Electra

Black Dahlia. Not even a question. There IS rose in it (described as "smoky rose"), but I can't wear rose either - it's awful on me - and I can't smell it at all in Black Dahlia. Notes - "Voluptuous magnolias strewn over orchid, star jasmine, black amber and smoky rose." It's a bit powdery, but not baby powder at all. Definitely a 40s/50s vintage-y film-noir-glamour feel. Among the adjectives I have used to describe it in my incoherent gushing: deep, velvety, film noir-ish, sophisticated, dark, powdery, elegant, sexy.

I know there's batch variation occasionally, so I don't know if this still holds true, but Black Dahlia (from 2004) and Fallen (from 2005) smell very similar on me.

Oh, purrr. Who ever would have guessed that Lucifer would be so feminine and darkly gorgeous? I got a 5 mL of Fallen from an amazingly generous forumite. I wouldn't have tried it on my own, because BPAL violet is generally bad to mediocre on my skin (see: The Raven, Ultraviolet, Numb), and amber doesn't play nice most of the time either. This, however. This is GORGEOUS. I am head over heels in love. Fallen smells very similar to Black Dahlia on me, and Black Dahlia was my first BPAL hit back in 2004 - a dark, film noir-ish, slightly powdery (but more the impression of powder, if that makes any sense - not baby powder by any stretch of the imagination), velvety, sophisticated, unabashedly feminine floral. This is dark sultry glamour. Phenomenal. I do understand why other reviewers are calling it "perfumey" - it is, compared to a lot of BPAL scents. Luckily I have absolutely no problem with that . I think it smells amazing. More, please! (Bottle is from 2005.)

Hmm. Danube smells like flowers in the rain. No ozone, though. Lightning smells like ozone - perhaps you could layer them? Another suggestion (though I haven't tried it) is Black Ice - it's supposed to evoke "sleet, smoky asphalt, and winter wind," but most of the reviews seem to be describing it as a somewhat dark, perhaps ozonic aquatic floral.

God, this is SO GOOD. If this is masculine, well, call me a dude . But then again, I do tend to do well with the scents that other reviewers call masculine! I see the similarities to Shanghai, but I like this much better. Shanghai, to me, was a dead ringer for Elizabeth Arden Green Tea, which I used to wear when I was in late high school/early college. This scent I find much more interesting. I think it's the aloe and white musk that give it the slight edge that I really enjoy. At first it's citrusy, then it dries down into something intensely clean. Just delightful for hot weather. I love clean scents. This is a great one.

Olokun is a gorgeous fresh, bright, happy marine scent. I adore it. It's the best hot weather scent I've come across from BPAL (very clean and shower-fresh, which is nice in muggy hot disgusting weather). I have to give the caveat that ocean/marine scents are my favorite scent family of all time and always have been, but this scent is amazing. It's one of the very few scents that I tried from the imp and ordered a 5 mL immediately. I freaked out a bit when I got my 5 mL because it has a distinct melon scent to it which was not present in my imp. I put it on my skin - yep, melon. ACK. I was very sad. But the melon disappeared within about two minutes and from that point on it was the wonderful Olokun that I knew and loved. Also, it's the only scent that I took on my post-bar exam European vacation (a week in Rome and a Mediterranean cruise with my best girlfriend this past August) and wore every day on that vacation, so it has very happy memories associated with it .

I was going to suggest Whitechapel (for the lime). You might also want to give Saint-Germain a whirl - it's gorgeous and sexy, and it has lavender in it (Villain has lavender fougere), so he may find it an acceptable alternative. It's a much lighter scent than Geek (which I love and wear myself ). Word (though I'm going from forum reviews rather than the official BPAL list). And like you, some of my favorite BPALs are what I would personally consider gender-neutral - or actually really traditionally masculine ones, like Geek and Saint-Germain. I was so surprised when I read so many reviews of Theodosius talking about how masculine it was - it's really sweet and sugary (and very nice ) on me. I'd be interested to smell it on a man, actually, because I honestly can't imagine it! Perhaps it's a skin chemistry thing. I've also read about a number of men wearing Dorian - same thing. Totally can't imagine it, smells like sugary gingersnaps on me, would have to actually smell it on a guy to comprehend it. Different strokes! I always find the "BPAL for guys" threads SO interesting because of that. (Edit - and yes, I realize that both Theo and Dorian were inspired by/created for Puddin' .)

