dronzeka

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At first this didn't smell like much of ANYTHING on me - which I think was the white musk; it's a very kind of neutral scent on me. Then the other notes started to come out - the orange blossom does a lovely job of keeping the apricot from screaming JAM!!!! on me, and the apricot adds a nice non-floral sweetness. This is very nice!

This is indeed interesting! I'd steered away from this because I'm not usually find of leather, but then people kept talking about it as a black tea scent.... It's crisp and gender-neutral (I think I'm duplicating the review above mine...), with a little sparkly bergamot and a smooth undercurrent which is probably the leather, but not what I think of when I hear "leather" as a note. I'm going to have to wear it a few times to figure out if I need more of it, because it's so unlike what I usually wear, but it's cool and sophisticated and clean. (On the drydown, I get more of the leather - I kind of wish I'd get more tea, but it's definitely an intriguing scent!)

This starts off all APRICOT!!!!! - super sweet and syrupy. As it dries, the clove is coming to the fore and tempering what was really overly sticky-sweet. It's much nicer once dry, but I think it's a little too jam-y/Yankee Candle-y for me. It has a similar kind of feel to Carnal - that bright fruit deepened by something earthier, clove here, fig in Carnal - and I like Carnal much better; it has a rich holiday feel without being so Yankee-Candle-esque. A nice blend, but not quite me.

That is AMAZING!! Thank you so much - that's great! (Though I do have to laugh at how some of the comparisons totally don't work on my skin - just more evidence of how different skin chemistry is!) I didn't get very much mandarin from Lady Lilith, but I think that note is pretty similar to the mandarin in Carnal. Keep in mind, though, that Carnal smells nothing like Lady Lilith otherwise, because LL is so floral. But if you're really only looking for the mandarin, Carnal has it. If you don't like fig, though, you won't like Carnal. Me, I love Carnal, because it smells like a very expensive Christmas-time jam - the fig provides a lovely rich grounding for the bright mandarin. I do think though that the mandarin fades over time - my bottle is still lovely, but I think it's turning into more fig than mandarin (so if you want some for the mandarin, you might prefer to order fresh from the lab).

Obatala screams summer to me... I pretty much can't wear it in the winter any more! Lick It Again and Knecht Ruprecht are very wintry scents for me... as is Carnal, which is very Christmas-y to me, for some reason. And Pumpkin Queen is a very cold-autumn scent to me. Can't wear that in the summer to save my life. I have a Possets Cambienne from March a year or two ago which smells like crocuses and fresh earth, and I *have* to wear that in the early spring - wearing it any other time just feels wrong!

If you like rose, this is SO BEAUTIFUL. I get white rose, which I find is lighter and sweeter than red rose, with honey, and cream. Um, yeah, I know that's helpful, since that's what the description says already. But really, this is frakking gorgeous. If you're not into rose or sweet scents - if it doesn't sound like something that appeals to you - it won't. But if it sounds like something you like? you'll LOVE it. It is a little bit in the vein of Hope (though to me that's a very pink rose), in that it's a very simple, sweetened rose scent. The honey is a bit richer than the sugar in Hope, which I find very white sugar/cotton-candy-esque, and the cream adds a little bit of depth and is a tempers the sweetness just a bit - it's like good quality whipping cream, which has richness and depth and is in a gazillion desserts but isn't itself sweet. Hope, to me, is so simple that it's a little creepy as an expression of a vampiric Siamese twin - there's such a contrast between the sweetness of the scent and the sinisterness of the illustration. It's almost like Hope (the vampire twin) is so removed from reality that she can think she's all sweetness as she sinks her teeth into someone's neck. This, in contrast, is the scent of a young woman who's flirty, and knows darn well she's flirty, but isn't really experienced enough to know where that flirting might end up. Anyway. That's a random comparison. This perfume is wonderful.

Wow, I don't want to sound like a crazed fangirl either, but this: just seems so completely simplistic! Beth isn't reaching for Ye Olde Bottle of "Ocean Mist" - she's blending a whole bunch of EOs, absolutes, and all the other things people have mentioned to create something that smells like ocean mist (and then blending that with blood orange and Egyptian musk). I mean, jeez. And it DOES take her weeks to blend these things - which is why there are limited editions that we anticipate (eagerly, drooling) for weeks, and why something like Carnival Diabolique has taken so long to finish. I can kind of understand the skepticism about the volume of scents that BPAL produces - not that I agree, but I can kind of understand. There are SO MANY different BPAL scents, I can see thinking that they must start to repeat themselves, and yeah, there are some scents that smell a lot like one another (see the threads about GC equivalents to LEs and the like). But none of them are absolute dupes of one another - none! Obatala smells a lot like Milk Moon 2005 (thank god, or I wouldn't have a decent substitute for MM!), but they're *not* the same, and even if they are really close, some people are going to like the one better, and others will like the other. And part of BPAL's niche is to have this crazy variety (as opposed to CBIHP, which is going for a different niche). If the scents weren't actually different, people would figure it out and the strategy wouldn't work (because I just don't think consumers are quite as stupid as everyone assumes they are). Or to put it another way, maybe we all are brainwashed, but if we like the way BPAL does things, what's his problem with it? Individual notes are like letters - there are only 26 of them, but they can be combined in nearly infinite ways, and the resulting words combined yet again. Or we're talking about the ways that individual food ingredients can be combined into a ZILLION different recipes. (Sorry, I'm really rambling, but that post is kind of amazingly ignorant. Or just snotty.)

