DedCool sample set please don't piss me off

Let me save you $90 and your niche-girl dignity.

The DedCool girl. We know her. We love her. She’s an artist working a corporate job. Halfway between a micro and a macro bang. She does crafty wine nights with the girls on Thursdays. She’s bisexual with a Carhartt boyfriend. (It’s pride month and she’s valid!!!)

DedCool girl is trendy in a chill way. DedCool girl cleans her room. DedDool girl goes to therapy. DedCool girl. DedCool girl. DedCool girl. The marketing is pervasive, especially if you are a fragrance-inclined twenty something with an exorbitant screentime.

It always amazes me how far off branding can be from reality. DedCool’s big buzzword is “genderless.” Though I wouldn’t say genderless is exactly what I’m looking for. My desire is to smell specifically Lesbian — which seems to be a tall ask in today’s perfume landscape. I hoped that DedCool’s she/they vibe might align. I was, unsurprisingly, disappointed.

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Xtra Milk

I had the highest expectations for Xtra Milk, and I actually did like it. So maybe I’m not nicher than you bitches after all. It gave me a similar feeling to Not a Perfume by Juliette Has a Gun. The underscent, stripped down. JHAG is sexy like candlelight and lace and body contact. Whereas Xtra Milk is sexy like an all-cotton set. It’s alluring but still appropriate for family gatherings.

Out of all the DedCool scents, this is the one I might buy again. The musk doesn’t feel very me, but I could see this being my casual perfume for a time – really drenching myself in it and pulling some semi-clean girls with micro tattoos.

Madonna Lilly

I do get the peppery and papery notes. However, there is a bug spray top note that overpowers it — paired with an old lady base note. Madonna Lilly smells like the bottom of your Nona’s handbag with a five-year-old bottle of Chanel-whatever, a fifteen-year-old orange-tinted lipstick, and a century-old powder compact from the wartime makeup counter. There’s also a piece of nearly flavorless mint gum in the mix and something anti-septic. Grannies love her. Mosquitos fear her.

Taunt (01)

Taunt is like if a bubble bath was a candy was a perfume. It’s definitely gourmand in a blue raspberry, green apple way. It’s also soapy in a Bath and Body Works way. There is a marshmellowy base that makes the whole thing feel chewy, like one big saltwater taffy. I think that I might really enjoy that taffy. As a perfume, not so much. This feels appropriate for a teenage girl with glitter lip gloss and a decked out locker. I, however, am pushing 26 with a septum ring and armpit hair.

Aura

Aura is an AI amalgamation of every Sephora scent I have ever smelled. I do get the lemon and pear. All the other notes are smothered by the staggering stench of retail. I will say there is a touch of masculinity to this one – of the Old Spice and Abercrombie variety. Any way you look at it, the floor is dark and shiny, the lighting is unflattering, and you’re dropping $35 minimum on one item. After this, you’ll wait on the curb with an overly-frosted cupcake for your mom to pick you up. She’s late again, of course.

Mochi Milk

I am not opposed to sweet smells entirely. I like when they are gentle and balanced, roll around in the back of your throat. Mochi Milk is synthetic, sharp sugar. The color is purple. Like huffing a box of purple nerds, but not eating them. The cardboard box smell is part of it. Would I wear this? No. Would I like it on someone else? No. I’m really not sure what to make of an adult wearing Mochi Milk.

Sunlit Blooms

This one is explosive, I’ll give it that, though not in a welcome way. It’s just one itty-bitty step above a VS Pink fragrance, like they remembered it was supposed to be “genderless” and threw a little sandalwood in there. Sunlit Blooms lacks the lightness expected of a white floral. Instead, it has a cloying, nauseating depth – like getting sucked into a cartoon spiral and landing on your ass in a cartoon flower and letting out a big, fat cartoon sneeze. It’s a TV technicolor blossom that leaves you dizzy.

Blonde (04)

I wanted to like this one, I really did. And it has some things going for it. It feels more expensive than most of these samples. It’s got a base note like a bright red berry. The kind you see on a bush and you are NOT supposed to eat. Round and juicy and a little dangerous. It could verge on high-end cleaning product – which I don’t hate. However, the top note is all smoke – which I do hate. Now, this is not the smokiest of smokeys, less cigarette, more norwegian wood-fire, but the two layers do not blend naturally. The result is a novel but disjointed aroma experience.

Mineral Milk

I’m not big into warm & tropical or blue & beachy scents. From the marketing on Mineral Milk, I couldn’t quite tell which of those options it was meant to be. The vibe was just nondescript beach, (maybe cozy and cloudy?) I am getting none of the above. There is a sunscreen and salt quality, but it gives more sweaty day in the dry sun. An overpriced, low-sugar soda sits next to you on the concrete. Distinctly synthetic sweetener. Someone offered it to you an hour ago, you took one sip, and it went flat within a matter of minutes.

So… was that as good for you as it was for me? It’s not often that I get to be a bitchy gay on the internet. I lean towards devastating essays about disability and inscrutable poems about being dumped. But those are rules that I imposed on myself! I am allowed to break them! Sometimes I have to let the mean girl eat.

Some updates for you since I began writing this piece over a month ago:

I did order Xtra Milk in both the perfume and the room spray (I got a memorial day deal, okay). While I got multiple compliments wearing my Xtra Milk sample, the full bottle seems to lack the same oomph. Maybe it’s that the spray mechanism is more like a gentle puff than a rudimentary sample squirt. However, I went like ten sprays-deep yesterday and did not receive a single comment. I, myself, forgot I was wearing it about an hour in.

The Xtra Milk room spray is an entirely different scent. It’s primarily yeasty and much less sweet, like fresh baked bread. I don’t mind my sheets smelling like a bakery, but that too fades rather quickly.

The final takeaway: My bangs did not get shorter. My room did not get cleaner. I experience no attraction to mustached men who wear Carhartts to their office jobs. Was I destined to be a DedCool girl? I guess not.