Jilara

Wet: I thought my friend was going to eat my wrist, as he kept muttering about "fresh-baked brownies!" Since he's an attractive guy, I wasn't complaining. I got brownies with an undertone of almond Hershey bar. Dry: Hot cocoa and brownies. My friend said he was also picking up Malt-o-meal. He thought I was delicious to be around. Next day: I can still smell this! The general conclusion is chocolate tobacco. I like this one a lot, but maybe not for every day. If I'm in an all-day cooking mode, I'll definitely put it on! Definitely the thing to wear if you want to seduce a chocolate-lover!

As a beekeeper, I had such hopes... Alas, wet and drydown, this is caramel and sweat, with an undertone of old dust. Dry, the dust comes out even more, with a sickly sweet decay smell and something that reminds me of old newspapers stored for years in a hot attic. Not good. Just not my orisha, I guess... Later note: I tried this a couple weeks later, and it was still caramel and sweat out of the bottle, but morphed into something a lot nicer as it dried down. There was a pastry quality that came out, somewhat nutty and honeyed, but with a floral reenforcing it from behind. Still not really my orisha, but a big improvement. Maybe it's timed to my cycles, or diet or something.

Fascinating scent that I just keep sniffing, like the accident you can't look away from! Wet, it reminds me of tar, must be that asphalt smell, but with a background of dark earth, and something like decay... This is the scent the La Brea Tar pits must have had, as the animals slowly sank into the mire... Drydown: the aquatic note comes out, and the tar morphs into a dark background note. Slush churned on the roadside, with dirt and fir needles... It seems like a warming scent to me, in odd ways. Ice Age the Meltdown. Oh, here comes that hint of ice...how do they do that? Dry: I can understand the comment on the Poison note. However, Poison makes me nauseous, but this doesn't. And I actually like this BPAL evocation, and don't like Poison. I keep thinking of a coal bog in the cretaceous, with decaying vegetation, but there wouldn't be this hint of flowers in the back, would there? To me, there are prehistoric beasts wandering around in the night, in the background of this one. It's rich, with the hints of vetiver, something haunting, mysterious, darkly menacing. It develops a fairly good throw as it settles in. I wouldn't wear this one very frequently, but wow, it's a good one!

I almost freaked when I first put this on. Wet, it was a floral-toned Robetussin! Drydown started making the cough medicine undertone fade out, to my infinite relief. What popped out was almost exactly my "Bellagio Las Vegas" perfume, which I LOVE. It stayed Bellagio Las Vegas for about half an hour. The final morph seems to be Bellagio Las Vegas (soft and sophisticated floral) with a slight bitter and brambly undertone, which gives it interesting complexity, rather than just smelling expensive and sophisticated. This undertone (maybe the lemon and red currant melding?) speaks of loss and regret, but in a way of strength and resignation, rather than wistfulness. Definitely a scent for a mature woman, who's seen a lot and been through a lot.

Got this as a bonus imp from someone, so I thought what the hey... In the bottle: eau de head shop. It's suddenly 1973 again... Wet: patchouli oil and riotous incense. I'm sneezing. Suddenly, I am hearing sitar music and seeing india-print bedspreads and Peter Max posters. Drydown: pretty much the same as wet. Dry: pure patchouli. Oh my god, patchouli has never worked on me. Never has, except as a faint background with lots of other things. It still doesn't. I'm sneezing again, too. Time to scrub it off with LOTS of spice soap. Note for non-botanists: I've smelled living opium poppy blossoms, and they smell like old muscat wine, a very sleepy scent. This is nothing like that. I have no idea what poppy resin/foliage smells like, but I doubt this is it. But I know some folks used patchouli for masking the scent of burning herbal compounds...

Wet: honeysuckle and white flowers on the night breeze... Drydown: the honeysuckle and white flowers are still foremost, but something stickier is starting to manifest. I think it's mimosa. 1 hour: honeysuckle and mimosa, with white flowers in the background, like a whisper of mist. There is a faint green note here, like wet vegetation. 2 hours: jasmine and mimosa, with a honeysuckle chaser. It's gone very soft and nocturnal.

I had to have this, as dragons blood with an asian theme is sooo me. Dragon's blood is one of the scents I love on me. Unfortunately, this one fades pretty fast on me, but it's worth re-applying. Note from later: how fast this fades seems to depend on my hormone cycles. At certain times of the month, it lasts 8-10 hours! Other times, it's gone within two. Interesting. In bottle: Juicy red plums! With a slight undertone of dragon's blood and cherry blossom. Wet: Dragon's blood and juicy, plummy goodness, with a slight green undertone. Drydown: Ooh, here comes the bamboo! The plums are melding into the cherry and keeping the dragon's blood mellow. 1 hour: Dragon's blood and bamboo. The fruit has faded. Another note is starting to show up, but not identifiable yet. 2 hours: Sandalwood has replaced the bamboo. It's all Dragon's blood and sandalwood, now. A little bit dusty. 3 hours: completely gone. Time to reapply. Note from a different part of my hormone cycle: the bamboo stays in the running the whole time, and the cherry blossom lasts longer---a couple hours.