Geist

A pure oakmoss hit... since these kinds of atmospheric scents are my thing, collecting samples is great... this one is also the atmospheric type as I expected, and it's quite cold and balsamic. What I pick up the most is dark forest floor (wet and earthy) and a turpentine feel... Following that, the scent heads towards dark academia, a feel similar to smoky Russian leather but never dominant, and it gets earthier towards the end. There's ink, and one of my favorite notes, hemlock: dark green, wet, shadowy... The ink here isn't metallic to me, it's more like the ink we used as kids, slightly smoky and still. Everything in the scent is dark and mysterious... Someone made a connection to LLL Tellus, I saw that... and I remembered it too because I tried that one first. But there are differences between them. Tellus stays more floral and warmer next to this one. This scent on the other hand is fully gothic, dark, and like repressed emotions finding their scent. A witch comparison would go well for this one, dark academia would be superb, but I'm going to call this a necromancy student. There's a dark artist here who's putting in serious work to become a necromancer, burning the midnight oil in dark libraries, reading grimoire after grimoire. Tag(s): mossy, dark-green, earthy, smoky, atmospheric, turpentine, salty, dark academia, witchy, necromancy

@OlgaAnosova137: your complaint against the webshop as not fair is misguided, rather direct your complaint toward US postal service. US post has a list of substances that can't be shipped, perfumes included, if they are alcohol-based. I was never able to ship perfumes to Poland. If one decides to send a decant for you, than needs to fill out papers to declare what is inside and declare that what there is no forbidden substances (for example lithium batteries, perfumes, etc). and sign it. Parcels got to Poland via airmail. In airmail no liquids, or alcohol is allowed. "Perfume containing alcohol may not be shipped internationally or mailed domestically using air transportation. Perfume containing alcohol, however, may be shipped within the United States by ground transportation." according to US postal services. Please, take in account real information, before labeling La Curie's business practices as "unfair". This is a small artesanic business, I ordered samples from La Curie, and she is very fair. And even when trying to order perfumes to be shipped by Nordstrom, a company with much more resources and leverage than la Curie, if you put alcohol-based perfume in your shopping cart, you get an automated warning to remove it from the cart as it will not be shipped.

I took some extra time with this one before writing my review. So far, I've generally experienced scents as fairly linear, or they move through their stages within a few minutes on my skin. This one is a journey over several hours! It indeed has a dark, complex, and mysterious opening for the first ~30 minutes. Then I get a strong Christmas Tree experience, which I would likely enjoy in the colder months. After about 2 hours, the full dry down is my favorite of any fragrance I've tried so far as a newbie. It has something special to it that is hard to describe. I strongly recommend as a winter perfume for anyone into more atmospheric fragrances.

A great big dose of what I presume to be natural fir, turpentine-conifer and syrupy-sweet, over a rich soil accord with a big of bitter green and salt. It has a violet-like character to it, the way it projects with an assertive wooliness, and a deceptive lightness, likely brought to you in part by a large dose of iso e super. It's an earthy scent through and through, though it's set apart from many others by being fir-based, where many others use patchouli. I suppose there's likely a bit of patchouli in it, and that's probably part of where they're getting the chocolate note listed, but it's certainly not patchouli-forward. I like earthy fragrances a lot. One of my favorites is Pekji's Battaniye. I also love coniferous fragrances, but this one kind of misses the mark for me. It comes off a bit thin, lacking both warmth and any real camphoraceous bite. In that sense it smells very mid-rangey to me. I don't find an irresistible hook, or a satisfying dry down. This is in a category like Faunus, which I also liked, but I found it a bit lacking in depth, too neutral (also another one built on a hefty shot of IES). I like this perfumer's work, she definitely has an identity in what she produces, but I think her best work is still ahead of her.

This demands a couple hours to become something beautiful. Because, Jesus it is CHRISTMAS at first. Overwhelmingly turpentine-y from that dose of fir and distastefully gourmand with the chocolate. There is a subtle promise of what it will become: the grounding warmth of leather, damp oakmoss, musky hemlock, strangeness from the India ink. All these accords bloom slowly as the fir and chocolate recede. It’s the graveyard of stumps where your Christmas tree was harvested from dark and cold woods. Unlike La Curie’s other scents, this one kept evolving and projects well enough that I was frequently aware of Geist while wearing it. It is beyond the skin yet still so subtle and airy. Weird. Bizarre atmosphere.