Blackwater Thistle

Criminally underrated perfume, I can't stop sniffing my wrist. Usually these types of scents turn foul on my skin, but here, it's very pleasant. The soil note is not a clay type soil note. It's a black cement type smell. Wet cement. I bought it only as a perfume for layering, but it's sweet enough to be worn on its own. From a distance, you get that sweet, almost boozy smell plus some watery flowers, like lotus. It's not overbearingly soily. It's not a hint of soil either, it's a good dose of it. It does layer well with Aerin Lilac Path, but it overpowers it and drowns out its green notes. I think I was hoping for more green notes in Blackwater Thistle but I'm just getting dark grey and purple. If you're a serious fragrance collector and you need a good soil note soliflore, then this is definitely a good one to add to your collection. The drydown is especially beautiful. Very strong and lasts 12hrs+. It's not the most "beautiful" when you first spray it, but it's the most pleasant one. I never get sick of it.

Ever pulled out a shore bound lilly pad?? The kind that has soil clinging to it's roots? Smells like that. This also reminds me of Gaea by Centauri, just without the honey note. :)

I've spent the better part of 24 hours arguing with people about vaccine hesitancy, anti-vax narratives and general covid denying, and after a bit of back-and-forth, I delivered a line my discourse analysis professor once used on a dissenting student: "If you don't enter a discussion with the willingness to change your mind, you're not discussing, you're lecturing" and it seemed to work. My use, too, seemed to work, and I'm applying the same logic here. Smelling Blackwater Thistle, this is totally NOT something I usually go for. Not at all. But, I like it. I actually really like it. I'm gonna keep testing this, but, it's weird to try something out and consider getting something you normally wouldn't wear. The earthy-soil element really tames the floral elements well, and allows for an ungendered rendering of the floral aspects of violet. I'm genuinely intrigued and want to experience this more...

I was extremely fortunate to be able to test this today after it has been discontinued for years and almost impossible to find even in Australia. This is realistic wet thistle. Like you got the plant and blended it up. It is a wet slighlty/sour bitter stem sap with this slightly sweet floral juice. It dries down to smell wet like a clean pond. The cyclamen really is the star of the show in the air around you so you smell like you fell into a pond that is regularly cleaned. It still has a slight algae in th bottom and rims of the conrete but the water is fresh. I did pass up buying this as it does not come close to my beloved 'After the flood' by Apoteker tepe. But that one is purely pond water where this is more blended thistle stem and flower on skin.