Sister Hildegard

I kind of crashed out when I sampled this because I've been looking for this specific scent. I had no idea I would even be able to find it, and I did not expect that it was going to be Sister Hildegard. Throughout my childhood, my aunt had a log cabin in the woods. She furnished it with antiques, art, tapestries, all sorts of cool old things. She didn't have any kids of her own, and she traveled a lot so the cabin wasn't very lived-in, but it was still an enchanting, cozy (slightly dusty) place, and it fascinated little me. I don't think this perfume smells like "old lady" as people are saying, but it definitely smells like an old lady's cool stuff. Can't wait to get a full bottle.

Reminiscent of an empty church with one woman lighting a candle in silence. You slide into a polished wooden pew and kneel on the pull down kneeler and stare off into the distance to a biblical stained glass, a fabric draped podium stares back at you from a platform. A single chained censer still hot from service. Robes kept in cedar chests protected with moth balls. Your midnight snack at night in the convent, milk and warmed peeled orange. What goes on behind closed doors after the service, when the church was still known for its advancements in scientific research as well. Glass vials and specimen jars hidden beneath nuns robes in velvet clad halls. Smoke during prayer.

Shockingly realistic, heavily dusty opening. It’s incredibly difficult for me to describe how this smells. It’s like a deeply religious aunt’s house in the past, or an abandoned catholic school room that smells of mildew and old, never smoked incense. The opening is really nostalgic and evokes weird feelings for me, but the drydown is a gentler, milky frankincense with notes of camphor. I do get the old grandmother feel people have mentioned I must say this is so unique and truly one of a kind. For anyone interested in nostalgic, weird fragrances I heavily recommend sampling or trying it - it’s incredible

My friend gifted me this for my birthday. Came at the perfect time because I wore it all thruout lent season. Going to do that next year as well ✨️ Smelling like church while at church made me feel very ✨️angelic✨️ The scent itself is woody & citrusy. A couple hours later I get the incense which makes me want to go lie with my husband & be worshipped by him 🪽

This immediately brought me back to Palm Sunday services in my childhood church. The milk, dust and subtle wood notes really do evoke the feel of a soft, worn down pew. It's an unconventional scent, but still very comforting and wearable. Would love to see this added to the brand's permanent lineup.

The words can only describe this as an abandoned hospital catholic. I absolutely love it.

This is a church pew scent if I’ve ever met one. Fresh wood varnish and antique oak form the heart while the softer milk and incense meld to create a diffused, vanillic glow. The blood orange is the main character; orchard air one breath, wood oil the next. I don’t hate the cleaning product slant to it. There’s a handsome “historic property” feel to Hildegard, of dust and dankness but also comfort and care. Subtract the incense and I’d call it a natural history museum scent. Sadly, most of the Pearfats in the discovery bundle did not jive with my skin and took on a mildewy lean, but Hildegard stays faithful on both flesh and fabric. Burned through my tester in under a week. Longevity and sillage are on the gentle (~3h) end of the spectrum. Easily my favourite of the house, but by no means a blind buy. You have to want to smell like old church. Mental Snapshot: You’re the first guest of the day in a small-town chapel. The floors are polished to glass, but the cases of bygone curios and relics remain sugared with dust – either too fragile or too holy to be given a brush. You slide into a confession booth and peel yourself a plump orange, stolen straight from the priest's gardens. tl;dr: confessional citrus ⛪️🍊

This opens with blood orange, dust and lemony/piney elemi. I guess "glass" would be the sense of starkness it creates using these other notes. Even though camphor is a base note, I sense it creeping in from the beginning. Sadly, it begins to weaken here. Then, the camphor becomes more defined and cool to my nose. Underneath is frankincense and a touch of milk to balance the camphor. It begins to have a pool like smell. I cant imagine a day I'd want to smell like this. There is an herbal note (nard?) and floral cyclamen that keep it fresh and balance the camphor. It begins to smell a little less like a pool. I feel like the frankincense persists and becomes the focus as it dries down. I see that other people get church from this and I just don't. Yes, there is frankincense, but much more fresh frankincense than burning incense. It feels very strident and outdoorsy to me with camphoric woods in the drydown. An interesting experience, but that's probably it. I probably would not use this as a perfume so much as a home "incense" experience. With that said, I would eagerly try more from this house!

