Kit de Muestras for HER

Almost all perfumes are designed to appeal quickly. These five are designed to make you stop and think about what you just smelled. Nail polish. Korean barbecue. Blood. Sulfur. The ointment witches used to fly. None of those notes is there by mistake.

In niche fragrance, "weird" is not synonymous with unpleasant: it means someone decided to put something into a bottle that no one had bottled before, and did it well. This kit brings together five of those decisions. There are gourmands that bite, a floral that ends in smoke, and a poisonous herbarium. Try them calmly, on your skin, and notice which one still makes you want to reach for it on the third day: that's the one for you.

Each 1.5ml sample is 30 sprays: enough to wear each perfume for several days in a row and see what it really does after six hours. With these five, that part is exactly the interesting bit.

Angel's Powder · Born To Stand Out
It starts with something that should not smell good: nail polish. That bright acetone accord opens the perfume alongside pink pepper and icing sugar, and suddenly you are in an afternoon from childhood, painting your nails in secret. Then it softens, vanilla sugar, raspberry, cotton candy, and ends in heliotrope, white musks, and guaiac wood. A sweet, playful gourmand with a strange idea at its core, and more staying power than it first seems.

Naju Spring · Pictura Fragrans
Naju is a city in southern Korea known for its pears, and the perfume starts right there: pear ice cream, ginger, matcha tea, and almond. The heart moves out to the countryside, rice, white tobacco, hinoki wood, white flowers, and jasmine, and the base does what no floral ever does: Korean barbecue, castoreum, and sandalwood. Yes, barbecue. A sweet and salty smoke that appears at the end and completely resets the perfume. Extrait, and for daytime.

Seminalis · Orto Parisi
The most unsettling of the five, on purpose. Alessandro Gualtieri built it around bourgeonal, an aldehyde with a watery lily-of-the-valley scent; the house presents it as a perfume about the beginning of life and the chemistry of attraction. On the skin: a lactonic opening, a heart of clove, lily, and raspberry, and a base of cedar, leather, patchouli, sandalwood, sugar, and vanilla. Some describe it as latex, and some describe it as beautiful. It is usually the same people, half an hour later.

Leonarda · Spiritica
The perfume with the hardest story to tell. Leonarda Cianciulli was Italy's first serial killer, the "Soapmaker of Correggio": she killed three women, made soap from their fat, and cookies with their blood. Spiritica bottles it without metaphors. It opens with homemade soap, blood orange, caustic soda, black pepper, and a note of blood; the heart is Chantilly cream, homemade cookies, and raspberry syrup with a metallic edge; and the base drops into oud, sulfur, dark chocolate, and ambergris. An iron-rich gourmand. It is not for everyone, and whoever wears it knows it.

Hexensalbe · Stora Skuggan
Hexensalbe means "witch's ointment" in German: the hallucinogenic salve that, according to trial records, was rubbed on to fly. Stora Skuggan reconstructs it with real plants. It opens bitter and dark, with wormwood and salty licorice, and the heart is an entire herbarium: angelica, rosemary, belladonna, and tuberose. The base is forest floor, patchouli, hemlock, and lichen: green, salty, and damp.