t_for_tau

Wow, it's been a while since I've had to immediately scrub a scent off, but this one had to go. Inexplicably this is STRONG mint - and not like the fresh herb but rather definite chewing gum. Chewing gum and leather, to be fair; if you want to smell like the leather jacket belonging to an inveterate gum chewer then this is for you! Seriously, though, I feel like some people will genuinely love this, but since mint literally makes me nauseous it was immediately scoured off. I can confirm that it's persistent... I have absolutely no idea where the mint is coming from because none of the notes suggest it. I was hoping for tobacco and gunpowder and tomato leaf and I'm particularly sad that I'm not getting any castoreum in particular since it's one of my favourite notes and so rare in bpal.

I tried this again to see how it had aged, and I have to wonder if I somehow ended up with the wrong decant, because it smells of...powder and rose. I got nothing. O___o

This *should* work wonders on me, from the notes, yet it smells like generic pumpkin spice?? Alas.

I used to like red musk, and then every scent I tried with it was suddenly super fruity evil. I thought it was my skin chemistry, until I went back and tried some of the blends I'd originally liked, and they were still warm and slightly woody deliciousness! I don't know if Beth started using a new synthetic red musk, but I'd love to find more of those old school red musks. Are there any newer blends that people recommend where the musk is that lovely warm dry woody-incensey version, not crazed cherries?

Terribly hard to narrow down to five, but let's go with, in no particular order: Pinched With Four Aces Orpheus (the DC'd Salon, not the unicorn) Oak King v4 The Bride Unicorn & Ram ...man I wish I had more GC favourites. (In the GC, Golden Priapus and The Old Goblin lead the field.)

"Everything about this sounds perfect except for the lily!" *opens imp* "...ohno." >.< Yep, high-pitched soapy lily D: None of the lovely brownness I'd been hoping for, just screechy whiteness, including when it hits my skin. As it starts to dry down it softens and gets powdery; it smells very much "commercial ladies' perfume" with a strong soapiness behind. Unless this seriously pulls it out, it's getting scrubbed off... Not getting anything like my beloved Unicorn & Ram, which is up there with my Holy Grail scents. No leather, no guaic wood, *definitely* no tonka. Just sharpness and soap and that spray-alcohol smell; if this had been my first experience of bpal some 12 years ago, I wouldn't have stuck around! What a disappointment - all the more so cos as it wears on I get faint hints of a fuzzy tonka-wood behind all the screeching horror.

I've found a big difference in the older and newer blends with black tea in - the latter seem to have a strong anise/licorice smell. Has anyone else noticed this, and if so has anyone identified when it changed, so I can avoid the ones with that smell?

Initially, tonka, green and...licorice? anise? A very faint hint of that, anyway, or maybe of the recent black tea note that seems to smell like that. As it settles I can smell the sharp sappy dandelion coming out, a faint soapiness moving forward. The tonka seems more powdery than its usual creaminess, which I assume is the brick dust; it reminds me of the porcelain in Pediophobia.

Russetfox, I hear you - my wife has a peanut allergy, and though no bpal has ever set it off, sometimes the smell of a nutty note will make her feel sick & freaked out by association. :s The whole "unlisted notes" thing makes me really anxious from time, largely because of that - but also recently I saw that the Yule mashed potato scent is garlicky. I'm allergic to garlic, but it's not something I'd ever expected to find in a perfume, even bpal!

Oh, this is so beautiful! Definitely smells like the moors - I love the peat note (I love the smell of peat in anything, including real life) and the heather, with the rich sweetness of musk behind. The closest comparison I have for this is Hallow-een 1915. I need a bottle.

...This needs to be a perfume. How is this not a perfume? This is the *perfect* Dead Leaves scent. The leaves are fresh, greenish and airy with white musk - giving them, despite the greenness, a curious desolate wintery smell - with just a soft warm rounding of vanilla behind them. This smells like a February moorland in the UK: wide spaces full not of snow but a deep wet frosty chill, damp soil and frozen grass, but just a faint hint of warmth to come in the sun.

Holy petigrain - this is NOT the note I expected to jump out of this! In the bottle it smells unpleasantly like an artificial sweet orange scent. When it hits my skin it blossoms into something far more floral than I'd expect petigrain to be but with that neroli-sh edge - just not dirtied up by the woody resiny bits of petigrain the way I'd prefer. I'm wondering if there *is* some orange fruit in here (a petigrain accord, maybe, rather than the oil itself?) because with the vanilla behind it it's *very, very* sweet - or maybe it's the specific snow note in the "wintry musk". I'm used to petigrain being more of a dirty, woody, almost indolic vesion of neroli, but this is high-pitched floral. No sign of the frank, sandalwood, coriander. As it dries I can detect the thyme contributing to that high-pitched feel and the musk giving it a powderiness (it's definitely a powdery light modern musk rather than an old-school animalic one - alas). Honestly it smells like something a young girl would wear from the Body Shop or somewhere; not at all what I was suspecting. The further it dries the more it fills out into a commercial-type perfume with one-dimensional musk, floral, citrus and vanilla, with a hint of dryer sheet scent (from the "winter", I'm guessing). I'd swear there's an aldehyde in here, maybe C10 or something else fruity. It does fill out a little further and become a little more interesting, but still very much in a commercial perfume style. On a very close sniff there's a wintery-ozoney-herbiness contrasting with the musk/vanilla/fruit/floral; by this point a slightly more sophisticated woman could wear it. If that aspect came out a bit more it might start to veer slightly unisex, but as it is it's very feminine, with a soft powdery edge. The sandalwood might be contributing to that powder, but it never shows up as a note, and neither does the frank; anyone expecting incense from this would be disappointed. I don't know where the "velvet-brown" is - unless it's a velvet pink-brown hatpin cushion sitting on the dressing table of a late Victorian lady getting lightly sifted with face powder. Not what I hoped for.

Sexy apple! I'm another person who's not a fruit scents fan, but this is stunning. There's definitely a musk in here (golden, perhaps, given the description?) which when wet makes it a very realistic apple note with a sweet rich musky honey. Drying down it goes through some faintly shampoo-ish posh-salon-y phases, but it always returns to the good stuff. After several hours' wear it was mostly a rich musk with lingering sweetness. Lovely stuff!

I'm not a fan of foodie-bakery scents generally, and thus far I've been unable to find a lab apple scent that works on me, yet: THIS. IS. AMAZING. Seriously. I tried my wife's decant, and it's just *gorgeous*. Wet it smells exactly like caramel apple cookies fresh from the oven - you can really smell the melty tart-sweet cooked green apple - and on my skin it turns to gently spiced apple crumble. Which isn't a kind of scent I thought I'd ever want to wear, but I want to just douse myself in this. It really smells of autumn to me, as I'm used to making crumbles when the apples ripen here. The only downside is it makes me hungry! Need a bottle of this between my wife (on whom it stays true to the wet scent) and I.

You might want to ask for recommendations in the TAL subforum, too!