From my intro post, 26 Nov 11

I've tried a dab of BPAL here and there in the past, but recently I've undertaken a mission to find a new signature scent, and gone mildly crazy sampling BPAL stuff in search of it. I ordered a few imp packs early in the month, and someone at the labs was very, very generous with the freebies on those orders, so now I have something like 50 scents, all over the olfactory map, to try out.

 

The scent I'm trying to replace is what Christian Dior's Dune (original 1991 formulation, not the remix) turns into on my skin. I have a couple of bottles I've been hoarding for, uh... 20 years... that mix so perfectly with my body chemistry that it's hard to tell I'm wearing perfume; the net effect is that I smell good, and warm, and everyone has the faint impression that there's fresh, warm gingerbread somewhere nearby. It's dry and heated and a little bit peppery, with an undercurrent of ginger and bakery. It's supposed to be marine, oceanic, but on me it's all Frank Herbert, all the time -- hot, sandy, desert planet with an undercurrent of cinnamon/nutmeg/pepper spice, and maybe just a hint of that burning-dust smell of a heater coming on for the first time in winter. It's my absolute favorite winter fragrance, but I can't wear it in summer, because the impression of heat makes me feel faintly sick when the temperature hits the triple digits. The reformulated stuff seems much sweeter, brassier, and more aggressive, although once it ages a bit it mellows down to something more like the original. (The original ages to something even more like itself -- mellower, smoother, the notes blended into each other and less distinct.) Unfortunately, I didn't buy all that much of it ten years ago, so I have to wear it sparingly; even if I bought a gallon of it tomorrow, it would be ten years before it smelled right. So I'd like to find something that gives the same effect without needing a decade to mellow, and I'd love to find something that has the same altering-my-scent-not-covering-it effect without the extra warmth, that I could wear in the summer.

 

I know the notes I seem to get most of from Dune are amber, mandarin, bergamot, benzoin, oakmoss, and musk. Each of those works well to wonderfully on me individually, and the oakmoss seems to be the key to making it smell like a nicer version of me instead of like perfume. I just can't seem to recreate the magic. Oakmoss and galbanum comes close to the undertones. Bergamot and ylang-ylang come close to the sweet highs. Mixing oakmoss and galbanum and bergamot and benzoin and ylang-ylang oils makes me smell like I've been picnicking in an orange grove, which is pleasant, but not what I'm after, and completely misses the pepper and bakery associations.

 

Right now I'm testing Carceri d'Invenzione, which for some reason seems very close to Dune but completely unlike it. I think maybe that's because now that it's settled on my skin (an hour after application), it smells very similar to a fresh application of the new formulation of Dune. This is confusing, since I picked Cd'I pretty much at random, and it has nothing in common I can find in the listed components. Sadly, though, the Cd'I is just sitting on top of my skin (and projecting out several feet) announcing every second or so that I AM WEARING PERFUME! -- altered by my skin chemistry, but completely failing to blend with it, just sort of blanketing my own scent instead of transforming it.

 

So now I know that's the part I'm most after -- I love the desert-bakery scent, but what I'm really chasing is that tendency to infiltrate my own scent and alter it rather than just drowning it out. The Ultraviolet I tried yesterday did that, and I adored it, even though the violet it turned into had nothing at all in common with the smell I thought I was chasing.

 

Thus, today's experiment: mixing a few drops of Cd'I with a couple of drops of straight-up oakmoss. (Initial result: root beer.)

 

Scent is so very, very weird.

 

So, uh, hi! Newbie on a mission, here. Nicetameetcha.

Responses recommended I try:

Cat Allingham (DC)

Shub-Niggurath (own a bottle, almost but not quite there)

The Ifrit (plan to order in next batch)

Arkham scents other than S-N (for oceanic qualities)

Morocco (own an imp)

Ozymandias