Lucchesa

I usually avoid peppermint, but this was a frimp from a decant circle, and in any case it was much more pine than peppermint on me. It was a cool pine scent that was curiously short-lasting on me.

Le Lethe is my favorite GC red musk, possibly because it isn't only and entirely red musk. There's something about the red musk and nutmeg combination that really soars. The nutmeg and dry blonde tobacco keep the red musk from going too grapey. I'm not able to pick out the amber or labdanum, but I'm sure they're working their magic here as well. The end result is sexy and warm and spicy, an absolutely gorgeous scent for autumn, but easily wearable all year round. And it lasts all day on me.

This got cut from the decant circle I participated in. I'm so glad to have finally snagged a decant of it, and I wish I had more. In the vial and wet, I'm struck by the amber, but on my skin the amber just serves as a kind of transparent, glowing envelope for the leather and evergreen woods, so it's got both culture and nature somehow. It seems to be about -- if a perfume has a theme -- the transmutation of nature into art. It's perfectly gender neutral. I love this one.

My first yam perfume! And foodier than I expected, given the first three listed ingredients. I don't really get oakmoss at all. More like yams with brown sugar and cinnamon. I suppose it's actually the vanilla I'm smelling, and I'm filling in the brown sugar. But it's lighter than that description suggests. Like a sweet potato/cinnamon mousse, maybe. After an hour or so, the amber wraps around it all, moderating the foodiness somewhat. So it's a Weenie with a delicate Shunga sensibility.

On me Adante con Fantasia is all about the honey. Thick, golden honey, gobbets of it. There's a tiny kick of lime and a floaty lilac fougere that just can't hold its own with the way my skin is amping the honey. Like many BPAL honey scents, this one has great staying power on me.

Lately I've been losing the patchouli in a couple of blends, and I'm wondering if something's wrong with my nose. I'm getting almost all fruit here. Berry and pom, with the blackberry veering into candy territory as it nearly always does on me, though I shall never give up my quest for a realistic blackberry that works with my skin. The heliotrope is most evident in the opening, and there's a little bit of bergamot to temper the sweetness, but tragically I am getting almost zero patchouli. And my skin eats this up really quickly.

This smells delicious though not as foodie as you might think. Lots of dark chocolate at first with lots of clove, but as it wears the cocoa wanes and the sandalwood comes through. It ends up lots of clove backed by smooth sandalwood and a little cocoa, and it lasts really well on me. It feels more like an autumn/winter blend. A must for clove lovers.

I quite like this one, and it lasts a little longer than lavender usually does on me, though that's not saying much. The clove is gentler than what you'd find in your spice drawer, and the lavender is the more sharp herbal kind than the sweet sleepy kind, sort of the reverse of what you might expect from those two notes. They play really nicely together once the initial sharpness of the lavender fades down, with the ambrette very quiet, adding perhaps a tinge of nutty musk. This makes me think of a clean, bright apothecary shop.

Wildflower honey, check. And a really nice honey note, not cloying, golden and summery. But patchouli? Patchouli?? Where are you, patch? I have to agree with VioletChaos that the patch is almost nonexistent.

OK, I am having a very different experience with this than everyone else, and it was given to me by doomsday_disco, so it's the exact same thing tested above only four months ago. If I hadn't known this was a 13, I would have struggled to find the chocolate at all. This is not in the least foodie on my skin. I get burnt sugar and all the resins. Dragon's blood especially. Myrrh. Copal, amber. Several in the list of ingredients I am unfamiliar with so I can't comment on, say, bdellium, but the overall impression on my skin is of dark sugary resins with just a whisper of cocoa, and it lasts for hours.

I still haven't reviewed this? Of all the new TALs from the pandemic era, this is the one that felt like it was made for me. I love anything with anise in it, and I am all about new beginnings, every single day. This has been a mainstay for more than a year now. It has a wonderfully uplifting rootbeer smell that brings whiffs of happy childhood memories (I would have guessed there was sassafras or sarsaparilla in this), with some depth from the frankincense and other herbs. The bottle is sitting by my computer so I tend to use it a lot while working, mainly just because I enjoy the scent. I would happily wear this as perfume (and have) but it does also have a quality of lightening my load. Sometimes I just take the cap off and inhale deeply.

I got a testable empty of this one from my decanter, and it was surprisingly harsh on me when it hit my skin. ih8perfume is right: this is no tame supermarket honey but something much wilder and more bee-adjacent. And I don't get sweet orange either but something more like a bitter Seville orange, and almost no orange blossom (a note i usually avoid). So this actually ended up working much better on me than I would have guessed either by the notes or the opening. Dark primal honey with a hint of bitter orange. Like many honey scents, Honey, Sweet Orange and Orange Blossom has good staying power on me.

Hmm. A smoky aquatic. This is interesting, and something I wouldn't have chosen for myself (I got decants of the whole series). It does have a fair amount of oakmoss, and it does not turn into cleaning products, probably because of the anchoring smoke. This has excellent staying power on me. I'm not sure when I would choose to wear it, but I'm glad I got to try it.

