t_for_tau

This was probably the strangest reaction I have ever had to a perfume. I got it because I love Catullus 50, even though the only note in it that reliably works on me is the olive leaf. In the imp, it was a STRONG lemon verbena smell - a herbaceous lemon, rather than a cleaning fluid or candy one. I dabbed it on, and for a moment it smelled more like lemon balm, a warm summery lemon with a garden edge. And then I turned deathly white and bolted for the bathroom, violently nauseated. I have no explanation, other than that it triggered some *really* horrible deep memory. I have PTSD so this shit happens sometimes, but I had no idea that a pleasant herbal lemon scent could make me feel like I was coming down with the most violent food poisoning of my life. O.O Left me very shaken and I scrubbed it off with hibiscrub to get rid of any lingering aroma. So this could be really good on the right person, who wants a slightly sweet, fuzzy-herbal lemon scent for summer - but that person is very definitely not me. D:

I just found an old imp of this and I could weep, because it's perfect on me. Smoky, musky, sexy perfection - and so very discontinued. I need to find more of this. *Need.*

All rose, all the time. Sigh. Wish it was listed in the notes - I'd've avoided this one.

Imp aged since about 2007 Wet: a brilliant, golden spice-and-resin scent Drydown: something fresh, green and juicy is showing through, almost but not quite grass. Meanwhile, something's developing a soft powderiness - looking at the notes I'm guessing the myrrh. There's a faint damp near-floral sweetness that I think must be the storax, comparing it to how the powdered resin smells. Dry: not much change. Very pleasant indeed!

So disappointing! I'd been wanting to try this since it was released, because most pine scents work amazingly on me, especially the sweeter ones (so reviews above made me hopeful). Sadly the dewy wetness must be aquatics, because this is pure headache-inducing Lynx-alike aquatics, I actually scrubbed it off my arm D:

Aeroplane upholstery and urine. *runs to wash off*

I found an old stash of imps with a tiny amount of this, an on my skin it's glorious: dark, earthy (in the sense of soil and the more general sense), cool like somewhere under the earth, rooty and resinous with a hint of leaf-mould like rot. It's *very* masculine. Partner compared it to the best of Shanghai Tunnel without the ozone/aquatic that killed that on me. I would LOVE to get my hands on a bottle, but suspect that's pretty much impossible these days. :s One for the wishlist...

This has been on my wishlist since it first came out, and now I have an imp! This is a new one, not the original release. My allergies are bad today so my sense of smell's not top notch, but I'm going to try it anyway. In the imp: OMNOM warm buttery coffee shop. Wet: Wary - there's a faintly sicky-plasticky note coming out. Is there cream in here? That can be a death note on me... Don't do this to me, Misk U! Dry-down: coffee & rancid butter. Come on, come on, I can smell the woods & deliciousness (but no dusty tomes that I can work out?) lurking behind it... Dry: the rancid cream (since I'm pretty sure it's that) has backed off some, and the woods have come out. PHEW! It's now a blend of warm sweet coffee & woods; I'd swear there's hazelnut or a similar note in here. The cream-sick is still lurking in the background, but I have to really hunt for it. I'm getting a very faint whisper of the dust, and the throw is just delicious. I reckon I'll see if I can power through the sickly phase, because if so, this one's a winner.

Oh, this is *delicious*. It's not one I would necessarily have sought out, because of the pumpkin note - but I would have been foolish, because the rest of the notes read like a dream to me. Like Beth made a pumpkin just for me - throw in galangal and I'd be set. It reminds me of my beloved Pinched With Four Aces in feel, with the coffee and woods - warm, rich and smooth - but with pumpkin sweetening it instead of tobacco and the patchouli rounding out the bottom with a masculine resin. There's a definite classic Lab autumn-outdoors note to it, which I love. After it's been on a bit a warm coffee shop cinnamon-ginger spice emerges, giving it faint echoes of Shub, with the cypress from Loup Garou behind it, making it a blend of some of my favourite scents That cypress might make it a bit much for people who don't like its almost nose-stinging, nearly-eucalyptus dryness, which especially with the teak makes this a very masculine foodie. By now it smells like carpenters who're having a coffee break with *very* expensive fancy spiced coffees in the room they've been sawing in: there's my friend cedar. I don't get much of the tonka; it just gives a sort of creamy roundness to the whole thing, tying the pumpkin-coffee-spice and wood-patchouli halves together. If this stays like this, I may have to hunt down another bottle when I can afford it. I can see that for some it might seem a bit strange, but to me it's absolutely delightful, and I want to roll around in it!