That was an excellent posting. I don't have any perfume allergies or quasi-allergic reactions myself, but it bugs me so much when people get huffy when someone asks them to wear less (or a different, or even no) perfume because it triggers their allergies, and the perfumed person goes "Pfft, whatever, I'll wear it anyway." I don't know that I've ever seen that here, but I've definitely seen it both on other boards and IRL. It's so inconsiderate and unkind. I would think that most people, minus the drama queen category, wouldn't say something unless the perfume was *really* bothering them. And to put in my $0.02 - I've only had a "this scent actually makes me feel nauseated and physically ill, I must wash it off IMMEDIATELY" reaction (as opposed to "I just don't like it") to one scent of the hundreds upon hundreds that I've tried in my life. It was a BPAL scent - Ice Queen. So it obviously wasn't alcohol that was the problem - it was some component or combination of components in the scent itself. I don't know if I would have the same reaction to the scent if I were sitting next to someone slathered in it vs. having it on my own skin, but it's interesting to think about. Oh, on second thought - I also did really poorly with Midnight. I believe the phrase in my review was "it made me feel like I'd been Maced." It was awful. Again, I don't know if I'd have the same reaction if I were sitting next to someone who was slathered in it as opposed to wearing it myself, but if I did, day after day, I might have to say something. And I of all people don't want to take someone's smellies away from them! But I guess the point of this long rambling was - I've never had a bad reaction to a commercial scent, and have reacted badly to two (but only two) BPALs. So I'm not sure there's necessarily a correlation (i.e. allergic to commercial perfume = allergic to BPAL), but I don't think that *all* BPAL would necessarily be safe either. :ramble mode off:

I have the same problem. *sigh* Jack was screaming buttery pumpkin on me. I never got to the spices. Pumpkin Queen was much better at first, but unfortunately within 5 minutes it dried down to orange Kool-Aid and stayed that way. I never tried the Pumpkin Patch because five bottles of pumpkin? On my skin? Yeah right, with my luck with pumpkin. I do love pumpkin-scented (non-BPAL, so far) oils in my fragrance burner - just not on my skin. I wish I could wear them. But I agree with Sarada, you need to have at least some tolerance for butteriness in a scent to be able to wear them.

Frimp from the Lab. This smells like Big Red gum with a woodsy undertone on me. As time goes on, I get more wood and less cinnamon. Not bad, actually. If I hadn't already found my ultimate cinnamon scent (Hamadryad - I have a bottle of the old-school non-wintergreen version) I'd definitely be considering a big bottle of this one for scent alone. I can't speak to the voodoo properties of the oil, as I've had absolutely zero opportunity thus far to test them. Hopefully the labbies know something that I don't, and I'll be able to update my review soon .

Coconut always goes plastic on me. Always. ...except in Obatala. My review actually says something along the lines of "this scent is noteworthy as the first scent in which coconut did not turn to evil plastic on my skin," or somesuch. So that one might work for you .

Van Van is a voodoo oil. Here are the reviews for it - http://www.bpal.org/index.php?showtopic=25 You probably had trouble because the search engine can't find words that are less than four letters .

Well, I figured my pronunciation HAD to be wrong . Thank you, Juniperus! Very interesting.

I have to second Hod (as Shelldoo gave the only other rec for it in this thread that I saw) - it was basically a carnation soliflore on me, though I know other people smell amber and the like in it. Lovely. I've tried all the carnation scents that people usually suggest, because I went on a carnation quest about a year or so ago, and Hod is the only scent I found that actually had a discernable carnation note on me.

Ooh, I like this one. Zenvodunista tried to convince me to buy Rat King when it was live with Yule '05. I didn't, mostly because I'm dumb. Then I was fortunate enough to be gifted with two imps of it by the lovely ladies at a Meet'n'Sniff . Wet, it was very cologne-y. It smelled quite like a commercial men's cologne - not at all unpleasant, but definitely like cologne. The dust note rose, and I was worried that it might be overpowering. Drydown is great. Great, great, great. It's a very dry, very clean, ever-so-slightly powdery, ever-so-slightly spicy, ever-so-slightly musky scent. It's just gorgeous. Very understated, but very sexy. I love it. I can't stop sniffing myself.

