Wisdom No 26

i worship Tokyo Milk, so let me just say that right up front. nearly everything that Margot Elena touches turns to gold. her scents are simple, pure and smell exactly like they organically would in nature. her ingredients are the finest and her ability to combine complimentary notes is beyond my comprehension but she does it impeccably every time. take Wisdom No. 26... notes are literally mossy woods, water lily, walnut and musk. upon application you can smell each note individually and upon its drydown, all notes remain... earthy moss and sweet walnut being the most prominent. its hard for me to explain how each frag Margot creates makes me feel but emotions, memories and a quietness all overcome me when i inhale the whisper of Wisdom on my wrists. does it make me feel wiser? perhaps. the price certainly does! $25 for a rollerball that makes one smell as if they've been resting in a forest cottage, warmed by the glow of a crackling fire surrounded by the quiet that only nature can provide seems too smart to pass up, so treat yourself and become all the wiser for it.

I bought a small roller-ball of this in a trio last year to split up and put in stockings. I was, obviously, unable to part with this one. At first, I thought I just "liked" it, but as another (and unseasonably severe) winter sets in over the Midwest, I find myself loving it. The sharp/bitter walnut (with a subtle water-y, ozonic undertow) is very overpowering at first (almost akin to a blast of citrus), but it settles down quite swiftly and woods and moss begin to play their part. It smells like a perfectly engineered winter forest to me, or the sort of terrarium an angel itself might create....uncomplicated & classy, and lightly sweet from the water lily note (like any good cereal!). I get little to no musk note to be honest. My only kvetch is that, initially-applied, it is a somewhat strong fragrance (with average/moderate sillage), but it seems to fade on me (and even my hair/clothing!?) pretty quickly (within 2-3 hours). Buy it again? I am not sure, but it is in my purse for sprucing up while "out and about" for now!

Oh I love this perfume!I smell the water lily first, clean and slightly sweet. I do think the moss, woody notes, musk and yes walnut (not the toasted walnut smell I expected, but the smell of a walnut just plucked from a tree, green and yet slightly nutty) are all there. Together they create this perfect fall smell that I couldn't quite place until I was walking up the sidewalk to my home this evening. There it was the same smell as my perfume, the smell of crushed, slightly sweet, dried leaves. Fall in a rollerball :-).

I have worn Wisdom for a few years now, and I love the way it smells. It's... I don't know, crisp, a little dirty, brisk, icy. I agree with others who've compared it to the smells of autumn and winter. Thawing streams, mossy trees, damp rocks, leaf-litter, and a humid breeze. The tragedy is the poor longevity. I bought the matching body cream to help it last a little longer.

Perhaps my rollerball of this has taken a turn over the eight years I've had it. In the earthiness, I get some slightly sweet soy sauce accord that reminds me of the nicer side of an early 2000s fake tan smell. That will sound gruesome to you. But consider this — I was a ginger tweenager in early 2000s England. The girls that smelled of fake tan had this care-free sex appeal that felt like my antithesis. They seemed like they never had anything to release while I was chronically pent up with emotions and thoughts. So to me, this scent is all post-catharsis. The lily in this tells me about plump petals and the walnut rolls in its muted, gentle nuttiness. There's no rush here. It's for idly crashing through the woods in the North of England looking for somewhere to lie down with your friends and warm your skin. Because my mossy note has lost all its green and turned sweet, the warm skin merges with the undergrowth as the chatter, the stream's babble and the sun rays stretch on and on. I remember getting this one. I bought this in 2012 from the flagship Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road in London.