mrsveteran

An Ode to Pink Or, A Ridiculous Review What can I say about this Pink wig spray? It's a scent for all night and a scent for all day! Vague cotton candy and coconut too, the scent of a carnival WILL embrace you! Oh, Pink, lovely Pink! My heart's all a flutter! You make me so joyful I grin like a nutter! You're silly and sweet like a big fluffy fog, a fog filled with love and with cute puppy dogs. Um. Okay. Maybe not Dogs. Dogs actually smell quite different. It's more like the smell of the concept of cuddling a bunch of super-fluffy happy lovey puppy dogs. Like, if that feeling was a smell and not a feeling, PUPPIES! But I digress. *ahem* MOVING ON! This scent so refined that it near makes me drunk with the joy of removing my trusty wig's funk. So do not buy this, although it might call, because to be honest ... I WANT IT ALL! --- In all seriousness, I agree with those who've said "Midway in a bottle" and "cotton candy." It is hella hella hella HELLA good. Where Red is a terribly sophisticated and beautiful Duchess, Pink is like a perky cheerleader from a small town laughing at the county fair. Like, the kind of cheerleader who is just pretty and sweet without a mean bone in her body. Also, she is there with a farmer's son with whom she is terribly in love and terribly bashful. He worships her; treats her like spun glass, and is absolutely giddy with his luck in just being able to hold her hand. THAT'S what Pink is, folks. IT IS ALL THAT.

Red Wig spray My take: You have the notes. But the notes cannot convey the feel of this scent. Red musk and a sweetness with sharp edges blend into just a lovely whole that I can't quite put my finger on. Red is a gorgeous, sophisticated, unfathomably wealthy Duchess. Red has men fighting duels to the death over who will get to refill her champagne while she looks on, smiling a slight and unknowable smile with a vaguely haughty and bored expression. Out of sight of the struggling duelists, she winks wickedly and lustily at the busboy, whose heart nearly stops at the sheer beauty of that single, perfect movement. Red smells of wealth, and haughtiness, and complexity, all covering an undeniable zest and lust for life. Red is a beautiful courtesan with sharp edges, from a time when that word implied years of extensive education and highly sought skills. If you've seen Firefly, she is Nandi from "Heart of Gold." Red smells like a perfume custom crafted by the perfumer to the Empress; so rare that the only ones who can afford to wear it are the owners of entire small nations. It is strong, and bright and dark and soft and sharp. It is Red. ... The man friend's take: "Oh, that's very good. That's...okay, wait, I know this one! It's ... Steinway Showroom."