You get a CnS with a Paypal order. I have only ever received 1 CnS since I started ordering BPAL (about 18 months worth) I've heard of that happening with international orders. I've had tons of orders and have had a CnS for every one through PP. I wonder if it's because you can print out shipping labels from paypal online for domestic orders but you can't for international orders? Although I don't know if this is the case for the Lab as opposed to just individual people - I just know that if I get paypal payments from US folk, I can then print an online shipping label easy-peasy and paypal e-mails to say the package is being shipped, but I can't print labels for international folks because of the customs forms; I have to take those to the PO, so they go the old-fashioned way, with no online notification. The Lab may have a different setup, though (USPS CnS's are different from the paypal ones).

Oooh, yummy! I think I'm getting more red currant than blueberry... and the tea is in there as well. So far, very little vanilla, but I did get a whiff of ginger - which is quite dry and unsweet on me - and maybe a little hint of coriander, and these keep it from being uber-fruity-sweet. I am not a huge red musk fan - it doesn't turn vile on me, but I don't love it to pieces - and so far I'm not really getting any from this, though I think it might be grounding the fruit and giving it some backbone. It does have a kind of surreal and irrelevant vibe, though, because it's a kind of crazy combination on me - I agree with the Mad Tea Party comparisons; it's kind of surreal in a light-hearted way. I have to wear it a bit longer to figure out if it's really me, but it is a great scent that captures its concept amazingly well. ETA: Holy moly, is this stuff STRONG! I put a dab on my wrist and was surrounded by throw, and the next morning I can still smell it with ease, and that never happens with me.

I'm pretty sure that translates to - we will keep it just how it is, now fuck off and have a nice day. At least Sheri's reply was in reasonably decent English!

Well, I e-mailed them myself - even though my order was so small that the character limit wasn't a problem for me! - and got this charming reply: Um... yeah. That was helpful.

Maybe Paypal thinks the problem is that their comments box won't reset to the full number of characters if the OP has deleted them? That is, they think her concern is that she typed in stuff, deleted it, and isn't getting all the characters back? Rather than the real concern, which is that they've restricted the comment box completely unmanageably?!? But really, that e-mail is completely incoherent. How lame!

My husband resembles this remark! He almost never notices my actual perfume - but I have a variety of vanilla-foody lotions that I put on before going to bed, and he always says, "You smell like a cookieeeeeeeeeeeeee!" To stick to BPAL, I have probably had the most compliments on Dorian and Antique Lace, which are both warm and vanilla-y, if not quite foody. Unthreatening perfumes!

HONEY! Honeyhoneyhoneyhoneyhoneyhoney... I LIKE honey. Seriously, this is amazing stuff. It's beautiful rich honey, thick and sweet, without any of the sort of bland/powderiness I got from the honey in O and Jezebel. I don't pick out many of the other notes, though they add something to distinguish this from a honey SN; the one I do get is lemon, which makes me think of tea with honey and lemon (except without the tea!). It reminds me of Honey Moon, but I think it's a thicker, deeper honey, without any of the greenness or herbalness to lighten it up. At the same time, it's not at all cloying. It reminds me of the honey in Thaleia most, I think. I want to BATHE in this.

Like some others have mentioned, I get lemon-herbal cologne, and then amber from this. No honey, no cardamom (sigh!), and it doesn't have that sweet dry grass smell to me. It's by no means unpleasant - just a little dry for my tastes. I might have to try it again, though, when I don't have Mead Moon screaming HONEY!!! on my other wrist.

Wow, chemistry is funny - I haven't tried Severin, but the rest of those all smell completely different to me! (But I can see how they'd be similar if you amp the citrus, especially - I get very little citrus from Dorian and Baobhan Sith was very pink grapefruit, unlike the lime in Whitechapel or white grapefruit in Vampire Tears.)

