Snowy Owl

Fresh cool dewy grass and a hint of expensive department store smell (at first). This scent is already a lot more wearable than many Zoologist perfumes, in fact I'd like to smell like this. The opening is a pretty grassy scent, and the sample says it has 'Snow Accord' in it, which I see Fragrantica says is 'Calone.' I don't think I particularly smell "snow" here, but I do imagine crisp winter air on a sunny day with the snow beginning to melt and shining. There is something there that also reminds me of the smell when you walk into a department store and there is this sort of fresh new leather-y smell around. I know there isn't any leather in here, but it's the closest I can think of how to describe this scent relating to a department store. I also feel like the mint and coconut are not in your face and just subtly give a hint of coolness and sweetness to this. I can smell it within 4" of my skin, but it's lighter. 10 minutes later and it's become a bit more 'earthy' green scented. It makes me think of winter turning into spring, with again some snow melting and some greenery starting to make its appearance finally. This may be the snowdrop. 20 minutes later and I feel like this smells more nature-y and I imagine the ground of woods mostly. Like others have mentioned, having the autumn leaves from the previous year now exposed out of the cool wet ground among some melting snow. 30 minutes later and it's a skin scent, but stronger and I feel like I can imagine a "dirty" smell of the wings or feathers of the owl. It still absolutely has a freshness to it, but there's also this natural "dirtiness" to the scent as well now, which may be the oakmoss and the musk. There's still a coolness and sweetness to it as well. By dirty, I don't mean like a dirty patchouli, it's more like just what you would smell in the air in nature, not unwashed human dirty. I do feel this leans slightly more feminine, especially with the touch of sweetness and coolness, but I'm sure this could smell elegant on a man as well, especially the "musky dirty" dry down. I'll see how long this lasts, but I'm really enjoying this one. 2 hours later and it's a cool sweet musky vanilla scent with some woodiness and a lightness to it. 5 hours later and it's a faint skin scent I can only really smell with my nose to my arm, but it still smells the same. 8 hours later and it's gone

I was seeking a unique wintertime scent. Something that could get me into the spirit of the current frozen season as I sprayed it on, whilst wrapped in an oversized white mohair sweater and watching the snow fall...indoors...on a TV screen...ideally from Florida. Snowy Owl seemed to fit the bill. Much like with Zoologist’s Seahorse (a favorite of mine), my nose isn’t refined enough to pick out all of the individual scents mingling here. Among others, this fragrance includes notes of coconut, mint, and lily of the valley. I mean, I think I can maybe detect those. But then it also contains scents of...*checks notes*...snow accord? *Glances up from notes with confusion* What the hell does snow even smell like? Apparently it must smell delicious because, also like Seahorse, this scent is magical and transportive upon immediate spray. Like a white Christmas, Snowy Owl is a mystifying wonder. Now, I don't know exactly what fresh fallen snow in a quiet forest smells like, because I avoid going outside in cold weather at all costs. But I do imagine it smells like this fragrance – icy, wintry, aloof, and yet somehow soothing. To my mind, it reminds me of classic black and white movies like A Christmas in Connecticut, or the wintry album cover from Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm. This scent has largely been endorsed as a winter fragrance, as one might naturally conclude from a fragrance that’s meant to evoke the thawing snow in a damp forest. Best worn in daytime underneath a cold sun, indeed. However, I think this scent might also be just as ideally suited to summer, because upon spray it offers such a refreshing blast that I could see it perfectly cutting through the humidity of summer to land on your wrist like a melting ice cube. At the same time, it’s so utterly unique and indescribable that it can’t possibly be for everyone, and so I highly recommend sampling before purchasing. In five words or less: A Christmas in Connecticut, revisited.

