LadyCrow

In the imp: Fresh rose. Will this be the kind of rose that works on me? Wet: Hmm, it just might. Big, soft, wet tea roses, a bit sour... and then a rush of rosewood. Drydown: Sneaky and close to the skin. A quick vanisher, as ephemeral as its name would imply... but I'm fully willing to use up the imp for special occasions, because not only do I get the hazel on drydown, but this is more or less the result I was expecting of Rose Cross! Only that has The Wrong Rose , where the tea rose in this is ever so much friendlier to my peculiar chemistry.

In the imp: Sweet berries. Wet: A strong burst of sweet, tangy berry. Drydown: After the initial dark purple berry goes away, a green herbal layer shows up, followed by the return of the berry -- except much sweeter and more light red. I don't hate this -- there's nothing wrong with it, except that it smells, as many reviewers before me have pointed out, like a high-end herbal soap. If I wanted a high-end herbal soap, I'd go buy one. I kept looking for the evil or darkness in something named "Baneberry," and on me it just wasn't there. It's a perfectly nice blend, but I still prefer Jester.

So I bought a decant of Misk U., knowing that I don't like coffee. Nope. I have an advanced degree that was certainly fueled by a lot of caffeine, but I actually go to coffee shops for the chai latte, and now I do my paper-grading on Red Bull. True story. So why even try Misk U.? Loads of reasons. Lovecraft love. Occupational hazard. Two people close to me -- my mother and my husband -- have been coffee drinkers, and I was always compelled to agree with Mom that her various coffee blends smelled lovely, even if I thought they tasted like boiled arse. So I put on only a little Misk U., seduced by the scent description anyway, and this is what happened: In the imp: Creamy caramel. Wet: Caramel, and hello coffee, and ah, you've brought your friend Uisge Batha over to play! Drydown: This is amazing. Amazing. This has absurdly strong throw; it's like carrying your own portable fair-trade non-S'bux coffee shop around with you. The Irish coffee is heavenly sweet, and that first stage lasts for years. Only after a considerable wear time does the oakwood enter, close to the skin, and by that time it merely rounds out the complete scent picture: you really can find yourself transported to a huge library full of oak tables. (Just don't read anything by that Abdul Alhazred guy.) Verdict: I still don't understand why I can like this so much and still not like coffee. It seems like heresy. But... I really like this.

In the imp: What the hell? This smells like honeydew melon. Wet: Hello magnolia! -- and all of its floral friends. And then wet, wet grass. And dirt! Drydown: After a brief reign of glory for the famous dirt and a very aquatic feel to the whole blend, a citrus note takes over. That having gone, we're back to the very humid and fascinating dirt and decay. I get pretty much nothing in the way of booze (and please, watch me resisting the urge to cite a famous movie line here) -- just the combination of damp flowers and swamp water. Amazing throw -- a sharpness almost like that of ylang ylang, although it's not one of the listed notes. Verdict: An evocative morpher; I don't need to dive for a bottle immediately (bottle, heh), but I see this being a fantastic writing trigger.

In the imp: Sharp, clear floral -- the chamomile makes it sweet. Wet: Almost a single-note ylang ylang, until smoky poppy takes over. Drydown: The ylang ylang continues to dominate for at least the first half hour, with the poppy playing a strong second fiddle. I get the lavender and chamomile as secondary notes, sort of lazily drifting around the background, and then the last stage is like a herbal sandalwood incense. This is faboo. I wasn't sure about the lavender/chamomile -- that sounded more like a Panacea than a Lunacy from the listed notes, but the ylang ylang really pulls the herbals into the blend, and how can you not love the poppy? It's a drowsy spring/summer; it's too lazy to be as decadent as Debauchery. I find it rather seductive.

Dear Brian, If you weren't already taken, I would say, based on the evidence of Schwarzer Mond, that you are thoroughly my kind of guy. That is -- sweet, deep, earthy, grounded, complex, scholarly, possessed of a slightly prankish spirit (a Lunacy! I had to fall in love with a damn Lunacy!), and quite possibly a fellow former spelling-bee competitor. See, in the imp, this is so sweet it's almost foody. Wet, there's this huge blast of opoponax, and then this hip, urbane, yet not overdone patchouli walks right in the front door and steals the show. Yet it's by no means alone: resins and musks flood the scent-scape, the way the finest ambient and trance music artists cover their soundscapes with tones that stimulate and relax different parts of the brain at once. And now I'm gushing. I've been reduced to a gushing fangirl by merely opening a rather expensive decant. Well, that's life -- fine old wines and liqueurs get me drunk off my hiney, too. Yours with nose to wrist, LadyCrow

