Naamah_Darling

This is crisp and somewhere between lightly floral and lightly fruity, with a whiff of cinnamon and a trace of spice. It smells warm and wet in the bottle, very pleasant. It goes on in a heady perfumey rush, gardenia or geranium and a hint of something crystalline and clear – an almost chemical overtone that is reminiscent of commercial perfumes. There's musk in here, too, I think, giving it that nasal lift. There's still an afterscent on drawing away from it of cinnamon and spice, but it's very subdued and is being sat on firmly by the great-grandmother of all perfume smells. It gets dusty as it dries, but not powdery or like makeup, so it's rather pleasant even on extreme weardown, which floral scents usually are not on me. As it dries, the spice note fades, and it's much more of a dry flower scent. I don't know if I get fire from it, but I certainly do get brightness. This is grand and bright, but never oversteps its bounds. A mature, intelligent smell that hides nothing because it fears nothing. Beautiful.

Oh, dear. This sounds lovely, really it does, but if you'll pardon a pun, florals are not my strong suit. I smell the rose notes right up top, with a clear perfumey floral I don't recognize. The alpine scent of freesia is a chill, sweet note, bright but almost buried under the rest. This improves on, develops a little depth with the candylike lotus on one side and the rich roses on the other. Something in here is very green, possibly the orchid. I like it. The throw is profoundly beautiful, a light, airy floral that beckons so sweetly. It's a wistful, gentle scent, breakable almost. It's not too perfumey, but because it's so floral it's more traditional rather than less. And, in a welcome departure from the norm, it doesn't go skanky on me. This stays light, green, and beautiful the whole time, from first application to weardown, only developing a trace of powder toward the very end. Beautiful scent. Shame it was an LE and I'll probably never see it again.

This is musky and fruity, and very soft, a quite perfumey perfume without being stifling or over-sharp. It goes on in a haze of resins with just a breath of florals and fruits. It's a very deep, spicy incense blend that has a great deal of gravity. Resinous with a trace of woody green. As it dries it gets fruitier and woodier, and just a little sour. I don't think this is working for me, sadly, but it is a beautifully subtle scent. It would indeed work equally well on men and women, I think.

Sweet and dark, this is currant, pomegranate, and vanilla with a rich dose on incense bottoming it out. There's a touch of something nutty or coconutty, I really can't get a grip on it. On, the amber and vanilla come out for a moment of rough resemblance to O, but this is almost entirely done in by the myrrh and the other incense notes, which quickly overwhelm the fruity notes. The sweetness is still there, but it's barely hanging on, mostly anchored by the vanilla. There's something terribly, terribly familiar about this scent. It's complicated, deep, and absolutely beautiful, and only the fact that it is just a hair sweet is preventing me from calling it one of my favorite scents ever. It's very female, but not overly feminine or overpowering. It's strong, but not oppressive, and the throw is very present but polite. It's sexy, but in an offhand way, not in a way that's consciously trying to please.

Oh! This is musky, mossy, and herbally green in the bottle, with a hint of warmth that is either the leather or the tobacco. There's not a single note in here I don't love, so I have hopes this will smell as lovely as it sounds. And it does. It's much less assertive, much more low-key, and much earthier than I had expected . . . there's not a lot of throw to it, it's a very close-in and personal scent. It's so subtle that I can't really describe it . . . the tobacco, amber, and musk form one end of the pole, with the herbs and moss on the other end. The rest is a smooth grade, more middle-note than topnote, green and yet very easy on the sinuses This is really a mellow, spicy, earthy scent that, properly applied, could be easily mistaken for a person's natural scent. It's extremely appealing, very smooth, and much friendlier than I was expecting. Arrrgh! Fucking limited editions. They're so yummy and tempting and unavailable!

The strangest scent. The lightest honey mingles with fresh, herbal lavender for a scent full of . . . damn. Our vocabulary for scent is very poor. "Olfactory dissonance" is the only way I can describe it. The two scents oppose each other, one dry, one syrupy, one clean, one fleshy, one very forward, one basal. The blackberry is a persistent reverberation even after I pull back from the open bottle, but it is not apparent up close. The fierce herbal twang to this only intensifies once it is applied. The dianthus – carnation, y'all – only adds to it. I am afraid this is foul on me, a scent tense with the feral odor of a flower bed newly soaked with cat piss. As such, I can't even properly classify this; I'll take a stab and call it an herbal floral suitable for people who like lavender scents, but are searching for something a bit off the path, as it were, from the usual. Those who cannot usually wear lavender, be warned. This is particularly intense and aggressive once it goes on, and the scent is not easy to remove.

