Leather Sample Revisit

Image source.

At the beginning of my perfume journey I was very fond of leathers for a while. Several of my favorite perfumes had a lot of leather and I sampled a lot of different leathers. I have since moved on a bit. I still love leather but now I'm most fond of really skanky leather or in combination with creamy white florals or gourmand notes.

I am a sample hoarder and I still have most of those leather samples that I loved way back when... so I thought that it would be interesting to revisit some of them. In this post I'll only be talking about those scents that I remember loving but that I haven't touched since my tastes changed. That makes a half dozen samples for me to reacquaint myself with. All of them scents that I haven't tried in about two years. Two years might not sound like a whole lot of time, but I only started sampling niche perfume about three years ago and it has been a really tumultuous journey, with a very steep learning curve and a constantly evolving taste It feels like much more than three years! I'll be sniffing these leathers with a completely different nose now. So this should be interesting!

Enchanticals Perfume Dungeon - This first scent I am revisiting is not a niche perfume at all actually. It's an indie oil. But I loved it during my leather phase and haven't tried it since, so I'll include it. This is pretty much a solinote leather. Cold and sharply herbal, musky and with a slight saffron-like sweetness in the background. I still find this to be the most photorealistic leather I have ever sampled. It smells almost exactly like my black leather jacket, especially after the chilly herbal top notes have calmed a bit. I wouldn't wear this today, it's just a bit too cold and not sweet enough or animalic enough for me... And it is a bit simplistic, solinotes tend to bore me a bit nowadays. But it is impressively realistic and might make a good layering tool!

The following four scents were all a part of the same sample order two years ago. The order was all leather and made at the height of my leather craze. Two months later I was over the leather and deep into gourmands. ;)

Blood Concept O - I remember being very intrigued by the concept of this line and I really enjoyed sampling this one. Then I just forgot about the sample and never looked back. It has lingered in my collection for reference and because I enjoyed the experience but I don't think I have worn it even once since that first time. This time around I'm not even intrigued by it. I am so extremely bored by birch tar leathers nowadays. I just can't understand why almost every single leather perfume is full of birch tar. Sorry perfumers of the world, but birch tar has nothing to do with leather according to my nose. Birch tar is just a slightly smoky burning chemical sort of scent. And it gives me a headache. I have no idea what my nose was thinking when it enjoyed birch tar. So, my verdict on Blood Concept O is that these days it doesn't even register as a leather, it is just a mess of something weirdly metallic and burning chemicals...

Tauer Lonestar Memories - I am actually pleasantly suprised when I put this one on. It is another smoky birch tar sort of leather but it is a lot sweeter than I remember it being. I remember it as very smoky and quite acrid with a background of amber resins. Now I get a lot of smoky sweet myrrh! It is actually reminding me quite a lot of the drydown of vintage Shalimar extrait. It has that same combo of smoky leather and sweet resins! I don't know if this is because my sample has aged or just that my nose has evolved. Later on in the drydown I get more amber/labdanum instead of myrrh which is not as nice... But in any case, a much more enjoyable experience than I was expecting! I already have vintage Shalimar though, so I won't be needing Lonestar Memories.

Etat Libre D'Orange Rien - When I look at the notes list of this one these days, well... I don't even want to put it on. Incense, aldehydes, patchouli, labdanum... all are notes that really don't agree with me these days. It simply looks like one big headache! I actually can't remember my impressions of this one when I first tried it, but I loved it according to the rating I gave it on Fragrantica. And it seems to have been all leather to my nose back then. To think that my tastes have changed so radically! It certainly doesn't smell like leather at all now! I get aldehydes and a bit of oakmoss at first, along with some of that synthetic earthiness that is supposed to smell like soil but is much too clean. After a while I do get some leatheriness, but a very abstract sort of leather, not at all realistic. I only recognize it as leather because I have a whole lot of mainstream perfumes telling me that this is what leather smells like, even though it really doesn't. The drydown is ambery with some patchouli thrown in. Nope, this one just smells really thin, watery and generic now.

