veronicafranco

Richly crowned. Antiqued amber, frankincense, pomegranate, myrrh, rose absolute, and bois de rose. am i really first in line to review this one? i don't even know how to do the magic boxy lab description thingy.... somebody fix it [does not normally get stage fright] in the bottle, which has the beautiful photo too!, this is lovely bright rose and pomegranate. the moment i put it on, i get the sharp edge of the frankincense. how to explain? rose + frankincense on me = more rose than rose (in a good way). rose + red fruit (like in les bijoux) also = more rose than rose. so rose + frankincense + pomegranate + rosewood = definitely not for those who don't like rose! as it continues to dry, the amber is sort of spreading out around the edges, warming the scent. i don't get any myrrh thus far. this is extremely womanly and classy. timeless. grandma would have worn it... well, both my grandmas were serious hotties back in the day! would be perfect on a bride or with an elegant evening gown... but i'm pretty sure i will be wearing it quite a bit more than just for special occasions.

what scent would you wear with this? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0...mp;color_name=1 i'm being deliberately vague about the event, etc. just curious what you'll come up with!

welcome! i don't have many recs but i did want to agree that moonlight path is delish. it's one of very few non-oil perfumes i have kept around. if you can find "the gladdener of all hearts," the two have some notes in common and harmonize nicely...

really? no one else so far gets snake family from this scent? skin chemistry is so interesting. on me, this is definitely a soft, smoky, warmer, powdery-er snake oil cousin. when very dry, i get a bit of the violet/ylang ylang in the form of a lighter floral edge. i enjoy it, but it's not the grail i thought it would be (which is ok!)

wow. add me to those who thought this would be darker. it's fuchsia to me when first applied - i mainly get the plum, berries, and orange blossom. when fully dried down, the amber does peek through. not getting a lot of myrrh or bergamot; the benzoin i guess i can detect because i know it's there. after a number of hours, this smells a lot like "red door" (elizabeth arden?) on me (only, of course, nicer). i think that's the amber + orange blossom. not what i expected (noir), but this is very pretty and i will wear it again for sure.

ohhhhhhh yeah... i always go for plum scents and incense scents. wasn't sure about the jonquil, but it's fine - just blends into the landscape. the rosehip really smells like what you get in rosehip tea - a hint floral, but tangy and almost a touch earthy. it's great with the plum and sandalwood. on my skin, the sandalwood + amber incense + soft plum is the story here. almost like an expensive candle. i don't know anything about kaidan, but her scent is asian, ladylike and yet bad@$$ in my book. on a random and amusing note, my preschooler is wearing her kai-lan underpants today as i am trying this scent. i wonder if i could get mom-sized kaidan underoos?

kewl. thanks, girasol.

i've got one. does "kebechet" rhyme approximately with "trebuchet"? that's how it sounds in my head. heh!

oh, wow. full disclosure - i have not personally experienced the kind of wild night where i would be tasting blood. but i'm pretty sure that kind of night would not smell this great! the afterglow could feel a lot like this smells, though, in my humble opinion. when first applied, i get how the sharply spicy dragon's blood evokes violence. normally i'm one of those people on whom dragon's blood goes to weird loud floral, but apparently honey and amber are good matches for the note and i am enjoying it for the first time! all the rest of the notes are generally win on me, and so i'm not as surprised that the amber-white honey-currant-musk is a gorgeous combination.

any of the snake scents i've tried look like an old yellowy bruise! i wear 'em anyway. (womb furie isn't so bad.)

thanks, guys! keep 'em coming. my first thought was black butterfly moon.... but i won't like it enough unless the ambergris does some serious fading in 2 months, for when i'll want to wear it. unveiled! i'm so color-focused that i didn't think about how well that would suit. and i do really, frelling, love that one. hmmmm....

ok, in the vial and when first applied, i expected to add my "SN licorice" review to the many here. but lo, it's not!! so if you're worried about the anise taking over the whole show, i'd still try a decant. as this dries, the peony + cherry blossom and vanilla come out more and more until the scent is definitely the soft pink of the shunga image's, um, focal point. there's just a slight soapy edge (violet leaf or neroli? anyway it's pretty mild... she's a nice clean girl lookin' at that dirty picture) but it doesn't spoil the fragrance for me. i can't say it's the most me of perfumes, and i didn't really think it would be, but it will be required wearing with a cherry blossom scarf i have, and i think it is also calling the name of a particular pink lace dress that didn't turn out to "match" katrina van tassel in my book.

