Weird Wonderful Wafts: Seashells, Goat Hair, Rubber 

Our last look at strange notes in perfumery was quite the delicious one with the notes of Mung Bean, Biryani, and Garlic. Nothing in today’s list is going to be delicious, I can assure you…

Rubber Perfume

Nasomatto Fantomas

Notes

Now that is an unexpected list of notes. It isn’t just rubber that makes it weird, but also the plastic and gunpowder. It smells like the outside. You’re shopping at a fruit cart, melons the main offering. Perhaps it is in season. Plastic, smoke, rubber tires against the road. The gunpowder feels metallic, burnt, something very industrial and modern. It rained two days ago and the sun shines bright, but there is still dampness in the soil where the road isn’t. It’s an earthiness blended with the smells of the modern world.

You’ll either love it for perfumer Alessandro Gualtieri’s ability to capture it in a bottle or you’ll be repulsed. It’s worth a mini or a decant just to experience if not to wear.

Goat Hair Perfume

Pictura Fragrans Le Réveil

Notes

The strawberry and white chocolate dominate in the beginning, cloying in its sweetness. I don’t care for white chocolate on my tongue and it’s just as off-putting to my nose, but I can see this gourmand start being likeable for others. The synthetic note maltol adds to the sweetness and is caramel-y, fruity, and jammy.

The other notes save it from being just another sweet perfume. The animalic notes with the goat hair. A cool, wet kind of greenness. A milky note to soften the white chocolate. A lot of complex woody dimensions. All that makes this perfume more interesting than you’d think it would be at first.

Seashell Perfume

Sarah Baker Perfumes Atlante

Notes

We have done marine fragrances with weird notes before. It was starfish then and seashell now. It can be a good start for someone looking for a niche marine, tired of the sameness of other marine scents in the market. It can be compared to the ultrapopular Wood Sage & Sea Salt especially with the driftwood accord. But the similarities are minimal. The yuzu brings a citrusy freshness that feels newer than the common citrus notes used in marine fragrances.

Altogether, it brings the feeling of sitting by the sea, cleaning sand off a seashell your picked out and wish to carry home as a reminder of a pleasant day.

Whether you want to know about weird perfumes or the perfect normal ones, stay reading on Perfume Mag.