– a review of Opus Oils’ ‘Dirty Sexy Wilde’
Ever since a boring, windy November night almost two years ago, my dreams have been haunted by a phantom….perfume. A perfume I have never encountered in real life, never even thought about before that night I was visited by a relation to Edgar Allen Poe’s Imp of the Perverse and fell down a rabbit hole of my making.
See me as I was that Friday night…thoroughly, emphatically bored. Some idea bubbled away at the back of my mind, something nailed my posterior to my Balinese cane chair and sent me looking for an image I came across a few days before, something made me drum my desk as I looked and thought that heretical thought…
“What if…”
“What if” is how stories are born, books are written, things…happen.
I plugged into my iPod, unplugged my inner censor, and wrote a story about a woman much like myself with nothing to lose, a woman with a dream of doing and becoming – and the Devil in disguise in a midnight café who makes her an offer not even she can refuse. Woven into the storyline in a way I wasn’t even aware of doing was…that phantom perfume, the Devil’s scent, dark, erotic and dangerously alluring. It weaved and bobbed throughout the storyline that followed, as warning and premonition and button pusher, and the Devil that I conjured knew everything about pushing my protagonist’s buttons – good and bad.
Since then, I’ve often asked myself when I sniffed something new…would this be it? I have a current project – in dire need of resurrection at present, I freely admit – called the Devil’s Scent with Doc Elly of Olympic Orchids, I’ve met a few candidates…but none of them came so close to that olfactory image in my mind as Kedra Hart of Opus Oils did with ‘Dirty Sexy Wilde.’
It’s all Carrie Meredith’s fault. Without her reviews of Opus Oils and my own relentless curiosity, I would never have known. ‘When you get your samples, girl, I want you to pour half that vial of ‘Dirty Sexy Wilde’ all over yourself and let me know what happens’, she wrote me in an email.
So when they arrived after over a week of anticipation that nearly killed me, that’s exactly what I did. I’m so glad I was alone that Saturday, or my sanity would have been in question. The only word that bears repeating (this is a perfume blog, after all) is…OMG!
‘Dirty Sexy Wilde’ is Kedra Hart’s ode to Oscar Wilde and Dorian Gray, both of whom are very, very dear to my writer’s heart, so with a name like that, there’s something to live up to – an aura of Oscar’s rapier, elegant wit and verve and that underlying hint of horror that lurks between the lines of ‘A Picture of Dorian Gray’.
There’s nothing in the slightest horrific about DSW, but by golly, this is one of the most erotic things I’ve ever had the pleasure to inhale. It starts off green and slightly soapy in an elegant scented lace-edged Victorian handkerchief way, but it takes no time at all for it to begin asserting itself in all the best and most anticipatory ways. This is where it’s closest to the elegant Oscar, the aesthete Dorian.
Before long, that fatal combination of tobacco, oakmoss, coumarin, musk, civet and ambergris – a blend that surely equals ‘sexy beast’ if anything does – makes itself known in no uncertain terms, and it moves far past anticipation and well into bedhead territory. Dirty. Sexy. A night to remember.
As my nameless protagonist says in QD of the aftermath:
My brain wasn’t located until Friday morning. I felt like a major railroad disaster.
‘Dirty Sexy Wilde’ is a major railroad disaster perfume, in the sense that it practically evaporates inhibitions and distills desire with a capital D to a sharp and shining point. It isn’t obvious, yet it’s not understated and it’s perfectly balanced and flawlessly composed for what it is. I call it Eau de Perdition.
Your idea of the Devil’s perfume might be different, more understated, a touch less, well… animal. Since I wrote QD, I know my Devil well, and I tell you from the bottom of my black and highly depraved rock’n’roll heart…
My Devil would wear this for his first encounter with my protagonist at the Chelsea Hotel, he would wear it to burn away every last shred of doubt or inhibition she might have, every objection she could hold, and every onion layer self she would want to peel away forever. And he would wear it again much later, when he says:
Until there is nothing more to say, not vertical, not in words, not in anything other than the language she and I had spoken from that very first moment in a café at midnight. This one. This skin, this touch, this scent, this mind, this woman, this dissolution, this mouth, this conversation. Oh, yes.
Eau de perdition.
As for this lowly perfume blogger, desperately trying to write a semi-coherent review, I can only be grateful I have yet to encounter it on either my Devil or his lookalike.
If I ever did, I’d eat all three of his femurs alive and entire, more than once, and by Golly, he’d walk differently the next morning!
As it is, I’m so very, very grateful to Kedra Hart for putting my Devil into Dirty Sexy Wilde. For which I can only thank her from the bottom of my black and depraved rock’n’roll heart!
