Essence of IX

103 I had a sample of this and it was a lovely lightly sweet tart black currant rose. Since I could afford it, I purchased a bottle and it is terrible! Astringent, unpleasant, acrid powder, with a vague rose. It’s medicinal and nothing like my sample. This scent was so disappointing. 2/10-Would not repurchase. Shame I had to use it up to spray bedsheets.

Again w/ the herbal bug spray. Boy I hate this line. Glad I only bought a sample kit but still $90 wasted! All of them are trash! Weak, boring. If you want an all natural line w/ longevity, a wide range of scents try Gather Perfumes or Providence Perfume Co. This house is a huge let down!

A disclaimer: I tested this line in the store both on testing strips as well as on skin, but because I don’t have samples to study in more detail, this is more of a snapshot than a fully fledged analytical review. I usually spend quite a bit more time with scents before I cobble together my thoughts, so do with it what you will. Top shelf components at work in this one, and it’s composed very nicely with each item playing well with the others. There's a slight musky bitterness to this coming from the rose and black currant—both of which I’m assuming are more stem / leaf distillations as the scent feels neither overly floral nor fruity. However, there’s an animalic and slightly dirty facet that comes from the honey. It’s not sweet, but has a more hay-like profile to it, adding interest to the other notes. The lavender and sage were present, although quite dialed back, but I couldn’t detect the oak (which I’m assuming is oakwood absolute—a semi fruity, mulled kind of material). These notes all worked together to form an idiosyncratic scent that I’d describe loosely as mulled, dry, musky, and green. I sprayed a liberal amount of this on, chatted with the SAs, and went to do some more shopping. It almost entirely vanished within an hour. So, on my way back, I stopped in again to retry some of the others, and sprayed even more on, making sure to get it on my clothes as well. This time, the honey stuck around after everything else had vacated, but it still didn’t perform well at all. A short lifespan is to be expected with all-natural scents, and I'm personally not a stickler for longevity/projection/sillage. Yet it struck me that although there are ways that a scent such as this can be fixed and given stronger foundation, without some artificial structure, it’s simply not going to hold up. And that’s where the real problem lies. I rarely talk about price points in my reviews as I find it to be a totally subjective matter—what’s expensive for some is dirt cheap to others. I know that the production of this is would be costly (the honey alone would be outlandishly expensive), and the naturals are extremely high calibre, but there’s simply not *that* much to the composition. In order to keep enjoying this scent throughout the day, you'd need to reapply fairly consistently or really drench your clothes in it, making the 100ml bottle the viable option. But at $855 for a 100ml bottle, this is hardly an economical approach—even if it does align, price-wise, to other high end all-natural perfumes on the market. Consequently, it’s really difficult to justify the asking price for this one. It’s nicely composed and unique (although I wouldn’t say it’s all that strange), but its a bit too invisible overall.