Have you ever gone skiing? Have you ever been on the top of a snow-covered mountain? This is that. Ice-cold, damp snow all around you. You can feel the coolness on the inside of your nostrils, the tiny twinge of soil packed underneath all that snow. There's a wetness here--it doesn't SMELL like celery, but you know how when you take a bite of something crunchy, with a high-water-content? This fragrance has that abstract "crunch." It's more stemmy, though--not in the sappy, sweet, milky, sticky tree resin way--in a wet, fresh, split stem. Maybe like you pulled up a stalk of celery, with dirt still on the root, at the top of a snowy mountain. I bought a full bottle because I wanted a cooling, refreshing scent for summer: my collection is lacking that. With my skin chemistry, though, Snowy Owl develops a strange underlying sweetness. The wet, crunchy, icy elements somehow become humid, like ice-caps melting. My sweat ruins this fragrance, turning it quite overwhelming, at least in the summertime. What a shame. Luckily, when I spray it on my clothing, no such issue occurs--I got several compliments when I wore a half-spray to work. Love this fragrance, through and through. I hope my body enjoys it better in the cool winter.

The woods are quiet at night. Every step you take is laden with awe. Snow imprints the memory of your foothold in the slow wake of your walk. Pine needles shiver with snow and ice and gently you sweep some off with your warm, mitted hands, alleviating the weight of winter from their ancient arms. Stillness strikes you with a nostalgia for life beyond your grasp. Your senses are alive and awake to every small crack and call, none will go unanswered under your steady watch. Your mind alights with the passing of a silent wing. No call will be carried by this silent hunter. Pure luck has allowed you to witness her secret passing. She lands on the nearest tree and you try to sink into the snow unseen. But cold, wise eyes stare into your soul, purifying it. A Snowy Owl, serene and impenetrable, the guardian of the forest passes her gaze over you on to the next subject of her nightly reign. Obsessed with this, nothing else out there like it. When I heard "walk in the forest in winter" I was a bit skeptical thinking this could be just a heady pine fragrance but it's not at all. Artistry truly, it takes you into this winter scene.

I got this sample from Lucky Scent about a year ago. At the same time I got Bee and Hummingbird. Bee swooned me with its intense and pure honey note, and I thought Hummingbird was very pretty. They kind of eclipsed the far more subtle Snowy Owl in my mind, and it didn’t make that much of an impression. I registered it as a fresh perfume, with notes of calone and musk, and something green, and put it aside. Taking it out today and putting it on after it matured for a year was a revelation. It’s one of the purest, strongest Iris scents I remember smelling in a long time. A true silver Iris. It’s cold and beautiful. My husband commented on it right away and that’s rare since he’s used to the various perfumes I constantly cycle through and it takes something remarkable at this point for him to comment on it without being solicited for his opinion. I’m so impressed I’ve ordered samples off this creator’s website, DSH Dawn Spencer Hurwitz. Sometimes the best things take time.

This is winter in a bottle! The mint notes offer an interesting punchiness to the sillage that almost "burns" the nostrils like cold winter air after a fresh snowfall. The coconut and vanilla notes offer it a mild sweetness, not necessarily to my liking, I would have preffered stronger frankincense and cedar notes but overall it is a very well balanced perfume that evokes pleasant memories of winters gone by. The flower notes like lily of the valley, white rose and iris give this perfume almost a sexiness, like that unapproachable person sitting at the bar, who you can't quite put your finger on why you're attracted to them. Even though I have some gripes with the overall perfume, I would still review it as "LOVE IT" because it's such a great perfume for the colder seasons - and I really like that initial "burning" sensation, it immediately takes me to the ski slopes of the Alps.

So incredibly unique. This sort of fragrance is why I keep buying new things, to find more of whatever genre this is. I'm not looking for fragrances described as rich, deep, warm, or spicy. This is the opposite of all of those. I like refreshing, but not as in green sharp soapy clean refreshing, I do like those but I mean refreshing as in effervescent, water, angelic, heavenly, spotless, bubbles, airy, non-existent, powder, white noise, SNOW. It's so hard to find fragrances like this. This is refrigerator air. A bit sweet and so very clean, it's crisp and white. Not sharp at all, it's deep night air in the tundra, the coconut is not tropical at all. This is frozen oak moss with ice cold cucumber-infused coconut water poured over and a sprinkle of crushed spearmint leaves. Slightly floral, powdery. Ozonic. Musky. Rocks and rain and concrete, strange mysterious and beautiful.

