Olfactif January 2016 Subscription Box Review

January’s Olfactif featured 3 scents that smell just like their names!  Olfactif is a monthly nice fragrance sampling subscription box. You’ll get 3 samples in your box, each containing 15-20 “wears” of an independently designed perfume. With every box, your account will be credited with an $18 voucher to use on fragrances from the store.

Olfactif‘s focus is on niche fragrance, so you’ll see different & unique scents, higher quality and hard-to-find ingredients. They offer both a unisex version (this one!) as well as a traditionally masculine version.  You can read our review of the January 2016 Olfactif Men’s box here (my husband is a true fragrance aficionado and he loves it!). 

There’s a card that comes with each collection to remind you to keep smelling to understand the artist’s scent story. Fragrances develop over time on the body – don’t just spray it on a card because this isn’t department store perfume! Spritz it on and smell at different times to experience a niche fragrance properly.

Olfactif has the most unique & awesome packaging. I adore the slide-out box.

The information card for the fragrances is tucked inside. The theme for January is What’s In a Name?

Let’s be honest: A perfume is not only a scent. It’s also a name, and that name starts telling us the story that will continue once we spray the bottle and smell the scent. Sometimes the name tells us a lot about the story we’re about to enjoy. Sometimes it sets the tone. Sometimes it just creates mystery—and sometime it makes us say, “wait, what?“

In this collection, one perfume has a name that tells you almost exactly what you’re about to smell, despite not telling you a single note. One has a name that will pique your curiosity and suddenly make perfect sense once the scent meets your nose. And one has a name that shows what happens when something is lost in the translation from French to English—but the result is so lovely that it captures your heart and makes you giggle nonetheless.

So what’s in a name? As it turns out, quite a lot.

The information card gives the general gist of each perfume, as well as the notes.

Olfactif January 2016 What’s In a Name?

• Winter by Dasein. This scent includes notes blue spruce, black cardamom, forest pine, and French lavender. When I sprayed it on I got hit by the (natural) woodsy smells immediately, and thought I smelled like a candle! The fir is really strong here but opens up into the other scents, with the lavender and cardamom rising up eventually. It definitely smelled like winter to me – sort of a blast of brightness with warm coziness behind it.
• The Dark Heart of Old Havana by 4160 Tuesdays. With notes of orange, peach, grapefruit, sugar, tobacco, bergamot, tonka, jasmine, vanilla, musk, and black pepper, this fragrance was the one I was most excited to try. The different notes appear at different times (which is one of the things that is really so cool about all the niche fragrances and it really is an art form!). The darker scents appear at first – coffee, musk, tobacco – like walking through a rum-laden street, with sweet spots like the vanilla and the peaches popping up at later times.
• Poopoo Pidoo by Ego Facto. This is the French transliteration of Boop-Oop-A-Doop! It has nothing to do with poopoo and features notes of citrus, orange blossom, rice powder, amber, woods, and musk. Probably the most accessible because it’s a lighter scent, this one was incredibly rice-y and I felt like I had been making sushi. After a while the orange really starts to develop.

Unsurprisingly, the Cuban-themed scent was my favorite in the box! The theme was cute this month and I always enjoy the guided tour through fragrance that Olfactif sends every month.

Visit Olfactif to subscribe or find out more!