Get ready to hear me swoon some about vast salty seas, pirates, and incense during this fragrance review. I can’t really help but be frustrated often when using words and speech to communicate scent — a completely different sensory experience than hearing and speaking. So I resort to sharing sensory experiences from the past and imagination to attempt to give you the ideas that this fragrance evokes for me.
Transcript
Paul Cram: Boom! I’m Paul Cram I wanted to chat a little bit today about a fragrance by Zoologist. Squid is the name of the fragrance.
For those of you that do not know Zoologist, they have a whole line of fragrances that are based on animals. And what I think is cool is that they kind of pull on the animal’s environment, as well as some of the elements of the animal.
With Squid in particular, you can see the juice here it is blue. A little bit of a reference to the ink that Squids release when they are threatened. They release it in the water to get away. Something like that. It also could be in reference to the ocean. To water. To that kind of a concept or an idea.
So I’m gonna chat a little bit about it. I have some notes here as well that I’m gonna refer to. I do think it’s interesting that the awards Squid has garnered in the past couple of years. The Fragrance Foundation awarded Squid in 2020 the ‘perfume extraordinaire of the year’ award, and Squid was a finalist in the Art and Olfaction Awards 2020 in the ‘Independent’ category.
The perfumer behind Squid is Celine Burrell.
The concentration is 20 percent.
It is worth noting too, because they base these perfumes all around an animal, that no animal byproducts are actually used in the creation of these.
So all of that aside, because I’m sure most of the people that are listening are fairly familiar, well you might be new, but frag heads I think are probably kind of familiar with Zoologist. They’ve been around for a few years doing their thing. But I just kind of want to share my experience with Squid and what I think about it.
There’s something in this that that seems to fit in an other-world. I could totally picture Gandalf from Lord of the Rings walking down these rugged beaches with incense wafting from who-knows-what-spell that he cast, and the salty air and the briny sweetness.
-Paul Cram
I really like the bottles by the way. I think that they’re really cool. I think that they just look good. They look nice. They’re fairly heavy duty. I find that sometimes bottles and stuff are are not.
What to say about this fragrance? I really do enjoy it.
For those of you that don’t know I’m fairly minimal when it comes to the fragrance community, as far as how many bottles I actually own. Part of this is because of money. Sometimes they’re fairly expensive, and part of this also is because of the fact that I don’t always love– i like excess — but only to a certain extent, and then I’m like ‘okay I’m never gonna ever use all of this!’ So you know, I do try to keep it fairly fairly slim.
I think the last time I counted on my shelf-of-fragrances, I own under nine bottles. Something like that. I know that there are those in the fragrance community that that own way more. A ton. And rock on! You do you.
So what I want to say about this fragrance is I wouldn’t i really wouldn’t wear this in the spring or the summer. It’s a little too, there is a really strong sort of incense-y note to it. So I think it would be a little bit too cloying. And too, probably just too much for spring or for summer.
I did jot down from the from the website, the descriptors that they have:
- Aquatic.
- Incense.
- Salty and sweet.
Which I think is really hard to translate when you’re hearing me talk about this as opposed to experience it. For me when I approach scent I always enjoy the experience of it.
You know I order a ton of scent samples, and I’ve done that over the years just to kind of try different things. Squid is one of them. Obviously I enjoyed it enough and bought a full bottle. But when I when I sample scents, I really pay attention to not just that initial spritz, but I also really enjoy you know experiencing what it’s like as it progresses throughout the day. Throughout several hours. Later, this is one that does morph. I mean it’s consistent but it morphs into something really smoldery, and sort of sultry.
It kind of starts that way but I think that there’s a lot more at the at the top of it.
My experience with it, which get ready for some adjectives, because I love kind of the journey that scent will bring one on.
It reminds me of the ocean, but not like these tropical beach oceans. It reminds me way more of really rugged ocean-scapes. Sort of like, I spent some time working on a movie [Anniversary] in Maine, USA, and you know in Portland, Maine right on the water, there isn’t beautiful beaches that are sand. And that’s not what the experience is like. There’s crashing waves on slate blue rock, and it’s just cooler out. It was cold. So generally I was really bundled up. The smells and the experience. You’re bundled up, your warm, and it’s cozy; you’ve got like these brisk splashes of water and it’s salty. And when I bundle up too, I mean sometimes, it’s like okay, you sweat a little bit, and this scent does a really good job of capturing that experience. It’s a little bit sweet. Musk and sweat, like I think for most people they’ll understand what I’m getting at. It’s not a gross smell. There’s a little bit of muskiness. There’s a little it’s kind of sweet and salty.
The perfumer she did a bang-up job.
There’s also a lot of this kind of underlying incense, which I think for an aquatic it works really well in. It was surprising. Incense and water?! I don’t totally understand how these things go together, and then I smell it, and this makes so much sense.
There’s this, um, ah, words are failing me. Almost like there’s this um. The imagery that is running through my head with it is you’re on a ship and it’s wood and maybe this ship goes down. There’s something about this that smells so watery and wet yet it’s incense-y.
It’s like smoldering wood.
I think of pirates.
I think of water.
I think of salty expanses.
I do really dig too, I am not sure if i’m close enough to my camera that you can actually see, but I’ll pop it up, here the artwork. For most of the Zoologist bottles and stuff.
I think it’s really beautiful. Squid. I love love love it. Because obviously the squid has like a sort of staff and like a wizardry hat on. I think that that’s a really interesting reference because there is something in this, and I’m not exactly sure how to describe it, and I think I remember seeing it in the notes too. Like there’s there’s something, something that I don’t even know what it means. They’re calling it like a solar or something-something. I don’t know what it is. But there’s something in this that that seems to fit in an other-world. I could totally picture Gandalf from Lord of the Rings walking down these rugged beaches with incense wafting from who-knows-what-spell that he cast, and the salt and the sweet. And I don’t know.
I really appreciate this fragrance especially in cooler weather like in the fall and in the winter. In the fall especially. There’s something about it that I think probably has a lot to do with the incense, that sort of for me it’s just it feels cozy.
It’s this wonderfully salty-sweet-cozy-incense-hug.
I don’t know what else to say about this. But I do like as it progresses, and several hours later, not even that long actually, a few hours later where it does dry down into like a smoldering incense. And it still maintains that sort of that bluish incense-y tone.
So that’s my experience with this scent. I think it’s really nice. I know a lot of people ask what’s the projection? What’s the sillage? I don’t feel like this one is super loud. I don’t think that it’s a loud fragrance by any means, but you know like most incense fragrances it it definitely, if somebody’s in your vicinity, standing next to you or something, they’ll probably smell it. Obviously if you douse yourself in it you’re probably gonna really shout it out.
But yeah, I have tried a few other of the Zoologist fragrances. I think they’re really nice, but for whatever reason they haven’t really quite captured my imagination like Squid has. That’s why I picked up a bottle of it.
I know I keep mentioning it but I do I really like the the bottle design.
I actually store this on my bookshelf and it just it looks really sort of regal. I think that that’s what they’re going for.
Anyhow, I hope that you enjoyed this. I did.
I really love talking about fragrances and sticking my nose in them. If you have smelled Squid I would be curious, comment. Let me know what you think of it.
Thanks so much. I hope to talk with you all soon. I really do appreciate the feedback. I’ve been getting some really wonderful comments and support from people. Just commenting and letting me know that they like chat about fragrances and just and it’s it’s a really welcoming community so far. So I really appreciate that.
All right everybody I’m sure that I’ll be talking to you soon. Thank you.