In the imp: A delicate tinge of floral; mostly bamboo. Wet: I can just barely pull out that floral as the lilac. Bamboo, then somebody spills the sake absolutely all over the place! Not that I mind. Drydown: It's rather as if the notes are actors in a play. The lilac tree reemerges through all the sake; then I get the green tea incense (very distinctly incense-y) first around the edges, then more strongly; then the musk rises up as a note in itself. The cherry, surprisingly, seems buried in the musk, rather than floating above other notes as it does in many blends. While this is an exceptionally lovely and well-blended scent, I have to agree with a previous reviewer: many of the Salons that are inspired by Asian art seem functionally -- as perfumes -- indistinguishable. They're all beautiful, and this one has far more throw than I would have expected, given most of the listed notes. I would be happy to get my hands on a bottle of any of them. But I'm not sure that, in a blind sniff-test, I could distinguish this from Lantern Ghost of Oiwa. I would put the two on in much the same situations (i.e. don't go into the important meeting/dinner with the husband's boss/etc. reeking of Smut), or to evoke much the same type of mood and presence. This is not to diminish either blend; people still collect every possible variation of Samhain/Halloween scents, for example. It's actually quite interesting -- it's like watching a visual artist work out a concept in different studies.

In the imp: Opaque! This is my kind of oil... except it can't be Boomslang at all. Surely this is mislabeled Hershey's. Shelldoo? Have you been messing with people's oils? Wet (not really "wet" so much as "dark sticky stuff I have to rub in"): Deep, dark cocoa with a slow rising of Snake Oil vanilla. Drydown: As the cocoa -- reminiscent of that in Centzon Totochtin and Tezcatlipoca -- dries down, it becomes easier to pick out the teak and the wonderfully-placed rice milk notes. Rice milk! I never knew that could work in a perfume, but it's just a nice, subtle layer -- and, as with ingestion, it works ever so much better with my chemistry than dairy milk. Verdict: Oh Hel, another thing I need a bottle of!

In the imp, and wet: Hmm, strongly juniper. Maybe this wasn't such a hot idea. Drydown: The juniper recedes, and the patchouli takes its place -- and that dirt note comes out, with the sour, fresh rose very, very faintly in the background. Something in this mix reminds me strongly, strongly, of my late grandmother's basement -- that mustiness and sense of mystery; for years, the basement contained artifacts of my grandfather, who died when I was 8, before I could get to know him well. So this is scent-evocative for me in a specific way that might not be the case for others. Regardless, this imp is a keeper. I don't think I'd wear it as a perfume necessarily, but as an aide-memoire for writing, absolutely.

In the imp: Resins and... flowers? Wet: Incense and violets. I never would have thought that would have worked, but it does. Drydown: Gradually becomes more herbal. What fascinates me about this blend, apart from "watching" each note contribute to the mix, is how the violet -- a fairly delicate flower, after all -- stands up against the other notes and really hangs in there throughout the drydown. There's a personal tie-in between that as a metaphor and the scent concept for me, so that's especially pleasing. Verdict: Like Torture King, this is one of the spicy ones that I might just have to keep around.

In the imp: Juniper! Wet: Juniper! Oh, this is not good. Drydown: Fortunately, the juniper blast recedes quickly, leaving a soft sandalwood-musk close to my skin with a slightly strange floral remaining from a bit more distance -- is that the orchid-bergamot combo? Verdict: Interesting, but I like my sandalwoods and musks a bit more vivid -- and without quite so much juniper.

In the imp: Strangely buttery, nutty. Wet: Foody! Why is this foody? I get the sharpness of the ginger and pepper, and now the sweetness of the tonka... what the heck? Drydown: Oh -- that opium hallucination isn't serving me cake; it's serving me wine. Somebody else mentioned a berrylike note similar to that in Montresor, and I get that from the sweet tonka-champaca conspiracy. This isn't anywhere near as smoky as I would have imagined, or else I can't separate the smoke from the pepper -- and I don't really get the sandalwood hugely, either. The throw is fairly strong, though, and as it dries, it becomes more of a sweet, dry floral. Interesting character, this Seward. He needs a little Debauchery, though.

