Purple Afternoon

i loooove this. a scent for introspecting, maybe even brooding, on a busy, sunny day. you have errands to do, you're hoofing it through the city with an americano that's slightly too hot for your gloveless hands. you're a little hungover, the sun is a little too bright. the cashmere scarf hanging loosely around your neck smells like the american spirits you borrowed last night. there's a cool, autumnal breeze in the air. i'm learning i REALLY like iris perfumes and this is no exception. the iris really comes through! seems really well-blended, all the notes compliment each other pretty seamlessly. feels perfectly unisex to me. it has a vintage vibe to it. it's sophisticated, but not stuffy. wears very well with a leather jacket. definitely perfect for fall thru winter, but i can see myself liking this mixed with the sweat and humidity of summer too, especially on a night out. also, my roommate just surprised me by saying he's been getting whiffs from across the room -- i'm not wearing that much so i think the sillage can be deceptively strong (which i like tbh).

as soon as i purchased this fragrance i doused myself in it. sweet and spicy like a roasted carrot spiced with powdered cardamom. later that day i went to see my mother who said she had news to share with me. her partner of 10 years had been having an affair with a woman who lives in a house filled with cuckoo clocks. this fragrance is very long lasting. Purple Afternoon accompanied us as a beautiful aromatic soundtrack deep into the night as we smashed his guitar, threw his bodybuilding weights on the lawn and mopped up our wine spills and vomit with his clothes. to this day when i put it on i am teleported to a night of shrieking banshee possession. i now wear this scent when i need to summon my inner wicked witch. a must have!

anyone else get leather from this? i get condensed milk, leather, and just a tad of coffee and warmth—whatever that is—without being spicy. it’s a dry fragrance, in my opinion—how can it be? because it also somehow manages to give me sticky vibes. i originally disliked it when i got a sample years ago, but now i’m kind of digging it. there is something in it that reminds me of band-aids—like the scent of a band-aid (i also get the same thing from santal kardamon)—that sometimes gets on my nerves. i like this brand; their creations are quite wearable and not try-too-hard. p.s. ok, my bad, i just realized that this too has cardamom 😂

this is what the kids call “dark academia”. dusty sexy, powdery rich. the coffee is so chocolately, like a box of dutch process cocoa powder, i’m surprised i don’t see chocolate on the notes. theres as much orris here as coffee - it’s old wool garments and mothballs and wooden drawers. there’s a lot of that imagery in these reviews: cozy! library! but it’s a sexy, cozy, library. it’s lace under the wool sweater, cigarettes, whiskey in the coffee. really signature. debating buying a bottle because i WANT to have it, but i can’t imagine wearing it often. so distinctive.

The orris and spice smooth all the edges, softening any bitterness and leaving only the ghost of coffee and tobacco behind. Like an imprint. Like noticing the smell of your own home after a long vacation. Or for me, like stepping into my uncle’s house in Seattle in the nineties, when he had just bought his first espresso machine after doing design work for Starbucks, and the pipe he smoked while tying flies. He always saved me the best feathers. Really great longevity. I catch little whiffs all day.

This has become one of my favourite scents of all time, it starts out with a strong blast of coffee beans that reminds me of spilling coffee all over myself at my cafe job, but within a few seconds reveals this beautiful powdery violet smell that’s slightly sweet and feels very elegant. I like that i can distinctly pick out these layers but the overall thing gives off an entirely different, weirdo gothic freak-folk sensibility. Wearing this to an art festival in the rain today :-)

I love this combo of Orris and dry coffee with a hint of spices. This is not too spicy for me and I am sensitive to that. The woods reinforce the powdery aspect and amp the dryness of the coffee. This is not a creamy coffee note, but the blend presents creamy. It almost has a root beer float vibe to it, but upscale 90’s.

It is described with a characteristic of "whipped"- it is certainly that. It is a warm hug, it is a blanket, it is comfort. Coffee wafting, buttery orris, and smoke in a cashmere sweater. Like other UF scents it is not what you might expect based on the breakdown- it is better.

i love the idea of this one, and i still like it enough to pick up the rollerball. i wanted something a bit more gourmand-y, but it’s more powdery than lactonic. reminds me of having a 7 am cigarette outside my favorite brooklyn bakery (otway bakery, get the cardamom bun)

This is good on it's own, but I love layering this with either YSL Babycat or The Harmonist Hypnotizing Fire.

