ramblingrambler

Lilith’s French teacher is a lovely, kind, radiant human being, and always so generous with her time. Before Lilith left for Paris, she helped Lilith put together a cheat sheet of phrases that Lil knew she’d need for the trip. Où sont les jouets, s’il vous plaît? French vanilla, strawberries, and raspberries.  Wet, I was a little taken aback. This smelled almost exactly the way I remember pink amoxicillin smelling when I was a child. That lasted all of a minute until it became a delicious Starburst Jelly Bean scent. This was my favorite part of wear, not going to lie! As it dries, the jelly bean scent wears off until you’re left with a lovely, sweet, fruity vanilla all the way through. It doesn’t have a huge presence, but it is a delightful girly fragrance. This was one of my favorites from the Travelogues!

Oh, this is just lovely. It reminds me of a true cologne, one that an elderly gentleman might wear as he sits outside smoking his pipe and whittling. Or, perhaps, *this* is the scent of an older man whittling and smoking :).

In bottle this smells almost juicy to me. When I first applied, I wasn’t sure if this was going to work for me. It was musky and acrid, and I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. Dry down didn’t do much for it either—maybe a little more patchy vanilla came out, but it was still oddly musky. I let it rest a few days and came back. Interestingly, this has become a wooly, crinkly feeling blend. I don’t get any of the Banshee Beat or Revenant Rhythm those above mention, but the patchy vanilla is beautiful and understated. It isn’t the thick, chewy patch and vanilla of BB/RR on me. This is a crisp and round blending of the two. I almost smell popcorn and milkshakes if I stop thinking about it as its component parts. I’m excited to see how this continues to shape up over the next few days as it calms down from mail shock, and I can’t wait to see how it ages.

Not sure if skin chemistry changed or if aging perfected this fragrance, but my god, is this glorious five years later. It did not work for my nostrils for years, in or out of the bottle, until I almost swapped it away today. I'm glad I opened it and my sniffer told me to test it. On skin it's like a fun-size candybar. Wet, it reads like oil-slicked chocolate that sat out for too long in the heat. Dry, it smells like the wrapper of a candybar. Delicious.

No jokes here: who wouldn’t love a heart-shaped hot tub? A bubbling vat of red musk, sweet red wine, benzoin, red oudh, and lush magnolia. This is JUICY in the best way. Benzoin gives it the crackling pop of fizziness you might expect from a hot tub (though I always think soda when I think benzoin), and the red musk and magnolia blend together to make it velvety smooth with a hint of trailing smoke from the oudh. Ultimately, this is a candied (red wine note), fizzy musk, and I loves it, my precious.

[Described in forum announcement as "a toasted oat and chocolate marshmallow cereal scent".] So I was a bad girl and applied directly from mail; I will go back and edit my comment accordingly once I’ve rested and retested. This is like opening a box of your favorite chocolate-with-marshmallows cereal. I haven’t eaten cereal since I was a teenager since I can’t have grains, but it’s every bit as good as I remember popping open the bag and having the scent explode everywhere before pouring. And it is realistic to boot. It’s not overpowering on the chocolate nor the grains (oats), and the marshmallow is more of a cream, but a skin-scent. This is quite light and almost delicate, airy. Things will likely change as it rests, but I couldn’t wait to try it. I totally forgot I had backed the Kickstarter until this box (discreet and mysteriously packaged with tiny labels and eight zillion stamps!) showed up at my door. Usually my anxiety would kick in to get a weirdly packaged box like this, but it came with another perfume order from another house, so I figured why not dig in and die happy if it came down to it.

Raw patchouli, oakmoss, cassis bud, bergamot, and blackcurrant. Smokey, earthy goodness. The oakmoss tethers everything together, I think, and makes it entirely coherent. I slathered this all over my arms as well as my hair in hopes this would last all day on me—and it did. This is a beautiful, beautiful scent, and not my usual fragrance profile. I need about a dozen bottles of this.

