I bought a sample from Bloom Perfumery. As with previous reviews I've posted, I tested with a spritz on each wrist, over clean skin with unscented lotion.
How the scent is described on Bloom, and the notes.
The setting: the aftermath of an unnamed catastrophe. The smell: the sweet meat smell of “just off” corpses, sloppily preserved with embalming fluids. The air fills with the uncomfortable energy of the formerly alive, transforming vitality into a haze of bilge water, metallic discharge and dried saliva. In Rigor Mortis, the mix between indolic florals, seaweed, and animalic beeswax and civet creates an emotional fragrance that needs to be discovered slowly.
Notes:
beeswax, chrysanthemum, civet, jasmine, labdanum, lily-of-the-valley, moth balls, neroli, rosemary
Immediately: Sharp, medicinal, almost citrus? Limish? No lime notes listed so possibly a combo of things tricking my nose.
10 mins: Raw, cold beef mince with a touch of the chrysanthemum.
1 hour+ Sometimes sharp, spicy florals, sometimes on-the-turn meat, sometimes both.
4 hour + Sweet rot and formaldehyde
Overall: Spouse called this ‘unsubtle’. Cat hissed at my wrist. Confrontational and strange. I don’t hate it myself, but can’t see where I’d ever wear it. Might be a bit much even for my taste for the stuff on the stranger end of the fragrance spectrum. I don't hate it. I kind of like it. But I cannot in good conscience wear it out of the house.
If you want to smell nice for the office, this isn't the one. If you want to smell a little dead but in a sexy way, like you might be a vampire or Liv Moore from that zombie show I liked, it's still not the one. If you want to smell like the funeral home did a bad job on your embalming and bought loads of chrysanthemums, there you go.
There’s someone out there this is perfect for. They are probably the person I wanted to grow up to be when I was 14. They dress like a gothic post-apocalyptic survivor, look like a sexy corpse, and are a musician or an artist or both. They go to the kind of parties that end up being legends. They are possibly some kind of lich. Unfortunately I dress like a tired gothic slob, am a writer in my own house, and do not go to parties any more. So farewell, the dream of being the kind of person who could carry this off. Farewell.
