Fellow perfume enthusiast AG kindly offered to send me a bottle of Darling Clandestine Spurn, part of Darling Clandestine's series of limited edition Halloween 2013 perfumes; it arrived just in time for me to test and review for Halloween!
Price: $13 for an 8-mL/2-dram clear glass dropper bottle of perfume oil, or as part of the Halloween perfume set, which includes 4 perfumes for $44.
Shipping: $3 for shipping in the US ($0.70 if shipped with another item); international shipping starts at $5 for Canada, $9 elsewhere, and she will ship to anywhere but Italy and the United Arab Emirates.
Samples: Listed by request in the Etsy store, 3 for $3.50. (I'm not sure if there are any restrictions regarding limited edition perfumes.)
(More details about price, shipping, etc. can be found in our Darling Clandestine Company Overview.)
Description from the website: "At each silence, the ache of the blade that released your indecorous wrath. Twist it.
Spurn is part of my four-scent suite of special-edition Halloween fragrances. It’s fierce and passionate, with bright bursts of pomegranate, tempered with aged wood and haunted by marigolds. Unisex to feminine. It unfolds magnificently on the skin, tangy at first, and ending very clean.
Spurn appears *only* in a beautiful slim 2-dram clear bottle, approximately 8 mL, about the size of my Aequitas and Morderteile Kelah bottles, but round, with a precise little dropper top. This special-edition fragrance is *not* available in solids.
DarlingClandestine Halloween fragrances are highly potent and suspended in a base of sweet almond oil. Not for folks with nut allergies, sensitivities to fragrance or essential oils, or women who are pregnant or nursing."
My thoughts:
I instantly loved the packaging for this perfume. Clear glass isn't actually the best storage for perfumes since it allows light to break down the juice inside, so anything in clear glass should be stored in the dark, but the clean little dropper bottle with its moody black and white photo label looked clean, modern, and instantly appealing. The glass dropper alleviates the need to purchase a separate wandcap for application, although you do run the risk of accidental perfume overdose if you squirt it everywhere.
As far as the scent itself: my first thought was actually that it smelled oddly waxy to me, like snuffed-out candles, but quite not the pure honeyish scent of beeswax; a slightly dirty, skin-musky, oily basenote that surprised me. Not enough to make me actually call this an animalic scent, but there's something organic-smelling that would keep me from calling it a "clean" scent. I'm not sure what this element is. The marigolds, which can smell bitter? Something funny going on with the almond oil carrier oil?
Aside from the waxy smell, which dominates my general impression of the scent from opening to drydown, cologney dry wood (oak?) and pomegranate clamor for attention, with a breath of indeterminate spice on top (the tags in the Etsy listing suggest this is nutmeg). It smells slightly sweeter than a unisex scent to me, but it has a definite men's cologne vibe.
As it dries down, it starts to smell more floral to me, but a very dry, subtle, smoky floral, and the spicy note moves forward in the mix. I like it better in this stage; it smells more autumnal and a bit more clean; that waxiness starts to smell soapier to me, like white musk and laundry detergent.
Comparing it to the description: I wouldn't call it fierce, tangy, or passionate, personally. It feels more mellow and subtle, pliable and soft. The fruit never leaps out and jabs you, the wood doesn't assault you; it just kind of ambles along, warm and breathy, taking up space in your peripheral attention like a kindly brontosaurus.
Unfortunately, I can't say I like it too much on the whole. The red fruit, spice, and wax smell combine to make me think of cranberry-scented holiday candles. That's a bit unfair, since it's definitely more complex than a candle, and the wood tones down the fruitiness so that it's not cloyingly sweet, but it just doesn't speak to me personally.
Personellietea and Painted have reviews of Spurn up as well, along with the rest of the Darling Clandestine Halloween scents--go check them out!--and Beauty Infinitum is doing a giveaway of the Darling Clandestine Halloween collection, so up until October 31, you have a chance to win a full set of all four perfumes.
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