Lilith’s first genuine Parisian crêpe! Strawberries, whipped cream, confectioners sugar, vanilla bean, and orange zest.  I’m a little underwhelmed by this one. Perhaps aging will do it some good. All I get is Eat The Strawberries from in bottle to wet to extreme dry-down. It wouldn’t be too terrible if I didn’t already have multiple backups of that particular bottle, so here’s hoping this changes rapidly into something more complex. The notes sound like it will become something amazing, but it has rested for close to two weeks and still only Strawberries!

Sweet plummy goodness is all I get, and to be totally honest with you, it’s all I need. I was looking for something that wasn’t as musky or spicy as Mme Moriarity or Cassiopeia respectively, and this one fits the bill. Major yum factor here.

If I weren’t incredibly lazy, I would go look up the items mentioned in the notes before writing this review, but I’m lying in bed on my phone, and it’s just too much work. You understand. What I can say is that this is slightly salty, slightly doughy, sugary chocolatey goodness wet and dry. This is a dry, almost dutched chocolate/cocoa that reads slightly spiced and (hazel?)nutty. It has warmed up significantly since I placed my order (in the mid-80s while everyone else seems to be seeing snow still), but I can’t wait to wear this next winter when the cool air will make this stand out brilliantly on the skin! For now, it sort of gets lost in the heat and humidity.

I’ve never had the dessert this is based off, but I can say that I want to eat my arm when I wear this. It’s a chocolate cake donut filled with a fruity jam center, and it is SO. GOOD. I need to go wear Cake Smash and a Cake Smash Proto for comparison, as my brain keeps telling me I’ve smelled this before, and I somehow keep circling back to Cake Smash. Will update once I figure out which scent this is a cousin to! Amazing foodie fragrance though. Definitely pick it up if you’re a chocolate fan who likes unique combinations!

I was hesitant about this because I wasn’t sure what an aquatic strawberry would smell like, but this is lovely! I am extremely happy with my decant after multiple wears (strawberry dominant wet, subtle strawberry with a subtle aquatic dry). I don’t know how to describe the aquatic note—perhaps the way Z_z did above, a river water rather than ocean—but it is not a sharp, clean aquatic, and it is also not the aquatic, ozonic note I smell in waiting. I’ll edit once I remember which of the GCs this smells most like :). I definitely recommend hunting down a decant of this if it sounds intriguing to you or blind bottling a full.

I am not a lavender fan, but this one intrigued me enough to buy a decant. Although lemon isn’t noted, this smells exactly like a cup of Tazo’s Glazed Lemon Loaf Dessert Tea on skin, likely because the lavender here is herbaceous and akin to chamomile in the tea... but I’m still not sure where the lemon is coming from. That’s okay though! I drink a cup of this tea every day at work since they provide it for free, and I love the heck out of it :). This perfume is herbal deliciousness with a tinge is vanilla sugar cookies. If you don’t have it and really need to know what it smells like, brew some of this tea and then settle down to buy the perfume because you’ll want it after sipping 😅.

I originally got this for me, but I’m giving it to my partner instead. On me, this is much more masculine—predominantly snow and wood—and smells like I made out with a hot guy for a few hours/got his cologne all over me. I guess it smells similar on my partner, but HE is the hot dude I need to make out with/whose cologne I need to have rub off on me :). The wood note here is not pencil shavings, just a way to ground the snow note and keep it from outperforming the Snake Oil (which is there as a hint behind everything else on me). I’ll keep my decant and wear it to bed when I’m traveling, but my partner gets to keep the bottle that I bought because I couldn’t wait for my decant to get to me. ETA: this does not smell the same as the snow note from the Frostbitten series/Snow White to my nose. I’m not sure what it is, actually!

Whoa. I got a decant of this and did not like it the first two wears, but by the third (about two weeks after receiving) time testing it out, it became an AMAZING sunshine blend of pure happiness. THe first two wears it was all honey and a little tinge of strawberry. Now I get the strawberry in full force with the honey, and hot damn is it good. Pear sort of peeks out as it begins to wear off, but it isn’t “PEAR!”—just a whisper of another sweet fruit that rounds out the scent some. Really, really like this.