Zoologist is always surprising me, and some of the scents I'm least drawn to end up being my favorite, Snowy Owl being one of them. I'm not picking up any of the dirt or mildew some people seem to be smelling. To me this is a very clean, cool musk. The coconut, mint, vanilla and floral notes are present, but not predominant. They are all blended together nicely to create a soft floral musk that would be the perfect cozy scent on a cold day. I recently got a sample of 11:11 Vanilla by Lake and Skye, and Snowy Owl smells similar to me, not identical but in the same family. For my body care girlies, I think this would layer beautifully with the EOS Peppermint Cashmere holiday lotion. Also, I asked my husbands opinion on this. He has very limited knowledge and vocabulary when it comes to fragrance and he said "It's nice, smells like flowers, I like it."

To me the scent opes with a strong earthy albeit semi-sweet note, not entirely unlike the scent of polypodium vulgare roots. I guess this is the earthy iris that comes through. This scent is quite evocative, for me, and reminiscent of spring-winter. If you’ve ever been out in the boreal forest when the snow is starting to retreat, and the decomposing leaves of last autumn is starting to appear and giving of their scent, you know exactly what I’m getting at. Decomposing, earthy, yet fresh and cold. This is also, at least in this part of the world, the time of the snow drops. I’ll willingly admit, that even though I’ve grown up surrounded by these flowers each and every spring, I’ve never paid any attention to their scent. So all in all, this scent is, to me, very reminiscent of the boreal forest in spring-winter.

The opening of this fragrance smells like if you're burrowed up in your nest eating a coconut. But once it dries down, it turns into night and you fly out on the twilight of a cold winter. While on that trip you catch a fish, trying to escape it sprays you with water. And once you get back to your nest you realize spring is soon to come, and not much later you eat your catch and fall asleep. What a beautiful fragrance, I don't know if I like it or love it, but I know it smells extremely similar to myself in a way. The smell is so complicated for me to properly decipher how much I actually enjoy this fragrance but I will still wear it because it is something that strongly represents me, if only the sillage was better. 9.5/10 overall 8/10 basic "mass-appealing" smell

this literally smells cold! this opens with a refreshing blend of coconut and sweet mint with an ice cold calone note and airy lily of the valley. this is a snowy owl flying above snow capped mountains, flowers frozen over and crisp air breezing past. Then comes more florals, these are earthy, grounded and fresh. The snowdrop floral note here is interesting, as I believe it’s a fantasy note, but this really does feel like fresh flowers in the cold wintertime. The dry down is sweet, slightly animalic but in an earthy, woody, and aromatic sense. The snowy owl has perched upon a branch in the side of a mountain now. Sweet musky air passes by, mossy patches along the mountain damp from the snow, the snow smooth and soft.

As with all Zoologist perfumes, it’s interesting, unique, and up for interpretation. This fragrance is undeniably much more green than it is cold/icy or “white”. More specifically, it’s a lactonic (milky) green/grass. Branding and “snowy owl” title aside, my consensus is that there are several notes not listed on this one, most prominently cut-grass, but also suede deep in the background, and maybe even a fruit/melon. The coconut note is somewhat of a chameleon; some sense it immediately, and others barely at all. I’m certain if the coconut note wasn’t advertised/listed here, people would think grass before coconut. Zoologist could have easily marketed this as “Forest Owl” with the same formula. 🌲 🦉

I just experienced Snowy Owl for the first time. It was also my first time smelling a Zoologist fragrance in general. As a newbie, I gotta ask: What. Was. That? No, really! What was that??? There's only one thing I can say for sure: it's a unique scent. I found this perfume by searching for the notes I wanted: lily-of-the-valley, iris, rose, olibanum, and vanilla. I read all these reviews saying "reminds me of winter" or "walking through a forest." From the second I opened my sample, my brain scrambled into a Jackson Pollock painting 🤣 Seriously, that's the only visual I got. However, it's so unique that I can't stop smelling my wrist. I really do love whatever this is.

