Pale Grey Mountain, Small Black Lake

This scent is poetry. Just bloody beautiful. Elegant and one of a kind, It evokes an immediate mental picture, its name and accompanying text describing it perfectly. I get an immediate hit of heather, thistles and violets, earthy, cold damp ozonic air. It paints an image of remote wild moorlands. I am immediately transported to a bleakly beautiful view of a mountain with mist, bracken and dark lake. I wear it when i feel in need of armour, to channel its remoteness, when i want something ethereal. And yet i also find it extremely wearable. It feels chilly yet warmly envelops at the same time. Moderate sillage, and only lasts on me for about 4 hrs, but many perfumes don't last long on my skin, so i'd imagine greater longevity for others. A completely unisex scent - that molds itself around its host and therefore presents as very masculine or feminine, dependent on wearer. Frankly i want all of this line - they're all spectacular, but this is my favourite -currently!

I think it's beautiful!! What a gorgeous name..... it suits the perfume so well. It evokes exactly what the description above says I think. It's wonderful!!! Pale Grey Mountain, Small Black Lake.......oh!!! I just love it. It's so sublime. Fog!! Silver fog even!! Oh so true, it is! My my, I'm completely bowled over by this lovely, amazing perfume! It's so ethereal. So ancient cosmic as aschifm so beautifully says. The wetness, the bracken, the cool foggy climb up the mountain, to the romantic black lake. So sensuous. So alluring, so mysterious. So light and dark, dank, crisp and exhilarating. Thrilling and chilling!!! And I love pigweed! Like janjanjan below, I too love chewing on it!! It's delicious! Mmmm....... Anyway, it's a dream of a perfume for me. It doesn't last a really long time, but who cares? I love spraying it on again.....! Lovely beautiful thing it is!

This is a foggy, brisk morning in the countryside...lovely oakmoss with a touch of water notes and grasses...absolutely lovely...Pale Grey Mountain...take me away..,

very strong and persistant. herbal. walking-through-late-summer-fields herbal. so far haven’t found anything alike

"I wandered lonely as a cloud"... pale and interesting, arty and artsy stuff. I love AND hate it, but can't deny it is a true work of perfumer's finesse, vivid imagination and real integrity. It is brilliantly individual, full of character, a smell that hangs together wonderfully and an extraordinary bit of scent-painting, which doesn't just evoke a natural landscape, but takes you by the wrist and DRAGS you there from wherever you really are. Yet it's also the sort of scent which can make people wax pretentious; it's horribly priced, unpleasantly rare, and doesn't perform as well as it should. This is absolutely the smell of the outdoors; wet stone, water, grass and herbs, a tiny tang of something hinting at woodsmoke, the tart lemony smack of purslane (if you've ever eaten a leaf of fresh sorrel, or crushed one between your hands, it's a little like that: sort of lemony-spinachy-aloe-ish juice, but also more herbal and tangy, as if there was oakmoss in there as well). I don't even go for aquatics usually, they snuggle far too close to harsh masculine aftershaves, but this one somehow magically pulls off the trick and dunks your head right under virtual water - not saltwater, either, but the glorious cool ripple of fresh lake and stream. There's also something in the texture which is the closest thing to real fog or cloud I've ever met in a perfume, a soft, grey, misty aura which puts your head straight in the skies. Lovely, melancholy, wistful, beautiful. Nothing else is really like it, though D S & Durga's previous lakeland hikes for the nose, Mississippi Medicine and Freetrapper come the closest. It's so startlingly true to nature that to ask 'is it unisex?' or 'is it office safe?' is to miss the point altogether; either you want to take part in this aesthetic journey or you don't. More than just a smell or a product, this one's an experience. Closest you can get to a kayaking holiday in a bottle. And a horribly short-lived and discreet one! To drag this back to the real world: while you may get lucky and still have the wispiest, most feeble tang of wild greenery hanging onto skin for up to 7h, this is in fact only truly "performing" - and doing even that only in a discreet, watery way - for under an hour, while the cool stone and citric-herbal notes do their gorgeous thing. After that it's no more than a lingering aura of freshness. Possibly not even a perfume at all. So... everyone should try this, marvel at its art and its uniqueness. Those who have unlimited perfume funds should buy it, to support D S & Durga in their bold and brave mission to push the limits, and to make natural and medicinal aromas and landscapes far more important in scent design. But average Joe or Jane Consumers looking for something affordable which will just make them smell good and last a day's wear should probably look somewhere else.

A nice balance of aquatic, woody, and green, my fourth try from D.S. & Durga's Hylnds line, Pale Grey Mountain, Small Black Lake, is the freshest of the collection that I've sampled so far, and perhaps the best of the lot for wearing in warm weather. It comes off mainly as a mix of water, light florals, and the beechwood note that anchors it. It's pleasant and smells very natural without being obtrusive or distracting. It does smell a bit of a lakeside, between the fog, woods, water, and flowers. It's quite an achievement in terms of creating a natural mild realistic fragrance that's not over the top with heavy elements, nor does it fall short by seeming synthetic. Unsurprisingly, with many of the lighter elements involved, it's not a great performer, so the standard Hylnds pricing of $180 for 50ml EDP is difficult to stomach but you're looking for something natural and outdoorsy, this might quite fit the bill. For me, it's a like, not a love, but this is certainly something I'd recommend that everyone try. 7 out of 10

This one is interesting. I had higher hopes on it than what it has delivered, but it's still a pretty good smell, to my taste. It's cold, "stony" indeed, and also peppery, and watery, yet saturated, and it's hard to distinguish particular ingredients (at least for me, not being a perfume expert). All in all I guess it quite reflects the short poetic description given here, and on the web-site, and on the box. To my taste it's more masculine, than feminine (it's stated to be unisex), so I won't be wearing it as much as I hoped, but there are certainly seasons (late autumn) when it's just perfect.

Salty and slightly herbal oakmoss. When I first tried my sample on my skin, I thought I had become nose-blind because I couldn't smell it at all after the first hour. Turns out it just has really poor longevity and low sillage, which I find inexcusable at this price point. Not one of the better HYLNDS fragrances, really - both in performance and in formulation.

D.S. & Durga are really good with their names. "HYLNDS – Pale Grey Mountain, Small Black Lake" is water, limestone, and green notes. Pretty good.

Interesting, but not especially wearable to me. I can see appreciating this fragrance as art rather than cosmetic. The oak moss and 'aquatics' are effective at conjuring a cold alpine lake. Definitely more traditionally masculine. It also smells quite clean, if that's your thing. I don't love it, but neither do I mind having a sample around.

Interesting. Nice scent. Slightly sweet Soft Poor longevity ( 1/2 hour) Low sillage ( sits close to the skin)