Caltha

The Tower The Tower is a weird scent. It starts out strong and sharp and bitter, vetiver maybe? It dries to a faint, warm, vaguely sweet scent of old, cracked rubber. So if you'd like rubber as a comfort scent, this is for you. Edit: I put some in my hair and could feel it in the air around me all day, even though my hair is cropped short now and can't be tossed by the wind. At first I liked it and found it more interesting than the dry rubber single note on my skin, dark and complex. I got perhaps a hint of incense and mint or some other fresh herb. But after a few hours it turned to mosquito repellant.

Antique Lace Antique Lace was a freebie I would never have picked for myself. It's very creamy, like many AvaLuxe blends are creamy. Mostly vanilla and cream with a refreshing citrusy hint and perhaps some sweet, powdery florals, like violet. Very pretty, but not me. It's like vanilla ice cream. I'm not vanilla. Why pick vanilla when there are chocolate and booze and nuts and spice and... you get the idea. I didn't keep Morocco, which was a similar vanilla ice cream with a spicy oriental touch, so I'm not keeping the plain version either. But I'll say it again, it is very pretty.

Succubus I'm very grateful BPAL tossed this in as a freebie, as it is nothing I'd have tried by myself, unless for the name only (but where's the Incubus? I want to try the Incubus!) I've learned to regard orange blossom as an enemy, and this has two kinds of it and no great notes to make up for it, except maybe the sweet clove, which works better on me than ordinary clove. The reviews are not very favourable either and even those who like it say it's a clean and fresh scent, which I don't find appealing. Still, miraculously, I love it. The orange blossom (by which I mean the neroli as well, or one of them, I don't know which) behaves very well. I was actually glad to recognize the note and thought "mmm, sultry, oriental, heady, incensey..." I could have sworn there was patchouli or myrrh or some kind of incense note in this, but I guess it's just the bittersweet orange blossom that gives me those associations. (The funny thing is, I don't normally like incensey or headshoppy notes either) Am I the only one who actually do find this blend sultry and sexy and dark? It may be interpreted as "clean" if you by "clean" mean "soapy", not "fresh and light". It does remind me of an oriental orange blossom soap, but a very dark and dirty and decadent soap. The succubus is bathing tonight and the scent of her orange blossom soap is lingering on her skin strongly enough to make you dizzy, mixing with her naughtier odours...

Phobos Lemongrass, nothing but lemongrass! I do like lemongrass, but I think I prefer the fresh, citrusy lemongrass of thai food to the scent note which is more dry, grassy, aromatic and herbal. Nonetheless, I do like it. But where did the other notes go?

Strangler Fig I suppose this is a fig scent, what I've learned to expect from a fig scent - (grassy) green and (coconut) milky. I like it better than most fig scents I've tried though, it's lusher and sweeter, not so stale and flat. The tart, sweet greenness of it reminds me of a juicy, sour green apple. It almost has a citrus freshness too, and a certain creamy basenote. Unexpectedly sweet, but I don't mind, it's a rather nice honey or nectar sweetness. It would seem more like lush, fresh green leaves and plants if it was less sweet though. Still refreshing, but I think it dries a little less fresh and green and a little more sweet and powdery.

Yggdrasil Now this is a weird one. The first time I tried it I kept wondering what it reminded me of. Something sort of sharp and artificial, almost alcoholic but at the same time musty, from my childhood. A familiar smell. I thought of rubber dolls, other rubber objects, mouldy tents... Now, as I retry it, I think I know: silver and gold pens! That sharp and weird smell, slightly grey and cardboardish but alcoholic. The funny thing is, the same thing happened to me with Atropa's cottage's Hallow's Eve, but only the first time I tried it, the secound time it was fine. Yggdrasil doesn't seem to change though. I can think of it as a sort of musty wood scent if I concentrate but my immediate reactions is "silver pen!" Needless to say, not a keeper. Oh I get it. It must be the birch, that greyish, cardboardish, sharply alcoholic note. Vinland turned to pure soap on me and the DSH birch note was utterly awful so that explains a lot... Pity, I'd really like to like birch since I love the trees.

