loveandprozak

Chaos Theory 3: DCCCI (801?) Overall note impressions: Red musk, amber (multiple types -- dark, honeyed, and powdery), vanilla bean, patchouli, dark musk, sasparilla, other resins and spices? In the bottle: Almost a pure Red Musk single note. Sweet and strong; if you've smelled Smut, you know the note -- it's the same musk. Wet (applied): An initial strong waft of vanilla bean hits my nose upon skin contact. The red musk is still very apparent, but now there is a dark, sweet vanilla liqour counteracting it. 5 - 20 minutes on skin: We have a morpher on our hands. The gauzy red musk has parted to reveal a scent remniscent of Snake Charmer. With the musk and candied vanilla beans still backing the scent up, though, this seems less of the Snake Charmer, and more of an exotic, copper-skinned snake-woman/Naga (circa Laurell K. Hamilton, perhaps?) full of slinky, sexual intent. Honeyed, slightly powdery amber is at the forefront. 20 minutes - 1 hourish: From the clouds of sweetness the distinctly feral scent of black musk has surfaced. It's slight and subtle, far from choking like most of Beth's scents that incorporate a dark musk. This is menace contained -- the still seductive naga smiling, the faintest drop of blood visible on a fang, her belly full of the Snake Charmer's blood who wished to contain her, his body safely tucked away. 1hourish+: The dark musk evidence slowly fades from view, and instead there's the red musk/vanilla bean/powdery amber/snake charmer combination. She's soft, seductive, and well-fed now. The body has long been safely disposed of, and there's nothing better to do on the lazy summer afternoon but sprawl out amidest the honeyed indian spices. Final thoughts: I love fragrances like this that bring creativity and visualization so easily to the forefront. I"ve never been much of a Chaos Theory person, as most of the bottles I've had have always struck me as "nice, but lacking the softening process of blending and reblending that makes a fragrance really come alive, artistically speaking". This is my first real exception to that, I think. While I have, admittedly, never been one for the scent of Snake Oil, Snake Charmer, Smut, etc. on my own skin because it just doesnt' work well with my personality, my hats are off to the beautiful blending of those, and now to this Chaos Theory as well. Quite a lovely winner. Related Fragrances: Snake Charmer, Smut, Golden Priapus, Snake Oil Previously reviewed by neuilly.

If you were willing to look at something non-BPAL, there's several options. I don't know if you're married to the idea that it has to be a BPAL oil or not. I'd say your best option based on your wants, in my opinion is Oriental Lumpur by Les Nereides. You can purchase it at a few places on the web. One place I consider that is reputable that has it is: http://www.luckyscent.com/shop/detail.asp?...04&section= A couple others that sound like they MAY plese you is Padparadascha by Satellite and Dinner by Bobo. Really, the Oriental Lumpur seems spot on, though. You can get samples of it most places as well.

I've found that Herve Leger and Fae smell almost identical!!

I'd have to say that Morocco is my favorite carnation. It rally highlights the spicy/exotic elements of the flower well with the combined notes.

I find that Lick It smells like a Peppermint scented oil + Black Opal on me.

I actually find "clean and spicy" an excellent description of the oil "Black Phoenix".

I would think that if BPALs were 100% EOs with no carriar oil, a) they would be far, FAR stronger and Beth would have put a nice obvious "Caution" on the faqs page, about applying EOs to bare skin undiluted, yada yada I was just in Barneys and the lady at the L'Artisan counter was saying how the scent of Mimosa in one of their perfumes is recreated through "bouquets" (instead of using a synthetic) so I guess it can be done! I doubted! Then again, it does seem like doing something akin to mixing together orange, blue, and pink to make...urm...beige? *knows nothing about blending bouquets, obviously * I have to agree. First off, as several people have pointed out, the least you really need to worry about if you actually apply a highly concentrated essential oil to your skin is whether you get a red mark on it. There can be some SERIOUS side-effects. Secondly, there'd have to be all sorts of cautionary notes to avoid a law suit. There's way too many adverse effects to applying undiluted oil to your skin -- cinnamon, wintergreen, citrus, and vanilla being just a few that are big no-no's. There's also just the truth that almost any undiluted blend would smell really strong and vile if you applied it to your skin. Some of the "prettiest" smelling oils like vanilla and carnation are just awful if you smell them undiluted. Several notes also just don't exist in essential oil form that are listed. Gardenia seems to be the classic example people cite where it doesn't have a true essential oil, but it is created through the use of bouqets. Another good example would be some of the poppy blends, since it is illegal to even have poppies (with the exception of the loosely related California Poppy,) in the United States, let alone try to make an oil out of one. People have also mentioned price -- some of the oils Beth uses like agarwood, narcissus, and osmanthus are incredibly high in cost, and there's no way they could be used in a blend at $12.50 a bottle unless they were very strongly diluted. All that being said, there is a round-about caveat to all this. You have to consider how strong the essential oil being blended is in the first place. While the oil bought in stores is created in a rather complicated, elaborate, and mechanized process, people have been known to create their own oils. This is simply a process of taking an oil, like coconut oil, and daily adding components to it (like orange peel) until it begins to take on the scent of your desired component. (If you're interested in this process in full, it should be easy to find using google, I've done it before!) It is, ofcourse, much weaker than a store bought oil. If you mixed oils with a base of one of these "home-made" essentials and simply added other, stronger essential oils to it, you would, technically, be using "undiluted" essential oils. In practice, though, your oil would still have a very high carrier oil content, making it safe to use on the skin. PS: A lot of bouqets are simply stand-ins with a note or two to help round them out. For instance, as with the mimosa oil described above, while there really IS such a thing as mimosa essential oil it's VERY grainy and difficult to blend with so perfumers will often reach for an easier-to-blend similarly-scentedoil like cassie or orris root. Then, since Mimosa is sweeter than either of those, the perfumer uses some surrounding notes to sweeten it up.

