Elspethdixon

The Mouse's Long and Sad Tale is a really lovely vanilla sandalwood.

I haven't smelled Autumnalis, so I don't really have a basis of comparison, but The Lion is a warm, slightly spicy amber, and Coyote is amber with soft leather and sweet grass. Both of those might be autumn-like.

The May 2016 Thirteen doesn't have patchouli - it's "blackened cacao" with "Siamese red benzoin, olibanum, black copal, fossilized amber oil, sweet myrrh, Coptic rose resin, guggul gum, dragon’s blood resin, Palo Santo, bdellium, dammar gum, and attar of onycha." I remember because I wikipedia'd some of those notes when it was released, since I'd never heard of bdellium and onycha before El Dia de los Reyes may re-occur this December if we're lucky (I hope so, anyway, since it's my wife's favorite and I like to keep a back-up bottle on-hand). One of the other recurring Yules, Gelt, is also chocolate, but I've never tried that one because it always seemed excessive to buy two chocolate perfumes at once and there's usually another Yule LE I want more to accompany ELdlR. My bet is that it's a milk chocolate note, though, because those gold-foil covered Hanukkah coins are usually made out of cheap milk chocolate. ETA: Somebody upthread mentioned The Malignant Dreams of Cthulhu in Love, which is hard to find, but worth trying if you can track down a decant. It's a salty aquatic with chocolate, and despite chocolate and aquatics/salt both being iffy notes on me (one can disappear and the other usually turns into soap), the combination is weirdly sexy.

Boomslang vanished in under five minutes on me, so I can't help you there. But if it doesn't work for you, you may want to try Velvet from the GC for another spin on chocolate + vanilla incense. It's cocoa with vanilla, sandalwood, and myrrh and is church-incense dominant rather than foodie. My favorite cocoa/chocolate scents are El Dia de los Reyes, one of the recurring Yules, which is a dead ringer for the scent of baking brownies (super foodie), and Dark Chocolate, Black Tobacco, and Vetiver (non-foodie, mostly tobacco & vetiver), but close behind them is this May's Friday the 13th LE. It starts out a really weird and not at all harmonious mix of chocolate and resins, which I suspect is why it doesn't seem to have been a big hit, but after a half-hour or so it eventually settles into a soft cocoa skin-scent that lasts all day, even on my chocolate-note-eating skin.

Both white tea and sage and fig and white sandalwood HG go well with Amicitia, depending on whether you want to emphasize Amicitia's sweet/smokey fig element, or amp up the sage, and The Sharing of the Cake Between the Lion and the Unicorn + Mouse Circus is also good. Recollection bath oil (used as a moisturizer) + De Vos overtop of it doubles-down on the creamy marshmallow note (but isn't as sweet or in-your-face marshmallow-y as layering De Vos with Stekkjarstaur or the Marshmallow Chick single note is), and wearing Marshmallow Cookie Pie bath oil underneath BPALs with cocoa/chocolate notes like The Avenue or Dark Chocolate, Black Tobacco, and Vetiver adds extra and more long-lasting chocolate that presumably mimics the way those blends smell on other people whose skin doesn't eat chocolate notes like mine does.

I blind-bottled this because the description reminded me of my cat (who has a pink nose and white fur, and who for some unknown reason thinks unpopped 'old maid' kernels from the bottom of the popcorn bowl are god's most perfect cat toys). I was expecting more of a sugary-vanilla-wood scent, like a sweeter Antikythera Mechanism without the tobacco, but instead this is pure popcorn. Opening the bottle, it honest-to-God smells like Beth somehow liquified hot butter popcorn and then bottled it. Incredibly realistic - it even smells salty, and even oils with salt as a listed note rarely do that on me. Once it dries, the buttered popcorn gets sweeter, closer to the smell of fresh kettle corn being made. After the first few minutes, it becomes softer and more gentle and the wood note starts to emerge (I think the 'polished wood' might be teak?), making it less of a pure popcorn smell and more of a gentle-gourmand-with -a-hint-of-popcorn. I don't actually know how long the wear length is because I usually apply it in the evening before bed. It's wonderful. Cuddly and salty-sweet and actually a pretty good perfume for evoking my goofy little orange-and-white kitty. And unlike some of my other favorite BPALs, my wife likes it, too.