After reading a lot of reviews of TAL oils where people are talking about how much they love the scent and would like to wear it every day, it occurred to me that maybe we could help each other find BPAL equivalents of some of the TAL's at least scent-wise. My favorite TAL for scent is "Sexual Energy," but I don't need it every day. To me it's a very strong cinnamon and perhaps clove. Chimera is close, but is a lot sweeter with not such a strong cinnamon. Umbra is a tiny bit closer, but still not quite there. So, for people who've fallen in love with a TAL just for its scent, have you found a BPAL equivalent? Or things you can layer to get the same thing? As of 11/19/2008, here's what various people think (note that some of these are "smells sort of like X" -- check the thread for more details, because some of them have extra details like "Smut with a hint of lemon" and so forth.): TAL Anthelion: GC (Sin & Salvation) Faustus, GC (Wanderlust) Sybaris, GC (Somnium) Oneiroi, GC (Excolo) Ra, GC (Bewitching Brews) Black Opal, Panacea TKO (both have lavender) TAL Arabian Nights: GC (Wanderlust) Baghdad, GC (Diabolus) Wicked, GC (Diabolus) Phantom, GC (Love Potions) La Petite Mort TAL Armor: GC (Voodoo Blends) #20 Love Oil without the spices, GC (Love Potions) Seraglio but fruitier TAL Bildungsroman: LE (A Little Lunacy 8/06?) Schwartzer Mond, LE (1/06, 1/07) Luperci TAL Black Arts: LE Minotaur TAL Blinding Glory of Love: LE Smut, LE (Lunacy June '07) Red Moon (but without the rose), Spellbound TAL Blessing of Isis: GC (Excolo: Stations of the Sun) Khephra, GC (Voodoo Blends) Fire of Love, GC (Wanderlust) Silk Road TAL Charisma: GC (Sin & Salvation) Hymn, GC (Bewitching Brews) Mata Hari, GC (Sin & Salvation) Faustus TAL Concentration: Discontinued (Tarot Oils) The Star, GC (Wanderlust) Whitechapel, Discontinued (Tarot Oils) The Fool, GC (Bewitching Brews) Namaste TAL Determination: GC (Excolo) Odin TAL Dixie Love Perfume: GC (Voodoo Blends) Love Me TAL Hand of Hermes: GC (Bewitching Brews) Chimera TAL Hymn to Pan: LE Beltane '06, GC (Excolo) Melpomene, TAL La Flamme: LE Smut, TAL Lionheart: GC (Sin & Salvation) Faustus, GC (Love Potions) Jezebel, GC (Bewitching Brews) Black Opal TAL Meditation: GC (Bewitching Brews) Tushnamatay TAL Nocturne: GC (Somnium) Somnus TAL Peace: GC (Panacea) Quietude TAL Queen of the Nile: GC (Rappaccini's Garden) Black Lotus with added musk TAL Radiance of Ra: GC (Excolo) Ra with a bit of GC (Excolo) Ahathoor TAL: Road Opener: GC (Excolo) Erato, (dries down to something like) GC (Bewitching Brews) Bess TAL Sexual Energy: GC (Dark Elements) Inferno, GC (Wanderlust) Bengal, Discontinued (Illyria) Three Witches TAL Temple: Black Arts: GC (Excolo) Hades TAL Temple:Cthonic: GC (Excolo) Kephra TAL Temple: Egyptian: GC (Rappaccini's Garden) Black Lotus TAL Temple:Greek: GC (Wanderlust) Athens TAL Temple: Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: GC (Sin & Salvation) Fallen TAL Veils & Mist: GC (Voodoo Blends) Water of Notre Dame, GC (Illyria) Queen Gertrude (without the violet) TAL White Light: GC (Excolo) Ra, GC (Bewitching Brews) Black Opal MV

In the bottle and wet on skin: This starts out smelling like candy, necco-wafer-type sprinkles. I don't know how, but they do. Necco wafers: I don't even know what that smells like! Drydown Phase: After it's been on the skin for a bit, it smells like vanilla cake batter. Listen to me. It SMELLS like CAKE BATTER. How the heck do you even DO that? And it sort of wafts around as it's on my hand so I have this kind of vanilla, necco wafer, cake batter thing going on. Kind of reminds me of Cake Smash, but without the cream cheese frosting. Or like Eat Me without the currant. 15 Minutes Later: After more time, it's sweet, and soft, and somehow non-foody while being foody at the same time. I mean, it's almost musky, but not. It's almost cakey, but not. It's just a round, plump, soft, sweet, non-sticky smell like sugar cookies and a hug from your favorite grandmother. 30 Minutes Later: There is almost a wood smell in here. What. The heck? One Hour Later: Okay, there's almost a cinnamon thing going on. I think this is going to be amazing when it ages. For now, I think I'll put it aside and wait. Overall Verdict: Yep, I'm keeping my bottles. I really do like it now and I think it will be even more awesome in the future.

Okay, I gotta tell ya: I once went to a bullfight in Tijuana, Mexico many years ago. (It was my ex-husband's idea. Long story.) This scent, somehow, smells EXACTLY like that bullfight ring. It's somehow the smell of sweat and sawdust and many people sitting in the heat and smoking and eating various snacks and overall, just melting in the sun, because even if you pay extra to sit in the "sombra" (shade) section, you are still smack dab in the bright summer sunshine for most of the fight until you can feel everything getting just a bit surreal and the bull starts to look eerily like your pet dog and you start crying and cheering when the bull really WHACKS one of those guys out of the ring because, dammit, it looks so tired of everything as it staggers around the field with its tongue kind of hanging out... Yes. It smells EXACTLY like that. Now, what exactly "that" is -- well, that's a bit harder to articulate. Yes, patchouli, but it's blended really well with the tobacco, so I think those two scents twining about each other is the main experience here. It feels like a boxing ring in Mexico might smell, since I imagine it's probably very similar to that bullfighting ring. As a piece of art inspired by a Mexican wrestler character, I think it absolutely succeeds in presenting an overall feeling in scent of that character and his experiences in the ring. Notes? To me, there aren't individual notes so much as there is an entire experience, encapsulated in scent.

Just got this year's Luna Negra, and it is a LOT like the GC Kabuki. Very nice!

