merivelle

I need to get a gift for a friend who loves opium scents. Can you recommend you favorite BPAL opium scents? I'd appreciate your help.

I really love this scent. Wet it comes off a bit strong, almost like it has a lemon element, but it quickly dries down to a nice, warm gingerbread/ rum fruit cake . It's a great holiday fragrance. If you are a "foody", you need to try this one. I don't get much sense of the musk myself, so if you are worried about that, I wouldn't be. My only complaint is that on me it fades a bit quicker than I would like.

This is a strange morphing scent. That said, its' kind of fun. It starts off slightly sweet. 1-2 second of cherry cough syrup that almost immediatley turns to a faint lemon scent. I can smell the whiskey and it reminds me of Juke Joint without the mint. This fragrance has a powdery quality and ends in a light, almost cherry note. It's pleasant but I can't smell any blood of any sort , neither Dragon nor Accord. I also agree that it fades very quickly.

This is a fun scent and a MUST if you are a horse owner or horse lover. This is a light scent and is touched by maple, musk, and apple notes. To me, the oat note is more like oat hay than oat meal. It doesn't have an amazing throw and dries down to a light musky/powdery note. A very unique BPAL. For the other horse folks: not really a bran mash, more like a combo of oat hay with maple and apples.

This is a very interesting blend, and my favorite of the 2008 Pumpkin Patch. The description does not include cinnamon, but when I first smell this, I smell pumpkin and cinnamon. Perhaps it's the persimmon. Wet: warm cinnamon and pumpkin Dry: Mango becomes more evident, after about an hour, the pumpkin note takes over again. Verdict: Rich, lovely, amazing throw. This is a more feminine than masculine scent. Overall, a good pumpkin blend.

Is anyone familiar with a perfume called Ed Hardy "Love Kills Slowly"? They sell it at Macy's and Sephora among other places. It is beaucoup bucks but smells amazing. It is described as a fruity floral with the following notes: apple soufle, mango, strawberry, grapefruit, fresdsia, muguet,linden, amber, musk, vanilla. Any BPAL suggestions that might be similar? I have Poisoned Apple and The Hesperides, and Ladon, and none of these apple scents are anything like Love Kills Slowly. I am open to all help! Thank you!

I would go with Alice. Ther rose notes in Alice are very, very light...in fact, I really can't detect them at all. So, if you are worried about the rose taking it all over, you don't need to be. Alice is lovely.

Bengal if you like chai tea. I also agree with the suggestions of Plunder and Chimera. To me, Alice is really more floral than milky, it's heavy on the carnation, and is lovely but no spicey. Dragon's Milk is like milk and honey and even though it has Dragon's Blood, I wouldn't say that it smells like incense. Good luck with your BPAL quest.

I know that the Lab used to use cobalt bottles years ago and slowly switched over to amber. I remember some people being worried about this, and I believe Beth posted something about the change: that there was no difference between the scents in cobalt vs. amber bottles. I suspect the cobalt were more expensive than the amber, and I know that the Lab has always tried to keep the cost manageable for both them and us. (Thank you for that) Dark colored bottles help protect the oils, and I have scents in both cobalt and amber bottles. They are all fine, and as long as the scents are good, I do not worry about the color of the bottle Maybe they are switching back to cobalt.

Imp is great for peach, light fruits. I do not pick up patchouli in thsi blend. My all time fave for apricot is Depraved, but it's also a HEAVY patchouli scent. It's half apricot and half big, thick, yummy patchouli. If you are into the patchouli, you must check out Depraved. And it ages amazingly.

My favorite lavender scents are Temple of Dreams, which smells like pure Englsih lavender to me, and Envy, which is a lavender mint combo. I have tried TKO but can't remember it...I think I fell asleep!

For a rose-incense type I suggest Black Rose. It's lovely and I don't even really like rose. As far as vanilla goes, I love Tombstone. I know the name puts people off sometimes, but think Tombstone, Arizona! It's vanilla with cedar and I thinks it's awesome. Not sure about earth, maybe Graveyard Dirt.

Funny, I just got a Lancome Free gift and it has a sample of Tresor. I checked it out and, while Tresor isn't really like anything the Lab makes, you might want top check out Antique Lace.

