Emerald Moss

Emerald Moss opens with an absence of roundness. Terpenes punch my olfactory receptors without anything else to massage them. The naturals here, which are assuredly authentic, clean, biodynamic, wildcrafted, so on and so forth ad nauseam, seem to be caught in flux, aeriform. The color of the weightless, fleeting lavender and overdosed ginger essential oil, feels more a drab green than emerald, devoid of life, overly-distilled, and yearning for something brighter and more substantial to carry them to their true potential. Again, this peculiar saliva meets dry vomit back note appears, as with a few others from this house I've sampled, and it feels disconcerting while it lasts. Perhaps it's the attempt to make mandarin orange at work in this context. The brand claims that this is "unlike any fragrance you’ve inhaled," and they aren't wrong. It's just that it's the kind of fragrance that I've never wanted to smell, purely because it seems ham-fisted in approach and inherently unpleasant in its clumsiness. Be that as it may, it is a light and non-invasive discomfort, fading rather swiftly to a distant vetiver and mossiness that hugs the skin. Strange Invisible, for all its promise of offering perfumes that "wear far more subtly than synthetic fragrances," "are greatly influenced by a wearer's body chemistry" (this seems more a cop out to explain why they may smell a certain, unfavorable way on an individual, and is false), and as natural fragrances, "have much more gender flexibility, automatically smell more feminine on women and more masculine on men" (more potent nonsense), they are quite deficient to my nose. They are amorphous, devoid of bone structure, and show a poor command of the very precious naturals boasted.

Fresh, clean, fairly simple, but also different from anything else I've worn scent wise. It's non offensive, partly because of how light of a fragrance it is. You'd have to dowse yourself in it to project anything. My sample vial went quickly, but I've enjoyed it. The notes listed are on point to what you get with this. The mate and ginger run the show, but the rose and mandarin pull the strings in the background and pull it together nicely. Doubt I would buy a full bottle since I'm not in love with it, but I'm glad I tried it.