Brand: Haus of Gloi
Scent Description: A silvery lavender, nag champa, dry amber incense and faded patchouli.
A collection of indie perfume reviews
Brand: Haus of Gloi
Scent Description: A silvery lavender, nag champa, dry amber incense and faded patchouli.
This review is for 🟢Spruce Tip Shortbread🟢 in the pumpkin butter format.
Notes: Buttery shortbread cookies baked with crushed pistachios and delicate spruce tips.
In the pumpkin butter format I wouldn’t have known there was a crushed pistachio note. STS is pretty much a 50/50 mix of shortbread cookie and spruce tips. Personally I wish the spruce was just a bit more prominent but that’s just me. This layer so well with coniferous, woody and other cookie-like gourmand type scents (some oils I’ve layered with this are Nui Cobalt’s Emerald Velvet and Cloak of Evergreens, Moonalisa’s Noona’s Christmas Cookies and Iced Gingerbread and Hexennacht’s Fumer and Bois) This will be a repeat purchase at HoG’s next Yule release.
▪️This review is for the scent Cedar in the Pumpkin Butter format.▪️
Notes: just like the inside of a cedar chest (read below to see this was NOT the case)
So I opened the seal and took a sniff…I couldn’t smell anything. Did they mistakenly give me unscented I wonder? Once I apply this to my skin it smells faintly of Ivory bar soap. I would never guess that this is a cedar scent. Knowing it should be, if I really concentrate I can smell a very faint soft cedar. This is 97% Ivory and 3% cedar on me. This definitely does NOT smell like the inside of a cedar chest. I’m not sure if it’s a skin chemistry issue or if this was deliberately mixed with a light hand on the cedar fragrance or what. Compared to other PB scents I’ve gone through (Satyr, Cozy Sweater, Nag Champa, The reformulated Nefarious Gingerbread Man and Winter Divinity) this scent of Cedar is by far the faintest of the bunch. Yup, this is a clean Ivory bar soap smell with a kiss of cedar. I’d recommend this if you’re looking for a clean scent that doesn’t lean towards the sweet or floral or dryer sheet territory. I’m experimenting with my perfume oils using this Cedar PB as a base. I find that I have to layer other scents with this or my brain will just be stuck on a continual “I smell Ivory bar soap” loop and that’s not what I was going for with Cedar. I have some nice true to life cedar based perfume oils from Firebird that should compliment HoG’s Cedar PB nicely.
This review is for Flutterby in the Pumpkin Butter format.
Notes: clean cotton, warm summer winds and linden blossom.
Flutterby smells like my Gram’s house used to around Easter. I swear I can smell lilies and hyacinth in the background…two flowers I associate with both the Easter holiday and my Gram’s house in the spring. Hyacinths especially were always in pots around her house. I’m not sure I’m familiar with linden blossom but I have it in my head that linden blossom smells like cotton flower. I don’t know why or if that’s even correct. I love this scent for the memories it brings back of my childhood with my grandparents. Usually clean and floral are not the scents I gravitate towards yet I find this scent wonderful. Most “florals” kick up my allergies and send me into a sneezing jag but I have no problems with Flutterby. I’m curious to know what other peoples impressions are with Flutterby. Does anyone else smell lily and hyacinth in the background? I think this is an amazing scent for Spring and the Easter holiday. Usually, the only house I trust with florals is Alkemia but I’m considering a FS bottle of Flutterby in the perfume oil format. Possibly the EDP but I have no experience with HoG’s EDP format and I may look to other’s reviews before I make the leap. Contrary to what I’ve been told and read, I have much better luck with perfume in the oil format verses the EDP. If it has alcohol, it doesn’t tend to stick around on my skin the way oil does. My next review will get in to just that about Solstice Scents Chiffon EDP vs oil. Back to Flutterby, I can’t seem to get enough of this one as of lately.
This review is for ▪️Archipelago▪️a new summer scent for 2022.
Notes: toasted coconut, kola nuts, tamarind and jackfruit and a light dusting of brown sugar.
This was a sample vial given to me with my last HoG order. I was pleasantly surprised by Archipelago. Usually coconut notes go to plastic on me but that’s not happening here. This isn’t a scent that I usually gravitate towards but I find myself really enjoying this. It smells fruity and tropical but it’s not your normal run of the mill coconut scent. There’s the tiniest bit of plastic smell in the background but it’s only detectable if I put my nose right up to my skin. The fruit notes of the tamarind and jackfruit are keeping the plastic smell in check. Again, this isn’t my normal jam but I’m really digging it and am seriously considering a FS bottle purchase. I bet this would layer well with some of my dark ambers and patchouli oils. In conclusion, I’d describe Archipelago as sweet, tropical and fruity.
Hippie. Perfect hippie. Like clear memories of dark trinket-laden rooms and summer festivals with hippies. But not me.
I love the idea of this one, and I love all the notes, but it did not live up to my expectations. The “silvery” aspect reads to my nose as a glaring, high pitched white musk that dominates everything. The Nag Champa and lavender are choked by this dryer-sheet-meets-head-shop-incense note, and the patchouli never shows up to ground it. A disappointment, but it may work for someone wary of these notes who wants to dabble in herbal incense territory, since it is a cleaned up new-age hippie rather than a dirty one.
It’s faint in the jar, with a very slight amorphous hippie shop vibe. It could be okay. On fresh application, there is entirely too much lavender. I am big mad. This lavender is bright purple, not silver! Luckily, that phase lasts a mere handful of seconds, then settles away. It reveals an airy nag champa. There’s more to it, but I can’t pick out any other notes. It’s just okay. I don’t dislike it, but it’s also not grabbing my attention. It would be fine to layer under perfume, so it’s acceptable as a lotion. As I sit here with it, it occurs to me that my impression of this is a LOT like it was of Cozy Sweater once the lavender pop steps back. They share some notes, so I guess not too surprising. That one also elicits an overall lack of enthusiasm in me… it’s too light and amorphous. I’m thinking maybe the nag champa from this house doesn’t quite do it for me. Interesting. I start to get a little bit of what could be amber later in the wear. It’s a little warmer and deeper on my skin now, giving me a breath of life. Is there patchouli too? Could be. It’s still too delicate and fleeting on the nose to tell. I get random whiffs of this as I do chores around the house and I do like the way I smell. It’s nice, but hard to identify. I’ll use this up no problem, but I feel like if I want this profile, I’ll just go back to CS. No lavender needed. Soft pass, but not mad about it anymore.
Totally have to agree with SG. It was 100% boring lavender on me too.
Very silvery, very lavender, and a lot of incense on top
This was the scent that made me realize that I don’t really like either lavender or nag champa! Heavy, sweet nag champa with floral lavender. Very sweet with little complexity. I didn’t get any patchouli, sadly, because I think that would have helped ground it.
1/5 for me. It’s ALL lavender, ALL the way down, with only a hint of the nag champa/incense to make it a bit earthy. I like lavender just fine, but it’s SO lavender that it almost smells like a lavender essential oil or liquified dried lavender–there’s no complexity or variety, it’s just smack-you-in-the-face lavender. Maybe it would work as a layering note, but in general, just not for me. If you’re looking to smell like lavender and nothing but lavender, then this is your dream scent–the throw and longevity are both excellent (much to my annoyance as I try to scrub it off)