This is rose and heavy incense notes with a splash of carnation's fizzy dazzle. This is most certainly one of the most interesting rose blends I've smelled from the lab. It has not only depth, but a kind of manic quality – the rose is smooth and lovely, but the incense is sharply crystalline. The rest is slightly spicy, the tobacco leaf shows its influence more than directly asserting itself. It stays down there with the balsam and the tonka, making this scent warm and slightly woody. I like this. It's definitely a rose scent, but not overwhelmingly so. Very agreeable! This finishes off to a resinous rose finish. For those who might be searching for a similar scent, Pulcinella & Teresina from Carnaval Diabolique: Act II is a possibility. P & T, however, is also a limited edition, so. . . .

This is sandalwoody at heart, with a faint whiff of soft white pine, and a breath of florals taking a backseat. The floral here is soft, rosy, sweet. On the skin, it acquires a touch of honey, pleasant and sugary but not overwhelming. This is pleasant, a sensual blend that speaks more of slow pleasure than of lust. This would make a truly wonderful room scent, as well as a personal perfume. It's painfully polite, really, just a pleasant, woody aroma with an overtone of incense and roses. It's light but also sensual, an excellent combination.

Caramel/butterscotch, rum, and a faint whiff of apples are all I can smell in the bottle, a thick, sweet, yummy combination that smells syrupy and lickable. On, it's even yummier. It fills out to a creamy butterscotch and rum scent with just a trace of apple spice. And the longer it's on the more buttery/caramel it smells. This is delicious! The apple here is not overwhelming; it's actually the apple spices I smell more even than the apple itself, and it's a very subtle note. Mostly, this is caramel and buttercream.

Chocolate and vanilla make this foody straight off. The sweetness is underscored by a hint of orange zest and a flutter of sweet florals. This is, overall, a cacaphony of the scent in which no one note dominates. Its predominant character is foody and sweet, faint florals overlaid with thick sugar and spice. The incense fills it in, sandalwood and amber, so that it's a very unified, even scent with a smooth body throughout its life. Despite the fact that it contains orange peel, it's not citric in the slightest, and despite the fact that it contains geranium, rose, and lavender, this is not a primarily floral aroma. As it dries, the florals do come up a bit, thinned by the astringent tea note. Rooibos is thick and woody, a very distinctive odor, and I detect it here. This starts as thick and foody, and winds up astringent and sort of wispily herbal. I like it very, very much.

DCCXCVI, bottle 796, for those of you not into the MCMOMGWTF system of numbering, and it smells very cedary/junipery in the bottle. Pretty! But very masculine. There's a hint of smoke, something burning, way back in there. This smells like the woodfires I used to build on the lakeshore with green pine boughs when I'd go camping as a kid. Smells great! Dies down to a cedar finish, mild and not that lingering. Also reviewed by Dymphna, here. We obviously got really, really different impressions from it.

This is smoky and sweet in the bottle, with a bright tang of something hard and glassy bottoming it. It's not traditionally perfume-y, it is in fact slightly masculine, but it borders on it with a topnote that is high and clear. This one is hard to describe; it's a very subtle blend with a lot of interplay and action between its various notes. I'm definitely picking up frankincense or something, a very churchy note, but there's an odd bright note, which must be the metallic blood scent everyone talks about. It smells nothing like metal or blood, but it is cool, bright, and hard. I can't for the life of me identify it. There's a rough similarity here to the Black Tower, which was also smoky with a hard and bright topnote, but this is not woodsmoke and leather, it's ecclesiastical incense. It's not particularly aggressive or tenacious, wears off fairly quickly, and has only modest throw. I like this. I like this a lot. It's very subtle with a touch of poise, yet not overly refined.

This is a full, sweet, perfumey, throaty rose. Beautiful, yes, but really, really intense, almost boozy. It goes on the same . . . single-note rose, powerful and dark, very pretty, very haughty, and completely overwhelming. There's a warm note, almost a spiciness, that keeps it from smelling cool and sweet and fresh like Rose Red. This is a hot, velvety scent, a sexual rose, fleshy and spoiled rotten. Definitely one to try for fans of rose scents.

