DiesMali

So I didn't just buy one sexy gingerbread...I bought three. This is the second I'm testing. AHEM. In the bottle: THICK, dark molasses gingerbread with extra spice from the cinnamon. Wet on my skin: STAR ANISE is very star anise for the first few minutes, and that's a bit concerning, because I had a slight incident with sambuca a few years ago and have been a little wary of anise scents since then. Thankfully, as it starts to dry, that molasses gingerbread and cinnamon rejoin the show. Dry: The dark, dark chocolate (like 85% cacao dark chocolate) tempers the spiciness of the cinnamon-anise-gingerbread, which was close to being overwhelming when I first put it on. It's very much a dense molasses-heavy gingerbread, with extra oomph from the star anise and cinnamon. Darkly seductive, not at all subtle, and probably something you'd want to wear if you were on a date with a foodie and wanted to test whether or not the "vampire" part of the title meant getting bitten later. I wanted sexy gingerbread, and I got ANOTHER sexy, dark gingerbread! HUZZAH.

In the bottle: Spicy tobacco gingerbread. Wet on my skin: Spicy, clove-heavy gingerbread and sweet tobacco...and leather! Soft black leather. Mmmm. Dry: Okay, so I have a thing for these dark, sexy gingerbread perfumes. I don't even care that I already own Gingerbread Tobacco, Gingerbread, Patchouli, Leather, and Dark Musk, and Gingerbread, Vetiver, and Black Clove. I NEEDED THIS. This is dark, spicy, sexy clove gingerbread with sweet, smooth tobacco and soft black leather. I wanted sexy gingerbread. I got sexy gingerbread. YEAH!!!

In the bottle: Dry chocolate and tobacco...and DIRT. Wet on my skin: DIRT. And cacao-tobacco! But lots of mud! Dry: This calls up a specific memory for me! The dirt note in this is, at least to my memory, reminiscent of the Crayola dirt scented crayon from when I was a kid! 1994ish, colouring and drawing in the spare bedroom in my grandma's house (the summer after grandpa died) while my parents and uncle chatted with her in the living room. They were watching and discussing Beavis and Butthead, horrified that people would let their kids watch such a show, and I was secretly listening to the episode playing while colouring all that dirt and trees and sky. I LOVED that dirt crayon, and the leather one, and a few others! It was actually quite a realistic dirt smell, for being a crayon. And this...is like that, at first, and then becomes this ball of thick, mud-caked tobacco and dry, woody cacao. I actually really like this. And I love the memory it conjures up. ❤️

In the bottle: Gooey cookies and thick, black grease. Wet on my skin: This starts off with strong, black, slightly metallic grease glooped all over a plate of fresh chocolate chip cookies, still warm from the oven. It's almost a bit concerning at first! Dry: The grease, thankfully, mellows as this dries down, and now it is very unusual but also very yummy. It smells like eating freshly baked chocolate chip cookies inside the workroom of an independent auto shop! Not the huge, slick, unusually clean sort of auto shop, but rather the sort that you'd find in a small town or a backroad in a larger city, run by a couple of guys who just really love tinkering with cars. I take my car to one of those shops, and this smells like I brought a plate of cookies to them...which honestly isn't a bad idea, actually. The grease remains prominent but not overpowering for a while, but as it wears, it smooths out and sort of melts into the cookies, and gives the impression that maybe one of your batches of cookies got a little more dark and crispy than you were going for...but they're still delicious, even if a few of them have burnt edges. Dark, foodie, strange, and strangely delicious. I'm not even gonna test anything else tonight; I wanna just slather this on and wear it to bed.

In the bottle: Soft, figgy-sweet spiced rum and cedar. Mmmm. Wet on my skin: Goes on the same, with a soft, fig-sweetened spiced rum and a really nice cedar. Mmmm. Dry: I will preface by saying that my skin usually does great things with patchouli and oudh, so I was expecting this to be good. I was absolutely right. This is very well blended, with each note contributing about equally to the whole of the spicy, woody, slightly chewy-sweet scent! This is definitely a dark, chewy fig and coconut rum sort of sweetness, not a sugary sweetness, and it's also gloriously warm and spicy. I'd say it is in the same "scent-mood" family as Palmyra, Gluggagaegir, Mary Read/Anne Bonny (layered together), and St. Clare. Warm, spicy, fragrant, and a bit on the masculine side of the unisex center of the perfume spectrum. This is just gorgeous on me, and I can definitely see this going into the more frequent wear rotation! I bet some aging and summer warmth will make it even better, too!