Parfum D'Empire Cuir Ottoman - For a while there I had a thing for iris and powdery scents in general and I really loved this combo of iris and leather. I've since left that phase behind me so it was interesting to try this one again. I remember Cuir Ottoman as a powdery leather, a very elegant and refind sort of scent. Pretty much a straight up iris leather. But when I now put it on it smells really fruity and much sweeter than I remember. Kind of a jammy iris on a background of slightly smoky leather. And it does still smell like leather to me! Not as realistic as Dungeon but pretty close to what a leather accord should be like imho. After a while the iris gets less jammy and more the usual powdery makeup vibe. Yeah... this is a lovely ladylike leather handbag sort of scent. Very pretty, just not at all my thing anymore.

Olfactive Studio Chambre Noire - A little less than two years ago I bought, on impulse, a really affordable set of large samples of the whole line from Olfactive Studio. None of the scents were really my thing, but the line was hyped and it was a very cheap set... I was rather over leather by then but I still enjoyed Chambre Noire the most. According to my notes I fund it to be a lovely powdery leather with some wood and spices. This time around I get very little leather actually. It is more of a woody plum with some peppery spice and hints of dry but not very smoky incense. What little leather I get is similarly abstract and generic as in Rien. Chambre Noire as a whole strikes me now as pretty generic. Nice but nothing at all special.


So, have you tried any of these? What are your favorite, and not so favorite, leathers? Do you at all want to smell like leather?

A Spring-Summer Recap

Just to get into blogging again I have decided to do a post with mostly pictures. I have a whole heap of outfit pictures from spring and early summer that I need to post now or never... I especially love my eclectic spring outfits but I was too busy to write blog posts this spring so this here will be a recap.

I love this red jacket! It is one of my favorites for spring! I'll have to stay slim if I want to wear it for all eternity though, it's a thight one! This jacket is a vintage find from Beyond Retro (my favorite place for shopping strange vintage clothing!).

Sorry for the picture quality here. I can't even blame the dusty mirror for this one. This outfit was the one I wore when I had just turned in my paper and wanted to celebrate that milestone! Both the jacket and the dress here are actually from H&M!

This dress is another Beyond retro find! I absolutely adore the dark teal color of it but that color is absolutely impossible to capture on camera, even in natural light... The mirror is extremely dusty here so I guess you can't really see the dress anyway. Trust me, it is dark teal velvet and gorgeous!

On my birthday I visited Stockholm one last time before my big move. I went on a big perfume sniffing spree and to a couple of Second Hand stores. I fell in love with Les Nombred d'Or Cuir by Mona di Orio and at Beyond Retro I bought this dress. I never thought that I would ever fall for floral clothing, but I did! It is the perfect summer dress, a thin, machine washable cotton with a lace up back!

This is an outfit for colder days. The tunic is one of my favorite pieces, wide sleeves, lace, tight around the wrists... All this AND machine washable! Just perfect!! I bought it at H&M a number of years ago and it remains one of the most unique pieces in my wardrobe!

Here is another of my favorite pieces from my wardrobe, my black velvet dress, previously seen in at least one other outfit. I love how versatile it is, it can be dressed up or down, made morbid or romantic...I bought it at Weekday a couple of years ago. Here it is paired with my dark floral tights.

And now we get to my absolute favorite outfit of all time.I just had to include more than one picture of this outfit! I wear it again and again and I never tire of it! All of these pieces just fell together one day and became this outfit without any premeditation on my part! My black velvet dress is the base, together with my golden party skirt. The skirt was bought second hand, the absolutely gorgeous jacket is from H&M, the necklace is from LeBoudoirNoir and the slippers were a gift from a friend.

Hope you have enjoyed this little exposé. It will unfortunately be my last outfit post for a while... I don't have a full lenght mirror here yet. I didn't bring the old narrow (and perpetually dusty) one back to Finland with me and I have no idea where to find the wall space for a wider one in my room, not to mention the money to buy one...