Wet, this is a lovely, warm, ever-so-slightly buttery pumpkin (I loathe buttery scents, and I can handle this amount of butter). Unfortunately the drydown is 100% orange Kool-Aid.

Yep, this smells just about right for a pirate . Rum and wood - drydown on me is pretty much all spicy wood, as the rum fades away. I don't get much salt air, and the prostitutes have apparently turned in after a long night's work. It's good. I like it. Very evocative, and I'm thrilled that there's finally a pirate scent that works on me - Grog was awful with my chemistry (butterscotch and plastic), and surprisingly enough given my fabulous track record with aquatics, Jolly Roger wasn't very good on me either. (I haven't tried Anne Bonny yet. I should do that.) I don't think this is bottle-worthy for me, but I'll definitely keep the imp for days that I'm feeling pirate-y .

I should have known better. I ordered imps of Florence and Rome because I was feeling nostalgic about my trip to Italy, even though both have Notes That Do Not Work On Me. Here it's rose. Now, this scent actually isn't awful on me. It's just thoroughly mediocre. Rose, on me, almost always overpowers everything else in a blend, and it almost always smells like dryer sheets. In this blend it's doing the first but not the second. So I more or less smell like I'm wearing a rose single note. That's fine as far as it goes, but what I *really* liked was the scent in the imp - fresh, green, bracing. It would be a great room scent, actually. Almost spa-like. I wish it smelled like that on me, not a rose soliflore.

The pearl of the Italian Renaissance. Elegant iris, bright berries, gilded amber and velvety spices. I should have known better. I ordered imps of Florence and Rome because I was feeling nostalgic about my trip to Italy, even though both have Notes That Do Not Work On Me. In this case it's amber. Amber does this unfortunate thing where sometimes it smells like a diaper on my skin. It's doing that now. Not a keeper.

How does one pronounce "Kumari Kandam"? Because I just attempted to say it out loud and it came out "Kumari Condom."

I must amp sweetness like there's no tomorrow, judging from these reviews. And this is quite a morpher. Mischievous ogres, indeed. In the bottle, I smelled pine. In fact, I smelled significantly more pine than I did in someone else's bottle of Jolasveinar that I smelled at Meet and Sniff. Wet on my skin, I smelled pine. It was even woodsier on my skin than in the bottle. Not Snow Moon type pine - more subtle. A blended woodsy-spicy scent. Fairly masculine. Really nice. 30 minutes later, no more pine, now spicy pastries. 30 minutes after that - now the spiciness is gone, and it's sweet pastries covered in some sort of caramelized sugar glaze. Actually, it smells fairly reminiscent of the way DDLM '04 smells on me (that smelled like baked goods with honey). Just sweeter. I really, really like this one. I'd actually have preferred that it stay spicy, because I don't like the super-sweet drydown quite as much as the earlier stages, but it still smells great.

Sigh. You know...I wanted this one so badly. It was the one OoTD scent whose description leaped off the page when I read through the update. It sounded so perfect for me. It smelled so sexy when I sniffed someone else's bottle at last week's Meet and Sniff. The ONLY thing I can smell when the Count hits my skin is musty coffin wood. Not a single other note. Just that. It's very evocative, but...damnit. Every once in a while I think I might get a whiff of ginger behind it, but that might be wishful thinking. This one just isn't great on me.

I can't believe I never reviewed this. (This review is for Lick It '05.) Wet, it's fairly strong (but not overwhelming) peppermint combined with the vanilla from Black Opal. It IS Black Opal with mint, more or less. It's a very cold, crisp scent, and it actually feels cool and tingly everywhere I applied it. All of the mint disappears within about an hour or so. The drydown is surprisingly warm for a scent that started out so cold - a warm, rich, almost candy-like vanilla musk. It's really, REALLY nice, and I am not a lover of vanilla or of foody scents in general. It lasts like whoa, too - I put Lick It on at 8:00 this morning, and at 11 PM it's still going strong. Great stuff. I wore it a lot last winter, and I think it'll be seeing a lot of wear this winter as well.

Utrennyaya is similar to Night's Pavilion on me - just more wearable.

Another vote for Pain. It's freezing.