Enchanticals Perfume

Enchanticals is yet another perfumery that I happened across while scouring Etsy looking for things to spend money on (justifying it with, “Well, I have to have 365 perfumes to review for my project blog now”, of course). This shop sells ‘Victorian Gothic Perfume and Bath & Body Luxuries’.

Samples of perfume oil are available in various sets and collections. I chose a custom set of 6 and ordered Alize, White Rabbit, The Fat Lady, Embracer la Mort, The Snake Charmer and Levesque Burlesque. The shop owner, Monica, emailed me not long after my order and asked me to choose two free samples in addition, so I requested Mermaid Cove and Butterfly Wings. As I said in some blog post recently, I have been deliberately buying at least a couple of scents each time that are outside my normal range, because I want to mix up my reviews a bit. Besides, you never know when you might happen across something you love but would never have looked at otherwise, am I right? 

The sample set I bought was $13US plus $7US for shipping – international shipping from the US has just gone up dramatically, as I complained about in my last post, so Monica has currently suspended it while she finds out what the new charge will be. Generally speaking though, she does ship internationally (obviously, since she shipped to me). And speaking of shipping – it was really fast. The last few months things have been taking 3-4 weeks to get to me from the US, often even longer. I think a lot of stuff is being held up in customs these days while they faff about deciding whether they are going to open them and look at them or not. I ordered on 15 January and received it on 25 January.

Although my order was packed in a little box with packing peanuts, one of the vials was smashed and the perfume had leaked all over the others. I washed them off as best as I could (hence the tattered labels in the picture above), and contacted Monica to let her know. She got back to me within a few hours and was most apologetic; we sorted it all out very quickly, so two thumbs up for stellar customer service from this store. The one that broke was Alize – of course it had to be the chocolate one!

Now to the perfumes – I’m just going to be brief because I’ll eventually review all of these on 365 Days of Smells. There were a couple that I disliked, but these were the ‘outside my comfort zone’ ones, so it’s not that they were crappy perfumes, it’s just that they were the kind of fragrances I don’t happen to enjoy. The quality overall is really good.

Levesque Burlesque

Right off the bat this was one of the ones I really didn’t like. It’s fruity (peach), but on me it smelled like apple-scented disinfectant. On Noodles it smelled like The Body Shop Fuzzy Peach – I still didn’t like it, but it was nowhere near as bad on her, so take my experience with a grain of salt.

The Fat Lady

This was my favourite (reviewed here) – a sweet, biscuity scent that reminded me a bit of BPAL’s Eat Me (without the dusty part). It had a delicious smelling note of slightly lemony confectioner’s custard that really made me crave a vanilla slice.

Embracer la Mort

Violets. As in the shop description, there’s a note of green there (though in my experience, that often comes out with violet scents), but I didn’t get the berries. I liked it, but violet isn’t a floral I find very wearable all that often, so it’s not one I’d buy in a full size.

White Rabbit

This was the most ‘perfumey’ of the ones I tried. I couldn’t pick out any distinct notes, it was all just blended together. This one was the strongest and had the highest sillage.

The Snake Charmer

In the vial it’s marzipan (the amaretto note), which thankfully recedes a bit when applied and the berries come out. Despite my dislike of fruit, sometimes berries can work okay on me, and this was one of those. I quite liked it.

Mermaid Cove

This smells like a slightly watery white floral – there’s maybe gardenia in it (nope, it's frangipani)? Now you know I love my white florals, and you may or may not know I generally dislike watery florals, but I rather liked this one. It wasn’t TOO watery – it just added a hint of a background aquatic note, so it smelled like a garden after a really heavy rain rather than smelling like watered-down perfume, which I find with a lot of those kinds of scents. I’m not sure I’d buy a full bottle as I have quite a lot of white florals, but I’m definitely considering it.

Butterfly Wings

Another fruity concoction. I am 30 years too old for this. Noodles liked it though.

One thing I really like about Enchanticals is that not only can you get samples of all the perfume, you can also get a sort of in between size so if, like me, you want a full size bottle but you already have eleventy million perfumes and you’re never going to get through any of them, you can get these in a one dram size (slightly under 4ml) for around $10US - $14US each. There are also larger size 1/3 fluid ounce (about 10 ml) bottles that vary in price, depending on the perfume.

For the quality, the large range, speed of shipping and the really great customer service, I’d highly recommend checking out this store. You can do so on Etsy or there is also a website.

Update: International shipping is back!