A coffeshop-jazzhouse kind of vibe. Or a Borders bookstore (RIP) café, set in a bustling mall. Coffee takes the lead, followed by kid leather and dry tobacco. A lipsticky orris smooths out the edges. This afternoon is lively, yet cosy. Heavy, yet wearable. I’m imagining a brown leather trench, snugly cinched and topped with a fluffy purple scarf. This fragrance is definitely in the same universe as Rhapsody in Mauve, maybe even the same city. I feel like I’d get more mileage of it if I lived somewhere that actually got cold weather. In the meantime, it pairs really well with The Devil Wears Prada and a White Russian. Mental Snaphot: A 90s holiday romcom. City lights flicker though a snow flurry. Fade in: a bustling department store, in the “seasonal treats” section. A winsome gal in a chunky-knit jumper (protag) shops tins of candied nuts and spiced cakes. A smooth-talking salaryman (love interest #1) sidles by, nursing a coffee. Outside, a velvet-frocked doorman (love interest #2) nurses a cigarette. He winks. Title card: Purple Aftenoon tl;dr: java n’ jazz ☕️🎷

Despite other reviews, I don’t find this to be very sweet at all. It’s almost bitter. I mean I know there’s coffee, so that would make sense, but it’s like...the opposite of sweet, and I’m not sure what that’s called. It smells like my parents’ house lol. That’s not a good thing, but maybe somewhat comfortable for me in a way. I don’t hate it. It’s smoky. Stale smoke. Not cigarette smoke. Pipe smoke, like the smell ingrained in the walls of their house. But there’s also coffee, like there always is at their house. I’m getting a sort of dusty smell too, and their house is definitely that. I would wear this if I was going to the library to study.

definitely a more fall/late summer scent to me, or at least cloudy weather. It's more floral on me than the notes here suggest, which helps round the edges and lend more depth. While there is spice, I don't know if I'd call it a warm scent- the coffee here is definitely cold dregs. If you're scared of smelling 'old' this one probably isn't for you, but if you like estate sales, vintage dresses, fresh flowers on a desk, dressing vampy, or boys who smoke cigarettes give this a try. if you hid in the library as a kid i think you can blind buy

the opening is a deep, sculptural, unicorn-spit purple. the world's most bitter dark chocolate brownie which turns out to have no chocolate at all but definitely something of complex, sinking, swirling overwhelm like obsidian. the drydown is musty, almost chalky, a vampire's coffin in the farthest back corner of cobwebland.

It’s Fall. You’re reading at the kitchen table, eating carrot cake and drinking coffee. Your husband is smoking outside. The sun has almost set. You get the feeling there’s something in the attic, only it might be an idea you picked up chapters ago in the book. A little fire, a grey squirrel, it’ll leave.

purple afternoon is how I like my coffee, sweet and accompanied with a cigarette from time to time. I like that it doesn’t remind me of a milky latte, rather each individual organic “ingredient” shines through.

I just wanted to say that the person below me is 100% correct. I just sprayed this on me and I was thinking the exact same thing this person described. So I will leave it at THAT!

this reminds me so much of a health food store with all the fancy coffee beans, nuts, dried fruits, and dusty bins of rolled oats, maybe an essential oil diffuser running at the cash register. sweet like how black coffee can be sweet. it’s a lot better before it dries down and gets super dusty. not something I’d pick out myself but fun to have been sent a sample!

Feels like everyone is sleeping on the orris note here! This is a delicious lipstick orris. It there is an oopening of tobacco and oud, but it quickly slips into a warm orris heart and greeny carrot dry down. A lovely special scent. Can be daytime or nighttime. Limited longevity. Constantly wanting to reapply!

I get the waiting area of a mechanic or a garage...a car rental counter. Not the hands-on tires and grease, but rather the slightly sanitized but still leather-rubber liminal bureaucratic space.