*******************

In other news, from real life, my summer job has ended. Since Midsummer I have worked as a library assistant in a small local library. I have had that little library all to myself for a whole month! I LOVED it! Working there full time is my dream for the future, but I guess I'll have to wait...

My room is also taking shape. All of my books have by some miracle managed to fit in my book shelves and all of my clothes in my wardrobe. I had doubts about both! There is even some space for more books (this is the real miracle, I have been cramming for years)!! Now I only have a few more boxes of assorted nick-nacks to unpack.

My post about my herbal teas will be up sooner or later, whenever I can find the inspiration to write a long text... I have soo many photos of herbal tea now that I'm thinking that I might have to split the post up into several parts... We'll see...

I also have A LOT of new perfumes in my life! An Alkemia haul or two, some giveaway packages, some full sizes from Darling Clandestine, some samples from Wild Hybrid and even my first real niche purchase,a small bottle of above mentioned Les Nombres d'Or Cuir from Mona di Orio. I smell good!!

Perfume review - Slumberhouse part 2

This is part two of this review, part one can be found here.

Jeke has a fascinating concept that started "with a batch of smokey cade oil and the idea of a night time stroll with burning autumn woods in the distance - something fiery and burnt yet chillingly desolate, November illusory, breath of fog, ablaze. Into this design I sought to embed a defined masculinity - something well-worn yet intellectual, a refinement streamlined with rustic attributes - warmth of cigars in humidors, old leather shoes and odd buckles, traces of a fragmented sweet spice, the mysterious atmosphere that adorns the well traveled."
Jeke is intriguingly smoky with warm woody notes, a sensual hint of leather and a fantastic tobacco! My mother rolles her own cigarettes and keeps her shag in a leather tobacco pouch so when I sniff this I get the image of that pouch in my mind. This does not smell like tobacco smoke to me, but rather of woodsmoke. We have a tradition of Easter bonfires in Finland and this scent transports me to such a bonfire. The dark forest, the chill in the air, but most of all that blazing heat of the huge bonfire, the smoke drifting towards the dark blue sky and my mother rolling a cigarette. I think I get this image because of the fact that I won´t be going home for Easter this year... I regret that I´ll miss that bonfire and I definitely miss my home... I suspect that at any other time of the year this would be a scent to make my inner Steampunk happy. It could provoke the feeling of being an explorer of the Steampunk kind, gritty and dirty from tinkering with the airship, garbed in leathers, smoking a pipe and looking at old maps of exotic unexplored places. I really want to own more of this some day, when I have the money.

Grev is described as "The interpretation of the dapperest embodiments of a true gentleman. A deep, spicy, earthy, rooty fragrance with an elegant kick of herbs tinted through shades of orris, clove, birch and fir".
This one doesn´t evoke as many feelings and images as Jeke but it truly is one of the most elegant scents I have ever smelled. Grev is dignified and self contained where Jeke is gritty and wild. Grev is cold where Jeke is warm. To me these two scents seem like opposites, the arrogant highborn gentleman and the uncaringly unkempt explorer. The scent itself is herbal and I get that powdery kind of smell that I associate with orris root. I can smell clove and woods too, but somehow they manage to be old and frosty. As you might be able to see in the pictures, this perfume is a pale turquoise blue color, and I feel that this color mirrors the scent very well. I get the image of a elegant gentleman all dressed up in his finery going for a walk in a frosty park.


Free samples:

Pear + Olive is, I believe, the most recent scent from Slumberhouse. On the Slumberhouse blog the scent is described, apart from the pear and the olive, as "soft shades of herbal sweetness from Roman chamomile, the bitter booziness of grape tissue from French white cognac oil, the wet and earthy hues of zdravets crowned with the rich, velvety green gem of the very rare aglaia absolute. A chord of massoia bark & calamus absolute was created to provide a trace of cream".
This scent is lovely, very balanced and well made, but I´m lacking a concept, an intriguing background. And it smells a lot like an Yves Rocher pear perfume that I had when I was little... Not a positive association at all... I will forever associate pear and apple notes with the pear and apple perfumes I owned and overdosed on back then. Anyone who enjoys pear will love this though. It has the same smooth depth as the other scents but it is a bright and happy fragrance and you all know that that´s not my thing. There are some intriguing notes here that I have never encountered before, but they can´t quite make up for that pear.