In the bottle: Honeyed jasmine and carnation. Wet on my skin: Honeyed jasmine, carnation, and hay! I recognize this hay note from Hal and Kubla Khan! Dry: A-Rovin' is like Hal and Kubla Khan had a baby, and maybe For Each Ecstatic Instant was watching through a window or something. It takes the best parts of each of those two scents and makes a sultrier, slightly darker and headier sibling to both. Honeyed jasmine, spicy carnation, and sweet hay are at the front of this for me, atop a bed of warm, sexy red musk, sandalwood, and sweet-smoky tobacco. Not really getting any leather at this point, at least not as a discernible note of its own. It's a sexy, warm, mature but not antique musky floral with something more exotic about it than your typical jasmine-based floral. Very red-purple, not at all a white floral. After a few hours, it has barely morphed at all since drydown, aside from the warm leather coming out just a bit to support the other notes, which is really really nice. Jasmine and red musk usually behave pretty well on my skin, but I have to agree with above reviewers that this is NOT an overpowering blend for either of them. Well blended, neither timid nor unnecessarily overpowering, and ...someone above mentioned boss-bitch sexy? Yeah, that's a good descriptor for this.

In the bottle: Delicate pink-blue lotus. Wet on my skin: Stronger pink-blue, creamy lotus and mallow. It's a bit reminiscent of Poor Monkey for a minute there. Dry: If you liked Minamoto No Yorimasa and the Lotus Flower and/or Poor Monkey, you're probably going to like this. Creamy, sweet, delicate lotus and mallow, and just a poof of amber powder. It's a very pastel blue and pink scent, and despite being soft and delicate, is actually fairly strong in terms of throw. Not overpowering, but you're definitely going to have clouds of poofy, creamy lotus and mallow making themselves known to you and anyone around you whenever you move. The lotus ends up *very* slightly on the floral shampoo side, but only if you get in pretty close and take a big sniff. Soft, lovely, creamy-sweet. Just a beautiful scent, and I'm glad I have a bottle. ❤️ Edit: 9 days later, this has had time to settle a bit and it's even better! And I came to a realization. After this has been on for a while, it mellows a little into something that smells reasonably like a bowl full of Lucky Charms marshmallows soaking in milk. Not the cereal, just the marshmallows after they've had time to soften and melt a little into the milk, sweetening it.

In the bottle: Salty opium. Wet on my skin: Salty, plummy opium. Dry: Aquatics are a bit of a gamble on my skin, but this one is quite nice! It goes on as salty opium that quickly sweetens with that dark plum note, and the labdanum and indigo benzoin seem to be combining with the salt to bring it that dark, cold, oceanic feel. Definitely ocean, not a lake or river. That salty opium-plum combination is just beautiful, though, and is definitely the standout of this scent. It's not overly briny or fruity, and the labdanum and benzoin are a cool breeze atop the deep, dark water. This is a fairly unisex blend. For me, between the inspiration and scent, it is calling up mental imagery of friendly but slightly creepy deep-sea merfolk catching the bodies of drowned sailors, and then magically reviving them as newly-minted merfolk.

In the bottle: Yeasty buttery rolls! Fresh from the oven! Wet on my skin: Savoury, buttery, freshly-baked rolls with anise seed and cardamom sprinkled on top. Dry: This is bread. I smell like, well, freshly-baked, buttery Japanese milk bread with spices and just a hint of creamy almond. This is definitely more savoury than sweet, and very foodie/gourmand. I definitely have nothing like this already, but I'm glad I have this, because what foodie wouldn't like to occasionally smell like a bakery? Herby-seedy bakery bread. Yummmmmmm.

In the bottle: Wet ashtray vetiver! Wet on my skin: Wet ashtray vetiver! Luckily, my skin usually tames even the gnarliest vetiver pretty quickly. I'm already smelling a hint of the licorice and woods. Dry: There we go! My skin has successfully tamed the wet ashtray monster! This is now a quite dark, masculine-leaning blend, with smooth wood and smoky vetiver up front, softened and sweetened just a bit by opoponax, licorice root, and faintly lemony tea as a whisper in the back edge of the scent. It's a little bit leathery-musky feeling, despite having neither leather nor musk in it, but the combination of a few of these notes (mostly vetiver and tea/wood) can do that on my skin sometimes. It's dark and menacing and masculine, and actually rather sexually suggestive. Fairly close to the skin, not a huge or strong throw, but I bet it'll strengthen a bit as it ages. This is what a darkly charming villain or antihero played by 90s Antonio Banderas, or maybe The Crow, might smell like if you got up close and personal enough to hug them.