In the imp/wet - Foodie-adjacent apricot musk Five-fifteen minutes in - fluffy/velvety apricot and peony, with the white musk making it softer/hazier. I get a bit of vanilla from this, but not the sugary/creamy/marshmallow-y sweetness some people seem to be getting, and very little rose. Very low throw, but if I put my nose next to my wrists, I get soft clouds of a gentle pillowy-soft my-skin-but-better scent (I think another reviewer described it as being what a white unicorn's fur would smell like, and it totally is). Drydown/Hour-and-a-half in - The apricot has receded, and now I get primarily a gentle, barely-there vanilla musk with a slight fruity cast to it. The wearlength is slightly longer than I expected considering how faint it is - I keep thinking it's gone, only to sniff again ten/fifteen minutes later and still catch faint traces of it. De Vos has extremely low throw on me, which is a shame, because I'd really like it if only it were stronger. Like I said, pillowy-soft velvet clouds of the palest apricot-pink unicorn fur. Like white fur with the softest pink/apricot sheen. Wait, no, you know what it's like? A few nights ago I put on Recollection bath oil and LUSH rose jam massage bar before bed, presumably got traces of both on the sheets, and then came home from work to discover that my cat had spent all day snuggled in a nest of LUSH&BPAL-scented sheets and lightly perfumed his soft, soft fur with marshmallow-vanilla-rose. That's what De Vos smells like. That plus apricot.

In the imp/wet - Rose with something cool and sharp Five-fifteen minutes in - Strong rose note, with the bergamot adding a cool/sharp/fresh note and the jasmine probably contributing to the strength of the floral character. No detectable vanilla. Unlike most pf the other unicorns so far, Allegory has a couple inches worth of throw - probably the jasmine amping up the floral notes. Drydown/Hour-and-a-half in - Still a fresh, floral rose, but it's gotten softer and more gentle as it begins to fade. Any sharpness from the bergamot is gone now, and I get a sort of rose-dominant floral haze surrounding my forearm (but with about half the throw it had when freshly applied). Allegory of Chastity is more complex than a single note rose, but it's definitely rose-dominant, with no noticeable vanilla and with the jasmine largely a background/supporting player for the rose rather than the white floral blast I'd feared (and I say this as a jasmine hater for whom almost any jasmine is too much jasmine). Overall, it's a fresh, creamy rose with a hint of white floral, similar to sweet sugared/creamy rose blends like Love and Hope and very different from De Vos on my skin. I'm going to need to test it against my other rose BPALS to see if I need can justify a bottle.

St. Clare is a very soft, cuddly scent on me - I've been wearing my decant at bedtime a lot this week.

Aging must do something amazing to this blend, because I got relatively little licorice or metal/rust from it. On me, it was primarily a cozy/snuggly tobacco/myrrh, with the myrrh doing that soft, powdery thing myrrh sometimes does on me. A hint of licorice/anise was there at the beginning, and I could detect some metallic notes trying to peek through occasionally, but for the most part, Krampus' Chains were the softest brown-velvet-lined padded leather cuffs. Apparently, bad children really just need a nap, and Krampus is going to gently cuddle them to sleep.

