Beauty Care: Loree Rodkin Gothic I Perfume Review

Loree Rodkin Gothic I is an incredibly heavy, dense scent at its opening, where it’s syrupy and vanillic but not sickly sweet and tickled with spice and gets slightly smoother and more buttery over the next couple of hours before the patchouli creeps in and becomes more prominent as the drydown appears, giving it a woodier undercurrent.

The notes are listed as vanilla pod, Madagascar vanilla, spice accord, Tunisian patchouli, and Indian patchouli (without a breakdown of top/heart/base).

The fragrance opened with a rich, boozy vanilla syrup that was thick and gooey before warm spices and a touch of woodiness tamped down some of intensity of the vanilla. The addition of the warming spices and patchouli give the opening a heady blend of dark, bourbon vanilla accentuated by spicy, sweet woods, but don’t let me understate it: Gothic I is an intense, dark and luscious bourbon vanilla more than anything else for the first hour of wear.

The subtle progression made it a more linear scent, after that first hour, and it wasn’t until the fourth hour that I felt the patchouli started to become noticeable enough that it was sharing space with the vanilla rather than tempering it. This gave the composition a more pronounced woodsy note, and it seemed more spiced and lush as a scent. Gothic I didn’t change significantly from here, though the spicy, woodsy elements came forward inch-by-inch as time went on until it was just ever-so-slightly more patchouli-driven than vanilla–more than 10 hours in.

For testing, I used half of a 1ml sample dab vial, which was applied to the underside and topside of my wrist area on my left arm. I use an unscented moisturizer prior to applying the scent as this is also my swatching arm (aka, incredibly parched at any given moment) as I found scent did not hold well here otherwise. It was long-lasting (over 10 hours and was still detectable as a skin-scent) with moderate sillage for the first three hours and then wore more closely following that as the projection dropped to being more of a skin-scent after four hours of wear.

Subjectively, it’s certainly my kind of vanilla scent–darker, richer–and paired with patchouli, which I definitely enjoy. I think I’d wear Gothic I layered with something that might not be sweet enough (e.g. something that is too earthy or too leathery for my taste), even though I absolutely love the way it smells after four hours (if it smelled like that sooner, I’d have bought it right away!). I’ve been waffling on whether this is something to purchase now or if I should explore some more vanilla-driven fragrances first.