is because she has very little hair. Like very little. She actually sadly pats her head whenever she sees me or her mom play with our hair, and gets so happy whenever I drape my hair over her head.
. I promised to pepper my next review with lots of hot, shirtless dudes in my next review, so I'm delivering.
As always, all perfume reviews are done blind until the TL;DRs are written. An overview gets written if any of the notes surprise me.
This is amazing! It smells like actual chocolate for one, with a dark chocolate tartness. It definitely smells milky, with an amber sort of warmth and an almost floral fragrance. Not exactly floral, but floral in the way some wine connoisseurs will describe a wine to have a "floral bouquet". It makes me think of gourmet floral chocolates, where it no longer smells floral, but the flowers just infuse the chocolate with a complex richness that make you want to write odes to it. A chocolate that looks something like this:
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| This is from a store in New Orleans called Sucré, which I can't stop browsing. I want to make a trip to New Orleans just to visit them! Check out their store here! Oh, and their Flickr page is the best page for food porn. I can't stop drooling. |
It's just so fragrant! I want to bathe in this. I think I need to get a body butter in this fragrance! Oh, and the scent doesn't morph as is fades, so the lingering traces you get on your skin is still the same delicious scent, just a bit more faint.
TL;DR: Rich, gourmet, milky dark chocolate with the richest almost floral fragrance. Lovingly served to you on top of this guys' abs:
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Yup. You can expect every hot guy break to be introduced with this amount of subtlety.
Awesome photography by Mattia Valerio |
Overview: Ambers are often sandalwood & vanilla mixes, so that may be where that amber sort of warmth is coming from. I'm just really amazed by how rich this scent is from that relatively "plain" list of notes!
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Earth & Wild Roots
"A dark foliage and fig scent touched by earthen mushrooms, spirited herbal mint and light musk like powders. A blend created with mushroom, tonka bean, vanilla, oakmoss absolutes, orris root and agar wood co2's, fig fruit extract, myrrh resin, essential oils of peppermint, ambrette seed, cedarwood, amyris, infused in ground organic figs, mushrooms, tonka beans, vanilla beans, mint leaves and cedar wood."
Oh dear. This is a HOT scent. First, it has that slightly sharp, sweet sandalwood scent that make me go weak in the knees. Then, there's traces of that cool yet spicy earth you get in HoG's Ploughman, which makes me fall even deeper in lust. Finally, there's something sort of musky in this that just makes me me think of languorously lying in bed after a hot, steamy...er, hugging session.
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Anybody noticed how perfect the highlighter placement is on her cheeks?
Hot photography by Artur K |
The musky bit is a tad feminine but the rest is masculine, so I'm not sure if I'm lusting after a hot man or a hot woman. The sharp sandalwood may go too "dusty" for some people but I personally love it since wood, earth & leather notes are my personal weakness when it comes to masculine scents.
After about 10-15 min, there's a scent that smells like boiled baby carrots at the base of this scent. The hot scent is still dominant, and the boiled baby carrots are hardly noticeable, but I just thought it's a bit weird.
After about an hour, it's mostly that musk, which now smells a tad cottony. It's now more comforting than hot, but I'm fine with just an hour of hotness.
TL;DR: That moment before you tumble into bed with a hot man, woman or well, why the heck not, both.
Overview: I was looking up what amyris was since I was trying to figure out what's causing the boiled baby carrots smell, and found this on Wikipedia:
Amyris is a genus of flowering plants in the citrus family, Rutaceae. The generic name is derived from the Greek word αμυρων (amyron), which means "intensely scented" and refers to the strong odor of the resin. Members of the genus are commonly known as Torchwoods because of their highly flammable wood.
Oh my gods, how can she miss the opportunity to name this scent Torchwood??? 3 words: Captain Jack Harkness.
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Seriously. He's so hot. Why is he so hot?
Image courtesy of fanshare.com |
Oh, and of course. Here's John Barrowman shirtless:
*cough* back on topic. I have no idea what's causing the boiled baby carrots bit, but apparently ambrette seeds may be behind that seductive musk. I'm looking for more scents with ambrette seeds now.
