dronzeka

I haven’t tried Snow White in ages, but it and other “snow” notes went plastic-y fake vanilla unpleasantness on me, so I’ve stayed away from most of them. But I love TKO and lavender so much that I had to try this, and I lucked out - it’s mostly a stronger TKO, and dies down to TKO with a soft sort of coconut in the background. It is a bit cooler feeling than the original. If this kind of sweet lavender scent isn’t hugely your jam I don’t know if you’d need this on top of TKO, but it’s a lovely variant if, like me, you’re a fiend for lavender sleep blends.

This is so delicious. It’s pretty much what is says - lemon, honey, and sugar. The lemon is fresh and sweet and very much NOT lemon pledge - it smells like actual homemade lemonade or sweet lemon tea without the tea. It’s a little hard to distinguish between the sugar and the honey, but it’s a lovely sweetness - I don’t get wax specifically from the honeycomb, but a kind of wildflower honey - the light sweet kind, rather than the deep musky sort of sexy-times honey. It’s very lemon-forward to start and then the lemon seems to die down/meld with the sugar cane a little more. It feels very spring and summery to me, though I’ll happily wear it all year round. I may even consider a second bottle (I have way too much perfume as it is but I Iove this).

This scent is so gorgeous. Pretty much does what it says on the tin - honey, amber, and a hint of smoke. In the bottle, it smells like it’s going to be that really animalic, various-Vulvas-kind of honey that gets a little too funky on me, but on my skin the amber (and maybe some kind of vanilla element) saves it for me. Very warm and comforting, not too foody. I’d have probably bought this anyway given the notes but I’d never seen this poem before and it’s so amazingly vivid and glorious, it makes the scent that much better. “Wet bread” is so incredibly accurate. The poem cements this as a winter scent.

Like everyone else, I get lots of lilac from this one. Maybe a little muguet in the background, and I'm sure the vanilla and amber ground it a little, but yeah, almost SN lilac. It's a lovely lilac scent. For me this is something I'll wear almost exclusively in the spring - I grew up with lilac trees in our backyard and the scent is absolutely anchored in those fresh green spring days for me. If you like lilac, this is a good option for you, but if you want a vanilla-amber scent, look elsewhere.

This is going to be the world's most unhelpful review but this is a beautiful sweet scent where the notes meld together enough that I can't really distinguish them at all. On me it's creamy and not especially foody, just sweet and light. I guess I'd say primarily tea rose (soft and mild) with a non-foody vanilla. I think on me the amber and skin musk just work to blend everything seamlessly.

This is really lovely! At first, I get a little bit of coffee (it's nice that it's not more b/c sometimes BPAL's coffee notes take over on me), with a tiny bit of sweet resinous/incense-ish (not woody) smoke underneath. As it dries, I get mostly the cardamom, although very much softened round the edges/smoothed out by the other notes. If I huff it deeply, in the back of my throat I get a tiny little wintry hit of fir. I don't really get a lot of vanilla or identifiable spices, I think they're blending almost indistinguishably with the cardamom to lend depth without being quite identifiable on their own. It's mildly sweet but to me doesn't really read as foodie (despite the cardamom being so strong - probably b/c I don't cook with it very often) - it feels more like a light/fresh woody scent. If you don't like cardamom very much, or really wanted coffee and vanilla, this may not be the scent for you, but I'm enjoying it a lot. ETA: Okay, as it's dried down further, the loveliest, lightest, almost marshmallow-y vanilla has emerged! ETA 2: Further morphing, and I *swear* this dries down to the same vanilla as Antique Lace, or very very close (with a little cardamom edge). I'm really pleased b/c I bought it probably almost more for the label than for the scent, which didn't work out so well for me the last time I did this (looking at you, Autumn Landscape with a Flock of Turkeys).

First try: Initially, so so so so SO much woodsmoke. (I have to admit to not being in the right headspace for woodsmoke right now: I spent Friday night through Sunday night without power or heat, the temps dropped to the low teens (Fahrenheit) and stayed there the whole time, and we got through it by keeping a fire going in in our fireplace pretty much non-stop. But we used up the good firewood and starting burning windfall from our backyard, which was pretty damp, and by the end the house reeked of woodsmoke. It's not really a time I want to revisit through my perfume, but if you're feeling better about woodsmoke than I am, you'll like this). I caught a really brief whiff of pink pepper (which I loved) and as it dies down the resins are coming through as a slightly sweeter woodiness, which I like. Once the woodsmoke calms down a little, it's pretty nice - a kind of quiet scent. Eventually the woodsmoke vanishes almost entirely leaving a resinous-y base (though I still don't get really get any peppercorn). I guess it really does mirror a bonfire/burn pile - starts out with a big conflagration and dies down into something quiet and gently glowing. A serious morpher.

This is VERY VERY sugar plummy on me, which for me, is a very sweet juicy fruity kind of scent (it really just feels like purple candy - not grape, but purple). I get a hint of lavender underneath (I want moar!) and weirdly I get a little more marshmallow on the throw than close up? It's not as soothing as I'd hoped, mostly because I don't find very sweet fruit very soothing. It's certainly not bad, and it may mellow out a little, but at least so far, it's very strong.

