Chandra

It pains me to leave a negative review for this house. I own several of Gather's perfumes and I love them. I have blind bought several of her fragrances before w/out sampling and that is a testimony to how much I trust the perfumer Ananda and her work since it is pricy. That being said I am glad I only ordered a sample of this fragrance and a sample of her new Soft Animal, which I will also review here since it is not in the data base. Chandra's tulsi basil has a mint like quality that I find off putting. I had never smelled Tulsi basil before or Palo Santo Wood and was curious. The mint like smell of this particular basil destroys the jasmine to the point that you only smell the jasmine briefly in the beginning of the perfume's development. The Palo Santo wood has a strange smell that I can't quite put my finger on, it is sweet but kind of sickly sweet. This perfume smells like minty chewing gum that has been mixed w/ anise flavored chewing gum. While not bad smelling I would not want to wear it as a fragrance. This also has a muddy smell to it as well. Very dirty. Soft Animal. This perfume uses real animalic ingredients from beaver and muskrat. I had ethical qualms about sampling, but curiosity won out in the end, and I wish I had just stayed curious. This smells like burning hair. I can't really say any more than that. After that smell goes away it smells like fireplace ashes. This really pains me to leave this review, but Ananda really dropped the ball w/ these 2 perfumes. Maybe her perfume equipment needs cleaned, I just don't know what went wrong here.