christmas may have come and gone with its accompanying real life priorities and commitments over social media, but i'm pretty determined to see my advent scent-lendar through regardless.
my next gift to myself was the gorgeously-named Woods On A Snowy Evening by Alkemia Perfumes, a showcase of the beauty of New England in the winter. its official notes are freshly fallen powder snow, juniper berries, hemlock pine, white needle balsam pine, flat cedar, camphorous evergreens, and icy aquatic elements.
true to its notes, Woods On A Snowy Evening is a very realistic atmospheric that masterfully captures a blend of falling snow with the fresh smells of a forest. the combination of wood, pine needles and evergreens is well balanced, almost as if someone had distilled an entire forest into this little sample vial. i found this one to be relatively stable on my skin without morphing significantly; it had a moderate throw of more than a foot and lasted for about four hours of wear.
on my skin, the mothball-camphorous aspect of the evergreens stands out in particular, matching the scent perfectly to one of the opening paragraphs in C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe":
""This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!" thought Lucy, going still further in and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet. "I wonder is that more mothballs?" she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold. "This is very queer," she said, and went on a step or two further. [...] Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.
i love how Woods On A Snowy Evening brings together the natural wood of living trees with a slightly colder wood reminiscent of the interior of a very large (magical) wardrobe. the level of camphor feels appropriate for the built-up odour of mothballs among the hanging coats, while the pine needles and berries show that there's still life underneath the blanket of pure white snow, if one only knows where to look. this is the smell of Narnia in the days of the White Witch, the first breath that Lucy would have taken there, eyes sparkling with newfound wonder as she crossed the threshold of the wardrobe and stepped into that magical winter forest within. 8/10.
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this review is of a product that i had purchased secondhand with my own money. i wasn’t asked to review this as a condition of receipt and didn’t receive any incentives for writing this. i’m not affiliated with Alkemia Perfumes, and as always, all opinions remain my own.
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