Baque is described on the Slumberhouse blog as "a warm amber tobacco flower perfume containing notes of smokey apricot, cedar, straw, vanilla, tobacco leaf, davana, ambergris tincture and parchment. Elegant, rustic, golden and warm properly sum the four corners of its tobacco and honey heart".
This one is a fine comforting scent! The tobacco is sharp at first but mellows and mingles with sweet notes of amber and honey. This scent is somehow dusty and dry, I can smell straw and I imagine that I sense that note of parchment. Baque somehow makes me think of autumn forests covered with dry crinkly leaves. I wouldn´mind owning more of this, but unfortunately it seems that it is an older LE.

Kere is described as "Milky apricot, white chocolate and spiced plum-meat accords add texture and color to syrupy orange honeysuckle absolute and licorice within a halo of vaporous aldehydes reminiscent of champagne fizz. A circus of bizarre pairings harmonized in a blurring fashion that slowly devolves into spicy sugared hay and caramel".
This here is the most awesome gourmand scent ever!! It is so complex, so deep, I can´t even tell what notes I am smelling but it is so utterly, utterly divine!! I can smell licorice and caramel but there is also a sharp bite of warm spice. I doesn´t evoke any memories or places, it doesn´t transport me at all, but hey, I don´t care! Because I´m quite happy with being right here and experiencing only this scent and nothing more! This is another brilliant composition, balanced and intriguing! And the sillage! It is monstruous!! I´d love to own a larger bottle of this one, but alas, this too seems to have been a limited edition scent... Maybe it will come again sometime, preferably when I have some money to my name.


Slumberhouse really is such a fascinating perfumery! There is an intriguing depth to all of these scents, a rounded and smooth feeling that makes these seemingly simple scents so very complex and deep. Again and again I find myself using the word deep to describe them, I´m sorry I can´t seem to put this feeling of depth into better words... I also love the mysterious concepts behind them and the beautiful images that come to my mind when smelling them! Some of them take me away to other places and situations and all at least evoke certain moods!

All of these scents have good longevity and sillage, some more so than others. You can definitely tell that they are very concentrated! As they have no top notes there are no sharp changes in scent through the drydown. Some reviewers have remarked that these scents change dramatically about half an hour an hour into wear but I have not had any such experiences. What I get at the beginning is what follows me for the whole time!

Samples of Norne, Jeke and Pear + Olive can be ordered from the Slumberhouse website. Rume, Vikt and Grev have now been discontinued but are still available at places like indiescents until the stock runs out.

Perfume Reviews - The Leather Note Mystery

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I have noticed several times now that leather scents often smell like saffron to me. This post will look into this mystery and compare the leather scents that I have tried so far. Dungeon and The Haunted Mansion are both from my recent Enchanticals haul and they have been very instrumental in making me understand the leather note. Aragon by Darling Clandestine and Canus Lupus Arctos by Salmonberry Origins have both been reviewed before by me (here and here). I will revisit them now that I have a better grasp on leather. Hedonic by Haus of Gloi (in my recent package from Su, the awesome enabler) has been included because it is a saffron scent that ironically enough smells like leather on me. ;)

The one scent that really solved this mystery  for me was Dungeon because that scent is all about the leather. It smells like the real thing but in a way that allows me to sense the different notes that make up the real smell of leather. Sniffing Dungeon and sniffing some real leather made me realize that, as a scent, it is made up of three parts. One part cold and sharp herbal, one part saffron-like sweetness and one part dark animalic.

