After The Rain

The best way I can describe this scent is if celery was a porn star. Incredible. Fades to something gentle and sweet that lasts for hours and hours and hours. I love it so much. 11/10.

Photorealistic! Crazy how this nails the name to a T! After the Rain... It could be called During the Rain as well. It is an experience and crazy how this nails the scent with damp soil, greenery and grass that is saturated by the rain. It does dry down more soapy or a dish washing liquid scent profile. Thinking about this also gives me an imagery of when I shuck corn on cob during harvest season and get the wet husks. Very interesting fragrance and experience, but not something I personally want to wear. It's really neat imagery and is unisex in my opinion, as most of Darren's fragrances I have sampled lean.

This scent is crazy, in a photorealistic wet earth way. Truly smells exactly like when you walk outside after the rain stops and you smell the wet soil, wet sidewalk, and the worms that have been driven out of their usual haunts. I don't know how anyone could wear this out somewhere - it's not a people pleaser. However, if you want to experience that very realistic and nostalgic scent of going out to jump in the puddles left by the rain, this is exactly it.

This is my starting point with Darren Alan perfumes. I have immense respect for the DIY/Punk artistic attitudes of Indy perfume makers, I really do. It might not always seem that way because I don't even view these perfumes in the same reference frame as 'trained' or 'proper' perfumers work. That seems, snobby, gatekeepery even but it's largely true. There's levels to everything in life and the pro's are pro's for a reason. Anyway, I approach this set with an open mind and the title of this immediately evoked what I thought it would be about, not a bad thing. So it's a petrichor fragrance which usually involves the requisite materials like mushroom alcohols, perhaps patchouli and almost certainly geosmin. So I was expecting something heavy handed and glum, gloomy. Largely you do get that earthy, moist air, a very natural smell and something we can all somewhat relate to, but no perfume I've tried captures it well, it's a perfume after all maybe I have unrealistic expectations? I mean geosmin is an incredible material but is extremely powerful and difficult to incorporate into accords and compositions, but here I think Darren Alan has done a pretty fine job of it. (if indeed that's what he's used, as I mentioned some alternatives can create a similar effect) The main reason being that he has brought this floral accord into the mix which you can smell in the background throughout and I think that gives this perfume more of a story than simply representing AFTER RAIN, it adds to the context and naturalism, it's not just the soil reacting to the rain but everything else. The problem is....I don't want to wear perfumes like this. Okay sometimes maybe but they're just not my bag and it's hard to get excited about post thunderstorm, mineral, wet soil shit yano? Credit where it's due this could've had way less thought put in and a much more hamfisted approach but it was pleasantly surprising.

Honestly I only got the white floral note from it, surprisingly.