Reviews
Second Skin opens with chype-style bergamot top note along with an aromatic tea accord, green bitter Artemesia and smooth creamy sandalwood followed by a floriental heart with noticeable thick creamy slightly green tuberose, sweet orange blossom, spicy floral carnation, bitter dry tobacco and hints of immortelle and cedar. There is an illusion of a soft leather accord, think of the soft leather accord in Cuir d’Ange, it is very different from the usual smoky tarry leather that the perfumer usually uses in many of her compositions. There is a beautiful interplay between the floral sweetness and tobacco dry bitterness in the heart. The fragrance finally moves to a mossy chypre base of labdanum and bitter inky oakmoss with hints of musky ambrette and an animalic note reminiscent of castoreum.
Balushi
Anna Zworykina Second skin proudly embodies a kind of indie super-massive concept of boozy fruity/flori-oriental, a ideal sort of mixture of several Slumberhouse's alchemies (Vikt, Sova, Jeke and Baque jump more than vaguely on mind) but with an its own mature european rosey/soapy/waxy final chyprey undertone a la Maai Bogue or (back in the past) Roccobacco and Youth Dew. Second skin is a warm, intimate, intellectual, assertive perfume, an animalic contemporary experience with an historical massive chypre background a la Zoologist Civet. Les Liquides Imaginaires Bello Rabelo is another syrupy viney juice jumping significantly on mind. Tobacco, immortelle (appointed in a burnt syrupy way a la Hdp 1740 Marquis de Sade), animalic resins and cognac are heady under my vulgar nose. Cognac in particular provides a quite dandy/lofty posh aura of luxurious leather upholstery-bound ambiences. Overall is supported by rooty/leafy elements from the "forest-undergrowth", orangy ylang-ylang and tuberose. The latter is a floral utterly influencing element (almost paired by ylang-ylang) implemented in a quite resinous burnt sugary "form". The juice is well appointed, super-calibrated, "huge", musky and wise, a "cultured" palatin 800's serum for womanizer idealists, ruined kinky noblemen and old parisian antique-dealers.
Darvant
Second Skin (Anna Zworykina) ★★★
chocolate leather Having smelled quite a few all-natural perfumes in my life, it is a great surprise to come upon Anna Zworykina, who seems to be making all-natural perfumes, herself, in a grand classical style. Second Skin is an animalic leather oriental, which for a while does what few so-called leather perfumes would dare to do, which is to smell in large part exactly like the sort of wonderfully dim and slightly grimy shop containing piles of hand-tooled belts and deep caramel colored bags with the workshop just in the back. Against a floral oriental background murmur, which on paper conjures up an unmistakable illusion of milk chocolate, the combination of the inedible and the edible is perverse and appealing. I wish it could hold that ground instead of retreating into generic oriental territory, though it’s still pleasant. ts
"Perfumes The Guide 2018" by Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez