Take me to Church.

Take Me to Church was born from grief and the olfactory memory it leaves behind. At seven years old, David-Lev Jipa Slivinschi lost his grandmother. The smell of incense and summer flowers drying slowly in the sun stayed, became the emotional core of this fragrance. Seven peppercorns sit inside each bottle, his lucky number, a quiet talisman of protection threaded into the work itself. The motto on the front of the bottle is simple: God is everywhere. The name, Take Me to Church, carries the weight of that conviction, an embrace of faith as both shelter and confrontation.

The candlewax note is the emotional hinge here. Not the sharp, clean wax of a Yankee Candle, but the thick, slightly smoky warmth of a church candle burned down to a pool. Combined with the dust, not unpleasant, more like the mineral weight of old stone walls, and the frankincense that anchors the heart, the fragrance builds a sensory church interior from the outside in. The birch tar in the base isn't harsh; it reads as a slight edge, the wood smoke that lingers after the candles have been snuffed but the room is still warm. Ambrette seed gives the drydown a quiet muskiness that stays close to skin for hours without pushing into projection.

The opening hits mineral and sharp, dust first, then pepper. Black pepper and saffron arrive together, bright and warm before the smoke settles in. The aldehydes give it an almost metallic lift, like cold air mixing with warm incense. Forty minutes in, the candlewax emerges. It's the turning point: the scent warms, becomes something devotional rather than confrontational. The frankincense and myrrh build slowly through the heart, rich and resinous, with leather threaded through like stitching on a jacket. By the third hour, the base takes over, birch tar and guaiac wood, a smoky sweetness that doesn't fully resolve into sweetness. It lingers. Eight to ten hours is the norm, strong sillage throughout. On fabric it stays almost a day. The dust note never fully disappears, it's the memory underneath everything else.

Toskovat' has become one of the most talked-about voices in niche perfumery since 2022, self-taught, unconstrained, and deliberately outside the mainstream. Take Me to Church arrives in 2024 as a limited edition created for Urbanstoryteller, adding both rarity and a specific narrative to its appeal. Community discussions place it alongside incense-heavy references like Comme des Garçons Avignon and CDG Black, but its dusty, resinous character, with birch tar and candlewax threading through the smoke, sets it apart. It's the kind of fragrance that attracts people who've already tried the expected names and want something that actually contains a story.