Solstice Scents: Spring 2013 Review (Part 2)

By Unknown

Nothing to Disclose

Continuing our look at the Spring 2013 collection by Solstice Scents

So you're looking for something springy and fresh for the season? You might want to check out Part I of my Solstic Scents Spring 2013 Review to read about Blossom Tea Jam Cakes, Cascade of Gold, Chantilly Cream, and Chiffon. This review looks at the other half of the Spring 2013 catalog from Solstice Scents:

• Dellamorte
• Devil's Millhopper
• Garden Gate
• Spirit Tree

Dellamorte by Solstice Scents

Dellamorte

Full size: 0.35oz glass roll-on bottle for $12.00 USD
Sample vial: $2.50 USD

Oak, White Carnation, Oakmoss, Egyptian Musk & Vanilla
Dellamorte features dominant notes of oak and white carnation with supporting notes of sandalwood, oakmoss, Egyptian musk, vanilla, hyacinth and a small amount of violet absolute, vetiver and bergamot. On initial application, Dellamorte starts out with a bright burst of fresh green notes, dew kissed carnations, delicate creamy woods and a sweet element from the Egyptian musk and vanilla combination. It stays relatively strong for about 15 minutes then smooths out into a sweet, woodsy and velvety scent with the carnation still present, though more gentle, with a subtle green note and a tiny hint of spice.

Wow, that's a mouthful of a description. Sounds awesome, right? Sounds super woodsy and naturey and awesome. I love carnations! I also really like vanilla, so win-win, right?

Maybe this is awesome. But the only way I can see this being awesome for me is if I was 20-30 years older. As soon as I applied this to my wrists all I could think was "NO NO NO!" and restrain myself from dashing to the bathroom to scrub it off. It's lovely.... but it just smells so much older. Each whiff sent images flashing through my mind of past teachers and mentors, all lovely peri-menopausal women, all sporting this sort of spicy vanilla floral musk.

This is great if you're a peri-menopausal woman. Or even a menopausal or post-menopausal woman. Or maybe you, if your skin chemistry can pull this off. This isn't great if you are struggling to convince people you're older than 18. Don't get me wrong--it's NICE. It starts out very floral and green, like you just got a big bouquet of carnations and baby's breath. Then once the flower power scent eases up a sort of spicy vanilla creeps in, just not the same kind of vanilla as Old Cedar Magus.

But all I could think of was all the lovely, older women in my life. And while I love them all immensely, I do not want to smell like them. I was self conscious all day, imagining my coworkers passing knowing looks to each other about how I was trying too hard to smell old. Sigh.

Duration: ALL. DAY. LONG. No mercy. The flowery carnation scent wore down (but wasn't completely gone) by about an hour or two, but the spicy vanilla was here to stay. I was still smelling it after a workout and shower.

Score: 2/5
I didn't hate it, it's just not for me. I'll take a sniff if I'm ever lonely and in need of some kind of maternal spiritual assurance.

Devil's Millhopper by Solstice Scents

Devil's Millhopper

Full size: 0.35oz glass roll-on bottle for $12.00 USD
Sample vial: $2.50 USD

Heather, Oakmoss, Fern & Delicate Wood Notes
This scent contains notes of heather, oakmoss and an assortment of woods used to interpret the atmosphere of Devil's Millhopper.  On cold sniff it smells of fern, new spring leaves, moss and grass with heather and soft woods lurking just below.  On initial application, the green top notes quickly subside and the fresh cool-toned floral note of heather and delicate woods emerge.  Dry down is soft, fresh and hugs close to the skin.  A very unisex scent.

Perhaps I am being narrowminded when I say this, but I simply can't see this as being a unisex scent.  It's not like it oozes with estrogen or anything, but there's something very soft, delicate, and powdery about this scent, so when I try to imagine my grizzly, bearded dad smelling like Devil's Millhopper while covered in motor oil trying to fix up my car... it just doesn't cut it.

Devil's Millhopper is sharply green in the beginning. Not evergreen-green, just "lots of growing things tightly packed into a lush area" green. It smells very alive, and it reminded me of going through the woods where the ground was thickly carpeted with living plants and decaying leaves.

The sharpness tapers off and gives way to a very powdery floral fragrance. Something about it reminds me of soap - not squeaky clean unscented soap, but the ones that boast some kind of flower on the package. I imagine this is the "heather" and "delicate woods," but on my skin it mostly smells like powder with a whisper of earthiness hiding underneath.

Duration: Pretty good! I made it through the whole day and by the end I could still pick up wisps of delicate flower-powder on my skin. The sharp greenery in the beginning evaporated within 20-ish minutes too, so it cut to the chase pretty quickly. I wouldn't describe this as a heavy-duty, long-lasting fragrance by any means, but it does a good job holding on.

Score: 3.5/5

Devil's Millhopper doesn't offend me by any means, but it just seems a bit too soapy-powdery-flowers.  It's very much a cool floral fragrance (it doesn't have any of the toastiness or warmth of other scents using sandalwood), but the powderiness seems to overwhelm the other delicate scents. I like it, but I don't think I'll be buying a full size.

Garden Gate by Solstice Scents

Garden Gate

Full size: 0.35oz glass roll-on bottle for $10.00 USD
Sample vial: $2.50 USD

Voluptuous Lilac blossoms in the foreground combine with faint traces of cascading wisteria and subtle, fresh, green grass notes.  Contains a blend of fragrance oils and African Bluegrass EO to create a sweet, creamy and gorgeous floral.  The dry down is an intensely beautiful and very wearable floral that smells true to the light purple flowers that inspired it.