Block Buster and Harvest Moon '05 remind me of each other. But keep in mind that Harvest Moon '04 and '05 have significant differences. I can second this. Block Buster is Harvest Moon 05's brighter, sunnier relation.

Hmmm... this one didn't smell at all like I imagined, conceptually or note-wise. I had expected something that was sweet and somewhat chaotic smelling given the notes and my general conception of Devil's Night. Instead, this is a much drier, mysterious, and subdued blend. I smell woods in this. Dry, barren woods that are not anything like the rich forests I generally smell in BPAL scents, such as Oberlin and Ice Queen. I'd normally be turned off by this amount of dryness, but there's a thick layer of bay rum on top of it that keeps me intrigued. Far from chaotic or playful, this scent is more remniscent of me of a final credits scene in a campy slasher flick where all the campers are missing, the fires from the previous night have burnt out, and the sun hesitantly sets on the all-too-still scene of half-drunk bottles of booze, empty tents, and abandoned camping gear. It's very evocative, and something that I'll probably keep around for the "right mood" even though it's not my normal tastes.

I was very pleased to find that Lady Macbeth and Midwinter's Eve were very similar. It smells pretty much like the same thing, but Lady Macbeth lacks Midwinter's Eve "cold" note. Possibly if you layered it with Szepassony even that would be taken care of...

Wet: Heady and citrusy. Definiely a 'rain forest' feel here. 5 - 20 minutes: There's not much change. The citrus has faded somewhat, and blended to create a really heavyy, wet, lush scent that seems to be a mix of citrus, floral, and woods. The notes are fairly indistinguishable, though. 20 minutes - drydown: Hmm.. this has suddenly become a nicer version of Manila. I smell the same tropical banana-like note in this as I do in Manila, but the the woods aren't so dry in this. This is a vibrant, bright, tropical feeling Manila. I actually really like Machu Picchu. It isn't going to be replacing any of my top ten, and I don't feel the need to run out and buy a huge bottle, but I can see sometime in the future a 5ml ending up in my BPAL cart.

Hmm... I seem to get slightly different things in this than the listed notes. Wet: Cherry. A dark black cherry with some sweet warmth behind it. 1 minute - 10 minutes: Heliotrope. Lots of powdery sweet vanilla-like heliotrope dominating the scent. The cherry scent is still here, but it's now definitely playing "second fiddle" to the heliotrope. 10 minutes - 1 hour: Clove begins to peak through. It never dominates or overpowers the blend, but instead remains in the background, kind of spicing up the cherry. I might smell a little bit of leather mixed in with the clove. Still predominantly cherry. 1 hour - drydown: This scent becomes quite faint and cherry-like at this stage. It's sweet and pleasant. I find F54 to be a very nice fragrance, and if it was available I'd probably get a bottle. That being said, there are quite a few BPALs I like better, so I really would not be moved to pay the tremendous amounts of money people do to get a full bottle of this. I'll probably give another swipe with the imp and then pass it on, without regret, to a friend.

This one started out lovely on me -- lots of orange blossom, but ended up being a complete patchouli-fest, which is one note I really don't usually agree with. I can't really give a longer/better review than this because I ended up having to wash it off.

And more wearable, at least for me . Snake Oil is HORRID on me, but Snake Charmer is fab. I'm so pleased! (Not too strong or spicy on me either. Just sexy. Yum.) I actually find Golden Priapus to smell a lot more like Snake Charmer than Snake oil does.

Love in the Asylum, a recent limited edition (meaning it shouldn't be TOO painful to find,) was a nice rose-tobacco-incense scent. While I haven't smelled it, I also have heard someone say Dracul had a nice tobacco note in it. Non-BPAL, Geparlys' Darkness comes to mind. It's little-known but much loved by many who do know it (in my experience). It is a somewhat sweet, but rather masculine tobacco/tonka blend. (I figure since it's for a car masculine edge doesn't matter!) It's a bit hard to find anywhere but on E-Bay, but you usually can get it fairly cheap there.