Black Forest How come BPAL's forest blends are so sweet? I guess it's some pine or fir note they use... Black Forest is somewhere in between the dry, powdery pine sweetness of Dublin and the minty evergreen hard candy sweetness of Talvikuu and Nocnitsa. It's greener, wetter and cooler than Dublin, more like fir. A sugared fir, that is. Black forest? Maybe the dark scary forest in a Nintendo game... It's not unpleasant, in fact, I like it almost as much as Dublin, but in the end I find the generic evergreen note and the sweetness offputting. I prefer sweet blends to be dry and hot rather than damp and cool, sweetness in the latter kind seems so off and artificial. I can accept the sweetness in Dublin as "natural" if I'm thinking of a dry pine forest bathing in sunshine, with treesap and berries and flowers giving off their sweet aroma in the sun. If I concentrate I can think of Black forest in that way too, as dry and yellowish/brownish rather than damp and green, but something in it reminds me of that evergreen hard candy again... Perhaps it's not so far from Dublin, which a lot of people find moist and green too, perhaps my taste has just evolved and I'm finding the evergreen note dull. Too close to air fresheners and Holiday theme stuff and to far from actual forests.

Midnight A heady white floral, BPAL style. Vaxy and nectar sweet and slightly tropical. Nice enough, but not special enough to be a keeper for someone who isn't into florals much. (It's funny, the few department store perfumes I fell for ante BPAL were florals - Flower by Kenzo (poppy? more like violet) and Beyond Paradise (jasmine!) but I'm never particularly attracted to them anymore, floral notes tend to make me shy away from a scent, fearing that they will dominate it.)

The Unicorn The Unicorn sure is subtle, I put it in my hair and I can't really feel it at all. When I shake my head and inhale deeply I get a whiff of something sweet and vaguely floral that might as well be the scent of schampoo. According to my notes from when I tried it on my skin it started with a sharp, almost alcoholic or mosquito repellant-like blast but quickly mellowed to a green grassy, citrusy, honey sweet, clovery schampooish scent. Too schampooish for me.

Crossroads Incensey, fruity, jasminey and soapy. In the same sweet incense/oriental jasmine soap category as The Caterpillar, but I much prefer The Caterpillar. Crossroads is rather dull. And yes, I know there's supposed to be herbs and grasses and earth and stuff in it, but nope. Well, alright, maybe some wet earth clashing weirdly with the jasmine soap.... A bit too cool and moist and flat for me, I prefer my scents cosier and warmer and more fullbodied, and The Caterpillar is that version of this scent to me. Crossroads is so cool I get a hint of metal out of it. I also get... dried apricots?

Death Cap Mushroom and earth, pretty much like Destroyng Angel. I think this is a slightly milder, sweeter, more perfumey mushroom scent though. It's funny, when I tried them on my skin earlier I didn't get mushroom out of either of them, and I thought they were much more artificial. When retrying them in my hair, they're very dirty and musty and natural. According to my notes from when I tried Death Cap on my skin I thought it smelled strongly of plastic or wax or crayon, with a little earth underneath in a weird clash of artificial and natural. I can still see which note I was referring to as plastic or waxy, only now I find it very mushroomy instead. But yes, perhaps a slightly perfumed and sugared mushroom. A tad powdery too, maybe. As with Destroying Angel I'd like to keep it because of the spot-on mushroom and earth note, but I don't really see myself wearing it. Dirty mushrooms don't smell that good, at least not when not mixed with other foresty odours. And it might certainly make people wonder when you go out in public.... I seem to recall from the description that this is supposed to be a lush and dark green scent, but I clearly find it brownish or rather beige-ish. Well I was wrong about the description, I must have mixed it up with something else from Rappacini's garden. The actual description is rather spot-on. But is it a keeper? I already have Destroying Angel for "unwearable mushroomy note".... And Demeter's slimy Mushroom. Death Cap gets more artificial and powdery and waxy as it dries so maybe I won't keep it.... The musty sweetness is a bit offputting, actually....

Vice Mmm delicious! I was a little hesitant because neither orange nor orange blossom use to work on me and my luck with BPAL's chocolate has been so-so. Also, I don't like the chocolate-orange combo much even in candy. But I do love really dark and strong and boozy Italian chocolate ice cream with orange liquor in it, and Vice is more like that than like those orange milk chocolates I find rather dull. The chocolate in Vice is a warm, dry, sweet, powdery, dark cocoa. The orange is mostly a sharp, fresh, almost boozy edge to it. Not like fresh oranges or orange flavouring, more like orange liquor or some kind of orange syrup. I don't really get any cherry, but it might be there as a dark sweetness in the background, adding extra depth and warmth. There's like a woody note, mahogany-style, lurking beneath the surface which I think is really a combination of the dry powderiness and the warm sweetness. Overall it's a real treat, a dark, adult, slightly bitter treat like all the best ones! No plasticky milk chocolate with plasticky orange flavour as was my worst fear. No chocolate-covered cherries either as I hoped, but I don't mind.

