Review: Arcana - Pumpkins Crave Bread

Perfume: Pumpkins Crave Bread

Brand: Arcana Wildcraft

Format: Oil

Price: $26 for 5ml in an amber glass bottle.

Availability: Limited edition; as of 10/31/18, still available on the Arcana Wildcraft website.

Description: (From the Arcana Wildcraft website)

Sweet pumpkin flesh with warm, baking bread, barley malt, cassia, maple candy, and pumpkin spice.

Background:

Welcome to my first post!

Beginning this blog on Halloween was not premeditated, but was definitely a happy coincidence. In fact, I'd been waffling over whether or not to start an indie fragrance review blog for months, now, back when my collection was just beginning and I'd only just barely dipped my toes into the world of indies.

Anyway, I won't ramble on too much about the commencement of this blog; I know why you're really here. Let's get into the fragrance.

When I picked up this perfume, I truly didn't really know what I was expecting. I'd never tried the classic Vanilla Craves Bread before, which, from what I gather, is a love-it-or-hate-it marriage of yeast and honey (though I still plan on getting my hands on it one day), but had no bready perfumes in my collection, and pumpkins hovered in the high-threes-out-of-five for me as a note. More on that in another post.

I didn't let this rest initially upon trying it, being the eager beaver that I am, but that was over two weeks ago. As it's now been sixteen days since I received the bottle, it's safe to say it's sufficiently rested for reviewing purposes at this point. Sure, it could perhaps benefit from an additional resting period, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it wouldn't change much.

Review:

In the bottle, there's faint pumpkin and a sweet bakery quality to this perfume, with just a touch of yeastiness, which is likely the barley and "baking bread" notes coming through. That disappears immediately on my skin. Wet, this fragrance is all pumpkin spice, and heavy on the cinnamon. Perhaps a slight hint of that original yeasty, bakery note makes itself known about twenty minutes in when dry, but for the most part, the next few hours are like walking in a cloud of cinnamon sugar, through which you can smell a bit of allspice and nutmeg, if you squint.

As I write this out, I'm actually drinking a cup of coffee sweetened with sugar-free pumpkin spice-flavored cream (hey, it's Halloween and I don't need your judgments), and while I can admit the coffee is definitely altering the pumpkin spice smell, I think I'm not alone in the belief that pumpkin spice is not quite so heavy on the cinnamon. Really; I don't get any ginger or cloves from this. I wonder if the cassia, which I just now researched as being a kind of cinnamon, is completely overpowering the rest of the spices. That said, despite being so cinnamon-heavy, this is undoubtedly a pumpkin spice kind of smell; my friends arrived at my home to hang out about a week ago and an hour after putting this on, and the first comment was "It smells so good in here; like pumpkin!" So, if you're worried that this scent will read too much like "cinnamon" and not enough like "pumpkin," don't be. It's additionally worth mentioning that my skin amps cinnamon.

If you're wondering where the maple candy comes into play here, so was I; it's not until many hours after the dry down where the cinnamon finally takes a backseat and you can smell the maple syrup on your skin. It's delicious, and transfigured a bit by the lingering pumpkin spice so you don't smell too much like a breakfast.

Throw: Heavy. My dry skin drinks up fragrances like a mother, and my friends could smell this from about three feet away. Be conservative if you work in an office environment or spend time with someone sensitive to fragrance.

Longevity: Strong for about 4 hours, but could still smell it on my skin after 9.

Summary: Cinnamon-heavy pumpkin spice perfume with a maple syrup drydown, awesome throw, and the kind of clinginess you only experience in freshman year of high school with your closeted gay friend who's desperate to use you as his beard (but in… a good… way?)

Rating: My personal rating is 9/10, since I'm a gourmand fiend and couldn't stop sniffing my arm all day, but for the purpose of this blog, I'll rate it a 7/10 because it overpromised with the "bread" component that never really saw the light of day, and the cinnamon, even on people who don't amp cinnamon, may be overpowering.

Song: Pale, "Too Much"