Moth, from Canadian perfume brand Zoologist, is a newly released scent for 2018. The perfumer is Tomoo Inaba.

Moth is described as “[the] dark flame of love”

I’ve never tried a Zoologist perfume. I might be the only person in the world who hasn’t. The internet is all full of love for this brand. I was going to try them eventually, but I’ve been holding out on purpose.

THE ZOOLOGIST ANIMALS

All of the Zoologist fragrances are named after animals. I can’t speak for the fragrances, because I haven’t tried them, but the animals as presented on the packaging are quite compelling. They’re all clothed in vintage garments and look like they’re posing for portraits.

Looking at this superb artwork, (and their little faces!), it’s hard not to want to buy all of the fragrances. They’re so cute. And every one of them looks like he or she has a real story to tell. How could you ever resist a panda in a tuxedo jacket?

And yet, this is exactly why I didn’t want to try them. What if they actually do smell good, and I do want to buy them all? But, more importantly, what if they don’t?

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

My husband is one of the sharpest, smartest people that I know. He can solve any problem. He knows a lot of things about a lot of things. But when he has to make a choice about something he’s not familiar with, and it’s not something consequential enough to warrant actual research, he always chooses the thing with an animal on the label. Bonus points if the product is actually named after an animal. (Triple bonus points if the animal name is used in a way that is punny or clever). If there are multiple products with animals to choose from, he’ll choose the best animal artwork.

I love my husband more than life itself. I’ve also drank a lot of wine that has pictures of animals on the label, for no other reason than “it had the best animal”. This man also knows very little about fragrance, other than that it makes ME happy. He’s super-supportive and awesome about my obsession, but he doesn’t wear any fragrance himself.

Most of the things that I really love are obscure and/or vintage, so even though I love perfume, I would be hard to shop for in that area. Plus, I already have a huge hoard of perfumes, so buying a duplicate would be a real risk. And, I’ve already said that he’s a really smart guy, so obviously he knows better than to shop for fragrances for me as “a surprise.”

Having said that, I KNOW this, with every fiber of my being:  if you asked my husband to choose a fragrance from an online retailer or a store display, he would ABSOLUTELY pick a Zoologist one. There is not a single doubt in my mind. In fact, this line with its fascinating animal renderings might be the only thing that could ever sway him to just spontaneously pick up a bottle of a fragrance and smell it (or purchase it).

I know that other people make decisions in the same way. I’ve heard them talk about it. I might even subconsciously do it myself. Or, I might try to outsmart myself by consciously avoiding buying products with animals on the labels. Sneaky….

I am not saying in any way that having eye-catching, irresistible animals as the subjects of fragrances makes them any better or worse than other fragrances. I have found myself wondering though, over and over again, how much the animal artwork contributes to the brand’s popularity. When so many scents now have “minimalist” or nonsensical names, I can see why people connect to these scents that represent such specific characters, and lend themselves so much to imagination. Who wouldn’t be curious what a perfume called Bat or Rhinoceros smells like? So….. is it really the animals that are driving the hype train?

NATURAL SELECTION

Something that I do know is that Zoologist won an Art and Olfaction Award for their 2015 release, Bat, and was an awards finalist for their 2016 release, Civet. These fragrance judgings are blind, so the judges wouldn’t have seen the cute, dashing animal dressed to the nines, or known what the name of the fragrance was. And these judges are people who know their stuff. So, there is obviously a lot of quality and artistry in these fragrances.

When Zoologist really started promoting the release of their new scent, Moth, I had just started my blog (about six weeks ago). Their instagram photos of the moth were amazing. The notes… well, there were a lot of them. And, they seemed to be all over the place. But, a moth might be a really complex creature, smell-wise anyway. In real life they just wait to either divebomb your head or burn themselves up on your porch light bulb, but what else do I know about them? Nothing — and now, suddenly that’s a problem. Because there is a moth perfume. And I must smell it.

MOTH FRAGRANCE REVIEW

As soon as the Moth samples were available, I ordered the full Zoologist Discovery Set. Shout out to them — I love a complete discovery set, and this one is a great value. I got 1.5 mL samples of all 13 fragrances, with shipping to the U.S., for $62. They’re nice, carded samples with sprayer nozzles, and the cards have the adorable animal pictures on them. Normally I would immediately discard all of the packaging and cards for the sake of saving space, and I sure as heck wouldn’t be writing about them, but these are just so interesting….