Notes: Galbanum, red mandarin, violet, rose, jasmine, blond tobacco, oakmoss, coumarin, musk, civet, ambergris.
‘Dirty Sexy Wilde’ is available in many permutations from perfume to bath salts from Opus Oils.
Image of Tiger Powers as ‘Oscar Wilde/Dorian Gray’ used by permission of Opus Oils. There was a picture of Oscar that I found, but Tiger’s was so much better!
The Alembicated Genie 
Do you think, instead of sending me a sample vial, Kedra could send the fragrant Mr. Powers in person? 😉
I'm suprised the Devil himself didn't show up that Saturday…or did he???
Gaaa! where's my sample???do I have a sample?? o God where is it???
I'm so happy that you love DSW as much as I do, Sheila, I knew you would! It's the kind of perfume one could get used to… for the rest of eternity. A genderless, hyper-sexed-up gem in a bottle!
The review is just amazing. If the perfume is at least half that good…
On my “to try” list it went. Thank you!
I just got a generous score of samples from Opus, but not that one, and now what will I do? How will I deal with waiting? I feel I am experiencing it through this vivid description of its effects on you.
If Dorian wasn't quite so brutal, he'd be perfect, wouldn't he.
Another thing, I'm not sure if it preferable to be called an Angel, or a Devil….
Blessed GODDESS!
Oscar, he knew how to articulate so well the ugly parts of human behaviour.
Fascinating novel.
And after getting to know the Devil, I'm thinking I realllly have to get a sample of this.
Damn and Oh Hell YEAH all at the same time!
Great review. Notes are so appealing…
JoanElaine..how great to have you back! 😀
I don't know if Mr. Powers could be wrapped up and sent to you, but he does look delicious in that pic, doesn't he?
As for my Devil, he's never far away. I may not always see him, but I can always feel him around , and he was definitely there that Saturday!
Monica….oh, your poor thing! Did you find your sample? I hope you did – for your own sake not least! 😉
Carrie…yes, I LOVED it. But goodness, I couldn't stand to be around it 24/7, since if I did, nothing would ever get done around here! 😉 As it is, I'm rather grateful I'm the only one around who wears it. I mean, how much hyper-sexed up gem can a person stand, ya know?
Undina…try it, at least. This might not be all that civilized, but hey…a little danger never hurt! :
Lucy – while you wait for that sample that surely can't be too far behind, you could always sample it vicariously by rereading this review! 😉
I suspect Dorian was brutal – and Oscar not much less come to that – simply for discovering – and shamelessly exploiting – a sobering truth about human nature: That artifice is always preferred over nature, beauty over character. In other words, people want the illusion, but never the truth!
I also think that 'angel' and 'devil' are two sides of the same thing – and who is what depends only on your perspective! 😉
Oscar's main failing was that he saw the truth and said it, too! Which has never made me love him any less!
Well, Amanda…you know my Devil too, now, so I think this is something YOU might want to try now! Let me know how that goes! 😉
Bellatrix…if I tell you that those notes are indeed very appealing, then I must also tell you that they can't quite convey the overall impact. This goes on my 'Sex in a Bottle' list – and there's a topic for another post! 😉
WHOA.
Now I'm picturing you walking around, stunned and brainless, living in the animal part of you, everything wide open and wailing like a saxophone solo under the blue lights.
And *now*, I'm thinking, I might need a sample.
(Did you order a bottle already? Surely you bought a bottle. Surely you're going to.)
Yowza. After reading (and hyperventilating my way through) this, a certain refrain from a song keeps going through my mind: “She's come undone…”
I'm going to have to sample this one, no question about it. Thanks for such a stirring review, Miz Tarleisio!! 😉
What an excellent review of this lovely nasty stuff. I remember coming a bit undone by it at just a dab – you have inspired me to pour….
Muse, rest assured that it would take quite a lot to make me wander along, brainless and animal, to the tones of, say, Charlie Parker's saxophone. No worries!
Having said that, yes, I foresee a bottle in my future! Because a girl needs all the help she can get sometimes, and all's fair in love and war! 😉
Hyperventilating…gosh, Suzanne…who knew that my semi-pathetic attempt at reviewing could have such an impact on you? 😉
But lovely scent twin that you are, really, you should try this. And let me know what happens when you do! 😀
Tama…apply liberally. Then, follow the fireworks where they take you – or a willing accomplice! 🙂
Your reviews are a delight to read woman! Keep writing like this!
You and Carrie have me convinced that I need to try Opus Oils. DSW sounds sooooo good!!
This is now to be by SOTN when I get home from work. I must admit that the Oscar Wilde connection is what drew me to ordering this sample.
“I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible”
It is a sexy beast! And it is my favorite Opus Oils perfume.