There's a thread about carrier oils where this question has been discussed quite a bit. (I think it's this one but that could be wrong). My take on it (keeping in mind that I am not an expert or affiliated with the lab, yada yada) is that 1) it's possible there are components in BPAL that are neither perfume/essential oils nor carrier oils (absolutes? resins? beeswax?), 2) that there's (possibly - my speculation) a difference between a blended perfume that's diluted with carrier oil, and a perfume blended from oils that have been diluted to safe levels, and 3) while I know individuals can have allergic reactions to different notes/strengths, if BPAL were generally unsafe to apply to the skin without dilution, the Lab would tell us. They have no incentive to sell perfumes that are unsafe to put on the skin! That's not to say that specific individuals might not be happier wearing the oils diluted, but I'm quite sure the Lab blends its oils to be skin safe to the general public. ETA: I get all almond from Black Phoenix.

Hmmmm, I'm not sure I get any honey from this, nor much acai. It's very floral to my nose - sweet and bright and slightly "perfumey." The final dry down is a soft, sweet scent, but not terribly distinctive on me.

This starts out as the most amazing honey-amber scent - what I'd have wished for O to be (and isn't on me, because it turns to baby powder). As it dries down, however, something comes to the fore - I think it's the Arabian musk. Musk tends to go "men's cologne" on me, and the same thing happens here; it deepens the scent and reduces its sweetness. It almost smells a tiny bit like leather to me. Anyway, once it's fully dry I think it would be an amazing scent on a man, but it's a little too masculine for me. (It's strong, though - I tried a dab this morning BEFORE I showered, and I can still smell it!)

Alas, this ended up all caramel, all the time. I got a little sweetness from what I think was the apple blossom, and by the drydown the teak tempered the caramel a little, but for me, it was too overwhelmingly caramel (I was hoping to mostly get the other notes). I shouldn't have been surprised, as this has happened with all BPAL caramel scents (I think particularly of Tiresias). If you like BPAL caramel, though, you should love this!

I just wanted to add my review/endorsement of Charisma - I can't for the life of me identify notes or tell you what it smells like (though I think it smells good), but it seems to have a nice trick of smoothing the way with people. I haven't used it very often, but a few weeks ago I was at a conference and each day I dabbed a wee bit on my chakras (or what I generally think of as my chakras - I'm not very informed about the chakras per se, but I put it on the crown of my head, just between/above my brows, at the base of my throat, over my heart, and just below my navel). I always wore something else for scent - I couldn't even smell Charisma, and I forgot I had it on - but by the end of the conference I realized that my social interactions had gone really well. I enjoyed talking to people, I felt calm and confident, and people really seemed to enjoy talking to me. Now, I'm sure it helped that I was meeting up with friends much of the time but still, negotiating large groups of people and staying "on" for a few days at a time is usually really hard for me, and I really felt very little of the usual awkwardness that I feel in social situations - which I think was at least partly because the Charisma was working and people were responding positively. Anyway, I really want a bottle for further experimentation, now.

The only scent I've got true play-doh from was Snow White, which might well be the almond, although I have no problem at all with the almond in Black Phoenix, Bastet, Queen of Sheba, and the like, so I kind of doubt it. Unless it really is almond oil as a carrier, rather than the actual scent of almond.

I really don't get a lot of comments either - my mom liked Antique Lace, and I've had compliments on Dorian. But honestly? I don't think I know enough people who'd feel comfortable commenting on perfume - apart from my husband, the people I spend the most time around are the college students in my classes, and I really doubt any of them are going to comment on a professor's perfume! (Employees in universities seem really uncomfortable commenting on such things, unless you're already good friends - they don't want to be accused of sexual harassment!) And I also tend to have a "don't talk to me, I don't know you" face when I'm out in public by myself, so strangers don't usually approach me. It may not be because people aren't smelling the perfume, though, as much as they don't get BPAL as perfume. I was once waiting for people in a used-book store to tally up some books I'd brought in, and the employees started saying to each other, "Do you smell pot-pourri? I'm sure I smell pot-pourri!", and I'm quite sure it was actually ME! But we all agreed it must be the books. It was Tamamo-no Mae, which I don't think smells at ALL like pot-pourri! But I think the thing was that it doesn't smell at all like conventional perfume - no flowers or musk - or alcohol! - so it just didn't register as perfume them - it was some other kind of smell. So I think some people don't comment because BPAL is so unlike conventional dept-store perfumes, they don't associate it with something that people wear. (Oh, wait, my hairdresser usually comments! She's one of the few people up-close-and-personal enough to notice, I think. She's liked most stuff I've worn, though.)

Okay, this is unlike my usual scent so this is going to be a pants review, for the sake of knowing what this smells like, but I thought I'd put something down anyway... My initial response is OOOOOoooo! I like this! Spicy, dark, complex - if what I love in here is Bay Rum I'm really bummed I passed on Frederic... Initially I get a lot of rose geranium, which I love. Also the cinnamon. I think as it dries I'm getting more of the frankincense and bay rum. Interestingly, there's almost a wintergreen-y overtone to it? I like this. It's definitely a more unisex scent (which is what makes it odd for me, but if you like the unisex, definitely try this!). I might try it in a locket to see if I can keep that gorgeous rose geranium around longer!