Gryphon, have you tried Eat Me? (Either the "real" one or the proto v6?) I believe it has black currant ... haven't smelled Sugar Moon, so I don't know how alike or not they are...

This is a prototype of Shill, originally from Carnival Noir. I received a bottle of Shill VI hoping it would be close to the original. However, there are significant differences, which I will attempt to enumerate here. In bottle: When you *first* open the bottle and sniff, in that moment, you THINK it's going to be the same as original Shill, and you say to yourself, "Oh YES! Thank the powers that be! It's my beautiful, beautiful Shill!" But that's only for a second: there is that sort of oily "movie theatre butter" kind of popcorn scent -- just a whiff. However, there is an almost fruity/boozy note there, making it almost like kettle corn -- a sweet smell. VERY vague, but there. You do smell the buttery popcorn -- it's there, but quite a bit less strong than original Shill. The more you sniff it, the less it smells like popcorn! Wet on skin: Now, this is really strange: on my skin, there's almost a FLORAL note to it. Not rose .. something heavier, like maybe magnolia but not as sweet. There's a faint scent of that "movie theatre butter," but it's extremely subtle. Then, that faint scent is totally gone! Drydown: After drydown, it's all that very mellow, somewhat heavy (not heavy as in strong-scented -- it's very subtle -- but heavy like the opposite of sharp -- maybe I mean smooth?) floral. No popcorn, butter, or anything like original Shill at all. It's kind of strange, actually. It's actually hard to smell anything at all in the bottle sometimes! I'll sniff and ... nothing. Shake the bottle just a tad and ... nothing. And the scent on my skin is extremely elusive. It's nice, I don't hate it, but I don't LOVE it like I love original Shill. Summary: If you have tried the original Shill, but have NOT tried the prototype, DON'T think you're getting something close to the original. You'll have a very, VERY vague sense of the buttery popcorn scent of original Shill, but it's almost so faint as to be nonexistent. If you have tried "War" from the Neil Gaiman "Good Omens" series, here's an analogy for you. War is somewhat like original Shill made super-strong and radioactive with power. Shill VI is on the opposite end of the Strong -> Subtle spectrum from War: like Shill made very faint and weak. So: War -> Original Shill -> Shill VI . In Conclusion: I love original Shill. I don't hate Shill VI. But if what you really want is Shill, DO NOT confuse the two. Also, if you hate florals, you will not like Shill VI, IMHO.

Interesting: I wonder if the 2008 version will be closer after 2 years -- maybe it's the aging that makes it closer to Opium? MV

In the bottle: Okay, this is Eat Me with blueberries! Or lemon! But WHATEVER, I don't care! It is my beloved Eat Me, at last, at long, long last! [[Edit to say: Okay, somewhere I got the idea that Eat Me had been discontinued. But now, it doesn't appear to be. So ... never mind. But this is still Eat Me with blueberries and sometimes lemon!]] Wet on skin: Yep, still Eat Me -- a lovely white cake scent but very fruity-tart. At this point, it's not really citrus or blueberry -- just tangy fruit and white cake. Drydown: Now this is the fun part -- while it's drying down, it's like LEMON! No, BLUEBERRY! No,LEMON! No, FROOT LOOPS! No ... well, and so on. Overall: it is really as though one put on Eat Me and got that lovely cakey foody scent, but instead of currant, you get blueberry lemon froot loops. I absolutely adore this -- I'm getting several bottles!

whateverish, I don't think it's so much that heat kills the oils, it's more like they don't last as long if it's too hot. Also, some oils change their scent after awhile. Heat may (or may not) speed up the process. If it speeds up the process for one component and not another, then the scent of the overall mixture could change. I've heard that some oils can go rancid-smelling after awhile, but I haven't seen that happen with BPALs. Then again, I've been storing most of mine in my little office fridge for over a year now, so I might not know. I do know lots of people who don't bother refrigerating their oils and who live where it's warm and they don't always have problems. Just remember that with or without heat, the oils will age and change over time. Sometimes that's a good thing -- just look at all the people looking for "aged Snake-Oil." :-) MV

The BPAL rep I spoke with said that oils are best stored at room temperature: she went on to say something like "If the temperature is comfortable for you then it's probably okay for the oils." I took that to mean not to refrigerate *or* let them get too hot, so I keep mine in a little "office fridge" set to 68 degrees F. I'm not sure there is an official answer to that or not, though, that's just what I was told when I emailed them. :-) MV

Thanks!!!

fiddledragon: is Namaste a GC? (I've added that under Concentration to the original post -- thanks!)

