June 22, 2024 - Spooky Season
- Brush: ShoreShave Burnt Orange, Tangerine, PearlSwirl T4 Fan 26 mm
- Razor: Blackland Blackbird
- Blade: Wizamet (36)
- Lather: Declaration Grooming - Darkfall
- Post Shave: Southern Witchcrafts - Boonana
- Fragrance: Imaginary Authors - A City On Fire
Challenge: I’ll come back to this if I have time…
Edit: Okay. First, who has a pumpkin in June? Here's an avocado. I carved it with a GEM blade.
Darkfall has a regional, geographic tie-in to where I live. The old L&L was based ~20 miles from my house before moving to Michigan and rebranding to Declaration Grooming. In the fall, it’s very common to smell burn piles. I can hardly leave my house without smelling burning leaves that time of year. The smoke in this fragrance takes me there. The note perfectly mimics the smell of detritus being consumed by flame. The dry soap is very smokey. Once it was lathered, I smelled a warm base consisting of amber, wood, and balsamic notes. It’s a cool fragrance, and somewhat of a novelty. I like the theme. It really captures GA in the fall.
Speaking of GA, Southern Witchcrafts is a GA based brand that makes great soap. Their two most popular fragrances, Autumn Ash, and Samhain, are both fall fragrances. They’re also two of my least favorite fragrances from the brand. Enter Boonana. There are notes of candy banana and lily up top which feel playful and make me think of Halloween candy. Notes of bourbon and tobacco provide warmth and darker sweetness to the mix. There’s a hint of spice from the tobacco. A note of vanilla rounds out the sweeter notes and keeps the banana and bourbon in balance. As I continue to smell this, the pumpkin note takes hold. It smells like the real thing, raw, freshly carved. It’s the note that ties everything together. Honestly, a lot of my criticisms of Autumn Ash could also be leveled at Boonana. It’s very sweet, the banana is artificial, and it can be a bit cloying. But, I like this one. Maybe it’s the Runts I ate as a kid, or my love of bourbon as an adult, but this fragrance is fun.
For the fragrance, I wanted to play off the smoke motif of Darkfall. I chose Imaginary Authors A City On Fire. It’s a little overwhelming at first. It’s deeply smoky. The smoke has a chemical-quality. It’s sort of like charcoal briquettes. There are other notes I smell, but in the context of the fragrance add the prefix “smokey” to them. I smell pine, slightly sour balsamic, and resinous sweet notes. It’s actually an interesting fragrance that's fun to nose through. I wouldn’t buy a full bottle because I don’t know when I would wear it. It’s not the type of fragrance that would draw complements.
#photocontest - fire, to go with the smokey fragrances.
#FOF