“After Hours”

A delicious berry-scented soap from LovLab Natural Beauty that is gentle on your skin and long-lasting—that is, if you don't eat it first! Wait. Don't eat it... it's soap. I feel like I shouldn't have to point that out, but people get confused, especially while intoxicated, and this is an intoxicating fragrance, to be sure. I definitely don't bathe and drive. It started out as an organic-looking, hand-cut, pale-purple square, but as I've used it, it's transformed into a shimmering, slightly sparkly, deep purple, smaller square—that seems like it might conjure up who-knows-what, given the appropriate incantations. “Night” is a fitting name—did I mention when wet it's subtly-sparkly, and deep, deep purple. Depending on your age group, I might quote either: “Though you're gone, your love lives on when moonlight beams,” or : “with the Rolling truck Stones thing just outside...” The LovLab website lists: oils of palm, coconut, olive, castor, almond, and cocoa butter—and the fragrance a mixture of boysenberries, elderberries, strawberries, guava, and pomegranate. The last time I tasted boysenberry was in the form of pancake syrup, in one of those syrup Lazy-Susans at the IHOP. And the last time I had elderberry was in the form of wine—well, actually in the form of a song about wine (“cooked black-eyed peas me”). The mixture here works out nicely. It's fruity, berry-like, and delicious. Also, a “trace of soft vanilla”—and I appreciate going easy on it because, you know, a little vanilla goes a long way. Vanilla is best when it's like the scent left on a pillow by a dreamworld lover who's not going to text later on.

-- Randy Russel