Court of Ravens

First wearing of 4160 Tuesdays A Court of Ravens, a floral, resinous plenty with fruity and musky accents, described a rose chypre on the website, which to me is the perfect encapsulation. There are jammy, fruity accords on the periphery but this is, at its heart, a chypre with a prominent rose note, sharp but not as sharp as, say, Salt Rose, which I sampled yesterday, with a bit of bright greenness on top, over a bed of resins. It’s quite outstanding and elegant, a great chypre that dries down quite rosy and cozy, predictably losing some of its sharpness. This feels a little more traditional than, say, My Eau My!, while still sharing a core chypre DNA. Court of Ravens is (I believe) EDP concentration, priced at in the US at $195/145 for 100/50ml, and sold both via the UK house website as well as official US retailers like Perfumology, from whom I obtained my sample, as well as pretty much every other sample of Sarah’s creations. It’s also quite a strong performer, and as usual with the line, is very reasonably priced in the current market, in my opinion. 8 out of 10

I typically appreciate Sarah's artistry and storytelling, even if things don't work for me personally. But this one was an instant "get it off get it off get it off" scrubber. I do not know anything about how this smells, other than a visceral "NOPE". It didn't even smell good on my mum, and she has completely different skin chemistry than me. Sorry Sarah, love your work, but this one is definitely an acquired taste, as niche artisanal as it gets.

Spicy, dirtied baby wipes. It's acrid, alright. Pass.

We’re encountering a rose who is not just a protagonist in a horror film, but perhaps the film–a cursed film–itself. And not some schlocky nonsense that’s all jump scares and genre cliches, we’re talking the last violently spine-tingling, pants-shittingly terrifying film you saw and that you’ve begun to have ghastly nightmares about which are starting to eerily echo and reverberate through your waking hours. Court of Ravens by 4160 Tuesdays is, in short, and on paper, an incensey rose chypre--but rumors are the incense component is the boiling blood of a mad cultist mixed with strange and stinging otherworldly herbs, the rose grew sickly and sinister on the unmarked grave of a hanged murderer, and the chypre, well, it’s the usual materials of oakmoss and balsamic elements, but pounded on an ancient black altar to an oozing paste along with a secret number of drops from a cracked, cloudy bottle, and I don’t know what’s in that esoteric essence, but it smells shockingly of acrid fright-sweat, bitter adrenaline, and is underscored by a host of sharp, burning pheromones. So, you have probably reached the conclusion that I must love this, and you’re right, and I’m glad you guys can read between the lines.