The scent of Death’s seaside throne: luminous aquatic notes threaded through by creeping ivies, white woods, waving kelp and bruised violets.
When presented with many tempting choices, I often have trouble deciding between them. I'm the girl who takes forever to order a pizza (angering the waitstaff with special requests, too) and looks at five hundred websites before making the simplest purchase. Once I do find something I enjoy, though, I obsess over it to a degree that's amusingly bizarre. So when I say that my favourite BPAL scent is The City in the Sea, anyone who possesses any quantity of this perfume will become my new bestest friend in the whole wide world. Its aroma, even in the bottle, evokes all of the unfathomable mysteries of the ocean. I handled my imp with the ginger nervousness usually reserved for holding babies and loaded guns; I could tell it would smell fantastic on me. And oh, it did - on my skin, it multiplied and released complex, powerful notes. I smelled seaweed, salt tang, aquatic sweetness, and a darker languor that suggested the hypnotic, ancient rhythm of the sea. I had to stop working for a while; I need my wrists to type, but they were riveted to my nose. I tried it once and then, wrenchingly, offered it on my altar to Agwé, spirit of the sea, because it was so completely of his realm. I then found and paid a large sum for a full bottle, and will probably hoard this stuff in the future with the zeal of an angry cult leader stockpiling ammunition. Verdict: Exquisite beyond words. Anyone who tries to get my bottle will inspire the follow-up fragrance: "City of the People Sleeping With the Fishies." "Keep raising the prices, we'll break into your houses and take the f-ing cigarettes. They're a drug, we're addicted, okay?" --Denis Leary
