Alkemia Green Carnation: Review

Sydney Long, Sadder than a Single Star that Sets at Twilight in a Land of Reeds

Behind the pines, the sky is turning blue-pink. You shiver as you wander, lost in thought. Suddenly music, distant, at the very edge of your hearing. It comes and goes but never enough for you to recognise the tune. Something green darts between the trees ahead of you...

You do not wear Alkemia Green Carnation (AGC); it haunts you. This fragrance is the best bunch of the eponymous flower you have ever encountered in spectral form. You can almost smell the velveteen nature of the petals.

The Moth Woman loves carnation very much. She has very pleasant memories of carnation. Sadly, carnation, as a perfume note, is wildly out of fashion, relegated to the increasing pile of things labelled old woman smells. IFRA has regulated the ingredients needed to make a decent carnation fragrance almost out of existence, so good renditions are getting rarer, furthering the note’s unpopularity. AGC is, therefore, a thing out of its time, so of course, this makes the Moth Woman love it more.

This is an uncomplicated fragrance verging on a soliflore; this is one of its charms. It opens with something sharply green and herbal, suggesting the freshly snapped stems of the blooms, accompanied by bay and carnation. Within ten minutes, carnation alone remains but what a carnation it is, super naturalistic, 3D vivid. At three hours, a nice soapy note creates a duet. The longevity runs to about twelve hours. In terms of featured notes, pretty much unchanged from the three-hour mark.

It is worth noting that this fragrance needs a far longer than usual rest period; a full month. It does not smell different in terms of notes before that time, it just lacks persistence and vigour. Rest, then enjoy.

In some ways, finding this scent was like opening a book and finding a letter from a long-dead lover. AGC plucks at the Moth Woman's heart strings. The pleasure in this scent is not just in its ability to evoke nostalgia. AGC is a highly wearable scent. The Moth Woman has bought a full bottle and recommends you do too.

AGC is available for purchase here.

Song of India Kama Sutra

The Lion & The Lamb, Heather Cooper

You crouch, hidden in the garden bed. The smell of leaves and stems, bitter and green, kicks up with each small movement. Your heart pounds. You are shake. Sweat beads on your forehead. A small bird lands on nearby tiger lilies; you startle. Your mobile rings. You fumble in the leather messenger satchel around your neck but cannot find it. The sound of footsteps on gravel come closer... and the clapperboard snaps: "CUT!" The director wanders over.  You stand, stretch. Five takes of that scene were MORE than enough.

Later that day, you sit by the hotel pool, with a mai tai and watch seagulls dodge the incoming surf...

Song of India Kama Sutra (KS) opens bitter, green, leathery, like an extract of some innocuous looking but incredibly toxic plant, like the threat in a storm. It is the kind of scent that triggers panic attacks in the original Ancient Greek sense of the term. All this makes the Moth Woman seriously wonder whether her take on the classic Indian text that shares this scent's name, is all wrong…

Upfront, KS is very sharp, crushed stems and leaves combined with paper money in a leather wallet and strongly reminiscent of the leather chypres of the seventies like Lentheric Tweed. In the background is a quiet but distinct note of stargazer lily. This is not your standard lily though. The perfumer broke down the bloom into it component parts, boxed the petals, stems, leaves and stamens separately then arranged for them to arrive at the observers nose at different times. They also kindly left out that screechy note that tends to dominate lily based scents.  The Moth Woman does not normally enjoy lilies due to the screech factor but she loves this one and wishes more perfumers would take this approach. There is also a hint of green capsicum lurking amongst the stems. Overall, on first impression, KS is an intimidating and foreboding fragrance.

Things change though and KS drops the moodiness and becomes light open and breezy after about half an hour.  Hints of spice emerge, primarily the clove from the deconstructed lily note and overlay the softening greens. The lily phases in and out, different facets emerging at different times.

The final phase arrives two hours in, heralded by citrus note very much like the opening of Lush Karma, a bright citrus with sherbet/fruit tingles angle. By four hours it is very close to the body but it will abruptly reappear in gusts as you move or your skin warms. Toward the end, there is also a suggestion of salt, marine air/chlorinated pool. It is faint and strange but not unpleasant—and rather clever the Moth Woman feels—because such a small note works hard, powerfully evoking summer holidays and lazing by the pool at dusk.  By eight hours, all that remains is a faint marine note.

It should be noted that as well as its dichotomous nature, KS displays other odd behaviour. Every time the Moth Woman wears it, it seems little different. The notes shift around. The longevity differs. The fragrance cycles too, changing intensity and top notes and back again. Unaccountably the fragrance also occasionally becomes stronger again around five hours.

Much to the chagrin of the Moth Woman, this is becoming harder to get. Because it is outside this manufacturer’s core group of scents, she suspects KS is about to be discontinued. Enjoy it while you can.

Key Notes: bitter greens, leather, lilies, citrus

Pros:

• Good longevity for a green scent
• Decent sillage in the first hour
• Total seventies chypre flashback
• Cheap
• Very different

Cons:

• Too weird for some people
• Short opening compared to a lot of oils
• Hard to find a seller
• Possibly about to be discontinued

Available on Ebay and here.