Nui Cobalt Designs: Autumn Part I (Review)

A heartfelt thank you to Joshua and Forest at Nui Cobalt for sending me some press samples from their Autumn collection! As always, I am eternally grateful and appreciative of these lovely scents - and here is my review of these gorgeous Autumn scents.

Autumn has Part I and II, the second part which will be in a review to come (as I just love grouping everything by collection), but overall I was really interested in the themes of this one. They're not scents I typically gravitate towards because of all the darker, warmer tones in this collection, but I absolutely love the range of scents I got to try here. 

Murder of Crows -  Nag champa, smoldering myrrh, and tobacco sparked with clove bud, violet, fir needle, star anise, and currant. 

A gothic gathering of blue-black plumage and keen, glittering eyes.

If someone was looking for a scent that perfectly captures the scent of a crow familiar - this would be it. With the slow swinging trails of nag champa incense, sticky myrrh and sharp clove, this feels like if you had bottled the feeling of stepping into a dim, dark apothecary with a flutter of pitch black wings. I genuinely felt like I could smell the scent of birds, despite the decorative elements of nag champa and myrrh - it's wonderfully evocative. This scent is relatively linear, but it has a heavy, pungent trail. It's incredibly dense, and has a real weight to it. 

Perfect for: the patchwork textures of Elphaba's final dress - dark, glittering midnight blue and obsidian turning in the dim light, except this time the flying monkeys also have crow's wings. 

Starlight & Spider Silk - Slender strands of cotton flower hung with trembling dewdrops, cold crystalline musk, and tiny black vanilla beans.  

This is a very ethereal scent - straight out the gate I get a lovely delicate sweetness, a dab of white florals, and a tinge of pressed cotton and laundry sheets. It's a really soft and fragile scent, it almost feels elusive even when I try to huff it deeply, it tends to shift and move like smoke. Coupled with soft, fluffy musk and a hint of clean vanilla sweetness, this feels like a pretty take on freshly cleaned white sheets. 

Personally I find this scent a little on the mainstream/niche end, but it straddles the line of being a pretty atmospheric, a white floral and a laundry powder, but balances it effortlessly. 

Perfect for: Wandering through Narnia in a white floral tinged winter whilst draped in soft cotton sheets. 

Trembling Aspen - Sunflower petals, delicate strands of saffron, crystallized ginger, and candied kumquat. 

"Among the first trees to change color, it exchanges subdued green for a bright, buttery yellow that complements the afternoon light. But perhaps its most distinguishing feature is the rapid, fluttering movement of its leaves. Flat leaf stalks give the Trembling Aspen's foliage a unique quiver in the breeze, seeming to sparkle in the long shadows of September."

This is a spot on scent for raw ginger with the skin still on - it has earthy, root scent. For some reason, this has a real savoury quality to it that reminds me of sliced ginger and rice with soy sauce - it reminds me a lot of the scent of steamed fish with green onion, sliced ginger just before you put the soy sauce and boiled oil, like the type you might get at a Chinese banquet dinner. 

This eventually does mellow out towards more of a sweeter profile (and I typically amp sweetness in scents). I get a little crumple of sunflower stems, steamed ginger, candied ginger, but there's still an overwhelming savoury quality to this scent which I just associate with steamed fish and rice. I have never smelt the scent of the Aspen tree so it might be a spot on scent, but for me this is a strange cacophony of scents that drifts between savoury, fruity, spicy, woody and a tinge sweet, and vanishes into a soft indistinct spice note after an hour. 

Perfect for: TREMBLING ASPEN used CONFUSION! It's super effective... 

Owl in the Oak Tree -  Regal oakwood, sugar maple and mahogany, slender white limbs of birch, and cold rocks covered in emerald moss.

The golden Autumnal sister of Yultide's Owl in the Evergreen. Tawny feathers and bright amber eyes hold a steady gaze among the changing leaves.

This is a really lovely gender neutral scent - The oakwood, maple, mahogany and birch are all blended together to give a rich, woody and grounded earthy quality to the scent. It feels a lot like sun warmed smooth bark, and although it's predominantly quite a warm scent, it has an edge of cholrine like coldness that peeks through after dry down, and a light brush of bright green moss. This does lean a little towards more of a darker, bitter shade, but I really like the contrast and shift within the scent, as the moss and cooler qualities fade in and out like shadows in the forest. 