Wet/in the imp - pale florals - smells both slightly ethereal and very like the kind of traditional pale/white floral my mother would wear. On first application, it's pale florals with an element of something acrid/musty. Then the lilac comes forward and from about the fifteen minute to the forty-five minute mark, I'm surrounded by a glorious cloud of delicious lilac. If I put my nose right up to my wrist, it's all pale florals accompanied the soap/dryer sheets effect aquatics often give me (that must be the mist) plus a hint of powdery orris, but the throw and silage are all lilac. It's wonderful. I love it. If only this stage lasted, it would be bottle worthy for the lilac silage alone. Alas, after about a half an hour of gently wafting lilac beauty, something goes very wrong with my skin chemistry, and my wrists start to smell like floral diaper poop. Baffled because I knew this didn't contain jasmine, I check wikipedia, and sure enough, lilac has indole in it. Crap (literally). I've never gotten this effect from white florals before - my avoidance of jasmine is because I just don't like it not because it goes bad on me - but apparently there's a first time for everything. After several hours of pale/musty/powdery/soapy floral with hint of dirty diaper, the awful notes finally subside and I'm left with faint traces of a much more pleasant dry/powdery orris along with a hint of soapy aquatic. I can tell this is a really beautiful blend, but my skin chemistry does something horrible with it. Off to the swap pile it goes.

In the imp - cool, cologne-y sort of scent Wet - Sweet/cool teak and cognac. Something in this smells cool and almost minty (the oil even felt tingly/cool on my skin in the same way as mint). There's a hint of something unpleasantly musty, similar to the fusty/sour/musty wet stage of some honey blends. Dry - By ten minutes in, the mustiness has faded away, just as it usually does with honey notes, and the minty/herbal element has also gone, leaving smooth/sweet/warm teak accompanied by something clean and cool and by something else which reads to my nose as fruity honey but which is probably the cognac (which doesn't smell boozey at all). This is one of my favorite Unicorn blends so far. I can see how it reads as masculine to other people, but on me it's very sweet and gentle, like a cooler, fainter, less sweet Antikythera Mechanism without the tobacco/vanilla, or like The Gift from this year's Lupers but with less honey. It doesn't morph much after this point, though by the one hour mark it began to fade down to a skin scent and the smooth/cool teak has become warmer and softer/fuzzier. I don't get much myrrh, except for one spot on my left wrist where it smells warm/dry and incense-y (my right arm and the rest of my left forearm are all soft, warm/cool wood). I would swear there was either amber or honey in this based on the warm/powdery finish of the drydown, though neither are listed in the notes. Like all the Unicorn blends I've tested so far, Orpheus has very light/limited throw. Good wear length for something so light, though - it faded to a faint nose-to-your-wrists skin scent after about two hours, but that skin scent stage lasts a while. Six hours after application, I can still catches traces of it if I press my nose to the skin of my wrists.

Seconding De Vos's Unicorn and Allegory of Chastity if you like Pink Snowballs. They're both sugared, creamy florals. (And if creamy, gourmand rose is your thing, you should search the sales/swaps page to see if you can get your hands on a decant of Adrastea, this past February's lunacy. It's white rose with goat's milk, cocoa, and honey, and is pretty much what I imagine the turkish delight the White Witch offers Edmund in The Chronicles of Narnia must have smelled like). You might also want to try Asp Viper from the reformulated Snake Pit - it's kind of like a sweeter, Snake Oil-y Bastet with orange added.

This is glorious, probably one of my top fen BPALs I've ever worn. I get a hint of the salty/foodie chips during the wet stage (though I didn't mentally peg the smell as "tortilla chips" until I read other people's reviews), but mostly it's a clean, somehow outdoorsy scent. It makes me think of a salt marsh - not of the fishy brackish river mud smell salt marshes actually have, but of the idea of a salt marsh. In a perfect world, the Chesapeake Bay shoreline would smell like this. There's just a hint of aquatic freshness (probably created by the salt - I don't get the usual "soap/dryer sheets" aquatic scent from this at all), combined with clean/fresh sage and sweet, warm frankincense and nutmeg. Once the drydown begins, the salty-fresh notes fade slightly and the nutmeg note combined with the frankincense starts to remind me strongly of the nutmeg and resins in Mars Ultor. This isn't a sister scent to that one, exactly, but I'd say it was at least a second cousin. It's not a gourmand scent by any means, but it's definitely foodie-adjacent. I forgot all about the "honyed saffron" in the notes until I came here to post my review and re-read them, and thinking about it now, that's probably what's giving it the sweet, foodie-adjacent warmth. It lasts well, too. If I put it on my skin and hair before bed, I can still smell traces of "fantasy salt marsh + hints of Mars Ultor + honyed maize" on me when I wake up.

