Dragonfly Blue is one of my favorite small e-tailers: the quality of their products, packaging, and in particular their customer service is simply incredible, especially in light of the super-affordable prices. Although I love some of their scents, I never wore them often in the oil form; I found it annoying to apply and the base had a funny reaction with my skin chemistry. Even their Vanilla Almond, a perfect pure, airy and sweet meld of vanilla and almond that I maintain is one of the best almond scents out there, I rarely wore, because although it smelled great in the bottle, it invariably ended up smelling rather cardboard-y on my skin.
Then I discovered the company’s shea butters…
I have problems with the majority of the black tea fragrances on the market. Some of them, like Comme des Garcons Te and Speziali Fiorentini Te Nero, smell disconcertingly tarry, rubbery, or even incense-like. Perhaps they are supposed to render Lapsang Souchong in its full strength, and not the meek Earl Grey and English Breakfast teas I am used to. Others, like L'Artisan Tea for Two, have a strange cocoa-butter note; still others are too light and airy, or too floral. Even my reigning favorite, Elizabeth W. Sweet Tea, isn’t so much an accurate rendition of tea as much as it is a sweet sugary lemon and almond concoction with the barest hint of tea…