filigree_shadow

I like this a lot. Musky leather (not sleek black leather, but more like comfy broken-in leather), a sweet tobacco, and a little bit of smoky incense. The combination works beautifully -- it all goes together nicely and smells wonderfully comforting. Like a warm blanket and a good book on a snowy day. I can't wait to get a bottle of this. I can't believe I don't have one already.

In the bottle: A deep, rich, foody scent. Initial impression when wet: So much cardamom I can't smell much else. Maybe a little bit of caramel. When it's drying: It turned into a spicy, dark scent. Occasionally I get a big whiff of cardamom again, and from time to time something about it smells burnt. This is not as caramel/vanilla as I expected it to be, it's a lot darker. The only part of the scent that I can detect from the usual "throw" distance is cardamom and a little bit of caramel. I wish my skin wouldn't amp cardamom so much. I think I'll have to try this later because bread is baking about 10 feet away from me, and I think it's distorting my perceptions of this scent.

I'm really enjoying my psychology class. It's Psych 110, just the basics. I resist the temptation to play amateur psychologist armed with only half a quarter of 100-level knowledge (because it ANNOYS THE HELL OUT OF ME when college kids think they're an expert on a subject after taking one semester of it), but my professor has a PhD in cognitive psych from the University of Chicago and she's a damn smart woman to boot, so I trust what she says. Last night we were talking about motivation and emotion. She was discussing the various reasons why people are motivated for certain behaviors, and she briefly touched on compulsive shopping and hoarding. Her explanation was that people use this behavior to fill the void in their lives that is usually caused by depression. If someone experiences a sadness mood, they are motivated to change circumstances in their lives. Some people misdirect this motivation into changing material things in their lives (selling a bunch of their own crap on eBay and then buying a bunch of other stuff) rather than changing the things that SHOULD be changed (i.e. their partner, their job, whatever). Ultimately this makes the person more depressed because they've just racked up a bunch of new bills and the new material things didn't make a difference to their depression. I was all set to get defensive and huffy about this because I hoard perfumes and bath/body stuff, and I also sell stuff I don't want and buy things that other people didn't want. I don't think it has anything to do with trying to fill a void that's caused by depression -- I actually LIKE swapping and hoarding. I feel very pleased and happy when I look at all my BPAL bottles. They're little bottles of beauty, and I'm glad that they're in my life. If I feel particularly sad one day and I try to soothe myself by buying a BPAL bottle from somebody's swap post, I don't think I should feel bad about it from someone telling me that I'm screwed up psychologically for doing this. Dammit that perfume DOES make me feel better, and I love the anticipation of waiting for some lovely BPAL to show up in my mailbox. So as I was feeling all defensive and ready to raise my hand and tell the professor "You're WRONG, I indulge in retail therapy on occasion and it's not due to depression it's because I LIKE IT." And then she said, "People who exhibit this behavior will buy 40 sweaters in one day and never even take them out of the bags, they'll stash the bags in hiding places around the house so that their significant others won't see them. They get no pleasure from actually having the things they bought, they just feel a compulsive need to buy something. Then they'll have no money when it's time to pay the rent or the electric bill or the car payment, so their depression becomes even worse." Oh. THAT kind of compulsive shopping. Um, yeah. That's not the kind that I do.

We're OK! If the warning signs of a bad behavior are that you buy just to buy and you don't really like it, you overspend and can't pay bills, and that you stash bags of stuff you've bought all over your house -- we're in the clear. It's interesting because in the last chapter we were talking about cognition and intelligence, and one of the things the professor mentioned is that people with high intelligence often collect things (stamps, coins, etc.), which seems to conflict a bit with what she was telling us about what depressed people do. I think a whole lot of education goes into being able to figure out what characteristics/behaviors indicate certain conditions. Like, what's the difference between a hobby collector and a compulsive hoarder? Or an interest and an obsession? I can't tell where the line is, I just know I haven't crossed it. I'm glad there are people out there who have had 8 years of education and can tell. And about the college class = expert syndrome, I always have this urge to say, "You're quoting that out of context" when someone offers her "expert" opinion that's based on something she read in a textbook. The context she's missing is any sort of real-world experience. I remember when I was doing a public relations internship my last semester of college, and it was humiliating to realize that all that spouting off I'd done to family/friends about what PR is like was completely false. I mistakenly thought that the textbook was like the real world. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I was so completely disillusioned that I never worked in PR again after doing that internship.