The Haunted Mansion has the same leather note as Dungeon, but accompanied by chocolate, patchouli and sweet tobacco among others. So the sweetness is amplified here and the saffrony note is more apparent. But this one is still definitely a leather scent, unlike the following perfumes in this post.

Now that I have smelled Dungeon, Aragon makes a lot more sense to me. Aragon is the one out of all these five that smells most of saffron to me, even though there is not saffron but leather in the description. Still, there is a trace of that sharp herbal whip but Aragon is missing that animalic note that would make it be percieved as leather by my nose.

Canus Lupus Arctos is also missing that dark animalic note. The herbal note here is more ozonic and the saffron sweetness is subtle. So my nose percieves a bit of saffron, some ozone, but not a leather note.

Hedonic is an interesting one. Description says that this should be black fig, saffron, honey, oud and musk, but I smell only a leathery saffron. I guess the musk acts as the animalic note, the oud might act as the herbal and both of these together with the saffron makes my nose think that this is leather.

So, there is my solution to the saffron-leather mystery! Do you agree or am I, or my nose, just crazy? Do you enjoy leather scents? Any favorites? Or how about saffron scents and favorites?

(Btw... I have a new laptop and you all can´t understand how strange and revolutionary this is! I have never before in my life owned a new computer. The only computer I have owned was the laptop I have had these past few months that was one my little brother bought cheap and second hand in 2008... It was really worn and finally gave up last Thursday... But now I have a new one, and it is fabulous!! All the things I can do that I have never been able to before! <3 p="">

Perfume - Winter Is Coming...

Beware of geekery below!

I am a huge fan of Game of Thrones! Huge! Tonight I watched the third episode of the second season... I have read the books, several times, but the show is still so exciting! (Though they could cut down on the randomely nude women and the excessive sex scenes... Sex scenes are soo boring!) I love so many of the characters and the story is such a wonderfully complicated web, constantly teasing me with little clues to the whole picture, but letting me slowly put it together myself!

So I love A Song of Ice and Fire (and isn´t the name of the book series much more intriguing, though rather a mouthful?) and the Game of Thrones TV series. As you all know I also love perfume, and who says you can´t combine the two! As I watched the show today I suddenly remembered that I had come across some Game of Thrones inspired perfume on Etsy... After the episode had ended I had a look, and I found some! Here are a few of the more wintry, House of Stark inspired, scents that I found!

A Stark Winter by SaraWen is inspired by the House of Stark. This scent contains notes of the nothern forest, cedarwood, ivy and vetiver with a dark base of leather and benzoin.
To me this sounds absolutely awesome!  I imagine the mild warmth of the hearth in the morning, the fresh and earthy woods outside and a warm scent of leather. Not too cliché, but still with strong ties to the inspiration, I like that!  Also, dark and masculine is how I like my scents nowadays!

Winterfell by Black Cat Creatives, inspired by the ancestral castle of the House of Stark, is more feminine with notes of fig, mandarin, heliotrope, jasmin, amber, myrrh, sandalwood and musk.
I don´t quite get the connection between the inspiration and the perfume with this one... I like the oriental resin base, it is warm and comforting like an old castle perhaps, but a bit too exotic for The North... Combined with the rest of the notes, I don´t think this scent would take me away to Winterfell. To Dorne perhaps, but not to Winterfell.

King in the North by Bubble and Geek is inspired by Robb Stark, the King in the North... It is described as scents from the weirwood forest together with notes of lavender, oakmoss, cardamom, mint and vanilla.
This could potentially be a very nice masculine scent, although I am personally not a fan of lavender and mint. I would like to know what is in the scent of weirwood forest, if it is evergreen or more exotic. I´m imagining a resiny evergreen scent, but you never know...

The last scent on my list is Winter Is Coming by False Nostalgia. "Winter Is Coming" is the motto of the House of Stark. This one is described as a cold woodland breeze, icy snow, weirwoods, moss, smoke and ash. I find the description of this one really fascinating! Snow, ice, woods, moss, smoke and ash... judging by the notes, I think this one would really take me away to the far north, maybe even all the way to The Wall and beyond!

