What Comes From Within: Love

The clove and carnation in combination create a very abrasive top note on my skin. After about 30 minutes, those notes disappear and the fragrance softens into a warm, sweet, ambery embrace. Only then do I begin to feel the "love".

Thank you Sarah Horowitz, for the lovely samples. What Comes From Within: Love is the seemingly infinite trail of red rose petals left on the sidewalk during a funeral procession. In addition to the powdery rose, there is the faint scent of smoke and wax from extinguished candles, and cloves, amber and sandalwood create a smoky spicy warmth like the trail of incense left by the procession or the rich spiced warmth of the church interior where the procession congregated before creating their long petal path. The cloves and amber seem to fuse together with the spicy vanilla, becoming one entity as the musk becomes more prominent in the dry down. Eventually one is left with a light vanillic golden-amber musk, which is subtly spicy and quite pleasant This is NOT a somber perfume but rather, an intimate, colorful one, which does succeed in evoking a feeling of ritual. This wears lightly on the skin, but feels deep in its composition, comforting and sincere. Similar to the way in which essential oils have holistic properties, What Comes From Within: Love conjures feelings of ceremony derived from self-reflection and empathy.

Sarah Horowitz What Comes From Within: LOVE is a beautiful amber composition spiked with carnation and clove, but not too much of either, so it still smells more like amber than either flowers or spices. I first tried this house's PALETTE AMBER, which is a part of a series of minimalist "soliflores"-- or "solinotes" I should say--intended to be mixed with one another and added to perfumes to achieve different effects. So upon donning LOVE, I realized that it contains PALETTE AMBER: a smooth, luscious labdanum amber base sure to please amateurs of SL AMBRE SULTAN and Histoires de Parfums AMBRE 114. Keyword: labdanum. I am happy that the clove and carnation received a light treatment, as those notes can easily overwhelm. This is nothing like Caron BELLODGIA, for example, which to my nose is something of a carnation-clove bomb. In this case, the carnation and the clove serve to embellish the amber, making LOVE more appealing to me than minimalist amber perfumes such as those of L'Artisan Parfumeur. I definitely recommend this one for testing by amber connoisseurs.

I'm a little disappointed that this didn't work for me. For every note that is listed I can only say 'yes please', but this is not wearing as advertised. I agree with posters below who call this out as a gourmand. And there is certainly a hard edged spice here that can't be clove, as clove tends to tap across my skin. This just sinks. The vanilla is spice drawer, not my preferred Bourbon or Tahitian. I wish this had a stronger woody presence. Musc, when done well, soars on my chemistry. Yet here it gets caught up in a tar pit and fades into eternity as a gooey mess. At the 3 hour mark and I'm ready to call it a day and move on. Something just didn't go right here, and what a shame.

Apparently, love is delicious. This is very much a gourmand scent on my skin. I can't help but think of spice cupcakes. It has a heaping note of clove, but the vanilla and overall sweetness read cake to me. This has good lasting power, but lacks the complexity of a true perfume. It would be great as a body lotion.