Effervescent, yes, but not like champagne: like soluble medicine, complete with chalky artificial fruit flavour. It reminded me so strongly of being in hospitals that it actually made me feel panicky and I couldn't even put it on my skin, & had to scrub my fingers where it got on the opening the imp. First time I'm 10 years I've had a reaction like that to bpal! O.o

2015 variation In the vial: fruity, candied sick. Oh dear. Wet: the sick's gone in its place is a delicious warm, burned brown sugar...and bubblegum gobstoppers. Are there people who want to smell like bubblegum gobstoppers? If so, this would be perfect for them. :s Drydown: something musky and almost autumnal, faintly masculine. Huh. The gobstoppers have dissolved, leaving a faintly boozy note and just too much of a trace of fruitiness for my liking. Is there lotus in this? I could swear I smell bpal's lotus note.... Dry: damn, that lovely autumn-musk scent has backed off, and now it smells like scented plastic. The throw's still as above, and rather nice, but when it gets too close to my nose it's just...ugh. A near miss. ETA: ROSE WHY. My nemesis strikes again.

Looking for recommendations similar to a few things: 1) my beloved but long-departed King of Clubs: deeper, darker earth notes with dark musk, tobacco leaf, oakmoss, amber, leather, sage and vetiver with fig and bitter almond. The almond is no big deal, but the rest... <3 2) Orpheus, which I never expected to work on me but did: Pale musk, green mandarin, neroli, benzoin, citrus peel, blue lavender, narcissus, stephanotis, crushed green stems, willow branch and cedar. It's the only floral that's ever worked on me, because it's mostly greens and cedar with a faint hint of white. 3) I've been stretching out my bottle of Oborot, but one day it's going to go! Any more easily-obtainable scents work as a dark, cool forest-and-incense stand-in? Balkan fir sap, dark mosses, Greek Mountain tea flower, black pine, salty ocean spray, deep black earth, and a moon-touched magickal incense of sandarac, frankincense, and ravensara. Thanks in advance!

The label on this is trashed, but I can *just* make out the decanter's writing; took me a while to work out what it said! It's one of the 2011s which are my nemesis, but I'll try it anyway... In the vial: aquatic aftershave. Huh. Wet: incense & women's perfume! Concentrating more I can smell a wet kind of rose, the smokiness of the honey musk, faint violet from the orris, and something herbaceous which I can't work out - oh, it's the lavender! It just smells like fresh-cut sappy lavender rather than dry. Right now this is a very classy, sophisticated lady's perfume based around musk, amber, lavender, rose & a touch of incense. Sadly I was hoping for honey-tobacco-sandalwood-vanilla, so... :/ It"s a heavy, heady kind of scent with a hint of night garden freshness. Dry: well, this a classy scent with a great balance of rich, dry & wet notes, but it's just not for me. It's just a bit too on the "classic ladies' perfume" spectrum. It's complex and interesting and layered (is that a hint of anise coming out now? - lots of little moments like that as the different notes sift through - but not on me.