My House of Stark perfume would definitely be evergreen and resiny, with woodsmoke and moss, some cold green herbs and a warm and woody base...

So, Game of Thrones, do you like it? Do you watch it? Have you read it? What would your Game of Thrones perfume be like?

Outfit - New leather skirt!

I actually ventured outside of my home today, for the first time in mire than a week... I had a giftcard to a local bookshop to spend. This was the outfit... The accessories are the same as usual these days, raven skull necklace, vest, pocket watch and top hat. The dark red velveteen shirt is one of my absolute favorites out of all the stuff that is in my wardrobe! A machine washable, comfortable, every day kind of item while still looking absolutely decadent! I bought it a few years ago from a charity shop for next to nothing... The black leather skirt is a recent find. I bought it last week at another charity shop for 8 €. It is real leather, the perfect lenght and fits very comfortably! 

Price tag: about 60 € excluding the hat and shoes, lots of pricy accessories here...

Wish list: Real leather pants, because I´m getting really tired of my faux leather pants getting worn out all too soon... More velveteen shirts, I´d love one black, one dark green, one dark blue and one dark teal... Won´t happen, but one can dream I suppose...

P.S. For the perfumistas, I wore Falling Stars at Winter Solstice layered with a hint of Smoke and Mirrors (both Alkemia)... My mother said I should wear something that smelled like a sauna, so I combined evergreens, vanilla and smoke... Smelled a bit like a sauna to me, though I don´t really know what evergreens have with a sauna to do...

Perfume Review - Salmonberry Origins

I just recently got a nice little pack of samples from Salmonberry Origins! They shop is based in Alaska and the perfume olis they sell are described as arctic scent memories. Living in the north as I do, although on another continent, that concept charmed me and I ordered some samples!

I don´t remember my life through scents, I´ve never paid much attention to scents before the last year's perfume obsession. But there are a few scents that have been very important for me! The scent of a newborn puppy's mouth is one (sounds very strange, even repulsive, if you have not been there with a little puppy attached to your nose...) that scent is addictive! Another very important smell from my childhood is that of Getpors, a plant that grows everywhere on the bogs or where the ground is swampy here in Finland. The North American name for this plant is Labrador tea.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

I have always wished that there was a perfume that smelled like the leaves of this plant. They have such a wonderful, sharp but resinous and sweet, herbal scent! There is a small forest lake ner my home where I somtimes swin in the summer. Around this lake grows Labrador tea and I always take some leaves and rub the scent of them into my skin when I walk home after my swim. The leaves are very oily and if I had the know-how I could probably make an essential oil or something quite easily... but I don´t have this knowledge. So when I found a Labrador Tea perfume oil at Salmonberry Origins I just had to sample it!!

In the bottle this smells very fresh, of forest evergreens. On the skin it is very sharp at first, with evergreens and sharp resins. At this stage I´m not a fan, but then I´m not a fan of most top notes... Fortunately this one mellows fast and the sharp green notes fades and the resins sweeten. This sweet resin state is a bit longer than the sharp evergreen state, but then herbs start to slowly emerge. I can´t tell what herbals only that the sweetness of the resins is still there but that slightly medicinal soft herbals start to mingle with it. The drydown is a soft and sweet herbal that I constantly sniff at. And it lasts for a long time! 

There are no notes mentioned in the description of this scent, so the actual content is unknown to me.... But it does not quite smell like Labrador Tea to my nose... It does however evoke the memories of the forest around that small forest lake and with that I´m definitely satisfied! This is such a unique forest scent and it works so well on my skin that I´m definitely buying a full size bottle of it! When summer comes I can compare it to the real deal, right now I can only compare it to the memory I have of the scent of Labrador tea... 

The other scents I ordered were Corvus Corax and Canus Lupus Arctos, some latin names that you might be familiar with.

