Casablanca
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Everything posted by Casablanca
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This blend is a cold-season conifer forest: pine, fir with its frosty tone, and wafts of smoke adding depth and a sense of wolf-howl loneliness. When I picked this up, I’d imagined the smoke to smell light grey and wispy, but it reads to me as dark and sooty. I like all smokes, though. There’s no sweetness in this scent, and it smells dry. Low throw. Lasts 1 – 2 hours on me, less than average.
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Wet on my skin, this is sweet toasted-marshmallow bonfire smoke and the lightest touch of booze. (Rum or whiskey?) It really is light, and even though I don’t usually like booze in scents, I’m enjoying this drop of it with the sugar. I never smell the musk. I love the way this smells on me, but it’s mostly gone in 20 minutes.
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2016 version Yes, evil Christmas tree. Ashy pine pitch, opoponax, and tobacco with a little frosty fir and some blue spruce. Begins fairly sweet, and softly camphoraceous, and settles into a soft conifer scent with hints of ash, smoke and camphor. I like. ETA: I have to add this, because it cracked me up. Last night my friend tested this. Whereas on me this is very much the evil Christmas tree, on her it turned to candied fruits. We were like whuhhhh? It was like the scene from Mary Poppins when she pours medicine that turns a different color in each spoon.
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In the bottle, I smell a lovely fig (not overripe or Fig Newtony) and a little sandalwood; on my skin, though, this blend is mostly a red cinnamon-sandalwood-myrrh and the fig falls to the background. The cinnamon is pretty, and smells almost exactly like the Ceylon cinnamon I give my bird. But there's a little more of it on me -- and less fig -- than I'd hoped for. Unfortunately the cinnamon just amps more in drydown for me. The blend is soft and barely there, and kind of thin, like there isn't as much scent in the carrier oil. I hope it comes out more with age.
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Oh gosh, what is that, besides the snow and conifers? In the Wild North is lovely, but in the bottle, and especially on me, it opens with a bright, unexpected floral mingled with snow. On my skin, at first it makes me think of lotus, like a pale lotus -- and then almost like opium. Behind this, I smell a soft blend of conifers, more woody on my skin than green. The bright floral fades quickly in the drydown (again making me think of the way lotus plays on me), leaving behind a lovely, wintry snow-and-conifers scent, with only a hint of flowers. ETA: On a later application, I seem to smell strawberries in the mix, too.
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The Glimmer of the Northern Lights, The Yellow Flowers of the Greenland Summer
Casablanca replied to TijuanaBible's topic in BPAL Anniversary
The first impression of Glimmer of Northern Lights on my skin is a yellow-orange fruity floral and a little (very little) frost. The yellow seems lemony and the orange seems like some mix of orange, peach, or apricot. After a minute the opium flower develops, giving off a warm smoke-and-floral note, but on me it stays secondary to the fruitiness. The hint of frost is still present, but it's barely a touch in the air. The blend as a whole is warmer than I expected, but it's not quite like anything else I have. It's bright and lovely -- like a mild winter showing a glowing heart of spring. -
BPTP just kindly sent me this freebie, though it’s listed here as discontinued. Wet on my skin, Epitaph is white, misty-powdery lilies and a hint of pale green moss. The mossy, powdery mist quality is like that in The Virgin and the Unicorn. As Epitaph dries, its roses appear, just barely – pale roses, white or a faint pink. This blend isn’t me, yet I like it enough to wear with pale outfits for as long as the imp lasts.
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2007 version Tart, juicy red pomegranate. More tart than any pom fruit I’ve tasted, but I still like it. I also catch a little spice, which seems like allspice and/or nutmeg. Pretty. Medium throw and wear length.
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2005 version Car-freshener pine, baby-powdery snow, and lemon-floral department store perfume. Yucky-poo.
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A cool, fizzy floral – although what might have been fizzy in 2007 is just a flat, lazy champagne hit in 2016. Low throw and medium wear length.
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2007 version A cool purple blend. The sugared plums are more tart than sweet on me, at this age. They remind me of black currants; maybe there’s some of each. There’s a soft, white floral with it, but I don’t know which flowers. Medium throw and low wear length.
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2007 version I don’t know how this was when fresh, but when it has aged nine years, I smell no rum in it. Sugared cream is the strongest note on my skin, with a pleasant, almost balsamic brandy note (without any accompanying alcohol vapors) and nutmeg in support. Very low throw and wear length. My skin drinks this right up.
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2006 version Watery mint and hints of sweet coconut and white chocolate. Borderline foodie. Medium throw, short wear length.
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On the wand, this is primarily a sweet, creamy black coconut with a bit of rough patch under it. On my skin, well, that's a lovely coconut. Maybe too sweet for me, but I love its dark creaminess. The benzoin's vanilla tone is blending right into it, and a hidden creamy vanilla note being in here, too, wouldn't surprise me. This coconut leans toward foodie, but isn't entirely so. I'm pleasantly surprised that the patchouli is behaving itself. It's just contributing to a sense of the tropics... it adds the texture of palm-roofed huts... Oh. This would be the fragrance of any given troll village in WoW. (Little wave of nostalgia.) I love fragrance.