I've been kind of grappling with that same thing in the past couple of years. I don't live in the city any more either, haven't been shopping in the Clark/Belmont area in ages, don't get up and roll out of bed and roll down the street to the coffeeshop and just hang out like I used to... It's weird sometimes when I see 20-something people walking down the street because inevitably there's a young woman who's walking with them who reminds me of the way I used to look, and I think, "That used to be me." I miss that. I liked being that person. I'm not even sure what happened. I'm 35 but I don't have kids and I'm in school. It would be very easy for me to have the same lifestyle I had when I was 25 -- but I don't. It's different now, somehow. Kinda feels like that boat has sailed. A couple of months ago my husband asked me if we were free the next night for dinner with some people, and I said, "Tomorrow? Tomorrow night?" I sat there feeling dumbfounded that someone was asking for dinner tomorrow because I'm used to these conversations going like this: "Are you free on the 24th? Oh, wait, I can't get a sitter that night. Well it looks like we're going to have to do it in March, what do your March weekends look like?" It suddenly hit me that 10 years ago people would call and say things like, "Hey, I'm thinking about going to such-and-such for dinner, if you can be ready in 10 minutes I'll pick you up." And I'd go. When did this change? And why didn't I notice it? Wow, I'm really rambling. Sorry about that. It's not that I don't like my life now, but it used to seem like it was a lot more fun. Maybe I need to do some redefining too.

I'm very glad to hear that she got back in touch with you about this and that it will soon be resolved!

This is lovely! Not overly floral, but a bright, happy scent. I love the mandarin and patchouli combination that I smell when it's wet. On me, usually mandarin is pretty strong at first and then it fades out completely, but it seems to be sticking around in this one. The honeysuckle threatens to become too loud at times but it never quite gets there, and the beautiful peach blossom really blooms when it's dry. It ends up being mainly a patchouli and peach blossom scent, kind of dry, bright, deep, and sweetly pretty. I had been hoping to get Passion but I am inordinately pleased that I got this one. Also, my husband loves it and was very sad to discover that he is too late to try to get another bottle of it from the Lab. The patchouli is much stronger on him, and it really doesn't smell floral at all on his skin.

So, Blood Lotus means it has lotus in it, right? I'm having a difficult time detecting any lotus in this -- it doesn't really smell like lotus usually does on me (which is kind of bubblegummy). Whatever else is in this makes it smell smoky and a bit hazy -- it's much darker than lotus usually is. It has a lovely soft sweetness to it. Very pretty blend. This one works on me a lot better than most of the Garden scents do.

Red musk is my favorite musk because it smells so... um, lusty. The patchouli makes it deep and rich, the ylang ylang gives it a sweetness, and myrrh makes the whole thing go Mmmmmm. Already have a 5ml of this, and I love wearing it.

The lavender is pretty strong, but it's soft and not as sharp as usual. It smells nice with the wisteria and soft rose. But... It's late at night and I've been watching a sad show, and this scent is making me even sadder. It smells like loss and tears to me. Not the scent to wear if you're battling midwinter depression.

This is mainly ozone on me with the barest bit of of incense. It's kind of a light scent; it's barely there. This is more of my husband's kind of scent than mine -- and he likes this one.

I'm not sure exactly what this smells like. Kind of gentle herbs with some spices, and something even a little creamy underneath. It smells a tad sour on me for some reason, so I let my husband try it. On him it smelled very feminine. I still can't tell what's in this, even after smelling it on him. I can see this being a good meditation blend; it smells like a good calming and grounding scent

Lots of almond at first, but I like it more than I usually do, probably because of the vanilla and cinnamon. The almond fades out to take the background when the scent is dry. This is an unusual scent, sweet but spicy too, and it seems a little bit foody. It dries down into a rich, slightly spicy, almost creamy scent. The heliotrope is lovely in this. Hmm, I wonder why I don't wear this more often. I really do like it a lot.

