Alkemia Midnight Garden: Review

Gilding the Lily, rukuku

Amber light glints off the gilt mirror and wallpaper, the beads and crystals on your dress, each small movement throwing off light. It gives the lobby an oddly late afternoon feel despite it being nearer midnight. You sit in a red velvet armchair near the front desk, watching the staircase, a grand art nouveau confection of wrought iron and carved wood.  A six foot bouquet of white flowers stands next to your seat. Bored, you try to name each bloom but you do not recognise anything the tuberose and lilies. The scent of the flowers is huge and almost covers the smell of good tobacco that has impregnated the wallpaper. Every so often, the concierge gives you a nasty look. After a while you meet his gaze and raise an eyebrow; he scowls back. You smile to yourself, I wonder what he thinks I charge? Finally, you see your date at the top of the stairs, resplendent in top and tails, white silk scarf draped around their neck...

As a rule, the Moth Woman endeavours to avoid reviewing perfumes she is certain she will loathe. This is in order to be fair and to reduce the negative influence of subjectivity. In this vein, Moth Woman would also like to confess to not being a big fan of white flower scents. They tend to be headache-inducing for her. They also tend to be far too feminine; feminine styles seldom work on the Moth Woman unfortunately. She made an exception to these rules for Alkemia’s Midnight Garden (AMG) due to the seductive influence of good naming—a perfect fit as it turned out—and the Japanese artwork Alkemia use to advertise/describe the scent.

AMG is an opulent white flower fragrance, plush, elegant and utterly feminine but not little girl way; this is a busty, beautiful, self-confident womanly scent. It opens with fruity tuberose, touches of indolic but mysterious white flowers, very reminiscent of Fracas, apricots, all brightened with that mentholated effect that often makes an appearance in tuberose scents. There is no screechiness in AMG, instead you find sweet notes like nectar and hints of honeysuckle. There is an almost palpable creaminess to the florals in this brew, making it feel exceedingly indulgent and luxurious. Two hours, and it becomes a quieter thing, all tuberose, white flowers and tropical fruit, haunted by an over ripe floral note. Like greenery in a bouquet, a suggestion stems fill out the fragrance more. At four hours, it is still perceptible 6 inches from the skin and, at this point, is strongly reminiscent for a short time, of the old Bushlands dishwashing liquid.

From the Moth Woman's perspective, this is not an insult. In the 1970s and 1980s, Bushlands produced a pink dishwashing liquid. The Moth Lady loved as a larva because it contained some element that rendered the fragrance of the Spiky Mat Rush (Lomandra Longifolia) particularly well. Lomandra is one of the Moth Lady's favourite smells, totally evocative of summer days for her and a lot of other Australians. The Moth lady recently discovered this smells like certain aspects of tuberose, so she guesses this is what the perfumer was aiming to replicate.

At five hours, a surprising light—an unlisted—tobacco note and weaves itself into the flowers. By six hours is very close to the skin, perceptible only an inch away and largely just tuberose with a touch of moon flowers. Seven hours in and it becomes a skin scent, returning faintly to tobacco notes then morphing back again to flowers later. It lingers, in total, around twelve hours.

As much as the Moth Woman loves AMG, she doubts she would wear it. It is not in the least bit headache inducing, just not the Moth Woman’s style. That being said however, she wholeheartedly recommends this to lovers of white flowers. This stuff is lush to the point of feeling sinful and if you are a fan of white flowers, you will definitely want to try this, more so if you love Fracas.

Available directly from Alkemia.

All About Perfume Lockets.

Perfume lockets, oh how the Moth Woman does love these things! She is a relative newcomer to this trend but has wholeheartedly embraced it. The general principle is that something is impregnated with perfume, then tucked away in the cage of the locket. Body heat warms it and makes the scent more effusive. This allows for more persistent huffing of those beloved but evanescent darlings you just cannot get to linger by regular methods. The lockets work particularly well with oils, I suspect because the idea originated in the aromatherapy community, by way of the old idea of the vinaigrette.