Do you like lilacs? If you don't, I'm not sure why you'd consider this scent in the first place. Garden Gate doesn't play around.

LILACS.

LILACS ALL OVER.

Really.  Forget all that nice stuff about cascading wisteria and the grass notes or whatever. I'm sure that's all there and having a lovely time hanging out on your skin. This is pure, liquid lilacs. It starts out lilacs, mellows out into lilacs, and lingers as lilacs. It's breezy and gentle - I don't even really notice any sort of "grass" notes.

What's nice about Garden Gate (besides LILACS) is that not only is it authentic, it's not overly floral. Some floral scents get so overzealous and run the risk of smelling like an old lady bouqet. Garden Gate is very no-nonsense and straightforward. It's lilacs, and that's it. It's not trying to be something else, and it's not trying too hard. It doesn't morph into anything strange or unrecognizable. On my skin, this stuff is straight-up lilacs and nothing else (although someone on the Solstice Scents forum said it smelled like a urinal... What kinds of urinals are you hanging around?!)

Duration: My sister loves this stuff. My perfume-picky sister snatched it up almost as soon as I let her have a cold-whiff from the vial because finding a true-blue lilac scent is something of a Holy Grail Quest for her. She and I have worn Garden Gate it several times, and she recently put some on in the morning for an all-day outdoor wedding, complete with lots of dancing and sunscreen. By the end of the day, my fragrance (Nightgown) was gone, but we could still get a whisper of Garden Gate every so often.

Score: 5/5 if you like lilacs. 0/5 if you associate with strange urinals.
That's really all there is to it. If lilacs are your thing, this is for you. If you don't like lilacs... why are you still reading?!

Spirit Tree

Full size: 0.35oz glass roll-on bottle for $10.00 USD
Sample vial: $2.50 USD

Delicate White Flowers, Soft Vanilla & Sandalwood
Fans of Spellbound Woods and gentle florals will enjoy this scent as the smooth and subtle woodsy base is comprised of Spellbound, Sandalwood EO, Sandalwood FO and Amyris EO which marries beautifully to the sweet jasmine blooms and elegant lily of the valley that lay in an intoxicating blanket on top.

Poor Spirit Tree. It's the forgotten scent in my collection. It's not that it's a bad scent, it's just not a particularly remarkable stand-out scent. I swiped a bit on and instantly thought, "Huh. This has been done before."

I guess a good way to describe Spirit Tree would be, "Sugar cookies in a meadow clearing." It has a sugary vanilla scent mingling with sweet greenery. It's not a foodie scent by any means, but something about it reminds me of sugar cookies. There's almost a sort of love triangle going on between Spirit Tree, Spellbound Woods, and Old Cedar Magus. They all seem to be on the same branch of the family tree: Old Cedar Magus being the most woodsy, Spirit Tree being mostly sweet and vanilla, and Spellbound Woods being a sort of marriage between the two.  If you're not familiar with these two scents also offered by Solstice Scents, I'd check them out, especially if you want something a bit more woody and incensy than Spirit Tree.

If you aren't familiar with Old Cedar Magus or Spellbound Woods, none of that probably makes sense. It starts out as a strong vanilla with floral notes hiding underneath. It's not quite as powdery as Devil's Millhopper though, and the sweetness is more like a vanilla cookie than flowers. The sandalwood isn't too strong either, and that's nice because sometimes sandalwood can be a bit of a drama queen and hog all your attention. I never really picked up on any Lily of the Valley, and I was paying close attention for it because we always get a thick blanket of them near my home every spring!

Duration: Spirit Tree is never a really strong, pushy scent. It's very happy sitting in the background. However, that doesn't mean it's wussy either. I've put it on before bed and still smelled it in the morning, a good 10 hours later. It eventually goes from "sugar cookies in the meadow" to just "sugar cookie crumbs" by the end though. The woodsy floral element doesn't stick around for a long time on my skin.

Score: 3.5/5
Spirit Tree is not bad by any means, it's just kind of dull and unexciting. However, for some people that's just the ticket! It's a soft vanilla with a floral twist to keep thing from being too vanilla. The sandalwood gives the vanilla good base as well. However, if you want something more on the floral/woodsy side of things, Spirit Tree doesn't quite cut it.

Final Roundup

Spring 2013 Collection count:

• 8 sample vials (one of which is a half-filled premium vial)

Price:

• $19.50 for the full collection
• $2.44 per sample (a little less than the $2.50 price per individual vial)

Worth it?

I think the Spring 2013 collection from Solstice Scents has a broad range of fragrances from woodsy to floral to sweet. It falls short if you're looking for something that has a healthy balance between masculine and feminine fragrances - although Devil's Millhopper claims to be unisex, I don't really see anything in this collection being super unisex or masculine (but hey, you wear what you want and gendered fragrances be damned!) - and there's plenty of springy, breezy notes in this collection.

I'll definitely be grabbing a full sized vial of Garden Gate at some point, and I've already nabbed Cascade of Gold during a past sale. I personally enjoy scents with a bit of a citrus zing most of all, and I feel this collection was really lacking in that area. Chiffon, Chantilly Cream, and Blossom Jam Tea Cakes were all a bit of a disappointment in their fruitiness (although Chantilly Cream is still very nice).

If you are a fan of more smoky, incense-y fragrances, you might also be a bit disappointed by this collection. However, I think it's a great introduction to Solstice Scents and their catalog of fragrances!