One of the limited edition Yule scents I'm only just getting to review. This is a ferociously perfume-y medley of bright florals in the bottle, very perfume-y, and just a little too much – definitely as decadent as an overdose. It's like a fugue of bright, shiny, glittering topnotes, in which no one note dominates, yet it's pretty smooth overall; a shimmery, wet scent with the same effervescence as a champagne waterfall. On, it deepens. Here comes the musk and the sandalwood, arm in arm, just beautiful. There's a little rosiness, but it's surrounded by other florals, soft white ones and radiant, bright yellow ones. The poppy gives it a little bite. This is very beautiful on; it's beautiful and it even makes a stab at classy, but underneath it's just depraved. There's a drugged sort of stuporousness to it as it ages, the sharp and jangling flowers wearing down to a heady buzz atop the sandalwood's high. It's nice, and it gets nicer and less strident as it ages. The whole thing has the same sort of lush, high-maintenance beauty that gorgeous young actresses have. This is Jessica Alba selling her soul and going blonde. It's sleek and sexy and utterly caught up in something out of control.

Green cypress mingles with the sharpness of orange for a cologne-like base. There is a faint hint of clove, but not a sweet baking clove, more like an old, dry clove. The balsam and rosewood are mixed, too similar and too twined together for me to tell which is which. The smoke and musk, likewise, are bound. Smoke roils out, and spices, but this is a cold scent, a remote scent. It's the cypress and the orange, I think. The throw is spice and smoldering wood. Closer, it's powerful rosewood and rich musk. There is a hint of myrrh, but not too sweet. This isn't a sweet scent. It's grim, and it's rather dark. As it ages, it gets sweeter, the spice and the rosewood predominating, the fading smoke and cypress warming a bit. The myrrh is dusty and golden. I like this. An aged, arcane scent with a trace of menace at the beginning, that smooths out to a lovely finish with just enough of a perfume edge to it to keep it from being murky.

In the bottle, a sweet and hazy pure incense in crystalline form. On, it's redolent of frankincense, myrrh, and a lick of sweet wood – pine, perhaps, or cedar. It's a thick, soft scent, not too heavy, and without too much throw. As lovely as it is on my skin, I'm thinking this would probably be even more beautiful as a room scent. As it dries, this becomes very woody and smooth, not very much like incense at all. I like it, but I don't think it's a big-bottle purchase. What I wanted from this was basically more Jacob's Ladder, and in retrospect, that is pretty silly.

This is so high and bright and clear . . . amber and strong citrus with a sweet flush of flowers and a lick of tangerine. The florals come out more on the skin, with a breath of sweet, fruity resins. This is such a cheerful, radiant scent, unsullied and bright. I was expecting this to be more incense-heavy than it is, but it's mostly sweet citrus and a little floral. Lovely and cheerful. The florals and the sharp citrus die back a bit as it dries, letting the rich amber and golden frankincense come to the fore in a scent that is fuzzy and radiantly warm.

WHUUUH!!! ALCOHOL!!! GAH! BZAAAK! GXXXKT! Yes, this smells like whiskey. No, not rum. WHISKEY. A peaty old bog-man might smell like this, if he'd got really drunk before they strangled him and dumped him in. Wow. I'm actually afraid to put it on, because I don't want to smell like I've been boozing it up. But I'm your BPAL guinea pig, and I'll wear anything, so here it goes. *dabs* *sniffs* Oh, GOD. AUGH. What did I expect it to smell like? What the hell was I thinking? This smells like . . . FAUGH!!! *coughs madly* It's okay in the bottle, actually smells kind of good. There's a sweetness to it, and something that mimics alcohol's penetrating reek only too well. On my skin, the dead bodies and seaweed stink of whiskey comes out, but not in a friendly way. This doesn't have actual alcohol in it, but it stinks of whiskey. Now, a touch of this with something sweet to mellow it . . . a cake-type scent? Maybe some chocolate? That would probably smell fanTAStic. But alone this is just too powerful to wear, unless you want to be pulled over by every cop in the county. It's smell-it-through-a-car-door strong. It dries to the burnt hair and empty bottle of Wild Turkey smell of a drunken night spent too close to the campfire. The throw would probably peel chrome off a trailer hitch from half a block away. It will make small children cry, your husband recoil in horror before shoving you into the shower, and make your cats pull that "I smell your BUTT you disgusting HUEMANZ!!!" face. I will keep this in case I ever have to go undercover as a hobo in Detroit. Thumbs way up for realism.

This is more or less like you'd expect: a strong spiced patchouli rush out of the bottle, tempered with the most velvety and dark amber you can imagine. A very beautiful scent. There's a soft herbal edge to it that keeps the patchouli from being too dirty. I really like this, and can't get enough of it. The amber is warm, the spice is warm, the patchouli is hollow, dark, and earthy, and the overall impression is one of space, of vast, unlit, vaguely-creepy spaces. A spot on Mr. Jacquel scent, if you ask me, and one of the standouts of the Carousel blends.

