Lightsource

So far I am really loving this perfume. It smells familiar but also unique at the same time. As soon as I put it on my skin, I was immediately transported to summer and happiness. It is a very fresh, juicy uplifting and youthful scent, and the fresh-spicy note description is very accurate on the dry down. It is definitely citrusy/lemony and peppery which adds definition and pairs with the citrus really well, but for some reason, the first notes that came to my mind were "sour starfruit" and "orange blossom". I find that orange blossom is an invigorating, soapy, and bitter (in a good way) floral and that's what it smells like to me, but some may not agree. I have never smelled star jasmine or petitgrain notes in perfume before so I'm not sure if these are prominent in this blend or not. In my opinion, it lasts very well on the skin and I cannot stop sniffing myself, but I have noticed it doesn't last that well on clothes and has an okay sillage - compared to something like Baccarat rouge where I could stand far away and my sisters could smell it, they couldn't with this fragrance until I got very close. I think the sillage may strengthen a bit better in warmer seasons. This is also very much a day-time fragrance as it doesn't have that depth and sexiness one might want for night-time. I can totally stand behind the inspiration of Lightsource, which is the 90's rave scene. It isn't supposed to smell exactly like a rave, (cannabis, patchouli, sweat, drugs, dust etc. lol), but it is supposed to be inspired by the glowing lights, colour, energy, dancing, happy/euphoric emotions/serotonin boost one feels at a rave. The citrusy/spicy/fresh floral nature of this perfume can definitely be symbolic of those aspects and makes me feel like I'm embodying them as well with how I smell and how I feel when wearing it. The price is acceptable to me because I like this perfume and see myself wearing it quite often, and it is a good size for the price, but it may not be worth it if people are trying to find a scent with amazing sillage, or one that has an extremely desirable peculiarity. It is still unique to me, don't get me wrong. Even though I want to wear it every day, I'm nervous to because the shipping took so long from Iceland to Canada and I don't want to go through this perfume too quickly because of that (It's fairly brand new so I only found it available directly from Andrea Maack at the time - it should become more readily available on different websites at least). No matter what, I think everyone should have at least one of Andrea Maack's perfumes in their collection. If what I described in this review sounds intriguing to you, I would definitely give it a shot!! (I know that more experienced and hard-to-please frag lovers with high standards may not be satisfied with Lightsource however).

I was genuinely surprised by how much I liked this. This one is greater than the sum of its parts. It's fresh, sunny, and spicy. I get a little subtle rose, but mostly the florals here blend so seamlessly together and with the citrus and peppers that they're hard for me to define. They're more of a feeling, almost. The lemon and petigrain bring a brightness to the whole thing that certainly does give the feeling of the sun shining through clouds. The pepper brings almost a musky quality, almost like the sensation of sweat, but it doesn't smell like sweat. It gives me the feeling of being somewhere crowded on a hot day and smelling someone's cologne around me. I don't really detect any fig here, except maybe that it tempers the pepper a little bit. I also get a licorice quality that I am not sure the origin of. I only had a dabber sample, so it's hard to tell exactly how a fragrance will perform without being atomized, but even dabbed on one wrist, the performance was good. Sillage is gentle but not strictly subtle (I could catch whiffs whenever I moved my hands past my face), and performance has been steady for several hours of office work. Overall, I love it. Probably my favorite of her fragrances. It feels sophisticated without being boring. It could easily be unisex. Will probably full bottle this one.

I like this house. This is niche perfumery that doesn’t bow to tradition. The DNA is fresh, photorealistic, and made with high quality ingredients. Feels like it’s mixed in a cauldron rather than a lab. Let me try to elaborate on the craft bc it’s important to the overall DNA. This scent doesn’t feel as if all the parts were formed together; i.e. how most perfumes come together in a singular cloud bubble. Instead, each ingredient remains distinctly definable in its own bubble. The bubbles bump into one another in the bottle and meld once sprayed on the skin. I find it to be such a unique take on perfume. About the notes here, they lay down crystal clear. A tangy citrus opening and I get the jasmine instantly. The petitgrain is the round eraser of edge. This is a rave homage but I get something softer. I get waking up when the sunlight pours through your window and you are happy. You feel calm but fully present. MDMA has a similar euphoria so perhaps that’s the rave element. Today, when I wore this, I smelled pine needles with the tips coated in cotton. Those notes are not in the bottle but I think that’s the magic of these cauldron brewed perfumes. An exquisite line. It’s made me rethink what is possible for perfume. It’s bottling the natural world.

This frag low-key kinda blew me away! I love how odd and approachable most of Andrea Maack's offerings are. But let's talk " 90s Rave" about this... I was on the cusp of being of age in the 90s (coincidentally, as someone mentions CK1 below, I was stealing my dad's sample of it like a totally newbie - I don't find Lightsource to be any bit similar), so I don't have a direct correlation to draw on, but stepping into any room of the contemporary dance scene - this makes perfect sense. I actually found myself at a rave the day I sampled this. This scent is candy colored and bright, unique but approachable. It's totally fun, but super wearable. It matches the neon light aesthetic, but also evokes an image of high design. To me, It's all based on the context of the wear - I think it's a chameleon of a scent in that way. It's lemony but not traditional, it's been updated for todays artsy tastes. I get a little powder, but it maintains a clean edge through the whole wear. Every note blends well so as to mask the other, aside from lemon. 10/10 from me!

#855 in my "Tour de Fragrance" Got this as a decant. My first Andrea Maack scent was "Coven." I actually bought it for a woman but almost kept it for myself. "Lightsource" falls into that same unisex category, and I especially like the bright opening and the greenness of the petitgrain giving it a tea-like vibe. Oakmoss gave "Coven" it's likeable green lean, but I probably like this a bit better for the hint of sweetness. Like "Coven" the performance here is moderate, inoffensive, I think men or women can wear this, but older guys may find this too unisex. $135 and up for 50ml is more than I'm willing to pay for this as I think it's just nice, but not memorable and doesn't project much or for long. I'm not sure I would actually recognize this on a woman as anything more than being shower fresh. But if someone was wearing this in the car with the windows up it wouldn't be bothersome, like so many scents can be. So certainly car pool, elevator and small office safe.