In the imp: Butter! And a bit of spice. Wet: An initial blast of buttery rum. Drydown: Weirdly, my skin doesn't amp either the almond or the clove, which are notes it normally flings with the vitality of Charlie Brown making one of his strenuous but doomed baseball pitches. After the initial wet stage, this stays spicy bay rum... and I smell like a man's cologne again, very similar to what happened to me with Baron Samedi. Great! Is Papa Legba perchance doing this to me (and giggling) because I can't wear his scent because of the tobacco? Verdict: If this stuff were just a tad less expensive, I'd consider pouring it in a little dish as an offering to the Lwas. As it is, it will just pass on to somebody whose skin chemistry allows them to experience all the notes.

In the imp: I'm not sure why I smell tea here, but that, and honey, and spices. Wet: Baked goods! Holy food, this is foody -- like drunken cinnamon buns with a lot of raisins in that have been soaking in heavily mulled... cognac? And maybe have just started to bake? Did Sardanapal die from baiting a monster under his bed? Drydown: I have no idea why this works. It shouldn't on me, because it has cassia, a note that normally stings on me and that my skin usually amplifies to the detriment of other notes -- see Tanin'iver for a prime example. But the myrrh is like an anchor point, I believe, that keeps all of the other notes from floating away and getting too foody; the wine is just wonderful, the way it is in Queen of Clubs. Overall, this is just a really well-blended Salon (which phrase is almost a redundancy) that works splendidly on me after the initial blast of doughiness fades off. Moderate to small sillage, but excellent staying power. I'm pleased.

In the imp: Ooh, tea! Wet: Spicy orange tea, with the resins coming out just a bit. Drydown: Orange blossom, tea, and resins predominate. And then, zip, this is nearly all gone, leaving bare hints of mahogany lying on my skin. There was vetiver in this? On the bright side, maybe this means that I naturally repel Satan, Death, and Sin. That wouldn't be all bad!

2005 version In the imp: Ooh, gardenia! Could this work? Wet: Apparently not. It's that same evil rose note from Rose Cross. Yuck, that's sour. And strong! Okay -- at least now I know it's Damascus rose that hates me. Drydown: After several ice ages, I only faintly get any hints of the incense notes, or even the cassia, which normally hogs the limelight on my skin. It's all that strong, sour rose overpowering everything. Someone else whose skin chemistry works with rose might well love this; I think I'll give them the chance.

In the imp: Fresh, bright resins -- a cleaner smell than I would have expected from the dark brown oil. Wet: Frankincense, myrrh, and oh, bloody hell. This may have to go to swaps, because there's juuust enough of something coniferous to sting my skin and eyes a bit. In fact, maybe that's what was giving it that clean smell in the imp. Drydown: Here's another oil, like Aureus, that's difficult to call "dry" because it lies stickily on top of my skin for a relatively long time. I get a real depth, and a different kind of wood, like the wood of pews. Not having been raised in a churchy tradition, I don't have the scent memories of Yule and incense and whatnot that everybody else has, but I can definitely see where this would evoke an ecclesiastical setting with... unfortunately for me, greenery. Okay, I'm running for the soap and adding this to my swap pile, but I must make clear that that's just MY allergy; if you can pass by a conifer without sneezing, and you're an incense fan, you'll love what seems to be a beautifully-blended scent.

In the imp: Wet floral. Maybe a hint of frankincense. Wet: That is some strong jasmine right there. Drydown: LOL IM ON UR SKIN SMELLIN LYKE JAZMINZ Wait! What am I doing, quoting lolcats in a serious-minded review of a complex scent blended with such care by Beth and the Lab staff? No, obviously what I meant to quote was the lolrus: I HAS A FRANK N CENTS NOOOO THEY BE STEALIN MAH FRANK N CENTS Seriously, I do get this tiny waft of black currant also, but other than that, we're living on Jasmine Street here. Next!

In the imp: Sharp resin. Wet: Patchouli. Yes, skin, you are still wrapped around a hippie. Drydown: I hesitate to call this "dry" per se, as it's still kind of lying on top of my skin. I quickly get the amber, almost as a taste, then strong cedarwood, another note my skin amps, and a very dry sandalwood like the one in Dragon's Bone. And then amid the concentrated Eau de Head Shop, something almost like dill is poking out. When this scent initially made me think of "weed growing," I wasn't thinking of dill per se. Verdict: On me, this is basically Patchouli and Friends... and while I'm all about all of these notes, I still prefer Coiled Serpent for a smooth patchouli and Malediction for the in-your-face kind.

