still on advent scent-lendar backlog, the next series of gifts to myself (for almost a whole week) was a set of five scents from Sucreabeille's winter collection: Longest Night, Winterdeep, Life Spark, Whispering Black and Frozen Moon.
i chose this collection for my advent scent-lendar partly because of its winter theme and also because i especially love this collection for the intensely pretty label designs, a myriad of vividly-coloured mosaic art that encapsulates the theme of each scent perfectly.
Sucreabeille is also one of the indie houses that my skin has the most success with - more often than not, their scents morph well from application into the drydown, and i usually get reasonably good throw of about a foot over a six-hour wear.
sometimes it's quite cool how the stars align beautifully despite my absolute mangling of the post schedule i had planned for this advent season - even though i'm still working my way through my scent-lendar backlog, it's quite a lovely coincidence indeed to be posting about this first scent, Longest Night, on this twenty-first of december, the winter solstice this year.
Longest Night (a big glass of merlot, cinnamon sticks, freshly grated nutmeg, cedarwood, pure honey, frankincense, myrrh, sweet sugar plums) is the first of the winter collection, and i love this amazingly beautiful wearable gourmand that captures the joy of its namesake, the winter solstice. to me, this was a lovely throwback to my time in Scandinavia, enjoying mulled wine and watching the stars dance across the sky before a dawn that would be a long time coming.
Longest Night begins as an intensely sweet aroma of plums, red wine and generous helpings of sweet honey in the bottle, and on my skin the sweetness subsides to allow the nuances of the cedarwood, christmas spices and mild resinous components to come through. i like that the wood goes extremely well with the sweet redness of the wine and plums, while the spices and resins remain extremely subtle as background supporting notes.
i honestly can't find fault with this one; it's smooth and wearable, richly red but not too boozy, and deliciously sweet from the honey yet mature with its judicious use of the wood and spices. a firm go-to scent for the solstice and season indeed. 8.5/10.
next up was another boozy scent from the same collection, Winterdeep (a hot piping glass of eggnog, spiked with the finest whiskey. a dash of vanilla and spices to finish).
like the rest in this collection, Winterdeep is true to its notes and provides quite a realistic interpretation of them as a wearable scent - it's good in the sense that even with a blind buy, you'll know what you're getting just based on the notes. unfortunately, when it comes to slightly more polarising aromas like eggnog, realistic is... not always better.
the first sniffs from the bottle yield a very rich eggnog, strong on the eggs and generously blended with a good amount of cream, vanilla and spices. there's a nice whiskey note beneath as well, a smooth and strong-spirited alcohol that goes well with the cream. as someone who personally isn't a fan of eggnog as a drink, the eggs and cream weren't my thing though i really liked the vanilla and spice combination with the alcohol beneath.
i had to wear this (for science!) and the first application was just as expected, a very dairy-forward gourmand with some depth and complexity from a rich vanilla and subtle nutmeg supporting it. it's actually not a bad scent in itself, though i would have preferred the eggs to have taken a backseat - they really didn't play very well with my skin, contrasting way too sharply with the rich cream and sweet vanilla blend.
thankfully after about half an hour of wear, Winterdeep morphs on my skin to reach a more pleasantly wearable blend. the eggs have almost all but disappeared and the remaining stars of the show are the delicious vanilla-cream over a strong yet subtle sweet whisky. this final form is one that i can see myself wearing when i'm in the mood for something sweet and creamy, though knowing that i'll have to put up with the finicky eggs for a while makes it difficult to confidently reach for it too often.
interestingly after surviving the drydown i decided to revisit the bottle sniff and was pleasantly surprised that the eggnog didn't come across as being so egg-heavy the second time around. whether it was because i had become more anosmic to the eggs over time or because the blend was better-received by my nose after smelling the morphed version, it was an interesting change that helped save this dram from going into destash territory. 6/10.
with a truly unique description compared to the other scents in the collection, Life Spark (an enormous blizzard on a cold winter’s night, a fireworks explosion) was one that i was really interested to try.
in the bottle, the first sniffs are very sweet and refreshing, almost evocative of the fresh clean smell that you get from clothes that had just been through the washing machine with the fancy detergent loaded. i'm also catching a slight powdery-fizzy sparkle in here that's extremely familiar, and i would hazard a guess that Sucreabeille has included some of their floral aldehydes in this blend. there's also a slight citrus element in the orange family that gives this a little bit of dimension.
