Junky

I'll admit from the outset, Junky does not smell how I had imagined it would smell. The pre conceived idea I had in mind was likely influenced by other scents I have tried with a cannabis note - black afgano, hungry hungry hippies, mountain high, coze - all of which have, on me, a very dense, rich, heady aromatic type feel. So with the name Junky (which in my part of the world is most commonly spelled 'junkie' and is a derogatory term for a user of illegal morphine, and occasionally used for a thrill seeker of some kind, such as one who enjoys extreme supports and is an 'adrenalin junky'), combined with previous experience with this note, I was expecting something dark, maybe resinous, edgy. Therefore Junky was a [pleasant] surprise. When smelled in the bottle this made me think of the colour green - a rich, vivid green with shades of darker green. However it was much brighter than I anticipated, more aromatic, clean, fresh and green. Sprayed onto my skin this was immediately interesting. In the top notes there is a real smoky quality to it, almost as though I had applied my perfume in a room where someone was smoking fragrant tobacco or burning incense sticks. It wasn't a dirty smoke yet it didn't immediately remind me of incense itself. It is hard to explain. This smoky feel didn't last long at all but was an interesting opening that got my attention. Within a few short minutes this began to settle into my skin and became a wonderful clean, happy, green scent with violet leaf and violet flowers, green stems and leaves, and a clear herbal armoatic edge from the cannabis. Although the cannabis note is definitely here it isn't over the top, you wouldn't worry if you wore this to work that people would think you were carrying drugs! Rather the thick sweetness of the note adds a lovely rounded depth to the other green notes. The inclusion of notes such as galbanum, juniper, oakmoss, vetiver and cedar prevents this from becoming overly feminine and retains a unisex character although I felt it lent more towards the female side of unisex. After about an hour the floral notes really come to the fore - violet is prominent, with gardenia and iris supporting, and a surprisingly strong and persistent yet soft myrtle note comes fore. The combination of flowers, violet, iris, gardenia and myrtle makes for a lovely fuzzy soft and almost powdery feel, but this is more a fuzzy yellow mimosa style powder than an overpowering or baby powder smell. I was actually surprised to see mimosa wasn't in the notes as I thought this was what I had identified! This retained its green and floral heart for several hours before the drydown of mosses and woods came through, though it retained an armoatic, green and gentle floral quality, with the fuzzy powder on top. I found this to be a very enjoyable scent to wear and was surprised how much I liked it. There is a slight synthetic feel towards the end of the heart and start of the drydown which lasted maybe 30-60 minutes, this was the part I was least fond of, but the rest I did enjoy. This gave wafts of scent that felt rather elegant and feminine and I would be interested to smell it on make skin. There were some similarities for me to Velvet Forest Wood - at the time of writing it appears one other person found this as it is listed in the reminds me of section. Longevity was pretty decent at around 6 hours with moderate sillage before it moved closer to the skin. It remained close to my skin for another 2-3 hours before fading away. This was a pleasing scent that I would like to explore further. Tested from a sample spray, in cool autumnal weather.

The opening is smokey and woody, unlike anything I've smelled. Thumbs up for uniqueness. Then this scent goes on a journey of changes. At drydown the iris peeks out and makes the fragrance very powdery in a lipstick way.

Deeply strange and a bit of an enigma. Amused to read the notes here because smelling this blind I thought "narcotic floral with very heavy orris root". Didn't detect a specifically cannabis note in it at all (though I can in Florabotanica), but turns out that was the narcotic in question, ha ha. For me it's the smell of a rich, not destitute, hippie in 1969 San Francisco - there's something almost fusty, almost musky, about the bottom end, at the top the flowers are soon covered with dust and ash, the bohemian affectation hangs almost too heavily in the air, it's almost too much ... but not quite ... and it's definitely intriguing and multi-faceted. The violet's a bit cloying and threatens to turn the effect all air-freshener-y. I liked it more as it dried down and the orris/iris surged a bit more to the fore. But yeah there's an edge-of-old-potpourri tinge to it which turns me off slightly. It's got a definite powdery/fuzzy texture which is almost comforting though, and at the end there's a turn into powdery wood which I really like. While the projection dies back pretty quickly, longevity's surprisingly tenacious - I was getting flowery wafts a good 7-8 hours in. So: this is a bizarre character trailing wisps of some sort of drug which does unpredictable random things and is fascinating though a little bit creepy.... a junky indeed! I'm sure it is someone's dream so do try it if you are intrigued.

Clean-shaven, almost conservative, wearing an oldschool 3-piece suit, a tie and a hat. At first glance, this scent seems to be more inspired by a photograph of William Burroughs than by the actual book - a real story about heroin addiction. The book by the same name came out in 1953. By that time Burroughs was almost 40. By the time the punk movement got so influenced by him, he was in his 60s, and he was almost 80 when Kurt Cobain recorded his voice in the piece "The Priest They Called Him". So, not exactly a Black Afgano type of guy. Reading William Burroughs' biography or seeing a picture of him might help you understand why you smell shaving foam, soap and totally outdated galbanum in the top notes instead of smoke, dirty woods, spice, leather or anything that would fulfill the "dark" and "provocative" expectations of now. One of the greatest controversy with Burroughs was the way he looked and talked, and the wild psychedelic world that he wrote about. I guess that's how reality works. So you either choose to talk avant-garde about Naked Lunch and Cities of the Red Night, or you can talk about the author and the times he lived in: the familiar, yet strangely uncanny green and soapy notes.

I'm mystified by the high number people detecting the cannibis note; I don't sense even the faintest trail of it in this fragrance, which is 100% soapy iris/violet with an underlying gardenia. Nice enough, but I don't really want to smell like the guest soaps in my mom's extra bathroom.