Wet/in imp - Sharp, herbal honey, somehow 'clean' smelling Freshly applied/five minutes in - Sharp/clean herbal honey (heavier on the green herbs than the honey), that I'd swear has citrus in it were it not for the fact that citrus notes generally smell like cleaning products on me and this just smells fresh and clean/bright. There's also a hint of something acrid/dry/hot, like burning (checking the notes, this is probably the ash resin or wood, and my brain subbed in "burning" for "dry woodiness" because the word "ash" suggests burning). I'm a fan of warm/dry wood scents and"fire"-themed scents like Djinn, so I actually really like it. Half hour - after about 30-40 minutes, the ashes and herbs fade into the background and the honey comes to the foreground. It's a fruity-smelling honey, which I guess is the "ambrosial" part. The fruity honey stage lasts about 2 hours before fading (but might have made it a little longer if I hadn't put on sunblock at that point). . Overall this is a lot like an Apiary scent, except I actually like it better than I do several of the Apiaries. It's a good spring/fall honey, first clean and herbal and then somehow fruity and crisp rather than sticky and sexy. A shame it's discontinued.

Now I'm even more impatient for Act 4.

If you like leather + vanilla, you should try Bow and Crown of Conquest. It's a snuggly vanilla-leather with a bit of carnation/sage.

Roses, Pearls, and Diamonds is all rose/crystalline musk on me, and I don't get coconut from Brown Jenkins or Death Adder at all. Giljagaur and Obatala are amazing, though. Creamy/warm foodie winter coconut and clean summer beachy coconut. Between those and Black Pearl and Hidden Pearls' light, orris-y coconut for spring, I just need to find a good fall coconut and I'll have all the seasons covered.

In the imp/wet - sweet/juicy red fruit. Freshly applied/just starting to dry - the sweet red fruit has become dryer, and I swear I smell leather somewhere in there as well. It's a very sophisticated smell, the the kind of thing I expected Red Rider to smell like (instead of the single-note tack-room leather Red Rider actually was on me). I don't get any of the sweet grape Manischewitz the red wine note in some other blends becomes on me, just red/burgundy-colored leather and warm fruitiness that's somehow sexy rather than overtly foodie. After the first fifteen minutes or so, the leather note (or whatever it was, since leather's not actually a listed note) vanishes and the amaretto comes forward to complement the fruit. At this point, the sophisticated bordello where people drink dry red wine while sitting in plush leather chairs turns into a cozy kitchen with bakewell tarts cooking in the oven. The sexiness is replaced by sweet/warm/slightly-foodie coziness, and instead of burgundy leather, it now makes me think of a soft/fuzzy red sweater. Over the course of the drydown it gradually gets softer and less fruity until a couple hours later, I'm left with a warm/soft amaretto scent with hints of something amber-y.

This smells lovely in the bottle (sweet strawberry liquor with a hint of white chocolate and just a bit of tingliness from the pepper), but once on my skin, it gradually morphs into a dead ringer for the scented plastic of a 1980s Strawberry Shortcake Doll.

