Dandelion Butter

Ever since spraying my sample my nose has been practically glued to my wrist. Something I love about (my experience anyway) with all of Clue's scents is that they are straightforward in that every note listed is clearly articulated and present. Behind that, it feels like there is infinite depth to the story and memories they unlock. So it's hard to write about wearing a Clue scent without bringing very specific history into it, and that's beautiful! I was born in Ohio and my family on both sides are from the Midwest. I spent countless days, especially in the summer, sitting, lying, and rolling around on my grandparents' lawn. What summer is - what this season looks and feels and smells like in America - is permanently set to the Midwest in my mind. The creamy, rich grassiness of Dandelion Butter immediately brought those days back. There isn't the sense of the green notes happening separate from the butter, the pollen. Clue is always a strong sense memory happening all at once. I've never played the Dandelion Butter (or other names it goes by) game where you hold up a dandelion to someone's chin and rub it in if there's no yellow reflection, but when I told my mom the name of this scent she said, "Oh! Like the game!" So that's three generations of Midwestern memories already. I call my very blonde toddler a buzza bee, a silly pet name that evolved from who knows what - his honey colored hair at birth, the bee rattle he used to have, and so many other moments of nonsense baby talk. I've called him a dandelion as his hair lightened and grew into an impossibly soft mop. The pollen and skin notes of Dandelion Butter are, therefore, connected to him for me. Your experience and story will be different but I bet Dandelion Butter will still smell amazing on you.

One thing I forget and highly recommend is the first few sprays of a new bottle, do them outside. The reason being that whatever scent you are about to smell, that perfume thats kind of already been "pumped" into the sprayer will not bloom the way the rest of the scent will. So on the first sprays of this fragrance all I got was 100% stem. By the next day this had greatly improved. The best way to describe this is if your grocery store had the butter section right next to the floral department. In the best possible way. Initially you are hit with this sunny dandelion note. If you haven't smelled on in a while its like a gently sweet floral smell that leans more green than powdery like many other flowers. It's extremely light and fleeting just like Dandelions are. It then transitions into a milky sap scent. Lactonic green is the only way to describe it. And then it hits. Cold. Butter. Not room temperature, not melted, cold butter. Slightly salted. The way that it combines with the pollen and skin notes make it smell as though you were churning butter in your garden on a spring day and the oils captured all the scents onto your body. It's extremely intimate, not a beast mode fragrance. But it will keep you smelling yourself all day. It's a fantastic skin scent because it doens't smell like perfume, it smells like you living your best life outside in the sun.

I have been eagerly awaiting "Dandelion Butter | Clue Perfumery" out of curiosity to how it would smell. This is such a beautifully made, realistic, freshly picked Dandelion scent. The artistic skill that must have gone into creating this blows me away! "Dandelion Butter | Clue Perfumery" opens with a kind of fresh, sweet grassy/floral scent. It takes me back to being a young child. It’s an early spring morning, the sun is shining and I’m lying on the grass. I can smell the earth and that morning dew type of scent rising from the grass and flowers. This is definitely a fragrance that invokes happy memories and relaxing, meditative vibes. The scent progresses as it would as if you were there in the moment, picking dandelions, scoring the stems and making dandelion chains. I can smell the freshly snapped green stem, with a hint of earthiness and the smell of the pollen. There’s still a little sweetness in the background, but overall this is a very green, hyper realistic scent. The far dry down actually reminds me of Angelique Noir by Guerlain. I don’t get any milk or butter, which I’m not bothered about. I think they’ve done an incredible job to create something that smells so spot on. This is such a unique little creative masterpiece! This is something I will have to add to my collection because of the feelings and memories it brings with it. 10/10

This reminds me of impossible summers that only live in nostalgic blurs swept up by the first turnings of spring winds. It's bittersweet, intimate, and deeply personal. I'm trying to roll down hills the fastest, throwing my whole body into it, ending up with bruises and micro-cuts from the blades of grass I steamrolled. Cartwheels add to the growing dizzying spell and I look up at endless blue skies, dotted with rolling clouds. Grass-stained blue jeans and time spent collapsed in the shade of dancing trees. I find the dandelions dancing too. I blow and blow, making a wish I'd soon forget. It's quite sweaty at first if I'm being honest. Sappy and green, I can almost feel the hollow dandelion stem between my fingers and the sticky residue seeping out. This forms a beautiful personal scent bubble that lasts quite longer for such a delicate scent and lasts all day on clothes. I wouldn't say this is butter per se, but succinctly lactonic; it coats the whole fragrance and adds a silky body to it that makes this unlike anything else in this genre. I oftentimes find that most green-stemy perfume are too abrasive for my liking, so I'm happy to have finally found one that works. Not ecstatic about the price and size, but I'd rather have it than go without it.

First, it smells ALIVE. Not floral in the decorative sense, but vegetal, green, and faintly feral. The snapped stem and milky sap give you that bitter-white latex note like the smell you get when you break a weed in half and your fingers stick together. It conjures grass on bare knees for me, the faint metallic sweetness of skin, sun-warmed dirt, and the careless intimacy of being outside too long. The pollen note adds a dry, dusty warmth that bridges the green bitterness of the leaves with the yellow brightness of the flower, giving the perfume a quiet hum rather than a bloom. Then there’s the salted butter, which is where the perfume becomes quietly subversive. Butter doesn’t sweeten as much as it softens for me. Salt pulls the green notes closer to skin, turning something weedy and photorealistic into something intimate and human. It introduces a lactonic comfort without thankfully turning gourmand. For me, it’s an exceptionally safe blind buy and I genuinely struggle to see how anyone could find this scent profile objectionable. It's right up there with Carnal Flower and Fathom V in terms of photorealism. My only complaint is the 30 ml bottle and retail cost of $140 USD. I wish it was available in a 100 ml bottle <$200.