I do not like milk. I never have—when I was little I would try to thin out glasses of milk with water to create something more palatable, an approach that did not work—and probably never will. It’s fine in fancy little coffee drinks or baking or things of that sort. I like stuff made with milk (butter, yogurt). I’ll drink some of that super filtered high protein chocolate milk in the airport. But milk itself, I just don’t like.
The idea of “smelling like milk” also doesn’t attract me. (When I was told as a child that if you eat a lot of dairy you smell like milk to people whose diets are not dairy-centric, I felt this was deeply unfair.) In my life, if I’m sniffing milk, I’m usually trying to figure out if it’s gone bad. However, the reality of “smelling like milk” is that I’ve noticed that I tend to like perfumes with milk notes (also known as “lactonic”). I first observed this trying out Cirrus’s “Moon Bathing,” where “fruity” and “salty” both came together to work for me because of the milky aspects of the scent. When, more recently, I loved Eris’s “Mother’s Milk” I thought it might be fun to simply investigate milk, the category.
So I ordered Surrender to Chance’s milk sampler and got to testing. And then I thought, it’s kind of a pity not to have any of Hilde Soliani’s perfumes in here, and… well, things got a little out of hand.
Below, notes on Avatar (Hilde Soliani), Basilica (Milano Fragranze), Bianco Latte (Giardini Di Toscana), Blanche Bete (Liquides Imaginaires), Cream Tea (Sucreabeille), Crema di Latte (Hilde Soliani), Elephant (Zoologist), Hibiscus Palm (Aerin), Hot Milk (Hilde Soliani), Lait Concentré (Chabaud), Latte Freddo (Hilde Soliani), Moon Bathing (Cirrus Parfum), Mother’s Milk (Eris Parfums), Pipe Bomb Blue (Blackbird), Remember Me (Jovoy), La Stanza Delle Bambole (Nobile 1942), Yawahada (J-Scent).
What I loved
Basilica (Milano Fragranze)
(Fragrantica / Parfumo / Basenotes)
Head Notes: Thyme E.O., Rosemary E.O..
Heart Notes: Warm Milk accord, Labdanum Hyperessence, Incense Resinoid.
Base Notes: Cypriol E.O., Cedarwood Virginia E.O., SantamanolTM.
Incense and milk wasn’t a combination I had very high hopes for—I like incense, the actual thing, but incense perfumes tend to smell very similar to me and also just don’t seem to work on me. Plus, the idea of combining incense with milk felt bizarre.
In truth, the milk doesn’t stand out to me here as its own thing, but I think whatever makes up the “warm milk accord” does, I think, marry the savory herbal thyme and rosemary to the cedarwood in a way that means the perfume works. It doesn’t really smell much like incense to me—it smells more like opening a drawer in which someone has placed dried herbs for some reason.
This scent is also available as a candle. I think it would work pretty nicely as a candle.