Perfect for: Mustard beanies, corduroy slacks, flannel, and an afternoon rewatch of Bridge to Terabithia. 

Apple Picking - The orchard at its peak, limbs heavy and bushels brimming. Barely-ripe apples, green leaves, rain-soaked soil, wicker baskets, and golden hay. 

This apple note reminds me a little of the apples I've tried from Poesie and BPAL - it has a real crisp, Granny Smith apple, it's sweet with an edge of green. It treads the line of being little too artificially sweet, but it's kept in check by the atmospheric qualities that bloom after dry down. As all top notes typically do, the apple is tempered into a soft apple, tossed on bales of hay. I didn't quite get as much of the green, or soil notes, instead my skin pulled out this smoked, wood chip, apple wood warmth. It's overall a fruity atmospheric, although it wasn't quite the scene I was expecting. 

Although I haven't tried it - I imagine this might be a sweeter version of Corvin's Smoked Apple (Solstice Scents)? 

Perfect for: It's cliche but I'll say it - for when you want to go apple picking. 

Ginger Cat - Crystallized ginger and raisins baked into warm pumpkin bread with caramel drizzle, candied orange peel, homemade apricot jam and the subtlest sprinkle of cardamom.

Whenever I think of crystallized ginger - I usually think of ginger syrup. 

Opening with a blast of warm bread, orange juice, cardamom pods and a touch of grated ginger, this scent paints a picture of a lovely gold flecked with rich orange and caramel brown. However, I'm never sure about the ginger notes, I typically associate ginger with ginger syrup which is lovely, sweet but very sharp, but this ginger has a real earthy quality. The combination of orange zest, earthy ginger coupled with the savoury quality of the pumpkin, it has a real wheat/carby denseness to the scent. After dry down, the raisins sprinkled on top are plump, dark and sweet, smushed against the rooty spiciness of the ginger. 

This scent leans into just a little too indulgent for me, but I tend to prefer simpler lighter scents, so if you like the heavier scents, this is probably a good one for you, but it's one that feels a little overwhelming for me. 

Perfect for: Baking in a small idyllic little cottage, taking fresh pumpkin bread, dotting them with raisins and ginger, and laying them out of warm stones, except you've had about 8 already and if you might actually burst if you have another bloody slice. 

Grey Cat - Dry smoked vanilla, fluffy marshmallow creme, fresh blueberries, the gentlest touch of lavender and a warm cup of Earl Grey.

Leaping into action with a burst of sweet blueberries, blueberry syrup and grape candy! It's cheerful, propped up with a bed of soft sugar. Drying down to more of an indistinct sweet fruit note, it's definitely has that sweet simple syrup edge, and only a hint of lavender that keeps the scent from going too foodie and too childishly sweet. I don't quite get any smoked vanilla, or Earl Grey and the longer this scent wears on my skin, the sweeter it gets (again - I amp sweetness, so YMMV!). However, I love the pale, pastel shade of fruity syrup and gourmand lavender marshmallow I get from this. 

Perfect for: Soft grey cardigans, fluffy grey cats, dried lavender bundles, pastel blue crepe paper and iced butterfly pea tea.  

First Harvest: Grain - Acres full of sunlight, tall and bountiful, a golden expanse of promise. The earthy scent of oatstraw and hay drying in the late-summer fields.  

Although I initially felt like this scent opens up a little mainstream, the dried oatstraw and hay in this is frankly, incredible. It dries down rather quickly, around 5 minutes on my skin, before the most gorgeous sun warmed oatstraw and hay note comes flooding through. It has this wonderful dried grass, and a slight edge of smoked wheat, and this reminds me a lot of Tatami (Fantome), without the incense. This scent is all of the rich aromatic scent of earthy dried grass. While there's a tinge of bitter richness underneath the scent which lurks quietly which leans a little sharp, I really love the simplicity of this scent. 

Perfect for: Sun warmed tatami mats, dry warmth of a dying summer and fields of straw and hay under a clear sky. 

Disclaimer: These scents were was sent for review. I was not sponsored for this review or affiliated with this brand, and all opinions are my own, and do not reflect the brand's opinions or interests.