If you wear this in direct sunlight on a 90-degree day you can successfully give yourself a sensory flashback to southern Vacation Bible School. Church pew wood varnish from the elemi is inescapable. If you’re looking for a liturgical incense fragrance, you’ll probably be disappointed, but if you’re into “eerie chapel” smell more generally, go nuts with this one, sickos. I’m obsessed with Pearfat’s complex imaginative scents and can’t pass up opportunities to smell them! But like with Knee High and Multiball, I’m not sure if this is one I wanna carry around on my skin? Even with its relatively short longevity (something I’ve noticed about Pearfat’s other fragrances too).

my friend let me to try it on because she said it smelled like those dinosaur exhibits youd go to as a kid. i dont really smell the dinosaur exhibit. first time i smelt it, it reminded me of one of the zoology fragrances that i've smelled but toned down a couple of notches (the bat one??? i think). then later, it started to smell like someones grandma. like when you hug your grandmother and you get a whiff of her perfume. i like it but i wouldnt wear it

old lady rain smell i feel like a 1980s religion/paranormal horror movie. and like walking through an old church after it rained. it's damp, dusty but also a medical smell (might be the glass note) personally i like this pearfat has some unique fragrances

Extremely realistic and slightly off putting . i like this because it’s a good concept and everytime i smell it i like it more, but it is not wearable in my opinion. basically the smell of old people in an old church building

On initial spray, this is very dusty to the point that my throat constricts and I feel like gagging. It smells like unwashed carpet flooring and velour carseats from the 2000s. There is a chlorinated quality to it. There is also a strong warmth that reminds me of a just-snuffed candle, stale air from an ancient furnace or an overheating, overstuffed vacuum cleaner. The citrus, herbs and wood pull through a few minutes in, at which point it becomes more religious than appliance-y. The dust is still quite strong. After a while, the milk does come through on my skin, but it’s very peppery and subtle. Overall, this fragrance is borderline intolerable, very evocative and will likely bring up personal memories for you, even if you weren’t raised Catholic. It transports me to my childhood, riding home from the masjid in my dad’s sunwarmed Corolla on wintry Friday afternoons. It also smells exactly like this particular masjid’s basement. It was covered in plush dark green carpet, housed dark wooden shelves full of beautiful Qurans and velvet prayer rugs, and perpetually smelled like oud incense and dust. I’m so torn on this scent. I love it for the memories it conjures, and I can potentially imagine wearing it in colder months if my stomach hardens to it, but it is challenging.

Me: This one shares a lot of DNA with 2030 park avenue. Similarly to 2030, I go back and forth between being disgusted and intrigued. I do understand the comparisons to dusty church pews. I would consider this wearable in very limited occasions. It's medicinal, almost like some sort of balm you'd put on leather boots or cracked hands. When I think of it this way and am able to compare it to more familiar scents I'm less grossed out. Still, I don't think I'd want to smell like this. But I'm almost scared that it's growing on me. Him: This smells exacty like on of two things to me... The outdoor section of Home Deopt or an aqarium. It's alright. And unique.

Now, as a conceptual piece this is amazing. It truly smells like an unsettling and stern old woman. Not in the way a perfume an old woman would wear smells, but literally I get a vivid scent of the skin of an old nun. As a wearable piece? I find this too unsettling to be an everyday wear. On my skin there is practically no orange. It’s completely turpentine and camphor, with dusty mildew and old halls. Honestly though, if you’re about to fire up resident evil requiem and want to be even more immersed I would consider this as a somewhat more pleasant while still deeply unsettling alternative to some other “creepy” perfume concepts out there.