I found an imp of Marie and to me it seems more rosey than violety. Le Serpent Qui Danse is the most "pure" violet in my opinion ( reminds me of Devon Violets from England). I also found some Sybaris. This is violet and clove and it is unbelievably rich and amazing but it is best applied one drop at a time because it is really intense.

I LOVE violets! My fave violet BPALs are Le Serpent Qui Danse and Wings of Azrael. Wings is pretty rich and ages amazingly. I think you need to save your pennies and buy ALL of the suggested scents! Evil enabler I!

I do like this scent. To me, it's all jasmine...straight up with no chaser. I like jasmine, and I recommend this one if you are a jasmine fan. It is strong and has great staying power so it is best used sparingly! If you hate floral notes or jasmine or ylang ylang, then you might want to avoid Has No Hanna. Did it lift my mood, yes, however I wasn''t in a "down" mood when I tried it. I like this one better than Follow Me Boy, which turns powdery on me. Has No Hanna did not turn powdery . It is more similar to New Orleans, but as I said, this one seems to be all jasmine.

The scent of a pirate's bumboat, overflowing with stolen wares: tea leaf, cassia, cinnamon bark, clove, allspice, sandalwood, tobacco, peppercorn, and nutmeg. Plunder and I are having a very strange relationship! I tried Plunder for the first time at the September will call and I fell head over heels in LOVE ! So I purchased a 5ml one month later, and was all happy and giddy to get this one home. I wore it the next day and it didn't smell all that much like the lovely fragrance I had swooned over a month before. I found it to be a washed out cinnamon, very little tea, and a ton of tobacco. I like the tobacco flower. It doesn't smell like cigarettes, and I am not a smoker either. However, this was not the hot, spciey cinnamon scent that I remembered it to be. It also faded very fast on me. So, I let it sit there for a few weeks and tried it again today. My initial reaction was ,"Root Beer". Wierd. However, on the dry down it smelled amazing: cinnamon, tobacco, and a hint of tea and spice. Awesome. The only downer was that it faded very fast on me. So, if you are thinking about trying Plunder, I would recommend getting an imp first. This seems like a scent that reacts very differently on various people.

This is my favorite of all the 07 Pumpkins! I LOVE Pumpkin II! It is awesome. In the bottle is is a warm, buttery pumpkin. On the skin, the florals come out but are very sublte. The tobacco is not all that strong on me, but gives an overall smokey flavor to it. I think I'll need to buy another bottle of this one.

Sadly, I am not loving Midnight Kiss. It is very sweet and the red musk is a bit over-powering to my senses. To me, all I can smell is red musk and a very sweet fruity, strawberry type scent. Midnight Kiss seems to be a cousin of Hollywood Babylon. I think I'll have to sawp this one.

I agree that you should try Tombstone. The cedar gives the vanilla are more masculine feeling. Good luck.

I too am disappointed with Fairy Market. It's not a bad scent. I really wanted to smell incense but I just don't. Strangely, I tried this at will call and loved it, but the bottle I brought home with me seems to be a different scent entirely. Fairy Market reminds me very much of Dark Delicacies and Black Moon. It's a sweet floral with no staying power at all. I might have to swap this one as well.

I was hesitant about getting this scent for fear that it would be too masculine. However, I am loving it now! It really grows on you. The cedar is the strongest and it almost has a peppery after taste. I can't smell the leather at all. This one is worth checking out.

I think that this is an excellent oil to use for ritual work and it has been very successful for me. As far as the scent goes, yesterday I actually wore it as a perfume.(I had previously used it only to annoint candles.) I can see where some of you are getting the lemon scent, but I honestly feel, after wearing it for a few hours, that there is a strong carnation element to this oil. Oh well, the mystery remains. It is a wonderful oil for completion rituals.

This is a very difficult scent to describe. It is a sweet, light, floral. I think I smell something like orange creamsicle with flowers and maybe a hint of spice. Definatley not powdery. This is a complete mystery to me! I have no idea what is actually in this blend. It's very nice on and did last a fairly long time. Overall, I find it to be very pleasant.

The boys in my life have liked Villan, Villan layered over Snake Oil, Santo Domingo, Doc Constantine, and Herr Drosselmeyer. I personally think that the BPAL scents come in such a wide variety that you don't really ever need to think of macsuline/feminine boundaries, except in the case of some very floral scents.