calivianya

Ooh, this is good.

Midnight Kiss is initially all red musk, cocoa, and wine on me. After a while, I can smell the patchouli trying to fight its way out, but red musk and wine amp on me so well that it's not winning. Eventually, the cocoa fades and all I have left is red musk and wine. I never quite get the amber, nicotiana, and sandalwood, but it's very good all the same.

I started off the day with Red Lace, and it was sweet and snuggly and awesome. I may have to seriously think about buying a backup bottle before it leaves Dark Delicacies.

Another for you to try would be The Bow and Crown of Conquest, if you also like woodsy scents. The description is: Nobility and haughtiness befitting the Antichrist: sage, carnation and cedar with lavender, vanilla, white musk and leather. It's under Sin and Salvation and I think it's quite delicious.

I'm going to second the Arabian Dance recommendation. To smell like a true coffeehouse, though, you'll need to layer it with something sweet. The Arabian Dance is not very sweet, at least on my skin, by itself. I imagine if you can wear The Antikythera Mechanism, that would be a great sweetener. I tend to pair it with Red Lantern and get a caramel coffee vibe from it.

I agree with the candy-ish descriptions. This is a very, very candy sweet pear and coconut blend. I can't smell the carnation, and I'm not really sure what tiare and angelica smell like so I can't attest to their presence. It is a very soft and subdued kind of scent. Very pretty.

I smell... Sea Breeze?

This isn't quite Sea Breeze, but on my skin it's a kissing cousin. My maternal grandfather always used Sea Breeze as an aftershave. I'd forgotten about that until just now. For me, this is a comforting smell for that reason - it brings back good memories. However, I really think my skin does something strange to blue musk, as the blue moons smelled like aftershave/astringent on me, too.

Wet on my skin, this was a very dry, woodsy blend. I had really high hopes - but then the castoreum came and stomped all over everything. I think I amp the very animalistic musks, so take my review with a grain of salt, but it smells like I'd imagine a bear sitting on some dry wood to smell. I don't picture bears as smelling particularly nice. It's musky in a oh hey - I'm a wild animal that doesn't bathe kind of way.

I wish I got the experience that you guys seemed to get from Tea and Couple Engaged in Lovemaking.

Tea is just lemongrass, lemongrass, lemongrass on me - the lemongrass overpowers everything else in there.

Couple Engaged in Lovemaking is single note oatmeal. Apparently I amp grain smells?

Either way, neither really smelled like tea to me.

Oh wow, this is amazing.

I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but I definitely wasn't expecting this amazingness. I definitely smell woods and musk, but they are sweetened by the champaca and made spicy by the myrrh and frankincense. I just found a new favorite!

Banshee Beat has taught me that my skin makes the hemp/patchouli combination very similar to vetiver. This smells like a vanilla vetiver scent on my skin, very smoky and mysterious, but with just the right amount of sweetness to round it out. I wasn't really expecting to be crazy about this, but I may just have to hunt down a bottle now. It's divine.

This is pure soap on me. I can't think of what brand it reminds me of, but I've definitely smelled this in liquid soap form before. Oh well, I'm glad I got to try it.

Cake Smash, to my nose, is mostly Dorian with a hit of cream cheese frosting and red velvet cake. It is so like Dorian that I don't feel the need to hunt down a bottle, which makes my wallet ecstatic! This really is a beautiful scent, though, and I will definitely use up my decant.

I dont know whats happening to my chemistry, but some of my favorites are failing me. I have previously loved and adored Bordello for my dark sexy fruit blend, but the last time I wore it -- it was decidedly strange and not what I remembered at all. Mme Moriarty doesnt really work for me (tried again very recently) and Im looking for a dark, sexy, fruity blend. From reading this thread, here's what Im looking at trying/retrying: Lady Macbeth, Fruit of Paradise, Imp, Blood Countess, Depraved, Oya

 

I have Bathsheba on right now, and Obsidian Widow on the opposite side. Bathsheba is pretty nice, but not a bottle level of love. The Widow is mostly rose, mean, but still beautiful somehow. I do like the Frumious Bandersnatch pretty well, although I dont get much dark from it.

