Imaginary Authors: Falling Into The Sea, Memoirs of a Trespasser Perfume Review

Imaginary Authors is a perfume house based in the United States, and is founded by perfumer Josh Meyer. 

"Imaginary Authors is born from the concept of scent as art and art as provocation. Like a good book, these scents are meant to inspire you. In these bottles are layered narratives that are sure to generate stirring conversation, fragrances that might be capable of changing the course of your own personal story. The hope is that they not only invigorate and intoxicate, but also take you to new places.

Each Imaginary Authors fragrance follows a compelling storyline peppered with intriguing twists. These are scents to curl up with, to share with friends, to take with you wherever you go, and to return to again and again for a uniquely transcendent experience."  - About

I've always wanted to buy from this house before, but unfortunately none of the scent descriptions grabbed me, but I wanted to take the dive and really see what the house has to offer. 

As always, I bought these from indiescents and got them in the standard 1.5mL sample bottles, both which sell for $5USD. 

I bought two scents as samples, and I wanted to really try something new as well. 

The first one I chose was Memoirs of a Trespasser. 

"The early exploration writing of Philip Sava bent the limits of post-modern fiction, revealing fantastical worlds that fooled many into believing they were, in fact, real. Sava’s kaleidoscopic collections, of which Memoirs of a Trespasser is the undeniable centerpiece, drew upon true experiences from his exotic travels but were infused with a hallucinatory inventiveness that set his work apart from others in the genre.

Though Sava had associates all over the world, he spent most of his time living in solitude on a ranch in southern Madagascar. When interrogated by the press on his cloistered lifestyle he notoriously answered, “Who needs love when you have cognac?”

The notes in this are Madagascar Vanilla, Guaiacwood, Myrrh, Benzoin Resin, Ambrette Seeds & Oak Barrels. 

For me, this was a really interesting scent, I almost like it despite it being not being what I can see myself wearing at all. This is a very grown up, almost masculine woody twist to a vanilla scent. 

Opening notes are a very woody and sharp myrrh, it gives it a punchy opening that is just all smoke and oak and adventure, what I kind of envision the smell of Tarzan's treehouse would be with all the wooden crates, cigar smoke and "exotic goods". After drying down, the Madagascar vanilla beckons underneath all the smokiness as a little touch of sweetness underneath all of the heavy woody oak smoked blasts. 

In a way, I actually love this scent a lot more, though not in the way I expected. I thought this would be more of a mature exotic vanilla, with a touch of smoky incense and maybe a hint of wood, but this is a lovely realistic oak barrel scent that I can actually smell if I close my eyes. This is definitely 'unisex' in the way I'd imagine it to be, and I really love it, 

I don't think I'd buy this in a 50mL bottle, but I definitely can appreciate this scent, and if I don't find anything I love more, I might even go for the 14ml EDP which retails for $38USD from IndieScents. 

Falling into the Sea: 

At the age of nineteen Nica Galas published her first book, the autobiographical tome Falling into the Sea which chronicled her short and torrid love affair among the hot beaches and lemon trees in the Gulf of Naples. The breathtaking story opens with Nica and her girlfriends picking bunches of jasmine flower for boys while they cliff-jumped into the sea. An innocent first kiss erupts into an ardent summer entanglement which is cut short one moonlit night when her lover leaps into the dark abyss never to surface, leaving Nica naked on the cliffs screaming his name.

WHEN TO WEAR: This scent is sunshine in a bottle. Wear on cloudy days to invoke the ardor of summer.

The notes are :  Lemon, Bergamot, Grapefruit, Lychee, Tropical Flowers & Warm Sand

This was a really interesting scent, though probably not as positively as I'd hoped to say this would be, 

To put this in the most accurate terms I can, this scent smells like toilet cleaner. I thought I was the only one, but there are also a few other reviews online that describe it pretty much like I just have. I also asked a few friends to check if they smelt the same, and it was the same reaction, and most of them disliked it. 

Most accurately, it smelt like toilet cleaner, as the grapefruit and the bergamot gave it an awful bitter kick that smelt just like actual toilet cleaner, which in itself tries to mask a sort of underlying bleach/soap mixture. 

However - I try to never give up on a product I've paid for, so I revisted this scent, after containing it in the little bag it was shipped in, and smelling it from far away - I can agree with the other half of reviews. I can actually smell more of the nice breezy sweet lemon and tropical flowers, though unfortunately I can't really smell any lychee at all. The further away I get from it, the nicer it is. The grapefruit and the bergamot even fade away into a nice bite at the end of it, but however, the closer I get to the scent and inspect it, the more it comes back to chemical cleaner.

If the actual perfume smelt more like, how it smelt from just wafting a plastic bag, I wouldn't mind it as much, but unfortunately I can't stand this scent on my skin or to smell it closely at all. 

Personally, I also wouldn't describe it as warm sand or summery at all, it just has a touch of 'marine' and a lot of lemon peel. It doesn't remind me of sunshine in a bottle or summer, and has now given me a fear of lemon and grapefruit notes. 

Conclusion: 

While two of the whole category of this house is nowhere close enough to determining what type of perfumes and scents they make, this is definitely a house that gives you a complex scent and really and has an attention to detail and to quality. I like the elegance and complexity of the scents, but I'd definitely stick to samples rather than blind buying at any time.
I would highly recommend Memoirs of a Trespasser, to anyone looking for a grown up, smoky and mature scent with just a dab of vanilla, with an overtone of expensive and carefully curated elegance.