The last time I was tempted to post a one-word review, I think it was for Lust, and the word would have been "Yes." Now, I'm tempted to post a one-emoticon review: Some scents are so great that I'm just left at a loss for words. Q of C is like that. I really got all of the listed notes; this seems to be one of the roses that doesn't turn sour and horrible on my skin; and the red currant is fantastic in this, fruity yet tart -- this is sweet, yet kept from being foody by the earth, amber, myrrh, and all of the skin notes, but still the currant floats above everything and all of the notes hang together and balance each other. Winey, ripe, rich -- this is sort of reminiscent of Hymn to Proserpine, but really dressed up. I have to agree that if "regal" had a smell, it would be in this. No wonder this scent is so sought after. I can only plead for a revival.

In the imp: Almost pure ozone. Wet: Ozone and wet grasses -- not a cool wet, a hot wet. (What an advanced vocabulary you have today, milady!) Drydown: The dominant ozone note hangs around for ages, with something like lemongrass near it. It takes a good bit of the blend's wear time for any other note to even be detectable. When that happens, I get a wonderful hint of the Lab's "dirt" note; a salty aquatic layer, rather briefly; and, finally, the amber, unusually clean-smelling in this context. I'm not getting any of the woods here. As others have commented, there's amazing throw and staying power for a scent in this category. I'm still a bit on the fence with regard to this one; I can see the points of view of both those who find it annoyingly sporty or detergent-like and those who find it quite evocative. I think there's a long middle stage in the drydown that could go either way, depending on your skin chemistry, time of hormonal phase, and even mood. You could wear this out in public when you weren't trying to seduce someone or preside at a ritual, definitely, but it's also not a scent I'd wear randomly; it has too much presence for that.

What, there's only one BPAL called The Temptation? Isn't BPAL, by its very nature... oh, never mind. In the imp: Ooh, sour rose. Please don't go weird on me! Wet: Sweet floral, with a background of something else. So this is what peach blossom smells like -- it's quite lovely. Okay, I'm tempted. Drydown: The musk comes forward and makes a beautiful background to the peach note, but unfortunately I'm not getting any other identifiable florals here -- this is similar to the experience I had with The Perfumed Garden, in which the jasmine note was lovely but persistent enough to stifle all competitors. Average wearlength, minimal sillage. Verdict: I have the kind of skin that eats scents like this alive, and it's doing that with enough of the notes that I get a pretty but unexceptional peachy-musk experience. I've had peach body lotions that threw harder than this on me -- so this is getting swapped to someone who will really appreciate it.

In the imp: Citrus and a bit of clove. Wet: Citrus and lots of clove. The leather comes in here, too, followed closely by the vetiver. Drydown: Fascinating, complex guy, this King. The woodsmoke note is uncanny, especially coupled with the very strong throw; at one point, having this on only one pulse point, I was startled into thinking that I had a vetiver incense stick going. I've also never had citrus notes last quite this long, which must be the frankincense or ambergris -- which also make the latter stages of the drydown oddly sweet, and not "torture" at all. But then, I was in love early on. Verdict: For years, the deodorant ads blathered on about "Strong enough for a man, pH-balanced for a woman." In this case, it's more like -- a man certainly could wear this, but I'm keeping this whole imp for myself! Bwah ha ha ha!

In the imp: Flowers and amber. Wet: Flowers, amber, and honey. Wow, champaca! Drydown: The sandalwood and amber mix really, really nicely. I suddenly have the feeling that I should have a long floral-print skirt on and be talking earnestly to somebody in a little shop about the use of expensive crystals to balance one's chakras... but the date palm keeps the floral component sweet without being predictable. The throw isn't gigantic, but it's more vigorous than I'd predicted from the listed notes -- possibly helped by the amber. There's almost an apple-y sweetness to what the date palm and rose do together. Very girly (and I don't often react to scents as gender-specific), very wear-your-hair-down, very young -- but not in the slightly icky Jailbait way, just happy.

I see I've had my review written for me! Very sweet at the beginning; almost like New Orleans in evoking a heady, damp, sweet flower garden. Then, for the rest of the wear length, this is practically a jasmine SN on me. I mean, I like jasmine. I like it in my tea; I like it just fine on my skin. But I was hoping to get some of the other notes out of this, too. Swaps ahoy!