The first thing that I noticed about Moth is that the juice is gray. This just stimulates my curiosity further. I’ve never seen a perfume that was so gray. I am already wondering what the full bottle looks like….

I’ve been wearing Moth all day and evening, and I’ve applied it four times to different areas over a 12-hour span, as well as wearing it as an all-over scent. Each time has been similar, but I’ve picked up on different nuances. I’m combining all of the wearings for the review.

Every time I sprayed Moth, the opening smelled like urine tinged with vanilla. Actual, concentrated human urine, with just a hint of a very balsamic vanilla. Like a lightly-scented diaper that’s been completely soaked. Or an old urine specimen in the doctor’s office bathroom, sitting next to the air freshener. This is short-lived, and not really as unpleasant as it might sound. But it is definitely pissy in the beginning, with just a hint of burnt something…. plastic? There’s a smell of plastic that’s been in a hot car, or old vinyl car seats on a really hot day.

Within the first five minutes, the vanillic base shifts to smell like something that I can only describe as the smell of garden chemical aisle in the hardware stores of my youth. Rubber hoses, lawnmower and wheelbarrow tires, along with fertilizer granules, ant powders, liquid plant food, and rose dust that you dispense from a puffer to form a toxic cloud that will kill aphids and black spot….

What smells like this that would be in a perfume? Cypriol. Also known as Naragmotha, which sounds suspiciously like “moth.”

Nagarmotha has a deep, earthy smell, bitter, with sweet-woody undertones and has some similarities to both vetiver and oud. It has a terpenic peppery aspect to it. It can also smell a bit sulfuric, like gunpowder smoke, or gardening “dusts.”

After 20 minutes, Moth smells more like earthy oud, along with lemon, nutmeg, and black pepper. The top notes here remind me of a cookie that I made at Christmastime, called Pfeffernüsse. The name, which is German, means “pepper nuts.” The cookies are highly seasoned, kind of like gingerbread, but they have a sharp bite of white or black pepper. The cookie dough contains ground walnuts (or sometimes almonds). They also have cloves and nutmeg, and sometimes lemon zest. They can be glazed, iced, or rolled in powdered sugar.

After 45 minutes, a lot of the warm spices are subdued. The black pepper is still present. I can detect some florals, but they’re not prominent. Maybe iris, and rose. What I smell most is a sourness, and a kind of earthy starchiness. Just a touch of oil on the stove, shimmering right at its smoke-point. For the life of me, Moth smells like potatoes frying, with cracked black pepper.

This potato smell is baffling to my brain, and I smelled it every time during the drydown. It’s a little bit strange to keep smelling this in a fragrance. I’ve been in and out of the house all day, I’ve smelled this in different environments, nobody has been cooking at my house for days, and I haven’t eaten any potatoes or fried foods recently. It’s something that I’m smelling in the fragrance.

At 90 minutes, Moth has become mainly a slightly-smoky vetiver and oud fragrance, with a whiff of light floral musk. The vetiver is green-grassy, the oud is leathery, and the smoke is thin. There is a touch of black pepper. The whole scent is very, very soft. And, there is still a hint of home fries — it’s like when you make them in the morning, then leave the house for the day, and then come back. The slightly greasy, peppered and browned potato smell is still hanging in the air and in the curtains.

After four hours, I can’t really detect Moth on my skin anymore.

From the description of a “rich, gothic scent,” I was expecting a lot more depth and volume. I can’t say that Moth is very spicy, or floral, or smoky. It’s not as interesting as its story, or its picture. I’m glad that I bought the discovery set, because I would like to know more about this line of fragrances. But Moth, for me, is a definite pass.

MOTH DETAILS

Moth is an unusual fragrance that seems neither masculine nor feminine. Florals are mentioned in the notes and description, but I got almost none of them.

Sillage was low, even with liberal, repeated application, and longevity was about 4 hours.

The list of notes from Zoologist is: black pepper, cinnamon, clove, cumin, lemon, nutmeg, saffron, heliotrope, iris, jasmine, mimosa, muguet, rose, ambergris (synthetic), honey (synthetic), resisn, guaiac wood, musk (synthetic), nagarmotha, oud, patchouli, smoke, vetiver. Zoologist does not use any animal products in their fragrances.

Zoologist Moth is extrait concentration. It is not available for purchase yet, but other bottles of Zoologist fragrance currently sell for $135 per 60mL bottle. For more information, see zoologistperfumes.com.