In vial: caramel-wood-floral with a hint of commercial perfume. Wet: ...Parma violet sweets??? Nose-tickling musk and chalky candy. This is not going well. All of '11's scents still seem doomed to failure on me, even after 5 years of aging. Dry: the incense has come out now, and it's a classic sort of "Oriental" women's perfume, incense-spice-flora-musk, with a bit of the parma violets still lurking. Could be nice on the right woman, but I am neither of those things. Swap.

fig, sesame, hazelnut, and cooking spices softened by rice flower. Okay, Molly Grue. Will you be the one that breaks my Last Unicorn jinx? Looking at your notes, I sadly doubt it. In the vial: a warm toasty faintly-foody scent. A sort of golden-brown-tan kind of scent. Promising! Wet: sweetness, faint floral, something toasted and a bit spicy - I'm guessing the last is the hazelnut and sesame. It smells a bit like a pantry, in a good way. The floral is backing out of the way fast, and the fig is coming up. It's making me hungry! Dry: sadly the toasty spicy nuttiness has disappeared, and it's just sweet fruit all the way.

frankincense, guggul gum, onycha accord, styrax, and deep purple fruits. In the imp: flowers...lilac? *checks note* Huh. I guess I'm picking up the purple, and styrax can be floral... Wet: Resin! Purple resin, if such a thing is possible? And a sickly-sweet flower like lily, noooo. Come on, resins, you can do it! Drydown: oh noooo, here comes that plastic/band-aid note that's dogged me through the whole of this line so far. Go away, go away. As this settles in, it's alternating between delicious delicious purplish churchy resins and...band-aids & lilies, yeah. Dry: purple fruits, flowers and faint plasters. Sigh. It might work on someone, but not on me. The resins, alas, are lost completely.

Worried about this one, because I LOATHE horseradish irl. Like, the smell of it literally makes me vomit loathe, so "hatred and terror" is apt. The other notes are so good, though, that I'm going to risk at least sniffing it... In the vial: ohhh..kayyy...bitter greens, real back-of-the-throat-and-nose bitter, but no gagging yet. Closer to torn-up spinach leaves than horseradish per se, though there *is* something unpleasantly horseradishy lurking in the back of my nostrils. I am *so* suspicious of this. Wet: pungent pungent pungent bitter greens with that nasty after-scent. Something reminds me of bpal's ivy note. Now horseradishy peppery-ness is storming up hard. Snapped stems and pepper and motor oil? This is...not what I was expecting. The tolu balsam, bergamot and clove (and maybe vetiver?) are combining to, strangely, give it the kind of hot-cold note I associate with menthol. Dry: ...diesel. No, seriously: this is chainsaw & lawnmower fuel, and the lawnmower has definitely been put into play. This is the smell of using a strimmer on an overgrown verge, diesel fumes and chewed-up stems. And, yup, nasty peppery horseradish bringing up the rear. WHY. As it wears in, it's starting to smell less like the process of strimming itself than the air on a summer's day after the strimming's been done. The diesel fumes are lingering a bit, yeah, but there's a cut-grass-in-the-sun note too. The resins and patch and clove are beginning to come out to play a bit, giving it what I can only describe as - inexplicably - an evening air scent. But it's still far too harsh & chemically to be pleasant or wearable at all. My partner sniffed my arm and went, "Ugh, industrial oven cleaner." Apparently this line and I are simply not meant to be.

A cocky light musk with leather, tonka, a dusting of dry woods, and a splash of porter. Is this going to be the LU scent that finally works on me? Musk, leather, tonka, woods, beer, all normally good on me...we shall see! In the vial: oh, that doesn't bode well. Powdery musk with a hint of nuttiness that I think must be the porter, judging from other blends. Onwards! Wet: band-aids. Straight up plasters. Crud. Medicinal plastic-rubber ick. Remember those rubber verruca socks they give kids so they can go swimming? This is that, especially because there's a faint aquatic backdrop. Dry: well, I can smell the leather & the musk if I concentrate, but they're still combining into that same smell on me Last Unicorn scents are still no-goes on me.