In the bottle: An unusual sweet-musky thing my nose can't quite identify in the bottle. Wet on my skin: I can smell that sweet yam! Sweet, chewy yam with an almost dessert-like quality due to the tonka, vanilla, and cinnamon. Dry: This is really unusual! Unlike anything else at all in my BPAL collection, but it would be since this is my only yam/sweet potato blend so far. It's actually a bit foodie-dessert like, though not quite into full gourmand territory. Sweet, chewy yam with gentle (not intense) cinnamon, tonka, and vanilla, lightened a bit by an unusual sort of amber, and I think the oakmoss is the herbal thing in the background keeping the whole blend from being a totally gourmand dessert scent. If you've ever had a baked sweet potato with dessert toppings like cinnamon sugar and melted unsalted butter, it smells kinda like that but even sweeter and slightly perfumier. Almost like...OH. I GOT IT. Baked sweet potato casserole with melty marshmallows and cinnamon on top, the kind you find at a Midwestern US Christmas and/or Thanksgiving dinner. If you want to smell like a slightly perfumier than foodie baked sweet potato casserole with melty marshmallows and cinnamon, this is your jam. Or your yam. Yum.

In the bottle: Spicy but also smooth red musk! Wet on my skin: Effervescent, smoothly-spicy red musk with hints of wood. Dry: This is the first thing I am testing out of the mailbox, and it's already absolutely beautiful! This is a gentle, slightly sweet and very smooth red musk with maybe something slightly floral, like jasmine green tea rather than plain green tea, and the addition of the fire/ashy pine wood, amber embers, and black pepper gives it an effervescent spice that tingles in the nose a little bit. Not really getting any leather, but I think that is contributing to the 'silken' red musk in making this feel so smooth despite the spices. Red musk usually behaves on me, but I feel like maybe this is a red musk blend that others who it doesn't behave on could potentially wear! It's very much a sum of the parts blend, and everything together just smells SO nice. Piney, spicy, silky-smooth red musk and a hint of amber. Nice. NICE.

Favorite pastime: peeping in yer windows. What a creeper! Spiced rum leather, frankincense, black cedar, sweet tobacco, and honey-gold sandalwood. In the bottle: Thick, strong rum with tobacco. Wet on my skin: Spicy, boozy rum with tobacco and frankincense. Dry: This is a win on my skin! The primary notes on me are spiced rum, frankincense, and tobacco, in that order. Under those are cedar and sandalwood, and a hint of brown leather. It's on the sweet side of spicy and incensed, and a bit on the masculine side of things as well. The throw is medium, though the frankincense is detectable much further away than the rest of the notes. My skin tends to amp that note, however, and I'm fine with that since I love the Lab's frankincense note. After it has been on several hours, the leather starts to come out more, but it's a beautifully sweet and soft brown leather similar to that in Blood & Judgement So Well Commedled. This is definitely one for the tobacco/incense/rum lovers! In my mind, it's a bright, shimmery gold (almost golden-brown) in colour.

Re-review, a month shy of 6 years later! No idea on the age of this imp, but I think it's a couple years newer than the one I tried for the 2015 review. My nose and tastes, and skin chemistry, have changed significantly since then. In the imp: Dry red musk. Wet on my skin: A mix of the red musk and body musk, dry and herbal with the hemlock, nutmeg, and orchid. Not much labdanum or anything. It's similar to the 2015 at this stage, but much more pleasant than I remember thinking it was back then. Dry: Red musk has a tendency to be 'juicier' on me in many blends, but not this one! These musks combine with the amber, hemlock, nutmeg, and orchid to be dry and a little dusty, and the labdanum lends a slightly effervescent quality to the blend. It's light, dry, and slightly spicy on my skin. The dominant notes in this on my skin are nutmeg, body musk, labdanum, and red musk, in that order, and there's a little bit of bitter, papery herbal quality from the hemlock. The tobacco and orchid are just faintly there, lending a little bit of sweetness to an otherwise fairly dry/dusty blend. Overall, this is a fairly light and inoffensive herby musk scent on me, leaning slightly masculine. It is a bit more chewy and sexy if I lean in and sniff the crooks of my arms, and I wish the whole throw was like that!