oh WOW. lucky for me, i am not a hoarder. this is the most golden-sweet thing i have ever smelled. something about the combination of notes makes it not strike me as peach at all. the tea anchoring the fragrance is almost like a soft warm musk. on me, no one thing dominates: it's perfectly blended. there was a YSL scent called champagne, that then they changed the name of and i don't remember what it is now, but this is akin to that - only better.

oh my goodness. this is nice. in the very beginning, the snow (which on me is a touch eucalyptus-y) is a little much. but as it dries, this is quite beautiful! the amber and lily make it rich and creamy, as others have said; the bergamot and cardamom lend it a high-end herbal fragrance. i can't say why, since they share zero notes, but this reminds me a lot of quicksilver phoenix (which i also really like). rich, sweet (this one more so than quicksilver), fancy-spa-stuff herbal. very much like something wonderful you might spend a lot more money on at an aveda salon. as far as capturing the shunga image, i will say that besides the snow note, the olive-green/golden "color" of this scent is exactly true to the picture. beth, for reals, hats off on this one.

my first shunga! i get a very similar scent to what theseagrows describes. the sparkly mandarin/blackberry/khus that pops out when it's freshly applied is nice at first, though not at all what i was expecting. but i really wanted gardenia and musk. right next to my skin i can smell them, but the throw is all tart fruit/citrus/vetiver. i like the parts of this scent, but they haven't melded together yet, and i suspect aging will put them into a proportion with one another that works better for me.

oh yum. this definitely has the famous O honey, but i also get a more flowery one, and maybe the delicately tangy white honey around the edges? on me, it's like 2/3 honey, 1/3 snake oil, which suits me fine. also, if you are thinking you can approximate this by layering O and snake oil.... that's going to be the poor girll's version, for sure. the 3 honeys are nicer, plus if musks are strong on you, that combo is too much. (and thus i considered breaking my "just enjoy the decants, don't need LE bottles" rule...)

oh. this smells like a beautiful jamaican guy. uh, full disclosure, i'm married to a beautiful jamaican guy and he doesn't smell like this. (he is not (yet) much for the bpal.) but i sure wish he'd wear some black death! this is dark but creamy (tobacco plus amber), with pops of spicy patch/sandalwood/clove and lemon/lime. i don't get a lot of citrus at all - i guess it's blended in there well. a bolder woman than i am could definitely pull this scent off, but i do get a strongly masculine vibe. the three scents layered together are fab. yesterday i also tried just black heart + black death, and although they don't sound at all like they would layer beautifully (to me, anyway), they are glorious together!

hmmm.... some thoughts on trying this decant: - this is the first cotton/linen scent i've tried, and i must say that the cotton note is amazingly true to life. - this seems too new. the cognac, tobacco, spun/burnt sugar edge, and incense are almost acrid before it dries down all the way. i bet they'll behave better in a few months. - those who say it's strong are not kidding! this is not one to slather. - the "cool vanilla musk" lyrical describes is what i get also. like a bone-colored cousin of inez' richer, golden vanilla musk. that part of the scent, which wafts amazingly, is very nice! - apparently there is also a lot of tobacco in the throw... i smell it blended into the rest; but having (sparingly!) applied some several hours before, i got into the car (aka small closed space) with hubby and he immediately said "do you smell tobacco in here?" (i said no.... ) overall, i can't say i love this yet, but as i said, i think it has a little mellowing to do... and how could i not try such a classic scent? glad it was re-released (and especially with the other 2 in the trio of scents, which are both great, as is the combination of the three together).

at first sniff, i agree with several posters on the sweet tarts! though of course, being beth's sweet tarts, it's prettier than real ones. as it is drying, i also agree with opticnerd that this is a pink/purple version of agape. i like this one better than agape, though (i always like plum and pomegranate, and vanilla sandalwood + honey is more me than vanilla cream). fruity-vanilla-floral girls should definitely get this one. (how hilarious that i would like that combination myself... certainly never did in anything but bpal!) the sweet pea is a bit much when wet (unless you love sweet pea), but this dries down youthful (ok, younger than me) and well-blended and beautiful! sweet, girly, innocently romantic (though there is the lightest hint of sandalwood and cognac to keep it from being childlike). i tend to like fruit, vanilla and sandalwood scents aged, too, so this one is a keeper. glad i got a decant. (last night, fresh out of the package, i did the layering thing with black lace and black death, and that is fabulous as well - though much darker and badder than black heart on her own!! i am apparently a total sucker for scents that come in sets of 3 to layer, and this one is no exception.)

