Cesare

Wet: Grapes and resin. Drydown: The grape becomes a more generalized sweetness, the resin develops into musk. Mmm, and dragon's blood, such a great scent. Dry: This is almost too much patchouli for me, but it's a good blend for enriching the wonderful smell of dragon's blood.

Wet: VIOLET. Drydown: Like choking on violets. That were dipped in vanilla. Dry: If you've ever had violet candy? This is the olfactory equivalent. Very sweet violet. I like violets just fine, and this isn't bad at all, but I think this is too much violet for me. Dry, 15 minutes later: This balances out better over time; the gardenia adds a more general floral note so that it doesn't feel like your nose is being beaten to death with a handful of violets. It's sweet and dusky and pleasant. If you like violets as a dominant note, this would be a blend to check out.

In the bottle: menthol, ozone and men's cologne. Wet: So subtle it's almost not there. A vague ozone-coolness with a hint of cinnamon. Drydown: I had to apply more because I just couldn't smell much of anything. It's still just slightly cool and minty with a waft of spice. What I can smell of it is interesting, but it's really hard to get a good whiff of it. Dry: Now I can smell pine and a little cedar. Wood, mint and cinnamon. It's still almost imperceptible, though. It just nearly vanishes on contact with my skin. I tried this on my guy. It was stronger on him than it was on me; it blended to a nice woody mint-spice cologne, cool and hot at the same time.

I probably never would have even tried this if I read the ingredients first. I hate myrrh. But I do like vetiver. And this revolts me less than I might have otherwise expected. It's richly resiny and strong. It's still myrrh, though, so it still smells kind of nasty to me, even well-blended with vetiver. It's a good interpretation of the sin-- if "slow and thick" had a smell, this would definitely be it. But this is not for me.

Wet: A thin, high scent. Very light. Drydown: Hints of lemony citrus and florals, but by and large, it's just an airy blend that's hard to pick apart into notes. Dry: You know those room and candle scents like 'clean cotton' and 'fresh linen' that end up mostly just smelling like chemical fabric softeners? Szepasszony is like that, but better. This is like the scent that those smells are trying to be. I'd love to have fabric softener that smelled like this; it's so fresh and clean, and not chemical at all. It would make a delectable linen spray. The downside is that it's not tremendously strong, but I'm happily gluing my hand to my nose to smell more of this.

Wet: This suits the lab description very well. It's flowery with a bright golden top note, definitely tiger lily as opposed to white lily. Also has a faint bite, possibly citrus, like orange peel. Drying: Very nice. The sweetness becomes identifiably honey-like as it dries, though the bright note is dulling. Dry: It's been an hour, and on me, this turns into a honeyed flower scent. I didn't fall madly in love with it, but it's a nice blend.

I found Jack a little disappointing. There was a pumpkin smell in the imp, but once I put it on... where did the pumpkin go? This is predominantly buttery, with a faint bitterness to it, kind of like Jelly Belly's buttered popcorn beans. The longer I wore it, the more it had a kind of popcorn-husk bitterness. From my experiences with other blends, I think the lab's butter note just doesn't suit me very well. Oh well.

I say, "WTF? This is dark? Do you sleep with a nightlight on?" This is light, in my opinion, with a salty note that's very brisk and welcome. It's very clean-smelling and beachy, so the oceanic plants are on target, but I don't get dark unfathomable waters. I get a sunny fall day at the beach. Also, it's soapy. I like soapy but it doesn't really connote creeping and slithering to me! What kind of soap does Beth use?! I like this blend as a brisk scent to put on when it's too warm or blah, and it also layers nicely, adding a sea breeze to other blends like Glasgow and The Hermit.

Wet: Cotton candy and a hint of sawdust. Drydown: Sugar, apple, popcorn butter. Dry: The BPAL butter note has ruined some other great scents for me-- it simply doesn't work with my chemistry. It gets bitter once it dries on me. So I awaited the dry stage of Midway with dread. I do detect a hint of that butter-gone-bitter smell, but this blend is complex enough that the popcorn-husk bitterness doesn't detract. It actually works well with the faint sawdust smell that's in the mix. What's really remarkable about Midway is that some of the notes remain distinct. It could all weld into a haze of sweetness, and some of the specific foody smells do kind of tangle together. But there's definitely cotton candy, caramel apple, popcorn and sawdust. The cotton candy is strongest, and what I'm smelling as cotton candy is probably the miasma of cotton candy, funnel cake, sugar tart and taffy. But a deep whiff gets the apple, clearly and separately from the other sweet smells, and the sawdust and buttery popcorn act as a kind of a base note. When you really suck it in, there's also a hint of oil that could signify the funnel cake. Inescapably, this is a VERY SWEET blend. But it's not sickeningly sweet to me. It's complicated, and undercut by popcorn butter and sawdust; I find it both yummy-good and wearable. Also, it's more atmospheric than a lot of other food smells. It's not like a food that you want to eat, it's an ambiance of being at a fair among all those scents. It might perk your appetite for sweets but I don't think it'll make you want to eat your wrist.

