Nui Cobalt Designs: Star Crossed Lovers and Divination Review

 It's been a while! I've been sitting on these reviews and decided to split these up. I have more NCD reviews along with the rest of this collection (Witches Utility 2024), so check them out here! 

Star Crossed Lovers - A wistful aroma for yearning hearts. Tears and dew glistening on the petals of a stolen rose.

I love the rose accord here but I think I want to love this a lot more than I actually do - while it opens up with a gorgeous freshly snipped green rose scent, this lacks the sweetness of a sugared Bulgarian rose, or a rose syrup, and unfortunately I get almost whiffs of almost sweaty, body skin musk in this one when I huff this one. While this scent settles into more of an almost citronella-esque citrusy profile paired with the green rose stems, I can't really move past the citronella/sweat aspects of this scent - which sucks. I guess this is a bit of a star crossed scent for me - I typically adore rose scents, but this one is a miss for me. I suspect I should accuse skin chemistry here, but this one is probably better off with someone who will actually will love this one right. 

Divination - A philtre for prognostication and clarity of Sight. Daisies, dry acacia wood, loose-leaf tea, obsidian musk, blonde santal, and a fading trace of star anise. This formula is further infused with both mugwort and wormwood.

This is a surprisingly refreshing, cool scent! Based off the notes, I was definitely expecting something a little dense and heavy, but on opening and after application, this is a light, cheerful and breezy type scent, it's surprisingly sweet, not notably or overtly floral. After dry down, the warmer, darker qualities come out, and it settles into what reminds me actually of a cup of steeped herbal tea, with a dash of spice and a touch of oat milk, and it has a warm woody quality that just adds a touch of grounded earthiness to it. I find this one surprisingly easy to wear, and I think it also has a touch of a clean/linen quality to it, but a increasingly darker, heavy wood aspect that blossoms the longer I wear it. I am surprisingly enamoured by this scent, but I think that's the thing about NCD's blends to me - there's always a handful of scents I would have never picked for myself based off the notes alone, but blended in such a lovely way that even my gourmand leaning heart is like, wait no I absolutely love this. While this scent definitely gives more of an upscale, elegant Aesop soap, I actually do love Aesop, and this would definitely fit right into their more botanical type perfume blends.