If you're looking for an incense scent I would pass on this one. It's decent, I don't feel like the profile smells like what they're marketing it as. I do think if you like The Noir from Le Labo you will enjoy this one (their profiles are distinctly different but give a similar vibe)

waiting in a medical office when an old nurse drops a glass jar of band-aids circa 1986

I've tried most of the Pearfat catalog and they consistently over promise and under deliver. While sometimes interesting, they are rarely wearable and often scrubbers, but I'm a sucker for a unique idea and keep trying them. Once the smell of new flip flops dies down, this eventually delivers on most of the notes, especially the dust. As the blood orange surfaces it becomes more intriguing. But personally, the scent does not evoke the reference of St Hildegard of Bingen. I get antique store in the Mediterranean from it. If you're into the idea of church or religious themed perfume there are better entries out there.

i mean, it delivers on the dust and broken glass notes, but i didn't account for that actually being unpleasant despite being interesting lol. it smells like an abandoned building to me which is a cool olfactory experience, but does not Smell Good and is not something i'd ever wear. good performance as well but personally i'm not a fan :( overall rating: 🩷🩷🖤🖤🖤 2/5

Not a fan. All I get is dust and camphor. The only thing about a church this could possibly evoke is the forgotten janitor's closet in the church backrooms. No incense or anything which is what I was hoping for from the frankincense note. If anyone knows any perfumes that smell like a photorealistic Orthodox/Catholic incense please let me know

This is an extremely artistic scent that I really dont like but respect that it exists. The top notes of dust and broken glass are extremely photorealistic and honestly repulsive but intriguing. Then it goes into a kind of stuffy milk & florals like “elderly nun smells”.

Certainly Pearfat's strangest and most experimental release to date, this is much less a classic church incense fragrance a-la something like Avignon or La Liturgie des Heures, and moreso a green idiosyncratic ode to the quiet provincial life of abbess Hildegard of Bingen. I was expecting more of a focus on citrus, but the blood orange dissipates quickly after the opening thralls. What's left is a blend of watery cyclamen, milk, and skin halfway between the milky provocation of Antoine Lie's Secretions Magnifiques and the gentle ivy found in Diptyque's Eau de Lierre. I don't get much incense proper, but I'm so convinced by the glassy, camphoric, and vegetal structure of this fragrance that I don't really think it needs it. I think of a stray cat finding its way into a convent, and the sisters leaving out a bowl of milk for it to lap languidly at. Outside, ivy thistles climb along wet stone walls. Almost chlorine-like on skin, I get a quite organic base of musty sweat, elemi, and dust that lingers for hours. The last year or so has seen Kiral mature vastly as a perfumer, and in the wake of this and other creative releases, I'm excited to see where she goes next.

This is so perfect 🤣 I imagine Sister Hilde has just past in her convent, you open the old stuffy room and the smell of antique woods, linens, her little porceline dishes with unburnt raw incense resins and her reliques hit you. You need to clean it out so you fluff the linens and mop the old wooden floorboards with a natural sweet citrus floor cleaner and you can smell the cleaning concoction evaporating as the top notes evaporate. The room still smells of dust and must so you crack open the old window and a breeze of fresh air wafts in, making the sheer gauze curtains billow. You can smell the garden outside and the sky is turning because it is about to rain. The cyclamen and milk give this is a lactonic aquatic scent that is so strange and makes me feel like I am indeed needing to crack open a window. This is so fun, I think I need a baby pear 🤣

The first pearfat scent that has blown me away! Sister Hildegard immediately reminded me of an old history museum. The dust and wood are very prominent here, with a milky medicinal background. Feels so quiet...I can also see the church inspiration here, sitting in wooden pews with dust sparkling in the sunlight with swirls of incense. Wow

I'm from europe so it almost impossible to get my hands on this perfume. If anyone wants to sell it because they bought a bottle and are not a fan, please message me!

Ah yes, the scent of glass! I love smelling like a window!