Brand: Alkemia
Scent Description: Iron cured Ceylon cinnamon, coriander seed, and green cardamom pods, pink peppercorns, dry black Russian tea leaves, liquidambar styraciflua, wood smoked amber, tabac leaf, guaiac wood, oppononax, and a touch of vetiver.
This one starts out a little bit like Old Spice or something similarly cologne-y. But very quickly turns into spicy, earthy suede. By earthy I mean it makes me feel like I’m in an outdoor market, on hardpacked dirt, and the hot wind is kicking up just a little bit of dusty, sun-scorched earth, and there’s a dude in front of me with spices laid out over suede. That is what this smells like to me. I don’t actually smell the tea in this one, but I think it sort of grounds and darkens the spices for me.
Despite his love of Persian Tea Room, my partner doesn’t really care for this one. This one lasts about 8 hours on me, and after that it’s kind of just “my skin but better” for an hour or two after. Persian Tea Room is fairly similar to me, and lasts even longer.
I recieved this as a freebie with my order. On me this morphs quickly from a mens cologne into minty (the vertiver?),woody, cinnamon gum smell. It’s oddly soothing to me but wasn’t something I’d gravitate towards on my own. And I must say this is the first cinnamon scent that I haven’t had a skin reaction to, so happy about that! I was worried that this would be too masculine on me but I seem to amp the cinnamon enough to make this feminine. On clothes this smells more masculine vs on me. I would say this is a unisex scent that leans more to the masculine side. This particular smell lasts about 3-ish hours on my skin before turning into a powdery musk that stays close to my skin. I think the amber in this one turns powdery on me although there are a few notes that I’m unfamiliar with. This one is a real morpher and depends on the person’s individual skin chemistry. I’ve never had an oil change on my skin so much! This unusual scent grows on me the more I smell it. I bet this one would smell wonderful in the diffuser.
In the bottle, it smells very much like men’s cologne. Wet, it starts off cologne-y but the tea and spices quickly become noticeable. On the drydown, it becomes an almost musky wood. Stuck kind of close to the skin and lasted about 5 hours. This reads as pretty masculine to me.