Loligo

I am as pleased by this one as I was disappointed by Honey Moon. I didn't expect much luck with Strawberry, but it turns out I love it. It's always wavering between strawberry gum and true strawberry, but it never gets cloyingly sweet. It's soft and rich. The sage and tea come out for a while in the middle, but I never get a noticeable cream smell (though the cream is probably what softens the overall effect).

This reminds me very strongly of both Intrigue (without the syrupy raspberry stage) and Cerberus. It's also another one that reminds me of Pier One in the old days -- a combination of incense, candles, potpourri, wicker, etc. etc. I really like it, and on me it's so complex and well-balanced that it's very hard to pick out individual notes, until the end phase when the musk becomes more prominent (in a sweet but somewhat manly way).

I am so sad! I never expected, after all the glorious previews, that this would be the first BPAL foodie scent to go bad on me. The main scent on me is vanilla milkshake, with greasy donut lingering in the background. But there are two off notes that creep in now and then -- one is a sort of vegetable smell, and the other is rancid grease. It's been six hours since application, and the off notes are actually starting to take over. Woe!

Wow! Since BPAL's non-foody, non-floral smells rarely smell like what they're supposed to smell like on me, I went into this very skeptical, but it really does smell like dirt. The initial note is well-cooked compost -- black, moist, alive. Then as the scent dries it starts to smell more like fallen leaves & pine needles during Indian summer, all crisp and dusty. This will be really fun to play with for layering.

I will so totally be ordering a whole bottle next time this comes around. It's the perfect balance between rich, candy-sweet white chocolate and sharp, tart fruits. There were a few minutes there where I was worried that it was going to go cloyingly sweet, but the citrus zest pulled it back. I've had it on for an hour now, and some tea notes may just be starting to emerge.

It's a fascinating perfume... which does not necessarily mean "good". The very first sniff is like the air in a cave, and I got really excited about the possibility of a cold, wet stony smell. But my skin refuses to let anything stay cold or wet -- soon it turned into a hot, dry, dusty cave, and then I got notes of burning plastic and sweet, dry rot, and now it's settled down into a vaguely unsettling soap/shaving cream smell. If I were writing a horror story set on a space ship, this is exactly the smell I would want to set the mood. But I'm not sure I can see keeping this around for that eventuality!

I didn't order it from the lab because I was afraid of the jasmine, but as I read the reviews I was *so* tempted by all the "tropical fruit salad" comments that I headed over to eBay. Again. Well, I don't get fruit salad from this, alas. In fact, there's not a single individual fruit note that I can pick out. But it's surprisingly nice, anyway. Initially I get this *insane* floral burst with amazing throw. It smells like some sort of spring bulb that's grown in pots indoors, like hyacinths or Easter lilies. Neither one is in the list of notes, so it's probably the peony (not the jasmine, which almost invariably goes chemical on me). I am addicted to this top note; it's just gorgeous. It dries down to a perfectly nice pale, sweet floral, with maybe a hint of generic fruit in the background if you really squint. I never get any pepper or ginger, which I was also really hoping for. But I find myself reaching for this frequently, anyway, especially on really hot days.

It's a bit scary to me to see how my BPAL obsession has grown. There are a ton of LE's that I remember seeing in the first few months after finding BPAL, and thinking, "Nah, why would I ever want that?". And now when I see them on eBay I'm all "OMG can't live without it!!!!" Queen of Clubs is one of those. (To be fair, I didn't read the description and then blow it off -- I never even saw the description because I hadn't caught on to the whole forum-only thing.) On me, there are two very strong first notes: incense and sweet fruit. It almost verges on head-shoppy, but, like, the world's classiest head shop. ;-) I never get *any* dirt smell at all -- which makes me curious to try one of the lab's full-on dirt scents to see what I'd get. Once the incense calms down a bit, this blend is amazingly complex and changeable. With one sniff I get pipe tobacco, then the next sniff is port or some other sweet red wine, and then I sniff again and get roses & currants. This goes right up on the tippy top of my favorites list, along with Chaste Moon and Milk Moon.