There are two main forms: ball cage and standard locket shape: The locket style warms the fragrance better due to greater surface area in contact with the body and therefore increases sillage. The cage style is more elegant, but does not broadcast the scents as well.

The locket shaped pendants are sold with little felt pads and the cage style with colourful cotton balls, to hold the scent. Now if you are a serious fume-head like the Moth Woman, and have a vast collection of lovely smelling stuff, using these might get pricey. The Moth Woman has found work arounds:

·         For the locket style, lining them with paper works. These mostly have filigree fronts, so the Moth Woman uses coloured paper for decorative reason. This works well but remember to clean the locket with a cotton bud (Q-Tip) dipped in some kind of vegetable oil after use or smells will get very muddled quickly.

·         For the cage style, she uses 14mm, unvarnished wooden beads. They are cheap, retain the scent beautifully and you can write the name of the perfume on them, so they can be reused.

The Moth Woman has become so tragically hooked on these items, that the Moth Man and Larva are starting to look askance at each new purchase. Time to start hiding them she thinks.

Both are available for extremely reasonable prices on eBay.

Song of India Night Queen: Review

The Beauty of the Night, rukuku

The Song of India Night Queen (NQ) being reviewed here is the current iteration. This is important to note because ten years ago, this fragrance was retooled and it was not a minor tweak; the current version bears no resemblance to the original. Anyone familiar with this scent, who has not tried this scent since then, would be well advised to retry it. 

The reasons behind such a radical change are understandable though. NQ1 was a challenging scent. A sour and bitter fruit/flower scent with a strong, smoky undercurrent, not easy to wear and very Middle Eastern in nature. The Moth Woman grew to love it though. Being a loyal insect, she was extremely saddened when, a few years back, she purchased a replacement bottle, only to find it smelled nothing like her beloved original. Disheartened, she put it aside without wearing it once. Only when she was planning to review Song of India oils, did she reconsider NQ2.

Approaching this scent takes an act of daring. From the bottle, NQ2 blasts you will a dreadful toilet cleanser stench. Based on this, you will go in expecting gold spandex, hooker heels and "hello sailor!" from a scarlet smeared mouth. What you get though is a Laura Ashley blouse, doe eyes, freshly scrubbed skin and blushing. On skin though, it completely mutates and becomes this lingering, subtle powdery delight with the heliotrope/marzipan elements not unlike Guerlain’s L'Heure Bleue, halfway through its development.

Furthermore, it NQ2's defence, it does seem the fragrance was intended to be a replication of the scent of NightScented Jessamine (Cestrum Nocturnum). The Moth Woman loves this plant. Her garden is full of it. It is not, however, the subtlest of blooms. A few days before she wrote this review, the Moth Woman was standing at her bathroom vanity, contemplating the stench of NQ2 in its bottle, thinking to herself that Cestrum Nocturnum resolutely does not smell like toilet cleaner. In the window comes a gust of fragrance from the bush of the aforementioned; it smelt EXACTLY like toilet cleaner…

This is a very long lasting scent. I applied it at noon and could still smell the delicious honey/heliotrope fragrance well after 2am. It opens with bitter almonds and hints of incense but without the smoke elements. This is followed by a super realistic night scented jessamine. These notes are short lived. Within the first hour, honey and strawberry notes take over. The strawberry is faint but gifts the mixture much needed sharpness that stops it lurching into an unbearably saccharine mess. There is also a hint of something approximating Mysore sandalwood, just a hint though. Around four hours till the end over fourteen hours away, all the other notes vanish and it becomes an enticing mix of everlasting daisy, warm powdered honey with a touch of non-specific nuts.

I am not sure how to classify this perfume because it backflips after the opening. Although the elements suggest gourmand, NQ2 never really smells like food. It smells like something far more expensive than it is and I will say, this one you love for the dry down. 

Keynotes: bitter almonds, night scented jessamine, smokeless incense, everlasting daisy, honey, strawberry

Pros:

• Cheap fun for loves of L’Heure Bleue
• Incredibly long lasting
• Very feminine (after the first moments)
• Unusual and unexpected development

Cons:

• THE OPENING
• Nothing like the original 

Available on eBay and here.