Haadiyah

My imp smells like "a rich golden scent" with a hint of aquatic and pretty noticeable vanilla and lily. I've shaken a lot of my bottles and no harm has come from it. All that happens is the heavy oils on the bottom get nicely mixed in with the lighter oils again. Why do others say not to? (mind you I do have some that smell better without shaking; but I expect my feelings will change when I get down to the bottom and have nothing but the heavy oils!).

Out of curiosity, have you tried shaking it vs letting it settle? Some of the blends have elements that will sink, and they smell differently depending on if you let them settle or shake them up. Usually it isn't dramatic, but sometimes it is. Thalassa smells sort of sour on me if I don't shake it, and just fine when I do.

Lyonesse can be a bit sweet/cloying on me (the drawback that tends to deter me from a full bottle). Usually I associate "grandma" florals with rose, and as far as I know, there are no rose notes in Lyonesse. this is all very subjective though. There is a strong lily note in Lyonesse. As an example of a batch-variance thing that also happened to me recently, I bought a bottle of Sri Lanka. It smells distinctly different from my imp. Heavy on the sandalwood and patchouli, and very faint on the other notes. I liked my imp better, but the bottle is definitely the same blend. It's probably just a different age--or it was a batch that was patchouli heavy. On drydown, the difference is hard to detect after about an hour. For the first hour though, it smells distinctly less outdoors-y than the imp did. By contrast, the Winter Heavens imp and the WH bottle smell almost -nothing- alike. I'm not sure there's a single common note between them. The bottle matches well to the scent descriptions on the WH reviews page, whereas the imp didn't match them at all.

Its totally different. I get no vanilla from it whatsoever. I suspected it may be a mislabel, but who knows. I think I will just go ahead and order a bottle and compare If it's at all helpful, I've smelled two Lyonesse imps, and both were "warm, sexy vanilla," not incense =D So I'm guessing (even though mileage may vary) this is a mislabeling case. Happened to me recently too. I bought a bottle of Winter Heavens after smelling a decant. Totally different. After researching, I realize the bottle is the real WH and the decant was a mislabel. Of course, the annoying thing is that when this happens, one doesn't know what the mislabeled item really was, which makes it hard to trade off if you want to get rid of it :/

I also notice that if they are variations (age/batch) on the same formula, they often dry down similarly even if they start out smelling pronouncedly different. If they smell totally different on drydown, it's even more likely it was a mislabeling case.