Destroying Angel Mushroom alright, mushroom and earth, at least in my hair. Quite musty, perhaps too much so for me. According to my note from when I tried it on my skin it seemed more bitter and herbal and green then, and dried more artificial or soapy, but in my hair it's clearly mushroomy. I don't know if I like it but it sure is fascinating. Can't see when I would wear it but it might be good for layering with some more green and crisp scent, a piney one perhaps, that needs more depth.

Nero Nero starts out with a real blast of evergreens, but in a good way, like sun-dry, sun-hot Meditteranean cypresses or brown, dried pine needles trampled underfoot, not a bit like christmasy Glade or Wunderbaum evergreens. Or is it really rosemary? I seem to recall rosemary from the description... If so, there ought to be more rosemary scents. I also get a whiff of sweet incense smoke, but not too much, it's still a masculine scent. And something slightly metallic or bloody which might be the unsweet aspect of incense smoke. Overall, Nero is warm, woody, spicy/herbal and cosy in a masculine way. Definitely brown rather than green but still with an evergreen vibe. I really enjoy it.

Nocnitsa BPAL's outdoorsy or foresty scents just never work on me. I want them to so badly, but I might just as well stop wasting my money. I've found out Alternative Breeding's foresty blends are much truer to their names than the BPALs in the same vein, without the odd and quite un-foresty sweetness I get from the BPALs. Nocnitsa does pretty much the same thing as Talvikuu: it turns to evergreen flavoured hard candy. Not that such an abomination exists, or at least I hope it doesn't... I guess it's the "cool nighttime air" I remember from the description that equals the "snow" in Talvikuu for that minty fresh hard candy note. Nocnitsa is a more dirty and sticky hard candy than Talvikku though. I do get some natural notes out of Nocnitsa too, most prominently earth and perhaps pine needles and lichen, they're just drenched in too much mint and sugar frosting. I just can't see myself wearing something this sweet and artificial, even though it's not in any way offensive (unless you're extremely sensitive to anything vaguely Wunderbaum-ish) I'll just learn my lesson and stop looking for outdoorsy scents in BPAL's range because I just won't find them after this many tries.

Calliope My first though was marzipan with lavender. Then I found it to be vaguely salty and modified it to Play-dough with lavender. I don't mean that in a bad way. It starts out strong, with a blast of lavender and something lemony or lemongrassy and that dough-y undertone. It dries mellower, drier and woodier, perhaps something more like salty dry wood with lavender. It's a pretty good lavender too, a spicy/green/herbal one I can stand. An odd one and a keeper. Now I'm dying to know what's actually in it...

Antony It's funny, I expected Antony to be bitter and masculine and green, certainly not sweet. All I remember from the description is leather and herbs, and I seem to recall that some people found it to smell like a pasta dish. To me, Antony is fruity incense, much like The Caterpillar. To my girlfriend, it's floral. We agreed on sweet, floral oriental soap. Huh? Nowhere near the description... Nontheless, quite likeable. Well well, we were not so far off after all. I was right about the incense, I didn't remember that. And my girlfriend said "summery field", by which she meant a field full of flowers, but at least there's green fields in it... But where does the sweetness come from? And is there leather in it or is that just descriptive?

The Black Tower The Black Tower is quite unlike any other BPAL I've tried. Actually, I think it smells more "expensive" or high end than most BPALs. A bit like a "BPAL-ized", stronger, sweeter, warmer version of a Comme Des Garcons scent. It's smoky and incensey in a way that makes me think of it as dark grey, but at the same time it has a certain fruity or vanilla-y sweetness, making it more heavy. I also get wood (my girlfriend said pine and resin but I don't know) and perhaps some powdery cocoa and bitter herbs. And metal, I do get metal out of it and perhaps it's that cool metal edge that makes it smell expensive. Very unique and a new favourite of mine. It has everything - sweet and bitter, dry and creamy, warm and cool... Right now I'm wearing it my hair, newly applied, and it comes off more sweet and creamy, but I remember the cool and metallic notes from the drydown.

The Caterpillar To me, The Caterpillar is fruity incense. The sweetest, fruitiest incense in the entire headshop. Like apricot or peach incense, maybe. It could be a sweet and incensey oriental soap too, possibly jasmine. Doesn't sound like anything I'd appreciate, but I do. The heavy, incensey, possibly soapy sweetness of it reminds me of Mata Hari, I think. It seems I can appreciate sweet incensey scents, while I don't like the bitter/resinous/smoky incensey scents and don't generally want to smell like incense. It's not very me though. It might be my teenage hippie self of ten years ago, with a green or orange sarong and a large copper sun around my neck. But I appreciate it enough to keep it, it's rather beautiful. It's also suitable for the caterpillar - the incense for the smoke of his pipe and the fruity sweetness for the psychedelic, bright image of a caterpillar on top of a mushroom, smoking.