In the bottle: Dry, slightly boozy cinnamon and a whiff of resin and dry cacao. Wet on my skin: Dry, warm, woody cinnamon with slightly lemony frankincense and a hint of dry, slightly powdery cacao. Dry: This dries down as an equal partnership between that dry, warm, woody cinnamon and slightly lemony frankincense. The cacao is a secondary player on my skin, adding just a hint of bittersweet, powdery cacao to the back edge of the scent. First part of the inhale = cinnamon-olibanum. Second part, as you're done inhaling and it's already in your nose = cacao appears. I was thinking this might be slightly similar to a couple other beloved LEs I have that involve some/most of those notes, but it's actually not too similar to any of them, and I'm not even mad. I am a huge sucker for good frankincense scents, and that's exactly what I got. My *only* quibble with it is that it's fairly close to the skin and doesn't last terribly long, but I suspect a few months of aging will fix that.

This was a frottle from the Lab, and I'm so thankful for it because it's beautiful! In the bottle: Sticky rose. IDK how it's sticky, it just is. Wet on my skin: It starts out as a sticky-sweet rose, with some carnation and dark fruitiness. Dry: Much the same as it is wet. Lush, darkly fruity/jammy rose-carnation with a hint of sticky sweetness from the honey. Not a terribly complicated blend, but definitely a really nice one for someone who, like me, loves them some rose. This is actually a lot more fruity-floral than I usually go for with my rose, but I'm not even mad. This is beautiful, and I am thankful to have it!

This was a frottle from the Lab! Oh my goodness! In the bottle: Grassy, herbal greenness. Wet on my skin: This smells like a whole herbal apothecary shop. Whooooah. I'm getting hints of notes I strongly suspect to be rosemary or something else minty-piney-camphorous, parsley, rose petals, nutmeg, clove or allspice, and various other green herbs and spices. Dry: Herbs and spices, and a bit foresty! This is really, really gorgeous, and unlike pretty much anything else I have tried so far, at least that I can remember. I can for sure pick out some kind of mint, parsley, rose petals, nutmeg, clove, myrrh, and I believe opium. The rest (and there's quite a lot of that) is a medicinal melange of ???? green herbal ???? resins ????? musk ???? pine???? Strange, dark, and a little unsettling, but also quite beautiful on my skin. Definitely evokes Plague Doctor, and/or Bog Witch. Nice. Very nice. Thank you, Lab, for sending me this unexpected treasure!

In the bottle: Cool, powdery rose and something almost aquatic. Wet on my skin: It's strong but gentle, cool, powdery tea rose with some honey, benzoin, and still something a little glassy and aquatic. Dry: This scent is gentle, but very present. It's got a pretty good amount of throw, not something you have to really lean in and sniff like some of the "calming" scents tend to be. Rose-tinted honey dust with gently floral mallow and soft violet leaf, with a gentle, shimmery benzoin-frankincense-balsamic resin layered over/around it. I think the balsamic note is from the balm of Gilead, which I'm not otherwise familiar with. Powdery, but not like baby powder. It's a fairly "antique" feeling scent, like a comforting hug from a favourite grandmother. Pink and gold and feathery white, and very pretty. I really like this, and it actually does make me feel a little better, whether from the soothing frankincense or the power of the words attached to it.

In the bottle: Murphy's Wood Oil Soap and some freshly-oiled oak cabinets. Wet on my skin: Freshly oil-soaped and polished oak furniture and a hint of gleaming ...leather? Yep. Something about the tea + blood + cigarette tobacco combines to smell decidedly like gleaming black leather, perhaps as a trick of my nose or because my skin sometimes does that to certain note combinations. Dry: This is definitely not what I was expecting, but I don't dislike it at all. It remains mostly the same as it dries, and smells very much like rich, freshly oil-soaped and polished oak chairs with polished black leather cushioning/backing. Clean, rich, and very masculine. This smells Vincent Price and Peter Cushing as they sit across from each other, at their immaculately-polished dining table, and drink black tea while discussing their concerns and curiosities regarding their friend Dr. Frankenstein's reckless new experiment. This is something I'd probably need to wear either to set a specific atmospheric mood or if/when I eventually get the courage to try the vampy drag king thing, but something that will be very useful to have on hand when I do need something just so. I bet this would be great for scenting my car, too, with a drop or two in a cotton ball stuck in my heater vent.

In the bottle: Golden delicious apples! Wet on my skin: Golden delicious apples with a little bit of floral honey and a bit of glimmery amber. Dry: Sjofn and Brisingamen had a glorious apple-amber-honey baby, and this is it. It's a soft, pale gold scent, with just a bit of extra depth from the oudh, cedar, and saffron that I can tell are in there somewhere, under the beautiful apple-amber-honey top notes. It's so well blended that I can't really pick up a sure whiff of anything under the apple-amber-honey, but it's somehow still there, if that makes sense? This is a lovely, lovely scent. Not actually very foodie, despite apple and honey. This is what you might expect a Swedish forest spirit masquerading as a beautiful, golden-haired maiden to smell like, as she steps out of the edge of the forest, just before sunset in the late days of summer, and offers an apple from her basket to a weary traveler who is still a mile away from the village. No trick, and that juicy golden apple somehow boosts the traveler's spirits as the golden late-evening sunshafts warm their skin.