I know this is behind the times, but FWIW, from that list, I don't get a lot of tea from Herbert West, Cheshire Cat (which I do love, just not for the tea), Baobhan Sith (though it's been a long time since I tried that), or Tweedledum. Kumiho especially is almost straight green tea on me, and Maiden is also strongly white tea (light and fresh), edged with florals (I just got this and like it a lot). Secrets of the Dead is also very very green tea on me. (and F5, too!) For black tea, neither of these are GC, but Severin is pure black tea on me, and Eight Views of Actors in Their Dressing Rooms dries down very similarly to Severin on me (starts with a big blast of mandarin).

Oooh, this is nice! (And a relief, because my other Yules have sort of been busts so far. ) The vanilla is quite warm and creamy, not super sweet (sadly, it does go a bit plastic as it dries down completely, but not too terribly - and it's lovely wet - scent locket time?) Fir needle and black pine bark are a bit warmer than other pine scents on me - they avoid the sourness that I sometimes get from evergreens, and do not smell at ALL like cleaning products! (my other problem with some evergreens.) I can see how people get mint from this, but I don't find it terribly strong. I like wearing this, and think it's extremely wintry. It would also be something that would make a great room scent, I think.

Sigh. I was really hoping this would be mostly amber, lavender, and tea rose, with a wee bit of vetiver. And of course, instead, it's vetiver vetiver vetiver vetiver vetiver. As it dries I get wee wafts of lavender and tea rose around the edges (unless the rose is from Rose Red which I'm also testing on this arm!) - it's kind of like they're there, but they're standing behind a thick screen of vetiver. I don't get any amber (but I frequently can't identify amber unless it's a really really central note - otherwise it's kind of like musk, a general kind of binding scent that blends things together). The vetiver is kind of smoky. But I'm way too much of a sweet fiend to like this. If you like vetiver, give this a try; it seems like a kind of neat blend. For me, it doesn't work (but I probably should have known that!).

This is lovely and Christmasy, but I agree with others that this might work better in my oil burner or as a room spray than as a scent I would wear. Wet, I got a lot of cranberry (which was lovely), but as it dries down there's a lot more bayberry and pine, sweetened by honey. I get nothing I can ID as pumpkin pie, and I also don't really get any amber (but I'm very amber-neutral and often miss it in scents). It is nice and bright and festive! I also think it would smell really good on my husband (I tend to read bayberry as a little bit unisex or masculine).

Wow, this REALLY smells like a fresh-cut rose! It begins VERY green, like you've just got roses from the florist and you're cutting the stems to put it into water. It's almost too sharp, but it's amazingly evocative. The greenness tones itself down eventually, and you're left with the rich sweet smell of a red rose. It makes me think of the roses in my aunt's garden in England. It's maybe a little one-note for me to wear it all the time, but I do love how very realistic it is, and I bet I'll put it in my oil burner when I want to sit in an English rose garden.

Sigh. I really wanted to like this, because, well, THE LAST UNICORN! But for me, the white chocolate is a deal-breaker. I can get that there is something pale and ethereal behind it, but I'm just getting white chocolate and that paleness - no lilac, no orris, no lettuce. As it dries down completely, the sandalwood seems to come to the fore, but blended with the white chocolate it's a sort of slightly murky blandness. It's very much a skin scent on me, too - very little throw. (That seems appropriate to the Last Unicorn to me, though, since she's such a secretive, hard-to-pin down creature!) The final dry down is actually pretty nice, but it isn't very distinctive on me, either, and I find it hard to get through the white chocolate to get there. ETA: Okay, I didn't really wait long enough on this one - once it's really truly dried down, it turns into this lovely ethereal kind of scent - very close to the skin, but long lasting; kind of airy and sweet, a little bit of floral, a little bit of lettuce greenness, blended together in a kind of misty quiet scent. It does become quite lovely, ultimately. I'm not sure if I'll wear it often because I don't love the opening, but it ends up much closer to my idea of what the Last Unicorn should smell like!

Oh, wow. I've never really tried earth scents before, but thought this might be a good chance to do so, so threw one into my Yules decant circle order. And, um, well, I've discovered that my instinct warning me away from earth scents was probably a good one... Actually, this starts out awful on me, but gets a lot better. In the vial and wet, I find this incredibly[/] dank and sour. (You know, I'd figured "dead weeds" in the description were one of those things where Beth makes it sound really horrible, but in fact it smells wonderful. Actually? It smells like dead weeds...) As it dries, though, it really does smell like dirt and (less noxious) weeds. The dirt is still slightly sour for my tastes, and I guess I'm not sure that I, personally, will ever quite feel like smelling like this. But that's more about my tastes than about this scent. If you like BPAL's dirt scents, I think you will like this. (I can't compare it to others in terms of lightness/heaviniess - it's just straight up dirt to me.) So, yeah, pretty much how it was advertised!