This is an awful, awful smell on me. Bitter, medicinal, heavy at first, then "mellowing" to a dusty, moldy smell, like dead things that have been shut up in a hot, dry room. I had to wash it off. Who do I blame for this -- the patchouli, maybe?

FERN! So that's what ferns smell like. At first I got a *very* strong green, crisp note from this, something that I've smelled in a lot of men's colognes. Since I have learned from this forum that fougere is a category of cologne and comes from the French for "fern", I think I can identify this note now! An hour after applying, the fern is still the strongest note, but behind it I smell the sweet/ pale floral/ vaguely citrus smell that always characterizes the lunar oils. It's very clean and invigorating, almost too masculine, but not quite.

Wow, this is the first aquatic I've tried that actually smelled like *water*. Initially this blend smells like fresh greenery on a riverside. Then slowly a sweet, fruity note emerges, then some thing clean and soapy, which finally turns to an evergreen of some sort. All in the course of an hour! So far after an hour and half, it seems to have stabilized at a dry berry & evergreen smell. Very Christmasy, but not fake-smelling like some others that people have described as holiday scents (Tintagel, for example, was bad on me). I'm very glad I have a decant of this, but don't think I'll try to track down a whole bottle.

I've tried lots of scents with musk as just one note among many, but this and Czernobog are the only ones with musk as a very prominent note. Czernobog was *way* too feral, but this one is great. It's pure dragon's blood with just a hint of musk at the beginning, but an hour later it's a warm, clean, sexy musk with just a bit of that unique floral/fruit/resin smell to make it interesting. Very nice!

Alas, it smells like a cheap holiday candle. After a few hours it settles down and some darker, woodier notes emerge, and at this stage it's sort of evocative of a medieval feast hall. But I don't think I can put up with the first two hours.

Dear god. This is the Mystical Sugar Cookie of the Cosmos. This is vanilla ice cream as interpreted by the world's most creative and sophisticated chef. This is... amazing. A strong dairy and sugar smell (I don't get honey, I get cooked sugar instead) with little herbal and floral hints in the background. There was an initial whiff of something sour and fermented, but that went away. Or maybe, it went away *almost* completely -- there's something really fertile and biological in this scent, and I think a tiny hint of that fermented smell might be part of it. I don't know how well it lasts (I just put it on an hour ago), but even if it fades quickly, I will treasure this imp (purchased from Chopchica, BTW).

Who cares what it smells like? ;-) I have a high-strung kid who refuses to believe that she needs an afternoon nap, and the two times I've tried Somnus on her, it's practically dropped her in her tracks, like a rhino hit with a tranquilizer dart. Go, Somnus!

Wet: CARNATION, carnation, carnation. The clove scent of carnation is so strong you'd think I was wearing straight-up clove oil. Drying: The CARNATION gradually recedes enough to let some milk, honey, and rose peek through, and the spicy/sweet/floral combination is absolutely beautiful. Dry: ... and it's gone. Lasted about two hours, then disappeared, except for a faint trace of (wait for it...) carnation. But, oh, it was nice while it lasted.

Not a winner at first -- the cypress smells sick or fake or rotting. Really unpleasant. But as it dries down, the cypress gets tame, the hazelnut comes out, and it smells like a dry, scrubby woodland in the sun. I don't know that I would wear this often as perfume, but it's very evocative, so I may keep it for inspiration while writing.

Hmm... I may just have to expand beyond six, because yeah, Morocco and Bordello really would round things out nicely, wouldn't they? (Which means OH DARN I'd have to order another few imps for myself to keep it in multiples of six. ;-) )

Thanks for all the great ideas! (Especially Dublin -- I didn't have anything foresty, and people seem really passionate about that one.) So here's my tentative list: Snake Oil -- vanilla & "exotic Indonesian oils" Dana o'Shee -- milk & honey Dublin -- Cool foresty smells Neo-Tokyo -- crisp & light Spellbound -- rich roses, amber, & musk Velvet -- sandalwood & cocoa I think there's a bit of vanilla, musk, and rose crossing over from one scent to another, but hardly any of the dominant notes are duplicated. Plus, the bonus for me: I need to order this week if I want to be sure to get it before her birthday in August, but I'll be seeing her a month from now. I can bring a bunch of stuff for her to smell then, and when she gets her order, if there's anything she doesn't like, she can trade with me for something of mine that she's already smelled. I haven't yet smelled *a single one* of the ones I'm getting for her, so I'm almost hoping there's something she won't like! (I won't be ordering until The Update, at the very earliest, so if people want to argue for alternates to this list, feel free!)