In the bottle: Dark, boozy Smut! With a bit of something extra. Wet on my skin: Smut, plus some wet pumpkin guts! Smut guts. Dry: The combination of Smut and juicy pumpkin guts almost smells like butterscotch or like...buttered pumpkin booze with a hint of spice. Smut in all its musky, boozy glory, plus wet, gooey, canned pumpkin and a bit of cinnamon, or maybe raw pumpkin pie pre-bake. There's just a hint of spice to it as it dries, or maybe that's just the musk/booze? Hard to tell, exactly. Either way, this is indeed filthy, somehow even smuttier than normal Smut. Not something you'd want to wear to take Grandma out for lunch, let's put it that way. Also, it's NICE. I will definitely be getting some good mileage out of this one. >:D

In the bottle: Pumpkin pancake batter! Wet on my skin: Pumpkin pancake batter! With a bit of powdered sugar. Dry: Wet, sweet, goopy pumpkin pancake batter. Specifically batter, not cooked pancakes. With a bit of powdered sugar and cinnamon. Could also double as pumpkin pie, actually. But pumpkin pie with funnel cake crust...and a bit of powdered sugar and cinnamon. YUM. Foodie, gourmand, fairly simple, and delicious. I want pumpkin treats now.

In the bottle: Cherry cough syrup and/or cherry cordial liqueur. Wet on my skin: Same as in the bottle. CHERRY. Slightly chilly and medicinal cherry, actually making my skin feel a little bit icy-hot where I applied it. Not bad, just strange! Dry: This is a very cherry scent. It's like "I Kissed a Girl" in perfume form, honestly, rather than creepy walls dripping with blood. This scent is wearing cherry Chapstick (there is a slightly waxy feel, like Chapstick) while drinking cherry cordial liqueur, with a tiny hint of something bitterly medicinal just beneath the sticky-sweet cherry surface. Not getting anything like a velvet or wallpaper note, but this is semi-fresh from the mailbox, so I may come back to it later. As it is, this is actually only my second full-bottle cherry scent from BPAL, and it's very, very...cherry. Not a super strong throw on this, but it's nice and youthfully sweet, and a little more "commercial" than a lot of BPAL offerings. This would be quite popular with teenage goths, I feel like.

Fresh-ish from the mailbox, but want to get a review in! May edit later! In the bottle: Soft, leathery-woody oudh and incense. Wet on my skin: A perfect combination of every listed note, velvety and resinous and smooth. Oh man, this is nice. The burgundy pitch and incense smoke are probably the most forward notes at this stage, but not by much. Dry: This is *really* really nice. It's not super strong, but as it just came off the mail truck earlier today, it may strengthen later. As it is, this is a gentle but present scent that is a perfectly blended combination of all the listed notes. Everything is there and accounted for when you pick it apart, but as a whole, it's a dark, deep, velvety smoke and wood/resin forward scent. The vetiver and oud aren't super strong, for those concerned about those notes. The incense smoke, burgundy pitch, and wood are most forward, with the velvety cacao and opoponax under that, and then the oud and vetiver deepen and darken everything. This scent isn't that strong, as I said, but it's definitely dramatic and doleful, and very very nice on my skin. If you like darkly resinous/woody scents and your skin likes vetiver/oud, this is a must-try! I have a feeling this will enter into my common-wear rotation.

Not long out of the mailbox, but wanted to get at least a starter review in for this! In the bottle: Light anise and frankincense. Wet on my skin: Pale, translucent frankincense and star anise, and something a little bitter emerges as it starts to dry. Wormwood? Dry: This doesn't really change much as it dries down and wears. It's a pale, shimmery scent like a ghost, but a ghost made of frankincense and star anise, with a hint of bitter wormwood. The bergamot doesn't seem to be much in play as a top note, but there's a very gentle, warmer, citrusy undercurrent helping to carry the cool frank and anise and give it all that pale, ethereal feel. This scent doesn't have a ton of long-distance throw, but it's actually quite present and even strong within ~12 inches of the skin. For those who've tried Three Dayes from 2015, this is a lot like the top notes from that, without the opoponax/vetiver base to darken it. Very unusual, but also pretty and very much a *mood* scent.