on first application, the fizziness amps up in a manner reminiscent of that feeling in your mouth after drinking a bit too large a gulp of Sprite and then awkwardly trying to swallow it in smaller increments. it fades off though after about ten minutes as we move into the drydown, where the aldehydes and 'clean laundry' smell take centre stage. the orange citrus that i first smelled in the bottle alsoseems to have sidled off quietly to leave behind something that's quite fresh and vibrant, albeit relatively neutral.
i would say that this is actually a pretty close cousin to Sucreabeille's summer scent Siren Song, with the same "clean laundry fresh from the machine" vibes. in my book, i would have expected some sharp coldness, some gunpowder in a fireworks-blizzard scent, though i suppose that Life Spark could be a passable "fireworks in the snow" interpretation, with the interplay between the bright bursts of light above and blanket of silent snow below being reflected in its fresh vibrancy and clean notes respectively.
even though it turned out different from how i was expecting the name and description to go, Life Spark is a fun scent to wear and sniff, a great versatile freshness to start any day. 7.5/10.
where the rest of this collection tended more towards the gourmand or sweeter side of things, Whispering Black was a refreshing shift towards the heart of winter itself, the solitude of falling snow in a forest during the dead of night.
with official notes of cedar, a cool stream in a dense forest, a sudden rainstorm, oakmoss, decaying wood, this is an intensely realistic atmospheric that captures all the smells of untouched nature in the woods - the oakmoss is dominant and there's a lovely warm cedarwood interwoven with a darker wood vaguely reminiscent of the damp forest floor. the perfume overflows with humidity, but surprisingly more like the cool temperate feel under a spreading treetop canopy, not of the warm sort you'd expect to find in a tropical rainforest.
on application, it seems that my skin amplifies the wood elements quite a bit and the earlier greenness of the oakmoss fades within the first half hour or so of wear. the complexity of the wood is quite lovely, moving from a rich living warmth to a darker yet not unpleasant detritus with each sniff. the humidity dials back too, matching the crispness of the woods in winter, with whatever water present being trapped under a thin layer of dark ice. with the drydown, the woodiness does get a little more linear as it moves towards a single blend rather than a changing olfactory experience, though it's still quite a lovely scent to wear.
Whispering Black is the essence of a winter forest in a bottle - wearing this brings back memories of my younger days when i would take solo treks through the trees along the ridge of the mountains, completely surrounded by nature with no sound around me save my own breathing and the occasional snap of a hanging icicle. 8/10.
last but definitely not least, Frozen Moon (crisp winter evening air, frost, sweet sugar plums swirl with delicious marshmallow) is a mouth-watering candy gourmand that rounds up the collection on a beautifully sweet note.
in the bottle, this is just confectionery heaven, bright purple plum-flavoured boiled sweets with soft pillowy marshmallow and icing sugar all around. i really like how the plum candy persists for almost a minute even after i've replaced the cap on the bottle. to be entirely candid though, i did (coincidentally) test and review this on a good day when i was more amenable to candy - sometimes when i'm not in the mood for sweets (which does happen more often than one would think) i know i would totally read this as being almost sickly-sweet and relying solely on the sugar to carry the scent across.
that said, on application the scent does mature and develop quite a bit more beyond just a five-year-old's sugar-fueled fantasies. i gladly bid adieu to the blizzard of icing sugar within the first ten minutes of wear, which reveals quite a realistic plum note that is naturally sweetened. some more nuances also come out over the course of the wear, most noticeably a slight coldness that accentuates the fruit and gives the perfume those realistic wintry vibes.
i can see how the perfume on its own in the bottle can be a bit more polarising, though i truly enjoyed how Frozen Moon morphed on my skin and can see myself reaching for this quite often before spring arrives. 8/10.
==
this review is of products that i had purchased with my own money. i wasn’t asked to review these scents as a condition of receipt and didn’t receive any incentives for writing this. i’m not affiliated with Sucreabeille and as always, all opinions remain my own.
the scents from the winter collection are available here. prices are US$6 for a 1ml sample, US$12 for a dram, US$16 for a 5ml bottle, US$20 for a 10ml rollerball and US$45 for a 1 oz bottle (before shipping).
all information correct at time of publishing.
Comments
Post a Comment