Hello! I’m relatively new to the fragrance scene, but not to importing. A few months ago I found a few reviews on perfumes from indie (and a few niche) brands in China, and decided I had to try them! Importing was a bit of a hassle, but cheaper than expected.
Overall, I was very surprised by these! A lot of these ended up being a lot spicer than anticipated. Tea scents are also very common, and I was surprised at the differences between them! A good majority of these scents are advertised as unisex, which I find very interesting compared to how often scents are gendered in the west.
The star of the show was definitely Qicunjiu’s Yuanying. It was advertised as being similar to rice, but when I took a whiff it was very sweet yet masculine at the same time! I definitely will be trying out more from this brand.
I also thoroughly enjoyed Black Paw’s sandalwood pack. It has a black sandalwood scent and a white sandalwood scent, and I found both very pleasing to the nose.
Another brand I tried, Lost Little Star, is a much smaller indie than the other two. I found their scents a little polarizing - some were very spicy and strong - but others were a bit more mellow. I’ll have to figure out which note of theirs I didn’t enjoy, because it seemed to be in most of the samples I got from them.
I also got a little solid perfume from an indie that was based on historical perfumes from China, and hoo boy I had to quarantine that quick! I didn’t even have to open it to smell it, it was very strong and spicy. The history nerd in me had fun with the concept, but my nose disagreed with my enthusiasm, unfortunately.
I also tried a few non-indie but still niche brands, like To Summer and Modern Bath Art. As they are not relevant to the subreddit I won’t touch too much on them, but I enjoyed everything I got from both.
Overall, this was a very fun experiment! I will definitely be ordering more to try, particularly from Qicunjiu.
All of these brands are available via Taobao, and I used a proxy website to ship. Some proxies will not ship perfumes, as a heads up for those who want to try a similar experiment.