spessartine

In the imp Aureus is nearly all cedar and sandalwood for me. I was hoping it would warm up and round out when I put it on, but instead I got a very pungeant mix of cedarwood and damp, musty stone. It smells exactly like an old, mostly deserted church I used to visit from time to time with my grandmother when I was a child, to an almost unnerving extent. Very evocative, but not something I want to smell like. The musty quality stays for around an hour then starts to die back, but beneath it is still that very strong cedar note. I like cedar when it's sweetened up with something warm, but this isn't working for me at all. Ah well!

This was lovely on me, but very perfume counter-ish. It's a dry, almost grassy scent underneath that though, not too sharp, but certainly with sharp notes. I can't work out what they are, but this smells very, very similar to Chanel No 5 on me.

I wanted to like Tombstone so much. I love cedar, I love balsam, I love vanilla. Who knows what sassafras is, but I was willing to give it a go... In the vial it's a lovely blend of these, light and warm and grassy. A minute after putting it on it turns to burnt rubber on me. Bah.

This is my favourite BPAL scent, I think. It isn't at all what I was expecting - in fact, I don't think I've ever smelt anything like it. I was lucky enough to be given a decant and bought myself a bottle as soon as funds allowed! Its another scent that I find hard to separate out into notes, because the overall impression is so cohesive and perfectly balanced. Chrysanthemum Moon is incredibly rich on me, almost narcotic, but with a sticky sort of sharpness poking through the haze. I do get spice, but it isn't as overpoweringly ginger as it might be, and ends up coming across quite woody, like untreated panelling that's smoke-stained and oozing resins. I love it!

Silk Road was the first BPAL oil that really made me sit up and take notice! It's an amazing blend. The only way I can describe it, and how I think of it, is this: It smells like the inside of a wagon that's travelled the silk road, picking up various sacks of spices and grains and incense and food on the way. It's travelled through vast swathes of grassland which have left a hay-like untertone, and the wood it's made of is old and imbued with the scents of the spices it's been carrying. There's road dust and splintered wood in there, and maybe some kind of butter-and-flour cakes got transported in it once, but they've been replaced with bolts of cloth now. That's exactly what it smells like to me. Funnily enough I don't really want to smell like a wagon, so I never wear it, but I keep an imp of it for a burner, because it's the most evocative scent I own.

I was hoping for more incense from this, and maybe a dark currant note, but what I got was nealy all cake and butter. Yuck! Not me at all.

I love roses to an unhealthy degree, but since trying out BPAL scents I'm heartbroken to discover they nearly all turn to soap on me almost immediately - there are only two that don't - this and Rose Cross. Beatrice is beautiful and delicate and a little bit menacing. It's hard for me to identify the individual notes, but I get a lovely green lushness as much as any kind of floral, like walking through a very overgrown garden after the rain with pale, ghostly roses dotted all through the tangle of leaves. Love it.

On me this scent is like a very dark, spicy cola syrup. I get the cherry and almond notes, but it's blended very densely so that I get the odd waft of those layered over a treacly darkness. Not usually my thing, but I'm getting to like it as an every-now-and-again scent, because after a while the resin in it starts to come forward from behind the almond. I certainly want another imp of this, though probably not a bottle.

Temple Viper was the first of the Snake Pit scents I came across, and I'm in love with it. On me Snake Oil is a little too medicinally astringent for me to really love it, despite its spiciness, but Temple Viper is a wonderful softer, rounder equivalent. It stays relatively close to my skin, but it has a great husky, quietly sultry, resinous quality that just seems to work really well on me. A bottle is on the way!