Villainess Scintillating

Villainess is a small company that sells soaps, perfume oils, and sugar scrubs. I’m partial to their Krakatoa soap myself and had a bit of their Scintillating perfume oil kicking around for review.

In Bottle: All mint, all the time. This isn’t the sweet mint you might be used to in candy and gum, or the sharp mint in mouthwash, this is just mint and if you like mint you’ll probably find your sense of smell right at home with Scintillating.

Applied: It’s hard to really judge Scintillating based on my usual method because it doesn’t really move or evolve. It stays relatively static and that’s the main stage with the three mints up front. I can’t separate the mints as they are fairly similar to one another, but I do get a bit of a spicy bite from the spearmint. The black tea in this adds a bit of bergamot to the fragrance, but it requires some very close attention before it reveals itself. The vanilla casts a bit of smothness on the fragrance as a whole but to smell vanilla in and of itself isn’t going to happen. End story is, vanilla and black tea are both minor players. I have three mints up top, in the middle, and at the bottom. Mints ahoy. The longevity of Scintillating was moderate. It gave me a good five hours on. The sillage started off projecting rather loudly but quickly calmed down and got much more personal in the end-stage.

Extra: If you like mint, love smelling mint and want a very minty experience, Scintillating is a good way to go. Check out its corresponding soap too.

Design: Scintillating, like Villainess’ other perfume oils, are bottled in an ampule flask with a stopper cap. It has this interesting, old-timey, perfumer’s lab feel to it with a thin metal wire holding the name card for the fragrance and a delightfully tiny round plate with a skull design on it. Very cute presentation overall.

Fragrance Family: Aromatic

Notes: Spearmint, cornmint, peppermint, black tea, vanilla.

Scintillating isn’t a complex perfume. It’s very simple and will appeal to those who enjoy simple and straightforward fragrances. It isn’t much to my taste, however, as I tend to move more toward complex these days. But it is a nice display of mint notes.

Reviewed in This Post: Villainess, 2009, Perfume Oil.