i'm glad i retested this decant. the first time i tried it (which was the day it came out of my cold, cold mailbox) i was going to post the following extensive review of the scent: blërg! but i've started going back through and retesting all the phoenixes this week, and retried this one as well. i love the initial hit of pear + juniper. beth has really come up with some unusual and beautiful combinations of notes this time around (plum + cypress, lavender + cinnabar). anyway, i seem to like her juniper note/s whenever i come across it, and although i want to be a dark and mysterious scent sort of girl, the fruity bpals tend to smell nicest on me. as it starts to dry is when i again get the blërg phase. it's bitter on me in the way that some musks can turn dark and bitter. i wonder if there is a stealth-note musk in there somewhere? or maybe my batch of silver is just tarnished? either way, this time it's just a phase, and after 10-15 yucky minutes, i get what others describe - pale, crystalline, sparkly. kind of like what i thought cristina would smell like, if the chestnut hadn't been so powerful. or the girl, if the birch had worked for me. a winter bride kind of fragrance. not a me scent really, but it's very pretty and i'm enjoying wearing these anniversary blends as each one expresses such a different "personality"! i will keep the decant. eta: my 100th review? whoa....

i tend to like these sunlit sorts of bpals (someone mentioned sol invictus - i would add labores solis, which shares several notes with this). the bright, rich lemon verbena puts this one over the top. after wearing for a while, it does develop a metallic note i only notice close to my skin - but that's pretty cool, considering what fragrance this is. i wore this to work yesterday on a day most places around here were shut down for snow, but we had to go in. i am a poetic little nerd, but it did feel like wearing warm sunshine around the building. it's a great scent for that kind of day!

two-word review: opulent spa! this was one i wasn't sure i'd like. lavender is usually one of those sad notes i like the idea of, but not the scent on me. as generally happens, when wet this goes on very sharply lavender-y. something great happens to the note when blended with everything else here, though. i can't describe it better than to say it's totally aveda-like, and i mean that in a particularly yummy way.

two-word review: sylvan snakecharmer! ok, i know snake charmer is 2 words. wet, this is dark dark dark, cypress, and a bright spot of yummy plum. it's that plum plus the dark resinousness (resinosity?!) that makes me think of snake charmer. the cypress/hemlock and plum combination is very unusual, and great. also, this is the second tobacco blend that has not made me throw up in my mouth even a little tiny bit (the awesome melainis was the first one). this one is much prettier than i expected! makes me want to wear a dark velvet dress and lots of smoky eye makeup. i'm a fan. eta: i don't get (or miss) the lettuce. days later: excited for the plum, i slathered this one on this morning and.... got almost all dark evergreens and tobacco. not what i had in mind!! maybe this is just one of those blends that only work on me when i wear them in very small amounts. (would still smell good on a guy though.) on the plus side, it turns out garnier makeup removing towelettes are dandy for bpal removal as well.

two-word review: post-apocalyptic clemence! wow. from reviews, i thought this would be an immediate scrubber-offer sort of blend, but it's actually pretty cool. wet, the spices/herbs and myrrh are delicious and i can detect each one. almost immediately, the dragon's blood shows up, but usually it kills everything else in a blend for me - here, everything else is pretty bad@$$ and keeps the dragon's blood in check for once. as it dries, the dark metallic tang becomes more and more prominent. i can safely say that is the weirdest thing i've smelled in a perfume so far - and weirdly true to the real smell of metal. i'm not going to wear it to work or anything, but if i ever need to smell extremely extremely extremely tough yet still beautiful, this would be the blend. (well, actually, there are days i wish that was me at work. hmm.)

i got this as part of a set of anniversary decants - something i would not have ordered separately on its own, based on the concept or the notes, but i've been going down the list in order starting with gold, and today is tin's turn, so here goes! it's the kind of day that i could use a wake-me-up oil, too.... wet: LEMONGRASS!!! (which is pretty.) dry: for some reason, though they don't have notes in common, this has a similar feel to oberon on me. i'm thinking sharp lemongrass + creamy tonka is sort of analogous to sharp bergamot + creamy orchid. unlike oberon, it doesn't go so sour and heavy on me that i can't enjoy it. i would actually expect a lot of positive reviews to keep rolling in from those who love the clean, fresh scent category (though the tonka gives this a richness; it's not what i like to call a "fat free" scent).