In the imp/wet - Pale florals. Not a heady white floral like honeysuckle but something slightly harsher/more green and less sweet. As it dries, the honey starts to come out, but the floral still dominates. I feel like this is in the same honied-floral scent family as Skuld and The Bride, but less sweet than either. There's something fresh about it, not exactly soapy, but clean. Five minutes in - The floral note has overpowered the honey (or maybe it's just that the Redoul Honey I'm testing at the same time is so overwhelmingly honeyhoneyhoney that Daphne Honey seems like all flowers in comparison). It's a lovely, outdoor-in-the-late-spring scent, like freshly blooming flowers with hints of greenery. Florals are not always my thing, but this is a relatively wearable one. Having looked daphne up, it's apparently an evergreen shrub with pale pink flowers, which fits the strong/sweet fragrance. It smells similar to a white floral in intensity, but fresher and without that cloying indolic edge. Half an hour in - No honey remains - Daphne honey is all flowers on the drydown. I'm liking the floral scent a little less as time goes on, but that may just be because it's so strong/intense. There's an almost citrusy edge to it, which might be why it smells fresh and a little like something a soap or air freshener ought to be scented with without actually being at all soapy. This is much more like a classic floral perfume than any of the other three apiaries. Like, I could give this to my mother, the lover of things like White Linen and Marc Jacobs Daisy, without her making a face at it. One hour in - This scent doesn't morph much on me. An hour after application, DH is now a soft classic floral with just the faintest hint of underlying honey. I like it more at this point than I did earlier in the drydown, but I may in fact give this imp to my mother the white-floral lover, who I suspect will like it better than I do.

This is my favorite of the Apiary scents and one of my favorite BPAL honeys in general, but I've never reviewed it before. Time to remedy that. In the imp/wet, it's basically a single note honey. As it starts to dry, an almost berry-like note starts to emerge, with a base of sweet, foody honey beneath it. Then, the magic happens. By five or so minutes in, the honey smothers everything else and becomes dominant, just like it is in the imp. You can still catch a hint of the sweet berries, but Redoul Honey is indeed pretty much a honey single note. This is late summer honey, the kind that's super dark. Thick, rich, sweet honey, with that delicious honey-pollen almost crunchy sweetness that warm, partially-crystallized honey or freshly extracted honey being strained and processed can sometimes have. Sadly, this glorious hyper-realistic honey phase only lasts about a half-hour before morphing into a more general sweet/thick/rich scent, with hints of floral and berry notes still lurking in there somewhere. It lasts another two-three hours, getting gradually softer and more powdery over time. I wish the "stick your face in sticky, just-used honey extraction equipment" phase lasted longer, but the later parts of the drydown are still sweet, sweet goodness. I'm pretty sure that if I wore this at home around my parents' beehives, I'd be attacked.

In the imp/wet - cherry cough syrup. Freshly applied/just starting to dry - The cough syrup has transitioned into a cherry/cherry blossom scent that's relatively pleasant, but not really me. Sweet, but I don't really get much honey from it. Unfortunately, after about five minutes of pleasant-smelling cherry, the cherry note starts to morph into something plastic-y and faintly chemical-smelling. One hour in - No honey at all, just a cherry scent that is somehow both chemically/plastic-y, cool, and cloying. Fail. Cherry is apparently not a note my skin chemistry likes. You know that cherry-flavored gritty plaster/rubber/paste substance they used to use to take impressions of your bite in the orthodontist's office back during the 1990s? The drydown of Chokecherry Honey is unfortunately reminiscent of that stuff. This is not the sweet cherry-pie-filling scent I'd hoped for nor even the fruity cherry blossom I got for the first few minutes. After over an hour of cloying, plastic-y fail, Chokecherry Honey started to improve slightly around the two-hour mark as the cherry note finally began to fade. It was entirely gone by three hours of so, and I was glad to see it go.

I can't wear hair gloss in my hair, alas, because of how fine/thin it is, but sprayed on my skin like a dry oil body mist, this moisturizes well, absorbs quickly, and smells amazing. Warm/sweet fig with just enough dry sandalwood to keep it from being overly fruity. The smell is very light, but has relatively good throw, and lasted for at about an hour and a half after application. It would make a good moisturizer base for fig-scented perfume oils like Amicitia and Daruma Doll.

If you like Kumiho and Shanghai, then (provided citrus works well on you), you might also like Aizen-Myoo (three citrus notes, black tea, and cherry blossom) and Baobhan Sith (grapefruit, white tea, apple blossom, and ginger). Both of them felt like citrus-y scent-cousins to Kumiho and Shanghai's tea/ginger and tea/cherry blossom combos to me. ETA: And I see someone's already recc'd Baibhan Sith. Consider this a second endorsement for it's Kumiho resemblance.