Faustus + Tombstone = Torture King. It's a little more complicated in its phases, but that's what it comes down to. Faustus is golden, woody and resiny and sweet with a hint of spice. Tombstone is vanilla, balsam, sassafras, cedar, and leather. Torture King combines the resin and spice of Faustus with the wood, leather and old-time ambiance of Tombstone.

Sensual, sibilant, sexual and hypnotic: Arabian musk and exotic spices slinking through Egyptian amber, enticing vanilla, and a serpentine blend of black plum, labdanum, ambrette, benzoin and black coconut. Wet: Smoke, leather, amber, spice. Drydown: Smoky and leathery and musky with a strong sweet note that's a lot like Tombstone's vanilla-balsam. It's kind of disappointing... Dry: ...but it dries down to something different and interesting. This settles into a nose-pleasing complexity on my skin. The vanilla is present and seems fresher in this mix than in some other blends. The musk base note is subtle and solid. It's a very dark, smoky scent, cut with a hint of amber and a slight blunt sweetness from the vanilla and fruits. It's particularly appealing when you take a deep whiff and get the full strength of the subtler, brighter notes-- like snake scales glinting in the dark.

Wet: Instant love. I thought this was totally wonderful from the first whiff. It's strong and woody with a spicy-sweet tone. Drying down, the resinous wood smell develops, the spice recedes a little, and a kind of herbal note emerges subtly. Dry, the final smell is like evergreen with a general waft of cinnamon, spice and herbs, but it's emphatically not Christmas-y in any way. The pine smell isn't like the boughs, it's like pine sap, the raw sticky heart of the tree. The whole thing has a really natural, deep-woods smell that I like a lot. It seems unisex and initially I thought the only thing that could tear it out of my hot little hands is if my guy liked it, so I could give it to him and smell it on him. That said, he had a very very very different opinion of this one. He found it so off-putting that it almost ruined the oil for me, so I'm going to make it a dark color so that other people can skip it if they want. Highlight to read it. He said: (Wet) "IT SMELLS LIKE A DENTIST'S OFFICE! My teeth hurt just smelling this! It smells like chemicals and pain! How did someone bottle my terror?!" He didn't actually want to put it on, but I promised him it would change once it dried. (Drydown) "Yeah, it's different, it smells even MORE like flouride and fear. I can't believe you bought a vial of dentist's office smell." (Dry) "Now it smells like the hard, untasty outer shell of a piece of cheap bubblegum. On a pine-soaked floor." I loved this at first, but once he said 'dentist's office' I couldn't smell the berry note without thinking of that gross berry-flavored fluoride solution they give you at the dentist's. I've tried layering this blend with The Ghost and with Cthulhu. Both those oils helped revive my love for The Hermit. But it just goes to show how other people's impressions can influence what you think of a scent!

Wet: High John is sweet, and on first blush it's really similar to the lily scent that dominates the Queen of Hearts. Drydown: Sweet with an edge of resin or soap. The lily-like scent is getting richer and even sweeter, almost fruity. Dry: I actually dabbed some Queen of Hearts on my other wrist to compare because I thought High John was so similar. Queen's lily is strong with a whiff of cherry. I think High John has a lighter lily as part of a more complex blend, with cinnamon and spice, maybe a hint of wood, maybe ylang-ylang and maybe some fruit. Other people smelled grapes in it, and once I read that, I could understand why they said so, though it didn't immediately jump out as grape to me. I worried it might go soapy on me since it had a hint of soap on the drydown, but it didn't get any more soapy than that. It's not very strong on me, but I like it.

Wet: Sweet and cinnamony. Maybe some buried floral notes. Drydown: Cinnamon candy. Dry: This just seems like a straight up sweetened cinnamon, mostly. If there's anything else going on I can't really smell it. I had my guy smell it, too... (Wet) "Oh man. Yuppie candle. Seriously, that's a fourteen-dollar candle that's not very big. Maybe it has foil stars stamped in the sides." (Drydown) "Your cat got too close to your yuppie candle and burned its fur." (Dry) "I don't know. It's just kind of mellow now. Nice. It smells like something you'd sprinkle on clothes you don't expect to get out for a while."

Wet: Really raw, musky and perfumey. Drydown: Starts out like a typical musk perfume scent, gradually growing darker and more resiny. Dry: This is very nice. It's a little like The Hermit: foresty and complex. But while The Hermit has a strong berry tone and a pine note, which together reminded my guy of the dreaded Dentist's Office Smell, Khephra is more like a forest by night. No berries, just dark musk, the aromatic scent of plants and woods, and night-blooming flowers. This is appealing on its own, but it has no really clear top note when I wear it, so it also seems like it would be a great candidate for layering. I bet it would be killer with a single-note cherry, plum or bergamot. In the meantime it's lovely as an evening perfume on its own.