Smell Bent has launched a limited edition fragrance for their 1 year anniversary called One. Can you believe how fast indie perfume houses grow! 🙂 One is a sweet, spicy fragrance that is unusual with notes of paperbacks. I love One. It reminds me of sipping hot chai in Powell’s City of Books bookstore in Portland on a rainy Saturday afternoon. This is an awesome fall fragrance because it is spicy and cozy. And seriously, who doesn’t love the smell of a hot chai on a rainy day reading your favorite City Lights Pocket Poet paperback?
One opens up as spicy cardamom fragrance. Cardamom is both an olfactory and a taste weakness for me. I love cardamom. The cardamom in One is cozy, not zesty/fresh. It smells more like a chai because their is a milkiness to it. I do get vanilla but it is more lacteous. This smells of chai masala in steamed milk. Or perhaps my brain is filling in that blank, turning this cardamom into a full fledge steaming chai sans the tea. The vanilla in One is amazing. When mixed with the Indian spices and woods, this rich, dark vanilla bean pod-vanilla smells almost like dried pipe tobacco. Here’s another olfactory weakness…pipe tobacco. This fragrance reminds me of vanilla pipe tobacco. It’s sweet with that spicy edge. Oh, yes, and you can smell the paperback at this stage. You get the lingering super sweet vanilla bean pod and tobacco mixed with something odd but so familiar. The paper in this doesn’t really stand out but you can smell it. It adds an “peculiar”-ness to One. It doesn’t smell like fresh or new paperbacks. It doesn’t smell like super old and musty 60’s sci-fi paperbacks found at that nasty thrift store that “rehabilitates” hookers down the block. Nope. One totally smells like “aging” paperbacks…more like dry, slightly golden pages with a flaky, golden spine vs. brittle or “basement” smelling paperbacks. One’s paperbacks are just aging but not antique or musty. On me the paperback isn’t very noticeable unless I’m sniffing for it. I still get that spicy, sweet “dark” vanilla but when I sniff, I do sniff the paperbacks underneath. I think only I would know. I don’t think strangers will smell me and think “paperback”. The dry-down is chai spice but mainly sweet vanilla bean pod with a little late 80’s Star Trek paperbacks, and a faint splash of 70’s Avon musk aftershave in a covered wagon shaped bottle. Damn, I love One.
I love Smell Bent One. It is everything that I wanted Demeter Paperback to be and what I wanted CB I Hate Perfume In The Library to be. One is a very “me” fragrance. It seriously reminds me of rainy late October afternoons carrying and drinking a chai to warm my hands as I roam the many floors of Powell’s waiting on my husband to pick out a nerdy mushroom identification guide, me wasting the hours looking for edgy, early 90’s feminist comic books. For me, One is a good day in a bottle.
Notes listed include aging paperbacks, cardamom, dark vanilla, dry wood, and sweet musk.
Give One a try if you are a mega chai fragrance fan or if you like unusual tobacco-ish scents or if you like fragrances such as L’Artisan Parfumeur Dzongkha, Bvlgari Omnia, Demeter Paperback or Whiskey Tobacco, CB I Hate Perfume In The Library, Tom Ford Private Blend Tobacco Vanilla, and/or Jacoma Art Collection #08.
The EDT (what I’m reviewing) retails for $45. The perfume oil retails for $20. These are only available at Smell Bent. I hate to share the bad news, but this awesome fragrance is only available until November 1st!
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I want to try this! It sounds sooo cozy! You’re right, who doesn’t want to curl up with a chai and a book on a cold day?
Smell Bent’s One continues to grow on me every time I wear it! I know I should purchase the full-size spray!