There are a bunch in the GC that have just this vibe. Villain. Wilde. Whitechapel. Highwayman. Vicomte de Valmont. John Watson. Dorian if you can handle the sweetness. If you like leather, the White, Black and Red Riders (the last doesn't work on me, but I love the other two.) Bow and Crown of Conquest -- leather and carnation. Oh, and Crowley!! Lordy which benefits the ACLU but which some people thinks smells like cucumber. I haven't tried Boney Was a Warrior because jasmine, but it might scratch that itch, too: A fresh, light Napoleonic-era cologne with hints of rosemary, almond, oakmoss, and jasmine. And Kit from OLLA is very dapper in an old fashioned way: Mysore sandalwood, a tattered and patched 16th century waistcoat, inkstained, still scented with the marjoram and benzoin dry perfumes of his youth.

Cinnamon and Leather is lots of leather on me, not much cinnamon. A really, really nice soft brown leather, very cozy, totally unisex, and it lasts a long time. I really like this one.

Captain Cully is squarely in my wheelhouse and does not disappoint. The primary note on me is the soft, worn brown leather I love. It’s warmed by the tonka and made even more outdoorsy by the woods. I’m not sure I’m really picking up the porter — must test again with the notes in mind — but it’s probably contributing a bit of sweetness and warmth and extra coziness. Unisex leaning masculine, and really really nice.

Blossoms are hit or miss on me, but I received The Stream and the Waterfall in a blind bottle swap, and it's lovely. Wet I get a hint of peach or nectarine with gentle pale spring blossoms -- I'm not actually making out the neroli, just the peach and cherry blossoms. But there's a cedar mulch under those blossoming fruit trees. The cedar and dry woody frankincense don't take over; they become the base notes with the blossoms floating over them. The combination of a strong wood note in the cedar with the delicate blossoms doesn't sound like it would work, but it does. I need woods or resins to anchor my florals, and this fits the bill nicely. Not tremendous wear length on me; I had to reapply in about 3 hours.

I am coming to terms with the fact that I like the idea of the tomato leaf note better than I like it on my skin. I want it to be that weird wonderful green tomato leaf note that calls to mind tomato worms, looking for ripe red fruit in a tangle of vines, childhood in California. Like zanzoku_zen, while I can smell tantalizing hints of that, it goes soapy on my skin. I rarely smell the pepper note, so I was expecting hay and tomato leaf, but I'm getting hay and tomato leaf high-end spa soap. Sigh.

Nimue the Blood Queen is a femme fatale. In the imp it's very fruity, but on my skin Nimue is elegant and velvety. Smoky incense and dark fruits, mainly plum, not too sweet. There must be some opium among the poisons, and starbrow's description of a siren in an opium den is dead on. I had no problems with the oudh; it's just a deepening note here. It doesn't last as long as I would like on my middle-aged skin, but it's worth reapplying.

The green lotus is a really interesting note, not as bubblegummy as regular lotus but still sweet and tropical. I'm getting more orris and less Egyptian musk than I was hoping for. A nice summery scent and a hard one to pin down -- not your usual floriental. Wear length is only so-so on me.

Honey Marzipan is exactly as advertised. Lots of honey, and in the opening lots of marzipan too. My skin tends to eat up almond notes while honey lasts and lasts on me, so I expected this to quickly devolve into just honey, but the marzipan sticks around although as a secondary note. Great wear length, and it makes me smile all day long.

I am a sucker for the beeswax scents, and I love evergreens too (though not usually juniper), so Discarded Sandal was a no-brainer. At first I got juniper and pine -- and maybe hinoki, is it a little astringent? -- overlaying the beeswax. But it didn't take long for the beeswax to warm up and take over this scent. I never made out the lily of the valley, which is fine, just the beeswax and the woods, like a meditation space beautifully cared for with beeswax-polished floors in a forest. And it lasted forever -- I can still smell the beeswax on my wrist 24 hours later.

I was interested in Famous Kabuki Actors because of the mix of the goat's milk and honey notes with the masculine woods, tobacco and vetiver. My skin didn't really allow me that experience. It started out all the former, in the vein of Harlequin Milk or Jupiter Nourished, and it stayed foodie for a long time. The darker notes didn't appear until late drydown, by which time the goat's milk was gone, so they just shared the honey. It's nice but more gourmand and less masculine than expected.

I don’t know what milk bread is, but there’s a NYTimes recipe with almost 1500 five star ratings, so I’m going to have to try it. But I enjoyed the Lilith Bread, and this is very much in that vein on me. It is more savory than sweet — neither the star anise nor the amaretto lasted long on me. But I got a lovely buttery yeast bread with a hint of almond and cardamom that lasted for hours. I think if I wore it in a public setting I would make people hungry.

I agree that this is an odd duck. I’m getting that tinge of cucumber that the other reviewers described, which makes this more of a green scent than the shadowy bookish blend the notes led me to suspect. The vetiver is the grassy kind, not the charcoal kind, paired with a gentle frankincense. I’m not making out any oud or patchouli, and I tend to be anosmic to the pepper note. Shadow Pictures faded fairly quickly on me. It’s quite nice but not quite what I was hoping for.