Reunited and it smells so good...
Hello, friends! This week was a particularly excellent week here in Dames Nation. Dames Sophie and Karen saw each other IN PERSON for the first time since 2019 and had a sleepover party for the first time since 2009! It was an absolute balm to our very souls and amid everything else, Sophie traveled from Philadelphia to Northampton via train and brought a slew of perfume samples and we had a little smell -n- yell about them. If you’re familiar with Karen’s Drugstore Cowgirl issues, you’ll know how excited she was to get all obsessive about smells WITH Sophie and EXPENSIVE scents at that ! What a treat! Talking about perfumes of any kind is always fun but these were especially complex, rich, and weird and we went on for so long that our talk will actually be split over two issues!
DK: What will we be smelling today?
DS: I got a marketing email from Olfactif and they were trumpeting the arrival of a set of seasonal perfumes in this family of winter scents. The brand is Dasein and they only produce small amounts of Winter, Winter Green, and Winter Night on an annual basis around this time and when they run out, they are out. It’s a very niche-y thing and I had heard a lot about them from Olfactif and also in one of Rachael Syme’s Perfume Genie threads and I was intrigued. Not enough to buy entire bottles, of course.
DK: Who does that?! In THIS economy?!
DS: Outside of a well-stocked Marshalls or CVS, no one should. Sometimes I think about all the money I’ve spent on perfume samples and how it would work out to be the equivalent of a few full bottles, but doing it in this all you can eat buffet style means I have smelled a lot more interesting perfumes and test driven them. I’m always buying on the basis of a description and sometimes the description of one person’s experience with a given fragrance doesn’t match up with mine at all. They’re writing about it from their perspective about their preferences and so they’re going to highlight things I wouldn’t, and vice versa. These three Dasein scents are new to me.
DK: We’ll start with the Winter set, even though it’s very warm out today.
DS: We fear for the planet and are grateful for a warm beam of sunshine.
DK: Indeed. Here we go. Winter Nights. It’s a very inky black that goes on to the skin as such.
DS: I’m going to smell like beautiful squid ink. Ok, they describe this as “a deeper, darker meditation on the theme of Winter. We can’t even imagine the season without this fragrance taking us to a coastal forest with bonfires lighting up the night.” The key note in the original Winter is “fir trees.” I’m holding it over a foot from my face and I can still smell it.
::we spritz::
DK: Interestingly, the first smell that I get is menthol. Very strong menthol. On the other hand, I sprayed this 30 seconds ago and it's already dissipating.
DS: Me too. It is mentholated, which sounds so weird--menthol is cough drops and cigarettes that want to let you pretend they’re not. Somehow it works, in part because the woodsiness has a sweetness and partly because it does fade into the background immediately.
DK: Yeah, it mellows out very quickly, which I appreciate. I definitely smell fir trees and smokiness, but it’s fresher than I would normally associate with a woody, smoky scent.
DS: It really does smell like fir needles and tromping through a wooded area.
DK: Very green.
DS: Yes, but the underlying smokiness keeps it from screaming “IT’S A TREE!”
DK: It’s nice and it’s not sweet at all.
DS: Yes, and that’s important to me. Sweetness is often an aspect of perfumery that’s going a little too far for me. I’d rather not smell sweet, usually.
DK: This is a nice change for me; I’ve mentioned in the past how addicted I am to Bath & Body Works’s Bonfire Bash, which is a smoky, woody scent with a VERY sweet vanilla note that overrides everything. I’ve gotten much more into sweeter scents over the past year or so -- I avoided them in the past but now I like them, particularly vanillas.
DS: Have you thought about what’s driving that?
DK: I don’t know! It might be hormonal? Those scents were often too cloying for me and now I find them comforting and just really appealing, especially as it gets colder. Who knows? I do like this, but it’s a little too medicinal for me to love.
DS: I think it’s actually camphor rather than menthol…
DK: YES! It’s totally camphor!
DS: Menthol plus smoke equals camphor? Maybe? For me this is a good amount of camphor. I don’t know why that’s appealing to me because it is so medical and I don’t want to feel like I’m walking around smelling like Vicks Vap-O-Rub, but it’s not that. If I smelled this on someone, I’d be intrigued.