A friend of mine also thinks Bakeneko (2007) reminds her of Opium, but I have both and I don't quite see it. Maybe a little...

Thanks, Nia. Wow, we've got a lot more than I thought we had. I added your take on Anthelion to the first post. Not sure what other BPALs have gardenia, though, so I wasn't sure what to put up with White Light. MV

*nods* Excellent point, and that's one of the things I was worried about with our "regular" fridge. That's why one of those little desktop fridges are great: you can set them to a reasonable temperature like 60 - 70F so they don't get too cold or too hot. MV

I'm in NV and it gets pretty hot here as well, but so far a few hours in the mailbox hasn't seemed to harm any of my oils, even during the worst of summer. I think it's more of "over the course of time" it's better to keep them in a cool, dark place, rather than "if they get over 80F then they're rancid canola oil." It may also be that different notes do better in higher temperatures, so the oils that I've gotten may just be ones that do okay ...

For what it's worth, there are little "desktop fridges" you can get (I got mine at www.thinkgeek.com) where you can set the temperature to what you like. They're meant to hold maybe a couple of soda/pop cans or a sandwich. I have mine set at 67 degrees (much warmer than the fridge, much cooler than the house in summer), so it's always at a constant level of coolness, but not too cold and not too hot. I store all my oils in there and it's an instant "cool dark place." These little fridges generally are under 100 bucks, and don't cost too much to run since I'm keeping the temp between 65 and 70 so it usually doesn't have to work that hard. That might seem like a lot of money to spend on perfume storage, but considering what I've spent on oils so far, it's almost like I'm protecting my investment in smellies.

Oils that have smelled like lemon to me: Whitechapel Severin Arcana Yuki-Onna (Discontinued LE) Great Sword of War Phantasm Polyhymnia The Dormouse These are the only ones I've tried, and The Dormouse is the most like lemon meringue to me. :-)

My eChecks seem to clear right away now that I have a credit card on file as a backup payment source. Before they were taking 5 days or so to clear. I don't know if those two things are directly related, but if not it's one heck of a coincidence. The same thing happened to me, and I asked Paypal about it. They told me that if you do not have a backup credit card on file, or if it expires, then instead of money coming instantly from your bank account, it comes as an "e-check" that takes several days to clear. Apparently, my backup credit card had expired, and suddenly it was this "e-check" business. I actually use my ATM card for my bank account as my "backup credit card" since it has a Visa logo. As long as you have a backup credit card, then your payments should clear just fine. (Note: I'm in the US. This may apply to US Paypal users only.) [/hijack]

(PMed you so as not to hijack the thread anymore, but yes, I adore Tom Lehrer!)

Wow, really? They are not even close for me! Then again, I have the "Snake Oil = Pla-Doh" skin chemistry, so it could be worth a try. Now I need to get Vechernyaya. Dang it, another one to track down! MV

Ooh, thanks! [hijack] By the way, how did you pick your screen name? Because as soon as I saw it, I thought: "Oh my darling armadillo, Let me tell you of my love, Listen to my armadillo roundelay! Be my fellow on my pillow Underneath this weeping willow, Be my darling armadillo, all the day! (and some more stuff and then) Then I saw them in a hollow, 'neath a yellow muddy bank: An armadillo singing to an armor-plated tank!" Flanders & Swann, from the album "The Bestiary" I believe. My dad used to sing it to me when I was a kid. If you got your screen name from there, you are the only living being I have ever met (other than my dad and brother) who have A) heard that song and B.) heard of Flanders & Swann at all. Now that song is going to be running through my head ALL DAY! EAR WORM!!!!!! [/hijack] *lol* I have everything in the first post that people have posted so far, I think ... so ... not yet. Maybe someone will, though!

Yes, when I asked, the last reply I got was "I'm going to have to ask Beth," and then nothing. Oh well. I'm still looking. ETA: Oh, I just saw a review that said Charisma reminded her of "Hymn" or "Mata Hari." Also "Faustus." Have you tried those? GAH. I already SAID that! haha! I looked at the reviews for "Road Opener," and the only scents mentioned were LUSH "Aura Suavis" and someone who said it dried down to something a little like the GC "Bess." (I think Bess is a GC...) I'll be interested to see what zankoku_zen might have to say ... MV