 

eta: Im okay with carnation, but not realyl wanting a spicy scent. Maybe I need to start playing with some layering.... Bandersnatch over...

Have you tried Lilith? It's not exactly listed as fruity, but the red wine does provide a fruity touch, the myrrh makes it spicy, and the black musk makes it dark. It is a very sexy blend, and the only blend with rose that I can wear.

Celeste goes onto my skin smelling just like pure vanilla cotton candy! When drying down, a little bit of floral makes its presence known and I really start to smell the saffron. Celeste is absolutely beautiful, but I'm not sure if I'm going to need any more than my decant.

Ninon smells a little strange on me. I definitely get the lavender, amber, and honey musk, which I love, but the hay makes Ninon just a little too earthy for my tastes. I love lavender perfumes to be lighter and more wispy-smelling, if that makes sense. I'll give her another try after letting her sit, though - I feel like she has the potential to be absolutely beautiful.

Virginia does smell like she contains red musk! I'm going to second the similarity to Mircalla, and say that she also reminds me a little of Smut. I was expecting this to smell somewhat like Red Lantern because of all the notes they share, but they are totally different perfumes. I cannot distinguish Virginia's caramel, so it is very light in this blend.

I'm not quite sure if she's a winner yet. I already have bottles/decants of Smut and Mircalla, so I'm not sure it's worth keeping Virginia, too. If you like those blends you should definitely give Virginia a try!

The Lupercalia update was a bust for me. I already had a bottle of Smut, which is great, so the only winner I found this year was Red Lantern. Everything else I tried just didn't work on me, or was too similar to something I already had (Womb Furie).

Mircalla reminds me quite a bit of Mme. Moriarty! Unfortunately, the Madame and Mircalla are teaming up to make sure I'm aware that patchouli/red musk blends for some reason turn to pencil shaving and body odor when combined together on my skin. It's weird; they work individually... I can smell the frankincense, florals, and sweet vanilla trying to fight their ways out, but the patchouli/red musk blend keeps them down. This is a real shame; it had a lot of promise from the notes.

I have to say this blend surprised me.

At first, this is all RED WINE! on my skin, which is okay with me because I love red wine in my perfumes. The other notes come out on the drydown, but this stays predominantly wine and myrrh with a little musk and rose on my skin. This is a total winner! It really is shocking; rose is a death note and most of the time black musk doesn't like my skin either. Lilith is a testament to how a little red wine can make anything better.

...Soda? I swear this almost smells carbonated. It smells like I'd imagine a carbonated pink lemonade would smell - very sweet, citrusy, and bubbly. Okay, a couple minutes on my skin and this smells more like Taco Bell's limeade, which I am a huge fan of. And now I'm picking up the mint. This really is a morpher. I don't ever expressly notice the chocolate, but I think it may be present in the opening as part of the creamy sweetness I get when this first hits my skin. It's definitely pretty, but citrusy blends are not my favorite and I don't see myself reaching for this too often. I'll keep the imp, though.

I received this as a frimp from the Lab. Wine, musk, leather, and metal notes are usually win, woods are good... but dragon's blood usually will completely ruin a blend for me even in miniscule amounts.

Wet on my skin, the spicy mulled wine is the dominant note. It is much nicer than I was expecting. Not even five minutes in, the dragon's blood begins to amp and turn this into that piercing floral SN that I always get from dragon's blood.

I received this as a frimp from the Lab. I'm a huge fan of frankincense, but I really don't like rose, so this could go either way! I really hope the frankincense overpowers the rose.

I'm definitely getting a lot of frankincense with a rose undertone when this is wet. I'm finding it surprisingly pretty at the moment. Within five minutes, though, the rose takes center stage and wrestles the frankincense into submission, and it stays that way. What a shame.

I'm not a huge fan of rum smells, and the overpowering rum and almond combination just made this cloying. It's not for me.

I knew I wasn't going to be a fan of this, but I skin-tested anyway.

I get ROSE! ROSE ROSE ROSE! with a little something off-smelling in the background - maybe the jasmine? Either way, as I am not a fan of rose scents this imp is going in my sale box.

I just sniffed the imp, and came away with the impression of fruit covered in dirt. As I am not a fruit fan and not a dirty smell fan, I'm not going to bother to test this one.