DK: Same. It’s complex; I can smell all of the notes at once, and not in a way that they’re sitting on top of each other but in a “surrounding me in an environmental way”.
DS: Yes, but it’s still subtle, which I think is a difficult thing to pull off.
DK: Yes, it’s as if we’re actually in the woods. If you’re in the woods, the smell of trees and fir needles and the air and everything else is subtle, right?
DS: They tinted this perfume BLACK! It’s very inky.
DK: And it’s so oily! I can see it shining on my wrist! Should we do the other special one?
DS: Yes, this is Winter Green. It really does look like mouthwash.
::we spritz::
(It comes out very green!)
DS: I’m aquamarine! ::sniffs:: Interesting!
DK: Oh my GOD, this literally just smells like mouthwash to me right off the bat.
DS: But it’s changing VERY quickly!
DK: It is. Wow!
DS: I’m smelling…hyacinth? There’s something very spring-y here.
DK: Yes, it’s very bracing. Mint. Plant. If you squished some hyacinth between your fingers…it has that smell.
DS: I smell all of the mornings walking to school in April. Maybe there was a tiny frost last week but now the crocuses are out!
DK: Yeah, this feels so much more like spring to be than winter, but it is bracing in a way that could bring to mind stepping outside into the cold.
DS: Maybe snowdrops are happening? Here’s the description: “Winter Green [as you correctly assessed] gives us MINT. Fabulously green, crisp, and bright wild mint. Imagine walking through snow-capped mountains of evergreens on a winter morning and that’s Winter Green.” Good job, noses!
DK: There’s the walking outside bit. It’s really nice. At first I was like “This is JUST Listerine,” but that dissipated quickly. It’s so interesting because -- as readers of Drugstore Cowgirl know-- I spend so much time smelling cheap perfumes, which generally do not have the same dimension to them. I love so many of them, but they don’t change very much after you spray them until they dry down to a base note that’s more woody or musky, but THIS…
DS: The mintiness is already much lighter — now I mostly smell those blossoms popping up out of the last tiny bit of snow.
DK: Yes, or, like, breaking a stem and having that very green smell under your nose.
DS: It’s a different interpretation of sap, which we also smelled in Winter Night. That was more evergreen and this is more plants.
DK: This would be a wonderful, cooling summer scent. I’m going back to Winter Night to see how it’s drying down. ::sniffs:: It’s SO camphorous [?] on me.
DS: I think it is on me, too. And I like that. It’s so funny--if someone asked me if I wanted to smell like an old-fashioned pharmacy plus a bonfire, I would have said no, that’s weird, and yet.
DK: Yeah, it’s not super-weird. It is wearable.
DS: Just unexpected and unusual. Plus it’s subtle; I don’t feel like I’m in an envelope of sillage. Same with Winter Green, which is magnificent!
DK: I’m really loving the Green! It just gets nicer and nicer.
DS: I’m going to go wild and combine Nights and Green…::mashes them up:: It is a nice blend! I feel like they are mellowed by each other.
DK: ::smells:: Oh, I really like that. I still like Green by itself more, but for me combining Night with Green really improves it. Shall we try the original Winter?
DS: Yes.
::we spritz::
DK: This is so…there’s a slight camphor here, too, but I smell a little sweetness?
DS: I definitely get some sweetness as well as evergreen needles, which is the core ingredient in all of them. To me, it’s a little fruitier? Like a tangy berry of some sort.
DK: I like it.
DS: Funnily, to me this smells like a really nice bathroom in a fancy restaurant. This is the soap. That’s not bad, but it’s not what I’d be going for, especially at these prices. I remain enchanted by the smell of Winter Green and Winter Nights together.
DK: Winter Green is now amazing on me.
DS: I’d love to lean in for a hug from someone smelling like this. AND, to me, this is the essence of a unisex scent.
DK: All genders could wear any of these, for sure.
DS: Supposed unisex perfumes, to me, often lean on smelling very recognizable to all, and for me, familiarity is not the goal of wearing perfume.