Harlem Perfume Co. Releases Sensual Muse: The One They All Had To Paint

In Sensual Muse, you immediately get a hit of mysterious berries. There’s no one identifiable berry, but it smells like a mix of every berry, a berry Rorschach you imprint your own memories onto. There’s an effervescence to the note. It moves. As you try to latch onto it, the fragrance gets even more fruit-rich. First a trickle, then a sticky, candied citrus and skin-on apricot unfold as if they’re dripping. The sweet fruits are unfurled with an extra dose of airy musks, courtesy most likely of the gardenia note – petaled and fresh, melon-like – and the very prominent honeysuckle note, realistic in its syrupy-sweet petals, infused with a peach-like quality, further bolstering the apricot at its core that sustains throughout. Harlem Perfume Co. seems to luxuriate in sheer, cloud-like musks because a majority of their scents are positively drenched in them, and this one is no exception. There’s almost a “floating” quality to the sillage. It trails up, hovers, takes up space, and then wispily moves on down the hall.

Additionally, this was composed by Catherine Selig of Eilish No. 2, Cry Baby as well as niche hits like A.N. Other’s Crushed Velvet, and of course, Eartha, a perfumer whose signature is taking dozens of bold notes and massaging them into more tender versions of themselves to fit them all in one bottle. This move is on display here too. As linear as the smell ultimately becomes, it always seems to be in motion.

The drydown makes no mention of any chocolate or cocoa, but I swear I smell it somewhere. Maybe it’s the woodiness of the base mixed with all the dessert-like summer sweetness playing tricks on me, but my brain registers a floral-musk cocoa flirting its way into the dance. By the basest definition, it’s a woody fragrance, but the amber and the sandalwood behave less like solid wood and more like flowy, haunting apparitions. The perfume itself is quite thick, too, needing a few minutes of dry time after application, as it shimmers with the oil-slick formula concentrate for an extended time. It also plays with hovering between a close-to-skin scent and a trailing projection. You swear it wore down to the former, but then you keep catching your own trail, and others surely keep doing so too. She behaves rather deceptively - coy one moment, only to announce her arrival later.

I guess it’s a behavior fitting of a Sensual Muse, and she is a fragrance that fits perfectly within Harlem Perfume Co.’s new chapter.