Sorry if there's already a recs thread for this; I couldn't find anything quite like it. I want to get my sister some BPAL for her birthday. I suspect her skin chemistry will be a lot like mine (incense/resin, sweet, spice = good; jasmine, lily of the valley, and probably some other flowers = bad), but I don't know that for sure. So I want to get her six imps of scents that are widely liked but as different from each other as possible, so that she has a good chance of finding one she loves. (She lives a couple thousand miles away and I need to order soon, so her sampling my collection's not an option). A lot of the forum favorites fall into the category of sweet and/or vanilla -- O, Snake Oil, Dorian, and Dragon's Milk, for example. I wouldn't want to get her more than two of those. I'd like something light and clean: Embalming Fluid? Empyreal Mist? (Those are both good on me) Something lush and foody: Velvet? Hellcat? (Haven't tried either one yet) A rich floral: Sacred Whore of Babylon? (Love it!) Spellbound? (Haven't tried it yet) And what notes should I look for in the last one or two that would be as different as possible from these? Something woody, maybe? Hamadryad? (Haven't tried it.) Thanks for your ideas!

Oh, so *that's* what they mean by ozone. You know, I've been around before, during, and after a lot of thunderstorms, and I've never smelled this smell in nature. To me, it's the smell of electronic equipment. And hairspray. Yet strangely, I like this perfume anyway. Beyond the ozone I get a gentle, citrusy floral, and even though the ozone makes my nose tingle, it's somehow very energizing. I can imagine wearing this scent on days when I really need to perk up and focus.

Oh god, I'm going to turn into some sort of LE snob, aren't I? Catalog scents won't be good enough for *this* girl! Pink Moon is the first lunar blend I've sampled, and now I'm desperate to sniff all those ones I've missed. I've really enjoyed a lot of the BPAL catalog scents I've tried, but this is just a whole order of magnitude beyond.... For me, the strawberry, the sugar, and the unusual florals were all perfectly balanced in this amazing wave of soft pink bliss. This is the happiest thing I've ever smelled in my life. Plus I love the Nick Drake song "Pink Moon", so this is all-around a winner. I really wish I had a whole bottle, but I think I'm going to spend my limited cash hunting down the rest of the lunar LEs, instead.

Cinnamon frosting -- pure & simple, start to finish, cinnamon frosting. I can't pick out any specific notes like honeysuckle or copal here, but it smells great anyway!

This was a fascinating smell experience, but not necessarily one that I need to repeat! I *felt* this oil even before I smelled it. As soon as I put it on (and I am a slatherer, BTW), I got goosebumps ONLY in the area where I had applied the oil. Seriously, a little square half-inch of goosebumps. And the oil left a green stain, too. It started out with foresty smells -- I'm terrible at telling all those evergreen trees and related woody notes apart from each other. Then it morphed into something very manly and sexy smelling. A bit too manly even for my androgynous tastes, but I thought it would smell great on my husband. And then it turned into wet dog. I know, I know, body chemistry -- maybe it wouldn't smell like a wet dog on *him*. But he's not really that into perfume anyway, so I traded it away for something I wanted more.

Dill pickle, meet cough drop. Cough drop, meet dill pickle. Seriously. The first smell I got was fresh dill, then something medicinal like eucalyptus, maybe with a hint of mint. This lasted for a while, when suddenly this rose came out of nowhere, but I could still smell the dill. It was weird, but not unpleasant. Then it went all soapy. Alas.