These are all from another friend, meaning that I am branching out into new territory! Not a single BPAL scent in the lot.

* Citrine (NEST)
Described as “lemon blossom, lotus flower, and freesia with the essence of morning dew and hints of precious woods.” The lemon freesia of its early stages was kind of nice, but it gets generically floral over time, so meh.

* psy_cou (Nomenclature)
Described as “coumarin (which is apparently used a lot in pipe tobacco), cardamom, juniper berries, coffee, incense, saffron, oud, and palo santo.” It’s sharp in the bottle, possibly from the juniper, but dulls a lot in application, and then I think I must have largely been getting the saffron and maybe the cardamom? Because I mostly smelled like Indian cooking. Overall I found this one hard to parse, and it’s not for me.

* Flowerhead (Byredo)
Described as “angelica seeds, lingonberry, Sicilian lemon, dewy tuberose, rose petals, wild jasmine sambac, fresh amber, and suede.” This goes into the category of “floral, but I don’t mind.” I never picked up much of the non-floral notes after the lemon faded early on, but I’m holding onto it to test against the other inoffensively floral scents I’ve kept.

* Special Moments (Catherine Malandrino)
Described as “citrus peel, plum, peach, honeydew, rose water, pink cyclamen, jasmine, white musk, amber crystals, and vanilla bean.” The honeydew helped hold down the floral here; it’s fairly clean-smelling, and I’ll try it again.

* Fantasia (Anna Sui)
Described as “pomelo, pink pepper, raspberry, praline, floral notes, cypress, and Himalayan cedar.” This one went SUPER mild, super fast; the pomelo vanished as if it had never been, and I was left with lingering traces of those floral notes. Doesn’t really have enough personality to be interesting.

* Like This (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “Indonesian ginger, pumpkin, tangerine, immortal flower, Moroccan neroli, rose, spicy notes, vetiver, woody notes, musk, and heliotrope.” I forgot to take notes on this one, but I remember it being another sort of complex and confusing one, and while it wasn’t bad, it was also not really to my taste.

* Angel (Mugler)
Described as “Calabrian bergamot, red fruits, praline, ethylmaltol?, patchouli, and vanilla absolute.” Despite living in the Bay Area, I don’t really have a good grip on what patchouli smells like — or rather I didn’t, until I tried this perfume. My sister loathes the stuff and made faces every time she sniffed my wrist. I didn’t find it objectionable, but all I really got was patchouli and vanilla, and I find that unengaging.

* Gin Fizz (Lubin Paris)
Described as “bergamot, lemon, mandarin, juniper berry; iris, galbanum, orange blossom, rose, jasmine; lily, benzoin, iris, vetiver, oak moss, and white musk.” Another inoffensive but uninteresting perfume: it also fades quite fast, and is just sort of vaguely clean floral.