Gilded
Boujee Bougies (2023)

Gilded opens in a way that makes some of my neurons fire rambunctiously: the intellect familiar with components wants to know if I am smelling Aldehyde C-12 MNA with Safraleine and olibanum resin and some new captive molecule that I haven't yet smelled, is it Mystikal? Lemon-turpentine-glow says my nose. What is going on here? I am transfixed. I stop caring about analysis and I just give into whatever alchemy Pia Long created here. Yes, its gold. It smells gold to me, yes, because my synesthesia say so. It reaches in and grabs me and I surrender to it.

This does have a glistening feel to it. Yes, it has a texture. It's as if it is cabalistic, an olfactory cypher and my bulb is looking for the key to decode it. It's fascinating and as it persists it feels more like an immense glow. This is actually what I hoped Quartana Soleil Invisible would be like, but while that was unsettling, this has me rapt. It is relatively linear but when the luminescence slowly dims, it feels a bit more like copper, with a patina developing as it's closer to my skin, the incense more evident, a calm smolder. It seems to my nose that the elevated sensuous Civettone reveals itself as the source of much of the exaltation. This is spectacular.