I've worn this the last several days and each day I feel differently about it. This is a delicious gourmand, but sometimes it makes me hungry, and other times it makes me... nauseated. BPAL's caramel note usually gives me an immediate need to wretch, so I assume there must be some caramel somewhere in here. Outside of that, however, it's delightful and smells like a cake on days I don't get the caramel component.

This would be SO GOOD without the geranium. I mean, it’s still good, but the geranium is VERY prominent. Maybe a little aging will do the trick. The rest of the notes are standout exemplars of their own accords. If you’re into any of the listed notes, definitely try this out, as it may be amazing on you.

I get no marshmallow in this, but it is exceptionally effervescent and fizzy. It is straight up sugary soda on me. And I’m not complaining.

This is the gummy bears, bubble gum, and Snake Oil Motherhood fragrance sans gummy bears. It’s Lilith’s bubblegum, and Beth’s Snake Oil. Innocent and lovely dries to mysterious and enchanting. I definitely see the two of them here, and I can see Lilith becoming her own woman in the eyes of Beth here.

My nose feels like it licked the outside of a pink peep and couldn’t catch a break on the lingering sugar-high. Damn, this is some sweet stuff. It’s not marshmallowy at all on me, but it’s like the pink sugar crust outside the peep piled on a table. I’m going to let this age some because I think it could be quite nice with a little time on its side, mellowing it out and giving it a sweet, cutesy pink vibe rather than a HO-MY-GAWD, SWEET bite.

Well, this stinks (literally, I guess, too). I was hoping for toasted marshmallow graham s’mores, but all I get seems to be... vetiver? I can tell there’s something else trying to poke out, but it’s sweet and amorphous at the moment. Maybe a little aging will do the trick, but if it IS vetiver giving off the smokiness, I’m pretty sure that’s all I’ll ever get. If you can’t do vetiver, I would try this only as a decant, and then maybe graduate to a bottle if you get the other notes.

Mmmmmmm. Two of my most favorite chocolate scents from the catalogue are present fully in this blend: Chad + Baby’s First Con Panel = this glorious perfume. WOW. This is chocolate chip cookies, pretzels, and hot cocoa on me. I’m glad I don’t get the soda (though I’m happy to smell like soda!) since I think it would throw it off some. To me, this is perfection in a bottle, all gooey-crunchy goodness.

Orris root, French lavender, white sandalwood, pink peony, and white honey. I almost don’t want to review, as I’ve never been first before. Let me preface with this: I am not a lavender fan, and most everything that contains it gets passed on to someone who loves it. I only tested this as a skin moisturizer before bed last night, as that is the only time I can stomach lavender (for sleep). Luckily, the lavender is only featured for the first five minutes, at which point it fades into a smooth, sweet, powdery scent. I can barely tell which notes are which once it begins to quiet down on lavender—but even then, it is not too floral (in the sense that each note can be distinguished). This reminds me of the scent of a newborn for some reason. (I don’t have kids and am rarely around them, so take that as you will!) Although this isn’t my usual scent profile, I would likely use as a body moisturizer before sleep until I emptied the bottle.

This is essentially L’Estate on me. The moment I first smelled it, I knew I had its cousin—a high-end scent—somewhere on my stash, a fragrance only pulled out for special occasions (since it cost a pretty penny on second market!). It is warm and glowing in the same way L’Estate reads on me; except for the minor changes in supporting notes, the overall profile remains the same, and it smells delightful. My only problem now is that I’ve begun to amp amber, so we’ll see whether this and L’Estate will remain wearable in the future.

I was hoping the tobacco would not be front-and-center in this blend, but alas, on me, as any fragrance containing this note, it is all tobacco, all the time. The plum-oudh makes it bearable along with the usual Lace suspects (sans tobacco), but I simply cannot wear tobacco blends anymore it seems. For anyone who amps this note and/or is not a fan, stay far away. Otherwise, this will be absolutely beautiful on you, and I highly encourage you to get it.