The Lair has been pretty quiet lately, so I decided to order a custom fragrance from Waft as an experiment. I have been looking for something sort of gloomy, goth, unusual, so this seemed like a good way to get a scent like that. (I got a couple of discovery kits from Lucky Scent for Christmas and they were all duds on me!)
There are four main things Waft asks for, so that they can develop your custom fragrance:
- First you are asked to select a perfume you like, as a kind of guideline or pointer for them to understand your taste. I selected Marilyn Miglin’s Pheromone, which (if you have read my older posts) you’ll know is my best old standby. It does have a somewhat warm and hypnotic feeling to it, although to me it’s more like a sophisticated evening fragrance for an extravagant upscale party. (But: I do wear it as a day fragrance quite frequently.)
- Next, select three olfactory notes from a fairly basic list. Several options are available in each category. For example, the “Green & Aquatic” category has ocean, green leaves, or green tea for the choices. For mine, I chose green leaves, incense, and black tea. My nose considers incense and black tea to be “darker” notes and green leaves to be more sprightly.
- They also ask you to name the fragrance. Since I was going for the dark and goth scent, I chose the name “Cemetery.” Sounds pretty dark and gloomy, right?
- Lastly, there is a comments box at checkout for any other notes that a buyer may wish to mention. I said, “Prefer a warm & dark scent, not floral or fruity.”
All this, taken together, I felt was pretty strongly indicative of the style of fragrance I was hoping to receive. If I were writing marketing text for my desired scent, it would be something about a cemetery in summer, at midnight, with a dying fire before me, incense tears in the coals of the fire, and sage bushes nearby, while I drink black tea.
Today my Waft order arrived and I hurried to put it on…and it smells like jasmine and coconut. Like a light, ephemeral jasmine-scented sunscreen! It’s airy and floral and fruity and sprightly, with no sense at all of incense or black tea. It’s quite similar to Veronique Gabai’s “Sur la Plage,” although that is more sophisticated than this Waft fragrance.
Waft also included 2 sample vials of layering fragrances to wear with this. I tested the one marked “Elegant” and it smells like any generic drugstore fragrance, fake sharp floral with that watermelon Jolly Rancher scent underneath that I loathe so much. The other sample vial is marked “Fresh,” which wasn’t anything I asked for. I’ll try it in the morning but am not expecting much.
So, caveat emptor to anyone shopping at Waft! If I had sprung for the full-sized bottle, they would refund me my money, but I got the smaller 15ml bottle, so I’m stuck.
Good luck on your fragrance quests!
Coming back on 3/13 for an edit. I contacted Waft, specifically to complain that this fragrance was fruity and floral despite what I’d explicitly written in the checkout notes. Their first response said that my selection of three notes from their list was simply a guideline to the perfumer of the type of thing I like. It didn’t mean they would use my three notes in the finished fragrance. So, bleah; they should say that on the website. They offered to take this order back as an exchange which they would try to get more accurate. However, if I were to decide I didn’t like the exchanged fragrance, I’d be stuck with it. They won’t offer more than one redo.
Since I didn’t want to be bothered with the post office and stuff, I gave the bottles to a friend and wrote back to Waft that we could close the issue. But I also pointed out that my checkout notes said “Not fruity or floral” and yet the finished fragrance had jasmine and blackcurrant in it! I suggested they fix up the site so it’s clear that the three notes will not be in the final product, then declined a redo, thanked them, and mentally drew a line under the incident.
I dealt with the same customer service rep for all these replies. She wrote back to thank me for my suggestions and to once more say they would like to redo it for me. Once again I declined, because of the fear of getting another fruity, floral mess. (For fruity and floral I’m still in love with HoS Whispers of Enlightenment.) So I pointed out one more time that the risk of disappointment was not worth it.
In the end, she refunded my money in full, without me needing to send the perfume back. For me this was the best-case outcome, but I’ll still never risk Waft again. I’m actually considering taking online perfumery courses so that I can end up creating this vision of the perfect somber fragrance!
The Diva Lair 