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Magick & Moonlight
"A mysterious floral, lime aroma with a powdery under tone fragrance made with essential oils of frankincense,sandalwood, lime ,lavender, jasmine and vanilla absolute, infused with lime peels,lavender buds, jasmine petals and ground coconut."
Oh, this is such an Indonesian scent! Jasmines are the star here, and it's actual, fresh jasmines that you either love or hate. I personally love them, but I've heard some people saying jasmines smell like death. It's a watery jasmine scent, and I'm not talking about a blue note. Actually watery. It smells like rain on jasmines. You'll often encounter this scent when you're walking into upmarket tourist-friendly Indonesian hotels or restaurants. For everyone who lives/has visited Jakarta, you know that scent Tesate always has? That scent.
As soon as I sniffed this, I can hear the sound of gamelans and now I have this gamelan music stuck in my head. The bamboo gamelan kind.
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Gamelans are traditional Indonesian instruments that look like xylophones.
If you search for gamelans on Google images, you'll be under the impression that they're instruments played primarily by white people, which may now be true considering it's a dying art in Indonesia. I was in my college's gamelan orchestra, and I was the only Indonesian they had in years....we even revived a traditional song (as in we were the first to play it again in 50 years) that died because no one in the village wanted to learn how to play it. Yup. While all my friends were going on and on about how cool it was we're reviving a "dead song", I'm sitting in sheepish silence because my countrymen let it die.
Image courtesy of usd.edu |
Oh and here's a guy wearing the slutty version of an Indonesian batik-print sarong. Because why the hell not.
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This is a guy named Lane Fuller, whom I'm assuming is at least a model...
Image courtesy of famewatcher.com |
And another guy:
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This is Korean male model, Oh Jong Sung.
| Image courtesy of famewatcher.com |
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TL;DR: Jasmines freshly sprayed with water.
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Mandrake Garden
"Made with balsam peru resin, absolutes in tobacco,vanilla,honeysuckle,essential oils in ginger, fennel, jasmine, infused with ground ginger, fennel seeds, vanilla bean and tobacco leaves."
At first, this smells like a floral cinnamon milk. The milk is leaning towards that game-y milk sort of scent at first but luckily it got better on me. By about 10 min, clean, fresh jasmines took over and now it smells like jasmines with hints of cardamom-milk-cinnamon type of desserts you get in Indian cuisine. Like a lot of MGA's jasmine scents, this also has that fresh water sort of scent to it.
TL;DR: Catching a whiff of Indian milky desserts served in the background, while sitting in a hotel lobby decorated with fresh jasmines while waiting for a rendezvous with this guy:
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| This guy's Shahid Kapoor and his job must be to look professionally gorgeous. The image is from 123wallpapers.in, and here's the link where you can get a high-res copy of this pic. It's so high-res, you can see every water droplet on his glorious chest. |
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Pavo Real
"A blend created with natural strawberry isolates, jasmine, honeysuckle, rose ,orris root absolutes,essential oils in orange blossom ,vetiver, patchouli, bergamot, clove and coriander , delicately infused with real strawberry fruit, patchouli leaves,orange peels and rose petals."
This is what I expected Haus of Gloi's (HoG) Ruth to smell like! There's strawberries in this, and hints of herbal salves that gives this scent a clean, old European apothecary touch to it. Ruth is far too herbal though, so you start thinking of old people people wearing actual herbal salves. This just smell like the clean hands of a nun working in an apothecary (I'm thinking really expensive, old school European apothecary that are run by nuns and attached to convents that look like castles), or a aesthetician in a more medical sort of spa. It's so gorgeous!
Oh, and of course, the aesthetician will totally look like this:
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But it's a totally respectable spa. Really.
Gorgeous photo by Benjo Arwas, I really recommend checking his profile out for more hot photos of hot people |
TL;DR: Strawberry salve from a luxurious, old European apothecary.
Overview: Here are the notes for HoG's Ruth:
"Fresh strawberry, green patchouli, rose geranium and crushed violet leaf."