Corvus Corax is, of course, the latin name of the Raven. This scent has a really interesting top notes of some sickly sweet floral and berries, it sells like somthing rotten in a very weird and awesome way. It continues sweet and dark with some vague spicy undertones, but nothing that really evokes memories in me. This one disappares quickly from my skin and it is slightly soapy on the drydown, maybe a chemistry malfunction? For me this scent was all about the top notes, which is strange as I don´t normally harbor any love for the top note stage of perfumes.

Canus Lupus Arctus, latin for the Arctic Wolf, was really more of a filler, I chose between this one and Pilot Bread but in the end I felt more like sampling a masculine leather/spice/ozone scent rather than a gourmand scent. My first impression with this scent was that it smelled a lot like Aragon from DarlingClandestine, reviewed here. These two scents really have nothing incommon on paper except for a leather note and to me  they do not smell at all like they are described. They smell like saffron... Is my nose malfunctioning here? Canus Lupus Arctos is not as sweet as Aragon, where there is honey, and has a bit more of a clean smell, maybe because of the mentioned ozone, but in essence they are the same on my skin. This leads me to believe that either my nose or my skin turns a leather note into saffron galore (because while saffron might not be to difficult to imagine as an ingredient in Aragon, what would it be doing in an arctic scent memory?)! I might need a second opinion on this one... One sample of Aragon and one of Canus Lupus Arctos is now officially up for grabs if someone feels like being that second opinion!

I also received a free sample of Wild Arctic Rose which was unfortunate because rose is a scrubber for me... I think I´m traumatized by a bath set, with body lotion, shower gel and schampoo, that I had when I was a child... I loved the pretty bottles but that was still the start of my rose hate... Maybe I only hate the syntetic rose, or maybe it´s a chemistry thing, or maybe I have just not smelled any really great rose scents as of yet... I don´t know. Anyway, this rose scent is not one of the real scrubbers... In the bottle it is definitely rose of the kind that I hate, but on it is not as aweful as I feared. (I did put it on! Be proud of me!) This is rose with a healthy dose of lemon and I think something smells like cinnamon in the background. This one is up for swaps if anyone is interested! I can appreciate the vaguely spicy background here, but neither lemon nor rose is my thing. 

Now I´m lusting for more green but sweet forest scents... As I purchase my full size Labrador Tea I think I´ll buy some more samples too. I want to try Lichen, Ursus Arctos, Willow, all herbal in some whay, and maybe a smoky one, Noon Fire.

So, do you have any scent memories that you wish could be found as perfume? Or are there any notes that do really wonky things on your skin? Do you have any favorite green/herbal/forest scents? What is your favorite rose perfume? Are there any you think I would like? (Many questions on this one, but this set of samples was an exploration for me in many ways!)

Outfit - 80s Inspired

I wore this outfit to town a couple of days ago. I felt quite 80s. A couple of weeks ago I found the blouse/jacket at a trift store for 5 €. It was a bit large, so I moved some buttons at the waist. I like that it is large at the top, over the shoulders and chest, and small at the waist. I also like that you can either zip it up all the way to the neck or leave it open like I wear it in the picture, it looks great both ways. I think it IS from the 80s actually...

I pulled upp the legs of my faux leather pants over the knee and wore with my overknee stockings. It was a bit uncomfortable, but looked very nice. I love my faux leather pants. Again a versatile piece of clothing! But very warm, not for summer really, perhaps for cold and rainy summer days? Those pants are great when it rains, they are seriously waterproof! I don´t have to worry about getting my ass wet sitting on wet benches or the seat of my bicycle. A great by for autumn I think.

Price tag: about 25 €, excluding the hat...

Wish list: faux leather jacket (or a cheap second hand leather jacket), black leather gloves (futile, my hands are to large, no gloves ment for female hands fit me, and gloves ment for males are too wide and my long thin hands drown!), anything in black leather or lacquer perhaps... (Never thought something like lacquer pants would ever be on any wish list of mine, scary).