Imaginary Authors Dipped in Chocolate Review 2024

Imaginary Authors has never been a house that plays it safe. Founded in Portland, Oregon by perfumer Josh Meyer, the brand builds every fragrance around a fictional book — a story you are invited to read on skin. Dipped in Chocolate, released in 2024 as a limited edition, is the house's second collaboration with Portland ice cream institution Salt and Straw, and it reads like the sequel to a beloved first chapter: A Whiff of Waffle Cone, now plunged headfirst into dark chocolate. Where its predecessor was airy, lactonic and almost innocent — a scoop shop on a summer afternoon — Dipped in Chocolate is what happens after the sun goes down. The chocolate here is not a candy bar; it is cocoa with bite, dusted with green cardamom, folded into vanilla cream and set on a base of creamy sandalwood and Sumatran benzoin. It is warm, spiced, subtly powdery and unmistakably gourmand — yet it never collapses into pure sugar. There is structure beneath the sweetness, and that structure is what separates it from the avalanche of dessert-adjacent releases crowding the niche market. This is a fragrance for people who want to smell delicious without smelling like a dessert menu. It is unisex by design, priced at $115 for a 50ml Eau de Parfum, and — being a limited edition — it exists in the peculiar limbo that all great indie releases eventually enter: beloved, discussed and increasingly difficult to find. If you can still get your hands on a bottle, the reward is one of the most complete chocolate compositions released this decade.