Venetian Red

My favorite perfume is Mitsouko, but she can be such a cold bitch sometimes. If you ever wished that she had a warmer, more welcoming sister, Venetian Red is for you. I have never encountered such complexity in an all natural perfume. Warm, spicy, ambery and complex, I'm not leaving Russia without it. This is from Zworykina's gothic collection, will need to check out the rest! Both my partner and a friend dislike Mitsouko and love this, so give it a try even if you don't like Mits. Edit August 18th 2016: Wow, colder temperature really brings out the seaweed (I think). Strong iodine and salt opening that fades as the same gorgeous spicy drydown grows stronger. Edit August 2017: Mitsouko is no longer my favorite perfume. Since discovering Zworikyna last year, I have bare worn it. Instead, all the ones I reach for first are hers. Hard to pick a new favorite among these masterpieces, so these are the ones I'll have to replenish soon (and, yes, they're unisex, I do have help emptying them): Green Madness, Cuir de Russie, Young Cossack, Dark Side of the Goddess, Asmodeus, Silver Lavender, No 3. From the Switch. Perfumes and More line I have already emptied and bought a new one of No 4- Baba Yaga, possibly the best perfume ever made, and that's in hard competition!

Seaweed jasmine Venetian Red is the second marine in AZ line up (the first one is Hue). Whereas Hue was the smellscape of an ancient Vietnam capital, this one is inspired by the city of Venice. It definitely shares the dark, marine character with Hue though: it opens similarly with a strong note of moist seaweed. This note accentuated by the vegetal, bitter green angelica (think Malle's French Lover) together with the salty ambergris gives it a clear dark marine character. My girlfriend said that this phase reminds her of the smell of a pile of wet grass in a composter. Which is fair enough. Then it gets dustier and mossier thanks to labdanum+oakmoss and the jasmine comes out, dominating the scent after the initial strong seaweed opening. Its dirty qualities provide, together with ambergris, an interesting animalic counterpoint. All of that is served on a woodsy-smoky background giving reasonable depth to it. Excellent.

Wheew, I remember this really stunk the first time I wore it - I just couldn’t put my finger on it exactly. The seaweed or artemisia, maybe? VR was definitely dark, soft and initially unassuming. As it sat on my skin I could begin to smell the nutmeg and perhaps vetiver and patchouli or oakmoss. The oakmoss seemed to offer just a slight cooling, all the while resting on a layer of amber. The heart of the fragrance was like an oriental with the labdanum dominating the fragrance. If I put a dab on paper I could smell a light, warm spice - perhaps nutmeg and labdanum. On the second wear it wasn’t as bad. It was similar to other fragrances in Zwroykina’s Gothic Set - dark and ...well....gothic. But many of them are very interesting oriental-type fragrances. I was never really sure whether I’d purchase this or not, but it was definitely an intriguing scent.