I think this is my favorite scent from Zoologist, maybe my favorite perfume of all time. It has this powdery freshness that really lifts your spirits and brings you to a snowy mountain in the north, with the wood notes tying it together perfectly. I definitely think it suits the essence of the snowy owl. If this was as long lasting and had as much sillage as some of their scents, this would be a 10/10, but this is a much more delicate scent, and it becomes quite subtle if you're less generous with sprays. Subtle not necessarily being a bad thing, of course. Unlike many Zoologist perfumes, I will definitely call this a safe blind buy. Probably more feminine.

As with all Zoologist perfumes, it’s interesting, unique, and up for interpretation. Branding and “snowy owl” title aside, my consensus is that there are several notes not listed on this one, especially aldehyde and grass. This fragrance is undeniably much more green than it is cold/icy or “white”. More specifically, it’s a lactonic (milky) green/grass. The coconut note is somewhat of a chameleon; some sense it immediately, and others barely at all. I’m almost certain if the coconut note wasn’t advertised/listed, people would think of grass before coconut. Lastly, Zoologist could have easily marketed this as “Forest Owl” with the same formula. 🦉

'Snowy Owl' is extremely realistic. It smells like nature. When I wear this, it's as if I'm not even wearing a perfume at all, but rather I'm walking through an icy cold forest or park, after the sun has melted some of the ice. I get the impression of frozen flower petals and wet grass: green, gentle, and cold from the minty snow accord. I can detect a very minimal sweetness from the coconut. If you enjoy 'Beaver' (2016), then you'll probably like 'Snowy Owl.' They smell nothing alike, but they could almost be in the same family. The watery green, woody notes smell so natural in here. On the softer side, but while it lasts, this is magical.

So I’ve worn this 2 times now, the way it responds when your skin are 2 different temperatures is interesting. The first time was a very cold day. When I wore it, it was super cold minty green coconut laying in an icy wet Forrest bed with some sweetness. This time round I am in a heated environment, no cold shock upon first spray, it is a sweet green coconut vanilla fragrances with hints of earthiness and brightness. Do I think the heat makes this more wearable? Yes absolutely. But the colder months is where this fragrance gets its identity and thrives. I love wearing it both ways, this pretty much solidifies a full bottle purchase for me.

As a citizen of a cold climate area, where 50% of the year feels like winter, I can say this truly does smell like the air outside on a winter day. With it's aquatic touches this does not evoke a world entirely frozen, but rather a mostly frozen landscape with a resilient river running through it. There is no decay - everything that could not survive the winter cold is long dead, and all that remains are the ethereal creatures and plant life that are built to withstand exactly this. A truly transportative masterpiece, and one of the biggest delights of my Zoologist sampling journey. I hope full bottles are restocked soon.

Again, I might be cursed with loving very polarising perfumes.... But alas, I fell in love with this one from first sniff! It opens up very grassy and petrichor, which lasts around 1.5-2h. Then it gradually evolvrs to a soft minty coconut smell, which sits closer to skin. On my skin, it stays this way, with very faint soil notes. Absolutely beautiful. Really feels like you're wandering around in a winter wonderland without chasing any sense of time. This is definitely not mass-appealing, but for those in search for uniqueness and artistic value, this is worth losing sleep over.

Amazing. Similar to another classic in the fresh genre, you or someone like you from ELDO. A photorealistic mint backed up by fresh cut grass and florals. I am not a coconut type of person, like at all. This is genuinely the first time I have ever enjoyed a coconut note. It's blended so wonderfully well with the caloney mint that my vendetta against the note has been destroyed. Cold, green and fresh with some complexity to it, a perfect scent representation of a field of grass covered in a light powdery snow. Straight Canadian pride here with zoologist!