Brand: Alkemia
Scent Description: An homage to unsettling, eccentric, irresistable beauty – bergamot, mandarin, dark violet, Italian iris, black orchid, Japanese incense, orris root, sueded musk, white sandalwood, Tahitian vanilla, and pale patchouli.
Intensely sexy and mysterious. I feel like I have to save it for special occasions and dark nights. The Japanese incense note is just gorgeous.
This one is in the top three (along with Vamp and Salome) of my Alkemia favorites. Again, all of the notes work wonderfully with my skin chemistry. This is one of those ones that blends into something magical. I can pick out notes like the iris, black orchid, musk and the bergamot here and there but for the most part it blends together beautifully. This one seems to be very hit or miss for people. I’m guessing it depends on skin chemistry and scent preference.
This smells very purple to me… like midnight florals meets grapy head shop incense. Smells EXACTLY like an incense that used to burn in a new age store I lurked around as a teen. Really loving it!
This starts off strong with a base of musk and patchouli, almost overwhelming at first, but it makes way for the other notes as time goes on. The citrus falls aside quickly, but you can still smell a hint of it high above the rest. This is a sweet floral over a musky base, but I must admit it left an unpleasant after-smell, probably due to the fact I amp patchouli and I don’t like the way it smells. This scent is too musty for me, but I think it is a solid feminine chypre-type scent.
Yes, I know, lots of people think this smells like old lady. Maybe it’s their skin chem or memory associations. I have to disagree though. Madam X is the epitome of classy florientals. It’s reserved and cold, and very elegant. I have a problem with a few of the notes in general (citrus and violets), but they never give me issues in MX. The note that jumps out the most is the luxuriously smooth iris, with wafts of citrus, musk, and orchid accenting it. The base notes do act like base notes here, providing a pillow of warmth that grounds the scent. I can pick out soft suede and sandalwood. Don’t mind the incense, it just adds a ghostly hint of smoke, but it is quite subtle. Think of them as accents as well, rather than star players. MX is very complex well blended, I have to applaud Sharra for a job well done.
I was drawn to this for the Japanese incense, but it went super ‘perfume-y’ and ‘old lady’ on me and I had to scrub it off. I don’t know what went wrong.
Citrus is never my favourite and I do not like vanilla, but I loved this.
Wet, I got a juicy burst of citrus and iris out of this. The citrus wasn’t too mum’s-kitchen-handsoap, which is always what I think of first when I smell those notes, and it faded off pretty quickly. The florals are beautiful — I amp iris, so that’s the strongest for me, and the rest of the flowers fall in beautifully. It’s a dark, velvety mix. Drying down, the vanilla comes out alongside the musk and sandalwood. Very non-foody. The sandalwood is smooth and rich and blends perfectly with the musk. The patchouli is very light and unobtrusive. I can’t pick out the orris, orchid, or incense notes with my untrained nose.