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I was nervous about the dirt note, but I quite like it. There is a dark earth here that smells newly wet, and lovely, instead of like a long-term dampness grown through with greenery rot. But that's not the strongest note. The strongest first smells on me are green and tropical fruity flowers. The fruit notes smell like lemons and a little something a bit like melons. This mingles with what might be some sort of orchid -- but I've smelled more than a dozen orchid cultivars in person, and each one smelled different, so the range of what can represent "orchid" seems as vast as the jungle. I'm not familiar with the lab's orchid notes. There's also prominent humid greenery and musk. I think it's black musk, especially with the blend's dark and lemony tones. As Python dries, it grows a bit of a spicy woody note on my skin. That part of the blend reminds me a bit of Demeter's Black Bamboo. I like this. It's a good stop in my journey to find a favorite jungle scent.
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Waiting, on my skin, is primarily lavender and a powdery white musk. Secondary to those, I get a sense of cold, wet, dark rock and the lab's oudh, which always makes me think of words like "welcoming" and "solid." The lab's oudh reminds me of a comfortable living room. I like most of this. I would really love this if it didn't feel like it's coating my nose and upper throat with fine white powder whenever I inhale from it. Luckily, the worst of the powder puff comes up front. Once this dries, the powder takes a back seat (still in the mix, but no longer aggressive). I absolutely love the cold, wet rock plus oudh's dark solidity at this stage, which comes forward, with poignancy from the lavender. I've been running this in my car diffuser, too. It was perhaps a weird choice for a room scent, but I've enjoyed it, other than the powder.
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Oh, well, hello. I saw "crimson tea leaf" and feared a rooibos experience, but that's not how this leaf -- prominent both on the wand and my skin -- smells to me. Instead, I'm getting a kind of red raspberry tea scent, just a bit tart, with fizz and a light, playful booze vapor. Alongside that, I smell a floral myrrh. The lilac blends cunningly with the other notes, and I find it hard to pick out, but it seems to trail right behind the raspberry, like some clinging shadow of it, when I inhale. This doesn't change its balance on me once it dries.
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On the wand, I just want to pull back from this one: it smells awful. The whole makes me think of carpet cleaner, which doesn't make sense, because I never use carpet cleaner. To try again: the plum is potent but unappealing, even though I like plum. It seems to clash with the citrus and also with a heavier base note, the amber... well, it clashes with all of it. On my skin, the notes all come out swinging. This may be Megaera, but I'm thinking of Eris: the discord. The orris casts a powdery shroud over an angry plum and the other notes it fights with. The amber is there, adding an uncomfortable warm fullness to the plum. Once it's dry, I mostly smell orris and an artificial plum.
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On my skin, this is a salty, murky aquatic darkened, maybe, with a drop of vetiver, although that impression fades quickly on me. There's a bit of a gear or motor oil sense in this. The saltiness grows as this dries. Not my kind of thing.
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Cardamom is my favorite spice for fragrance, and I like most sugar notes. The Dead Leaves oils have been hit and miss for me, but DLSC doesn't disappoint. It's a lovely rustic blend. This and Lavender Buds were the winners for me from the Dead Leaves blends I tried. If I had more spending freedom, I might back-up bottle this one, because I could see it becoming a fall favorite. DLSC is well-blended. Even when it's wet on my skin, while I can pick out the notes, I don't find any seams. I love the way the dead leaves mix is working with this cardamon and sugar. The overall effect is a warm, dried, almost crunchy-leaf rustic autumn mood, spicy but not peppery, and sweet as a sugar crust, but not foodie.
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On my skin, at first this is pale gingered honey and sugar cane, and then the currants roll out when they warm up. I also get a beeswax impression, and wonder if that helps make a honey note "white." The ginger grows on me at Quaeris dries. I also smell, more strongly than before, the fibrous pale green of the sugar cane note. The honey is present but less strong, and I barely smell the currants. This stays as a gingery, green-sugar-cane honey on me for hours.
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Dead Leaves, Raw Leather, Bourbon Vanilla, and Clove
Casablanca replied to puellacaerulea's topic in Halloweenie
Wet on my skin, this is dead leaf-covered leather, and some of that odd, musty musk. I can pick out no more than a light trace of clove, and no vanilla (bourbon or otherwise). There's a more rustic quality to this leather -- the "raw" -- that pairs well with the leaves. This reminds me a bit of Hunter, although the clove is stronger in that one. This later turns on me into a dried, leathery, lightly clove-spiced, musty musk. I never find vanilla in it. -
On my skin, the tar is the immediate strongest impression, made rustic by the dead leaves and colored dark purplish berry by the black currants. I get a sort of musty musk underneath. I'm not enjoying this version of tobacco. Combined with the dead leaves, for me it sits too close to "tar-gummed ashtray," which, in my head, causes the black currant to seem like a room freshener to hide nicotine habits. I don't think this is working for me.
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Yeep. On the wand, this smells brick red to me, with a little brick-dust-like patchouli, and loads of dragon's blood-vetiver musk. On my skin, the cinnamon amps up, and the heavy red dragon's blood musk is nearly sickening. After drydown, the red musk turns to malodorous armpit in the usual way that the lab's red musk reacts on my skin. It's not improving things... This isn't for me.