Voodoo Pine and vanilla, as I remember from the description. I don't find pine very "voodoo". In the drydown it's more like wood and vanilla, pretty much like the vanilla-drenched dry wood in Tombstone. Perhaps a bit more balanced and warm and cosy and spicy than Tombstone though. Not quite what I expected (where's that lime?) but I like it well enough. I don't know if I need another Tombstone, but I think I prefer this blend to Tombstone so I guess it's a keeper.

Morocco I was expecting something more oriental and spicy, not this creamy and foody. Morocco has the creaminess of a lot of AvaLuxe scents, actually. It reminds me of ice cream, yet it's a warm scent rather than a cool one. A vaguely oriental ice cream dessert with perhaps pistachio, almonds, cinnamon, cardamom and rose water. Only hints of it though, the dominating note is the creamy vanilla ice cream. It's nice enough but I don't know if it's a keeper, I was expecting something much more exotic...

Dee Dee is everything I hoped for. It may not be what I expected, but it's lovely. I've been intrigued by the description for a long time, but now I can only remember parchment, so I have no idea what's in it really. Dee starts out strong and warm and dry and vintagey boozy. I'm thinking maybe a similar dry wood note to the one in Tombstone. And spice. Red chili and saffron? And something to sweeten and mellow it a little, tonka? I'm pretty sure I'm way off... Actually, it reminds me of the cosy "burnt rubber" note I got from Saint-Germain. Only cosier and better and more edible and less like, well, burnt rubber. A truly original and exciting scent, I can't quite describe it. I only know it's warm, hot even, and cosy and spicy and yummy. In the drydown I get a lot of spice. Food-spice, not perfume-spice. Pepper and chili and curry. The only other perfume I have ever got that kind of spiciness from was Oriental Lumpur from Les Nereides, which is much drier and flatter than Dee, without the touch of mellow sweetness or the cosy woody base (it actually has a clean soap base instead). There is a certain spicy herbal note in Dee that might be a very well-behaved lavender. I've recently discovered that I enjoy lavender when it does not smell like lavender, when it's only green and herbal, not that old purple floral to freshen up your linen. Oh, I don't know, I'll stop guessing and go read the description again. I do know however that Dee is a new BPAL love of mine.

Hurricane I had better luck with Hurricane than with BPAL's other water scents, probably because there are other notes in it stronger and more dominant than the ozone and aquatics, or perhaps simply because the scent is stronger overall, too strong and dark to remind me of some loathed generic sporty fresh scent. Well, it does have a men's deodorant vibe. A very dark men's deodorant. It's that artificial cleanliness I'm just not friends with. Luckily, Hurricane has enough dirty darkness to save it for me. I seem to recall vetiver, which I usually don't like, but here it's a good dirty, woody, earthy, dark, murky base for the fresh, tangy notes. And those fresh, tangy notes are intense, not citrusy like they often are but rather alcoholic. Hurricane is, perhaps, a dirtier, darker, stronger version of Comme des Garcons' Dry Clean. A similar alcoholic blast of artificial cleanliness, way to extreme to be your-average-masculine-aquatic. I strongly prefer Hurricane because of that dirtiness that makes it more natural, a bit more of, yeah, a hurricane, and a bit less of a dry clean. Quite refreshing when it's damn hot like it is right now. Weird and dark enough to be a keeper. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, an unexpected sweetness comes out in the drydown. I don't mind. It only takes it farther from the men's hygiene-department.

Tweedledum As anything with fruit in it, Tweedledum is mostly fruity on me. The good thing is it doesn't turn into scented erasor or bubble gum or bubble bath or something like that as most fruits and berries do. It is very bright and playful and childish, but not artificial. Instead, it's a juicy, sunripe, sweet, yellow tropical fruit. It seems mango actually works on my skin, so I've finally found one fruit besides apricot that does.

The Great Sword of War Mandarin, tonka, saffron, black tea, cocoa, tobacco leaf, sanguine red musk and five classical herbs of conflict. Mmmm wonderful, wonderful! Dry powdery cocoa and musk like the one in Scherezade, freshened by citrus. Absolutely edible but still interesting and complex. I get wood, cake, syrup and smoke with a hint of resins. Warm, dry, powdery and golden brown. Besides Scherezade I think it reminds me of Centzon Totochtin. A new BPAL favourite for sure!