Spice

Based on your responses to our LavenderandSpice.com Quiz, you are most likely to find a fragrance that matches your personality and desires from the sharp, piquant, warm, woody, floral, powder of the world of spices.

What Is Spice?

This category, along with incense, is one of the oldest in perfumery, going back thousands of years with a global spice trade from Asia to the Mediterranean. In modernity, spices were used as a sign of the exotic other, with outsized fertility and erotic potential to be captured by colonial adventure. While much of language has moved on, “Oriental” remains in regular usage in perfumery despite 40 years of critical scholarship with Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) as the foundation. We advise that our readers do not use this term and instead refer to the ingredients that define a category, spice in this case.

By spice, we mean cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, star anise, cardamom, coriander, black pepper, and ginger with vanilla and Tonka bean in a related but separate category. Most spice-focused perfumes will have a floral heart note, often a heavy one, to counteract any sharper notes of the spices. Base notes are often sweet and may include heavy use of musks, including animalic musks.

Why Spice is the Right Scent for You?

Leo, ruled by the sun, leaders, performers, artists, lovers of luxury. Spice, traded for millennia around the world, sometimes fiery as the sun, is the perfect scent for those born under Leo. The lioness is bold in her style, first on the dance floor, not caring what others think. Libra, the beauty, air sign, makes peace and friends where Leo charges in. But, there is a romanticism and erotic intensity waiting for the right partner. Rose is the scent of Libra, a spiced rose the perfect balance for the keeper of the scales.

You are thrilled to challenge a new dating partner to an intense physical adventure, after which the rest of the weekend in bed together seems like a good idea. The walnut liqueur or the whiskey are the perfect dessert. Vacations, you plan on doing them all as long as you aren’t sitting on a beach or in line at an amusement park. Happy smells like Jasmine and cinnamon, the sensual, indolic nature of the white floral balancing perfectly with the sweet, hot spice. Sexy smells like passion fruit, the sweat on your partner’s neck as you find the perfect lagoon. The gin and tonic as well as the IPA match your focus on the exotic spice trade even as you remember that you still need to read Said’s Orientalism. You have to admit that despite the provenance of the IPA, a good West Coast IPA is a thing of beauty.