I MADE YOU A MIXTAPE

I'm sad there is not currently a review for this fragrance, but I am pleased to give my review as the first! I was fortunate enough to visit James at his studio in West Seattle where he creates and sells Filigree & Shadow fragrances. F&S had been on my list for a long time since the price tag is accessible to me and the scents sounded wonderful. I learned of James and his work when reading an article about how he came up with the scent A Way To Say Goodbye for his mother and was touched by his process and intention. I likely got to smell every scent James had on display at the time, well over 40 scents, and each was elegant, complex, down-to-earth, and yes, a little melancholy. I cannot characterize this fragrance as melancholy. It made its way into my 7-fragrance sampler set that James encouraged me to buy before committing to a full bottle, and it was maybe the third or fourth day of trying out scents that I had to stop because I immediately fell in love with this. It's amazing. I want to live in the bottle. I want my world to smell this way. Maybe there is something connected to the notes and my hometown for me. I grew up in an agricultural town and the notes that I can most articulate on me in this fragrance are apple, cannabis, black pepper, and leather. As a relative newcomer to fragrance, I know less about ambergris and its distinctions. The apple note is not cloying or artificial, it makes me feel like I am in the orchards where I grew up, but the leather grounds the scent for me, like I'm near the industrial elements of the orchard (if you have been near agriculture most family farms have some kind of tractor graveyard, or old saddles, or other metallic, wooden, or tanned implements). The cannabis note feels youthful and reminds me of people I used to be in love with. Cannabis is sensual for me. I know this isn't true for everyone; if you don't really like cannabis as a fragrance or the scent of weed smoke this might not be for you. This is like the big green heady waft out of a first-opened glass jar of your favorite flower, NOT like dirty bong water or a browner-smelling smoke. So maybe the cannabis note in this fragrance is more of the flower unsmoked. I don't know how James made the scent this way but although it is fresh-spicy-fruity it feels at home in a coastal environment. He wrote about the scent being inspired by the city of London and it feels complementary to Seattle also. I don't usually like gourmands and I wouldn't say this is a gourmand scent but it is very comfortable, pure joy in a bottle, energizing and youthful with a darker, balanced backdrop. I do like spicy/leather/cannabis so there was a lot I thought might work for me that did. If you get the sampler set from Filigree & Shadow or are able to visit James' studio in Seattle you really can't miss visiting with James and understanding his relationship to scent OR trying out this fragrance specifically.

This could be the power of suggestion due to its name, but this takes me back to high school, somewhere between the innocent youth of scribbling anarchy symbols while sucking on green apple Jolly Ranchers and that first fateful toke with the cool crowd at a party where a senior is playing Yo La Tengo on his turntable. In spite of being sour, peppery sharp, underpinned with a fusted old leather couch, there is a melancholy here, recalling the anxiety of being in that hazy, dank fishbowl and remembering the fate of that girl in that book "Go Ask Alice" you read when you were 13. Then that senior's older brother from college crashes the party, says "turn off that gay shit" and cranks up Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy. In summary: I like it!

Beautiful, crisp and peppered green apple with a beautiful leather and ambergris backbone. This scent is one of my favorite from the house, and I think for most people used to traditional mainstream fragrances; this is the one to smell. This is a designer level fragrance within a niche level of creativity. This scent on my skin is fairly linear, not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just the truth. It starts off with that photorealistic apple that reminds me of eating an apple in the bright and crisp morning air, truly refreshing. Then the pepper starts to find its way in as it becomes more and more prominent, never truly over taking the apple though. Then as it dries down further the apple takes the backbone as a lovely slightly peppered light ambergris with a green sheen to it takes over the bulk of the fragrance. The ambergris here is similar to the light and airy ambergris of “Tell Me About The Forest (You Once Called Home)” by Filligree and Shadow, they definitely have a knack for the ambergris note. Then as it dries down further you smell that this beautiful and some how fresh, new leather jacket smell from the leather note in here. A super lovely and approachable leather that I think no one can truly dislike. One thing of note is that all of the notes never truly go away, just intermingling with each other for dominance. Completely unisex, I can see this being a bit more masculine to some noses though due to it being a more leather focused fragrance. Sticks around, and pushes off a fair bit. Perfect fall/winter day time fragrance, but can see this being someone’s signature. A wild ride. A cross country motorcycle ride in a new leather jacket. Life is good.

This smells like leaving a carnival later than you should’ve stayed, and now everybody there is in high school. Very fitting and lovely for those who look casually cool in a leather jacket, but I look more like a child in a costume. I feel like a bit of an impostor wearing this but I do really like it.

first impressions: reminds me of a rainy day. I like that fresh green apple note. fresh, in a way where you can feel the cool grey day around your neck where your jacket stops. A lot of filigree and shadow is a real symphony of notes, but this one is a comparatively small sextet. It's like a re-mix, the green apple here is a photo-realistic elevation of the green apple in my childhood hair products. Great composition, not quite sure how it makes me feel yet. like i should've worn a scarf.

Smells like a nice juicy apple that someone spilled a shaker of pepper on. Maybe it's just my skin chemistry but the pepper was uncomfortably dominant, a sneezy note.

All I'm getting is leather and an inordinate dose of black pepper. The apple must be tied up in the basement.