Basenotes - Reviews by edshepp

United States

Showing 1 to 4 of 4.

Cumming by Alan Cumming

OK, I just tried this again today. I tried it years ago. And really, I shouldn't be reviewing something that I just tried today, as I don't feel like I "know" it, but here's my quick impression:

First sniff: phenolic, burnt wood note. It reminds me of the leather fragrance I bought from The Good Scents Company. It also reminds me of a Bois 1920 scent which has the same phenolic character. The burnt-ness reads as leather. Wasn't crazy about that.

As it dried down, to me it seemed almost completely a leather scent--it got softer, a little oily maybe, kinda chemical and then inky. I loved it; I wanted it; but I'd just gotten Bel Ami a few months ago and Yatagan a few days ago. I couldn't buy another scent. Besides, it seemed like something good for layering, but maybe not as a dazzling main scent.

But the more I smelled that inky, chemical leather, the more I kept thinking, "I could make this." And if I could find some kind of castoreum or an extreme, extreme dilution of something grotesque like skatole, I could make it even "dirtier." I thought, "I could use that leather scent from tGSC and the oil called Baseball Glove by Christopher Brosius, which smells like chemical leather (and when I blended it with something--I think a caramel note--it smelled like just-washed hair)."

So of course when I read the notes here, and that it was a collaboration with Christopher Brosius, I wasn't surprised. And to be honest, when I think CB I think bullshit. Go to his store in Brooklyn and look at his "absolutes," which are all crystal clear and have the same viscosity. I think it's misleading to call something an absolute when it appears to be something ordered from a chemical company and diluted in something ending in "glycol." Also, what exactly is "white truffle"?? Isn't the smell of truffles androstenone and androstedienone?? It's a chemical found in human male sweat (2/3 of people can smell it and rate it with terms like "urinous, sweaty, chemical, woody"; 1/3 of people, who have a slightly different genetic makeup, rate it as pleasant and vanillic). It's also a pig pheromone, and it's used in stuff called "Boar Spray." I saw a can of this spray at a presentation by the New York Academy of Sciences.

At any rate, I like it as a leather. I wish the top note wasn't so burnt, and I wish there was just more to it.

And I wish "fragrance marketing" would go away.

4th January, 2009.

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Realm Women by Realm Fragrances

I think this fragrance is fantastic. I love the candy-sweet, children's aspirin/cough drop topnote, and the floral body and tangy base just make it. It's pretty strong and probably too sweet for most, but I find it incredible. Personally I doubt that the 'pheromones' in it do what they claim (increase confidence?), but the fragrance itself is pleasant enough that it doesn't matter.

3rd November, 2004.

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Beyond Paradise by Estée Lauder

Admittedly, the bottle is ridiculous. Ditto for the ad campaign. And it is extremely floral, intense and some might say cloying. I happen to like it, but I can see why others wouldn't. Don't think of Renuzit while you're smelling it.

3rd November, 2004.

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