desiccated black mosses, vetiver, olibanum, patchouli, and ashes. Imp: old-school bpal woody-masc LE deliciousness. Hoping the vetiver - currently a smoky backdrop - isn't going to go berserk on my skin as it's been doing recently. Wet: astringent resiny woods. I wonder where that strong, cedary wood note is coming from? Like I say, the olibanum is giving it a slight taut astringent - I want to say "powdery", but not like baby powder at all, like the actual slightly sticky, gritty powder that clings to dry resin incenses. Drydown: that taut note is stretching out into something soapy-medical. No, don't do this, scent! The woods are still hiding behind it, but the...moss? ash? is stomping all over it. It smells like disinfectant and cheap oakmoss accord and is making me Very Sad. Much less "the horrors of entropy" than "the horrors of a gloomy hospital shower cubicle". And here comes the smell of plasters/band-aids to back it up, with old lady face powder (appropriately enough). It smells like a nursing home, which fits the inspiration in entirely the wrong way. Going to wash this off.

In the imp: unexpectedly fruity and light, followed by in-your-face CHAMOMILE & a bit of clary sage. Huh, not what I anticipated at all. Like herbal teabags, but not the flavoured sort. Wet: Chamomile tea brewing, with some other herbs mixed in. Soooo chamomile. Sage strengthening a bit; no caramel, no sandalwood, no raisins, no tobacco. And oh no, here comes SOAP! Oh dear, I fear Schmendrick and I are not going to be friends. Drydown: Soap with a slight herb + cologne fragrance and then a trace of tobacco, like the hands of a male smoker who rolls their own & has just had a good wash. I really didn't expect this to go aquatic on me, but that's what it's doing. Where's the caramel sultana sandalwood deliciousness? This is sadness in an imp to me, alas. Pass.

This one took me on a weird and interesting journey... In the imp: every "masculine" bpal I tried around '10/'11, which is to say, Generic Straight Man. Well, I'm going to give it a try... Wet: yep, sharp headachey DudeTM, with something florals trying to tiptoe out so that it smells like the point the men's & women's section of the perfume aisle collides; I agree with the person upthread who compared it to champaca. If the fragonia is flowers rather than leaves, it could be that? I'm not getting the tobacco at all, which is a shame, because it might smooth this out a lot. Right now the mahogany and oakmoss are doing the olfactory equivalent of manspreading all over the scent, and I'm really hoping they'll back off. Bit later: Okay, now it's beginning to warm up and smooth out a bit. There's a faint medicinal back note which could be the resins from the galbanum; there's a slight resemblance, too, to Loup Garou, with cypress & maybe fragonia (if leaves) standing in for cypress and eucalyptus. It really needs something slightly sweeter to pull it together - not as much so as something like Golden Priapus, which'd take it too far away from the inspiration, but something to mix it together. It's better than it was, but I'm really hoping it's going to pull it out and get a bit further from "bunch of teenage boys on public transport". Bit later: Oh, here comes the tobacco! Thank god. It's a sweet tobacco, a bit like in Herr Dross, so it's doing what I hoped for above. I waved it under my partner's nose (also a perfume person) & got a guess of sandalwood and honey, so you can tell how far it's come from the start. Drydown: Whoa, now the tobacco is really storming out front: old pipe tobacco and dark heavy wood furniture complete with polish, with a slight dustiness. Less a Decrepit house than just an old one; a small stately home whose last, pipe-smoking owner has passed away, and the polished mahogany furniture has been dust-sheeted and the whole thing is waiting empty before it's put up for auction/bought by an American/turned into flats I'm amazed by how nice this is now! Rich, faintly sweet, faintly spicy, and sad.

This is great! Slowly working through these & populating my wishlist

Coming back to this after all these years, it's aged into a warm, brownish, woods-and-golden-syrup scent with a hint of smoke behind. Slightly masculine, slightly foody, not a lot of throw, would be very wearable on a woman too. Glad I re-found my bottle!

Thank you all! I'm definitely eyeing the Mars collection, when I can find samples this side of the pond! So many scents overall that look great, though.

Dark green and woody, with a hint of something soapy - but a thick rich soapiness, not an old-lady soapiness. As it dries down, the soapiness backs off to a slightly aquatic background and the woods come to the fore - pine, cedar? I'd call this a darker, more sophisticated cousin to Loup Garou. It's good.