Pale musk and green notes dominate this, a watery scent with a touch of the arcane lent to it by the sandalwood. It's clean, smooth, gentle, a lovely scent that isn't too much of any one thing. A bit lighter than I prefer them, which means this will probably be wildly popular, since my taste skews dirty. This is creamy golden light washing over reeds at dawn, an evocative musk blend with just enough juicy greenness to make it truly interesting.

Oooh . . . cologne. This is cool and citric, but not lemony. The vetiver blends with the citrus notes and the fresh lime to make this clean but forceful. As it dries, I can smell the artemesia, an herbal greenness that is common to several of the Lab's absinthe blends. Very nice. Overall, classically cologne-y, but light. It's not aggressive, but it's not exactly friendly, either.

Yeah, this smells exactly like sugar, bay rum, tobacco, and lime. Each is distinct and clear. The overall impression is one of disorder, of gentle disarray. The tobacco isn't as smooth a note as it usually is. Here it smells sort of dirty, fusty, like an unwashed coat. The bay rum gives it a hint of that "cheap aftershave" vibe. On, it's strongly tobacco and rum, with that lime lancing out. In case you're thinking that it smells sweet, it doesn't. Bay rum does not smell like the melting caramel rum you are used to; bay rum is a completely separate thing. The tobacco and lime are in the throw, stinkily. I really can't say I care for this. In small amounts it might work, but it's a very powerful scent with a lot of throw. It's subtle, but very, very strong. I will tentatively class this with the aftershave type scents, because of the lime and bay rum, but it's not something I can in good conscience recommend to anyone for regular wear. I like smelly, stinky scents, and this is just too much for me. The drydown is all right, but oh, that opening salvo is a whammy.

Honey, apples, and sweet little flowers swirl with almond liqueur and a vibrantly golden musk in a blend that is both crisp and sexy. The apple is the standout note here – an unexpected smell like a fresh-cut gala apple picked in the height of the season. It's gorgeous, and supported by the light florals and the musk. That part of the scent is very like Les Bijoux. The honey and almond give this a sticky sweetness, and the honey and amber give it depth. This is complex even before application, a medley of beautiful, golden notes. On, it deepens. The amber comes out, and the fig leaf, which is a sticky, low note that rubs up against the honey. The musk and honey twist together, too, with the apple's thinner, cleaner scent swirling around on top. As it dries, the musk, lily, and rose come out. The rose isn't apparent until the later stages on me, but here it is, pink and just a bit powdery, pretty and sweet. The musk is like golden fur . . . it's so soft and so pretty. This is a wonderful scent, and one I'd recommend to those who like honey blends, but find scents like O a little too powerfully thick to wear. I'd also recommend it to those who like slightly more traditional perfumes; this has some very traditional elements that will appeal to those who are used to wearing commercial perfumes.

This is nice. It's a deep, thick scent, heady. The spices are in front, the flowers in back. Now, most spice blends I've smelled contain something else, like musk, amber, patchouli, sandalwood, etc. This is apparently a spice blend without those things, and as such, it bears investigating. It's much purer, a much clearer scent than I would have expected, without that murky tinge that ruins a lot of otherwise nice blends once they hit my skin. And yet, it does smell quite a bit like incense. There might be a bit of sandalwood in there, but if there is, there isn't much. It goes on with cardamom leading. I definitely smell rose or rose carnation, and ginger too. The florals are subtle. The closest thing this reminds me of is Voodoo Queen or Chrysanthemum Moon. This is not a harsh or overly dark scent, as I had expected. It's very warm and pleasant, welcoming even. I love this. It's what Mme. Moriarty should have been on me. As it dries, the florals launch tendrils up through the bed of spices. Carnation comes out, leading a hint of some other spice. Saffron, perhaps, or ginger? I can't say. More florals . . . myrtle? Wow. It's utterly delicious, a very distinctive scent that you could leave behind you like a signature or a fingerprint. Lovely. Utterly lovely. The best of the lot.

Oh, man. This is a relentlessly tense and drawn scent. Sage and lime give it a high, sharp scent in the bottle, but there is a promise of depth. On, the sage and patchouli combine to make a smell like . . . uh-oh . . . here it comes . . . yeah . . . that's rabbit urine. I think this is one for the swaps, my friends. On me it has almost no throw, is nearly nonexistent even close up, and what I can detect of it smells like ammonia. If I force myself to linger and really sniff, I can detect what smells like a wonderful fresh herbal scent. Alas, the only "heartache" here is the heartache caused by smelling like pee.