I'm not getting much cherry from this at all. I'm not really sure what stephanotis smells like, but I'm familiar with lilies, and I smell a different floral in there, so that must be the stephanotis. It's not bad, but I personally like the lilies better. This one has more of that heady floral scent that I'm not as fond of. I already have several floral blends that I like better than this one, so this one goes to swaps.

At first it smells like sweet tea, but then the herbs kick in and it starts to smell like cut grass. Pretty grass, but still too grassy for me. It's also kind of aquatic too, for some reason -- not like the usual aquatic, but sort of dewy.

I have no problems with the scent of Pele. It's a very clean-smelling scent to me, and the ginger and soft florals are a nice combination. The problem I have with it is that it is SO faint on my skin that I can barely smell it at all. I've tried it several times. Once I even put on a LOT. It's just hardly there at all. I'd probably wear it if it were stronger because it's an interesting scent.

Suspiro is a pretty floral. Sweet and slightly fruity from the white plum, with lovely lily notes. It's a very white scent in my opinion, lovely and kind of breathy. When it's dry it seems to be mainly a lily scent, which is just fine for me because although I like lilies a lot I don't care for jasmine. Anyone who likes lily scents should give this a try.

Sometimes night-blooming jasmine is a lot better for me than the usual jasmine. And, apparently, sometimes not. This one smells exactly like the kind of jasmine that I don't like, and it's much too powerfully jasmine-scented for me. It gets to be more tolerable when it's dry, but I have so many BPAL scents that I don't need to ever wear any that I tolerate rather than ones that I love or even simply like. So this one's going to swaps.

For a scent called Bluebeard, I was expecting something more swarthy and swashbuckly than this. This smells more crisp than I was expecting. The vetiver keeps it from being too floral, but it definitely doesn't drown out the lavender and violet. The scent this is reminding me of is on the tip of my tongue but I can't place it. It's a kind of food, believe it or not. It's something like the clear-ish squishy orange-flavored filling you sometimes get in the middle of chocolates. I have no idea why I would be smelling that in this blend, but I do smell something citrusy in this. Maybe it's from the white musk, which has a tendency to smell lemony on me. Mostly this seems to be a combination of lavender and vetiver, and since my husband likes lavender a lot more than I do, I'll be handing this imp over to him. I bet it'll smell good on him, too.

To my nose, this is a very traditional cologne scent. However, it has a deep richness to it that you can't buy in a department store. I think it's the moss and mint combination that makes it smell like cologne, but the ambergis and sandalwood make it more interesting. This smells pretty good on me -- it's a little bit too minty for me personally -- but it smells fantastic on my husband. He has a big bottle of it. I always love it when he wears this one.

It smelled boozy to me at first, but then it changed to a spicy smoke. It still has a rum undertone, but there's a lot more smoke in this than what I expected. I like the scent, but this is more like the kind of thing my husband would wear. He likes scents like this more than I do.

Herbal and medicinal. Then powdery. I would never wear this as perfume, and I'm turned off enough by the scent of it that I don't want to try to use it for anything else, either.

Bat-winged, flame-eyed, and possessed of an unearthly, perfect beauty: the Daughters of Lilith, the Succubi, invade the dreams of men and lie with them in rapturous, unholy sexual union. The scent of their skin is bittersweet, dusky and terminally seductive. Mimosa, orange blossom, neroli and bergamot with a drop of sweet clove. Well, this is kind of an odd scent. Very orangey and kind of earthy too -- there's something dark about this scent, which surprises me given the notes. It's also going powdery on me. I'm not really sure I can handle this much orange in a perfume, and I'm not hugely fond of that powdery scent either. This isn't bad, but it's just not my fave.

Woah, I get a whole lot of cinnamon at first. As it's drying the violet comes out, kind of sweet and smoky. This smells really "perfumey" to me; it has that sort of stinging property that I normally attribute to the alcohol in perfumes. I think maybe it's the frankincense that's making it do that. I think the cinnamon is just a little too much for me here. I like violet okay, but I like it best when it's creamy. The spicy/incensy violet isn't working as well for me.

At first I smell a whole lot of vetiver, but as it's drying the leather comes out nice and strong. The musk seems to be going a little powdery on me, but since this seems like an extremely masculine scent I don't think it really matters what it does on me. This imp is going straight over to my hubby. I like this scent a lot. I hope he wears it.