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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Chazzyphant on 2025-02-25 01:01:01+00:00.
**Key note: please read all of this under the "allegedly" umbrella as the tweets/other accounts have been private-d and I anticipate a major scrubbing of social media in the upcoming days/weeks!*
For all 12 of you who may have read my earlier posts, you know I enjoy (if that's the right word) chronicling the rise and fall (and sometimes rise and fall all over again, this time including tumbling over the staircase on the way down) of indie perfume houses/makers. I actually have *yet another* saga to unfurl after this one, making it five total, believe it or not!
This time we're taking a look at a different sort of indie maker: a viral Perfume-Tokker (someone who reviews perfumes on the short-form video social media app TikTok) turned perfumer turned liberal pariah / most disappointing entry in the "oh, crap, HER?" unfollow-saga upon which many of us have reluctantly embarked recently.
Mason Jar Dixon Line
Scout Dixon West-TikTok Instagram (frankly, that name should have been a clue, but the line between cool girl and insufferable mean girl is often very thin, especially on social media) is a musician (front gal for the band "Low Pony"--again with the just this side of eyeroll name!) perfume tokker turned maker. Her slogan on IG is "wearing my heart like a crown" which as a hobby author, makes me ache with a kind of gasoline-scented oil slick envy, while still recognizing the intense stage-managed vibez in such a statement.
And the poison-apple flavored cherry on the rubbery melted ice cream sundae: the "X" handle: guantanamocafe ... UM YEAH. It's giving the girl who wears paper thin Catholic boys' tees, sans bra, tights over vintage full cut briefs (with strategic runs, natch), and beat up Keds or Ducks, while smoking Kools or Camels on the balcony, in an intimate tete a tete with the 53-year-old elegantly scruffy, very much married professor of American Studies at a book launch party. While preening and posing to ensure every other woman in the room sees her doing such.
Also Dixon is half the tin-flute-whistle phrase "Mason-Dixon Line" so make of that what you will.
With her lambent dark eyed beauty and radiant cool girl appeal, Scout Dixon West rapidly conquered multiple artistic outlets, and seemed like one of those hashtag blessed multi-hypenate women whose next venture would be a cookbook, and some kind of achingly edgy-cool cowboy hat line collab. Many viewers said they could watch her read the phone book and noted that they particularly enjoyed the intelligent, nuanced way she spoke about perfume.
Low Pony, High Horse
American Vulgaria explains: "Scout Dixon is a model, actress, screenwriter, and the lead singer of Low Pony, whose summer 2022 debut EP, the star-/shoegazing Ascetic Star, occasioned this interview later in the fall. What followed was a lengthy, free-wheeling convo on life and death, beginnings and ends, “depression” as an identity, the power of getting over yourself, and more. Scout is one of the loveliest and most talented artists around, a true lily of the field."
Perfume website Ministry of Scent describes her thusly: "An ascendent voice in contemporary fragrance who's fostered a devoted following, Scout Dixon West knows her stuff. With tastes ranging from deep classic to hyper-indie, her sly sense of humor is balanced with deep knowledge and a sincere passion for perfume. And it's all adding up — the surprising launch of the first three fragrances in her eponymous fragrance collection proves that Scout is also a creative director to be reckoned with. El Dorado, Incarnate and (instant staff pick) Coney Island Baby resonate with aching nostalgia, set in an American landscape of bright lights, dark secrets and soaring natural beauty."
Industrial Gourmand
In 2024, SDW surprised her fans and followers with an announcement that she'd produced her own capsule perfume collection.
Reddit user u/shmogi describes the 3 fragrances: *"*I tried the sample set and here are some brief initial thoughts:
Incarnate: Interesting warm spicy incense from this, definitely getting more gothic vibes from it, the resin and white pepper really shine here as well. Wearable in cooler/cold weather, definitely a brooding but alluring scent, almost reminiscent of a candle-lit religious ceremony or ritual. Similar vibes and notes (definitely not redundant though) to Zoologist Squid or 4160 The Waft from the Loft.
Coney Island Baby: Pretty realistic with the gasoline + vanilla + wafer combo, kinda like a mix between Namba by Fantôme and Whiff of Waffle Cone by Imaginary Authors. Warm, sweet, ambery, but also plasticky, not necessarily in a good or bad way. Not my personal favorite but if any of these sound like your steez, you will go crazy for this.
El Dorado: My personal favorite out of the bunch, a truly photorealistic and atmospheric scent of a California forest after a light drizzle. Fresh, woody, aromatic, and a bit aquatic. If you like Encre Noire by Lalique, Cape Heartbreak and Every Storm a Serenade by Imaginary Authors, you might appreciate this one, although it's definitely not an identical foresty vibe than them. It's reminiscent the first waft of air you get when you unzip your tent in the morning after camping in the woods.
While a few dissenting voices noted that they felt the proverbial wool was pulled over their eyes...
From u/pushkinalexander's scathing review: "I got all three samples from this brand a little over a week ago. I was excited to try them after watching some reviews on TikTok, and all I can say is that this is the last time I will go to TikTok for perfume recommendations! Not only did none of them smell anything like advertised, they also smell poorly blended and cheap.
Incarnate*: Absolutely none of the incense that was advertised. Instead, just bubblegum and burnt plastic. Like, the Hubba Bubba bubblegum I got from the dollar store as a kid mixed with a weird, chemically and rubbery texture. Smells like a significantly cheaper and infinitely worse version of Toskovat’s Age of Innocence (which is a fragrance I love. If you want grungy bubblegum, try that instead). 1/10*
El Dorado*: I was looking forward to this the most and I was severely let down. The lemon dominates over everything in this. It’s not even a natural lemon, it smells exactly like a bathroom dowsed in lemon cleaner - very synthetic and screechy. I wore it for an hour and scrubbed it off when it started giving me a headache. Absolutely none of the petrichor notes come out in this, nor the woody notes. I’ll be sticking to Le Labo’s Baie 19 for my juniper x petrichor fragrance. 1/10*
Coney Island Baby - Initially, I didn’t mind this one. The gourmand notes are nearly nonexistent, which is perfect for a gourmand hater such as myself. It smells like rubber tires and maybe a little bit of asphalt. However, for some reason the second time I wore it (probably due to resting it for a few days), I got absolutely nothing but smoke. Just a ton of nauseating, BBQ-like smoke. Scrubbed it off after thirty minutes when it became apparent that the smoke smell was not going away, and even then I could STILL smell the nasty charred remnants of a grill after a Fourth of July block party. 1/10
Anyway, as much as I wanted to love these, I really truly disliked this brand. Every scent was a massive let down. I don’t recommend trying any of these perfumes, and frankly I wish I didn’t waste $20 on these samples. Yuck.
Most reviews overall were gushingly positive, though. So far so good, right? A cool person makes 3 interesting indie fragrances. Surely nothing could go wrong with that, right? RIGHT?
"I was born a hater..." a red flag waves quietly in the starry/shoe-y night...
Okay, buckle in, because this is a complex red flag. On 2/10 of this year, SDW made a TT in which she recommends a particular perfume by Byredo. It's full name is contains a word we now consider a slur, G*psy, and most perfume-tokkers elide this with the shortened name "G-Water", while some more politically active perfume tokkers decided not to support Byredo for consistent cultural insensitivity in doggedly keeping the name despite its updated status as a shibboleth. Scout casually states the full name, which by itself isn't a huge deal but in hindsight... (for more reasons on why Byredo's G-Water is controversial/problematic check out the video by creator jeantheperfumequeen "Your faves are problematic" from 10/01/2024). It started to add up to a not-so-cool picture for some.
Scent of burned American Flag
T...
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