Yup, it's the strawberry & patchouli combo that makes them smell similar.
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Raven Spell
"Captured is a bit of raven mystery in a special blend of dark violet floral spice and berries with essential oils of sensual sweet sandalwood,cinnamon, frankincense and orris root ,violet leaf absolute,infused with blackberry fruit extract, dragons blood resin,orris root ,real blueberries and apples."
I'm getting an acrid smell, the same sour, acrid smell that's usually a black tea note going wrong. It smells like Chinese preserved citrus peels. It's softened by this butter mints sort of powdery scent (there's no actual minty scent), and while I love the butter mint sort of powderiness, nothing can save the sour, acrid scent.
Speaking of powdery, here's a powdery shirtless dude:
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Apparently this dude is a HK actor named Clement Tien.
Hot photography by Cymbie Yan |
I don't know guys, I'm running out of ideas of how to subtly segue into hot shirtless dudes.
TL;DR: Sour, acrid woody smell that's only slightly tempered by butter mints sort of powderiness.
Overview: Ok, so the violets are the ones creating the butter mint sort of powderiness. Maybe it's the fruits and sandalwood creating the acrid, sour scent.
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The Evening Stars
"A fragrance to relax and unwind to in a special blend of floral, and earthy fruit mix in essential oils of ylang ylang, anise, sandalwood, honeysuckle absolute, infused with amber resin, pineapple ,coconut, tarragon leaves an aroma sure to enchant and take you away from the cares of the day."
There's that ylang ylang scent that smells like cottony oil. Ylang ylang always makes me feel nostalgic because it reminds me of childhood vacations to Bali. Unfortunately, there's this prominent scent that smells really chemical-ish and I can only describe as sickly sweet & balloon-ish. I know MGA only does natural perfumes, so I'm itching to see the notes to see what's going on.
After about 25 min, the balloon-y scent subsided a bit, and now smells exactly like these ylang ylang rice soaps that used to be in a lot of resort/country club bathrooms (in Indonesia at least). The scent is cottony ylang ylang, with a cool, fragrant sort of powdery rice sort of scent, mixed with that soap smell every soap seems to have.
On the subject of country clubs, here, have a hot shirtless tennis player....which every decent country club should have if they want my business:
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Totally what every country club needs.
Image courtesy of tennisplayershirtless.tumblr.com. Yup, this is a thing. |
TL;DR: Sickly sweet, balloon-ish chemicals mixed with cottony ylang ylang, turning into ylang ylang rice soap.
Overview: That's it. The sickly sweet, ballon-ish scent is an ester scent, and I'm guessing it came from the pineapple. Not a fan of this, unfortunately.
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The Music of The Night
"A scent of enchanted beauty cloaked in the mystery of blended citrus,smoked woods and sweet floral tobacco. Created with frangipani, tobacco absolutes, agarwood CO2, myrhh resins, essential oils in , bergamot, lime, ylang ylang,infused in tobacco leaves and lime peels."
Oooh...this smells delicious. It starts off smelling like a creamy Indonesian mung bean dessert spiced up with ginger, spicy cloves, and cinnamon. By about 10-15 min, the creaminess disappeared and I get more of a watery cinnamon & cloves lotion scent. Watery cinnamon & cloves lotion sounds unappealing, but it's awesome, I promise. It smells like sipping a cup of creamy chai while sitting next to a hot guy in a trendy café. It's the kind of that's filled with minimalist furniture and has a monochrome colour scheme to make you feel like you'll be prodded by people in white lab coats anytime soon. It's a combination of creamy gourmand and clean, watery scents that blends beautifully instead of clashing.
Oh yes, and here's your drinking companion:
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Yup. Totally normal to drink coffee with your washboard abs hanging out.
Benjo Arwas again. Seriously. Check his profile out. |
TL;DR: Drinking creamy chai while sitting in a clean, trendy café.
Overview: There's a lot of wood in the notes, but the woody bits smell more like chai or add a spiciness to the scent on me. It does't smell like straight up wood.
