starbrow

Perhaps I was thinking more Morocco-type spices when I saw this lineup....but Phallus Devotion has way more of a kick. Imagine the most peppery saffron, a very fiery strain, seasoned with a sprinkle of nutmeg and an ever so slightly root-beer-esque patchouli. The mahogany and rosewood combination masquerading as leather to my nose; a leather jacket left in a household that uses tons of cooking spices, infusing the material with lots of flavor. The agarwood isn't instantly identifiable, and I am very happy about that! Nothing indolic about this oud wood, although it is quite earthy. Right now the spices are dominating, but I am picturing this aging and the resins deepening, the edges smoothing, and everything growing darker and sexier. Don't be scared if this arrives and is super patchy! So far, all the patch blends have needed at least a couple days to settle down from the mail and let the other notes shine through. The only thing I was worried about, the agarwood, turned out to be no worries at all. I've been growing more and more attached to this scent in the week since I've had it. I think the trend will only continue.

Resuscitation proves why experiencing a scent in the bottle, applied to the skin, and dry is vital! After settling, the bottle is ever so slightly scary to sniff. A little bit like wet cement, or something electrical that's been this side of overheated. It goes on exactly like that, too, wet on the skin. If I had just sniffed this and didn't skin-test, I would have moved on. But the bottle is mine, so of course I'm going to slather and see how it goes! After a couple of minutes of drying, the scariness is gone, and it's all deeply smoky. A smokiness that's had any sharpness completely kindled away and leaving a smooth, dark shadow behind. The acrid "barbeque" smoke of 2018 is no more. This is miles deep into the earth. The longer it warms on the skin, the better it gets. A few more minutes, and it's beginning to smell like the best leather. Like leather that has zero plastic. Like leather that is snuggly, soft from years of wear and lotion. I don't get any individual note in the lineup. Just leather. Which is not in the lineup, but that choya ral (a new note to me) is a balsam which smells "smoky-leathery, dry-woody, sweet resinous...with a delicate amber undertone." Nailed it. This baby smells like choya ral. The more it dries, the more it smells like old things to me. Like an old garage, with various bits of machinery and clothing and old boxes and books and wood all in one place. This is really, really good. I thought it had low throw, staying very close to the skin, because I couldn't smell it on myself unless I huffed my wrist. Then my partner commented on my "pretty" perfume from the other side of the couch. Well there you have it. It's pretty, and it has great throw. If this is what Resuscitation is like fresh, I am here for it this year and next!

Two Westerners jumped into my cart from the moment the Shungas went live. I mean, look at all those notes! Now that it's here, I'm slightly puzzled. The first whiff is very salty aquatic - and I like salt notes, but aquatics usually not a total winner - yet I can tell this is a murkier kind of water, like it's brackish or something, with the mahogany peeking through like water-logged ship beams falling apart from a long-ago shipwreck. Interesting. Then the other and even more puzzling note is the beeswax, which is high-pitched waxy honey, somehow still salty (??), and adding to the strange mystery of this blend. Together, they form a sharp and rather aggressive blend that bullies the other notes (parchment, bourbon vanilla, tonka bean, leather) into the shadows. Crimson musk is brave enough to come play in the drydown, something not quite red musk but a deep dark red like blood that warms and slightly softens the edges of the salty wet wood and beeswax. I think the true beauty of Two Westerners has yet to emerge in the aging process. It's spiky right now, I'd like to see this shipwreck in a year.

Kabe Ni Mimi Ga Aru, Shoki Ni Me Ga Aru, a journal: Day 1: Whoa this is....nothing like I was expecting! Kabe, o ye of two vanillas, smacks me with a whole lotta patch and cola-like copal resin, but with some vanilla on drydown so it's almost like vanilla coke. I thought it was a very fizzy patch, before I remembered that Coffee Beans and Copal (from the Yule coffee collection) had the same kind of thing going on. Curious to see how this develops as it settles. Day 2-4: This was not the foodie wood I signed up for? Not sure if I'm enjoying this. Yet I keep huffing my wrist? Day 7: Okay, the fizziness has calmed the eff down and now, while there is still some colaness, it's smoothed out, sweetened up, and the patch is at manageable levels. The vanilla sandalwood miiight be the slight funk that's lingering here. This perfume oil is a scent cousin to the Hagaromo-No-Taki HG from this year's Lupers (Tahitian vanilla, coconut cream, orris root, sugar cane, and white sandalwood), and what it shares is vanilla and sandalwood. Both have a very earthy, almost dirty sandalwood. And yet somehow it works in Kabe? I'm starting to really love huffing this. It's so strange and wild and, frankly, weird, that it's endearing. d I can tell this baby will continue to morph as it ages, and I'm here for it. Do not expect foodie, expect something pretty funky and crazy, and you'll be ready for Kabe's wild ride.

In order to understand what Snake's Kiss HG is like, it's important to understand the evolution of the perfume oil itself. Fresh off the presses in its debut year, Snake's Kiss was a wisp of a scent: sugary vanilla, a drop of honey, not much Snake Oil, not really much of anything. A year later, it was rich, creamy, warmly sweet. Two years later, it is INTENSE. Still quite far from Snake Oil, like to my nose it's barely in the same family, but it lasts longer, yes, LONGER than Snake Oil, with more powerful throw, more sweetness, more of everything. It smells like whipping up a vanilla buttercream frosting with a healthy dollop of gentle honey and a sprinkling of spices. Did I say buttercream? I sure did. "Thick vanilla cream" is no lie. This is desserty gourmand Snake Oil. I say all that to say this: fresh off the presses, Snake's Kiss HG is probably gonna turn into that. Right now, it's much closer to OG Snake Oil than Snake's Kiss perfume oil ever was. It's got more of the characteristic spices and muskiness, with less of the foodie buttercream action. I still am picking out the drop of honey, but it's faint. It's comforting, smelling the Snake Oil just sweetened up. Very pretty. Now on the hair....A few spritzes in, and it fades within a few minutes. Fresh. Fresh, I tell you. I won't be using this much for a year. I'm going to stash it away, forget about it, and pull it out again next February. I know what the Snake's Kiss journey is like. It needs time. It's very, very much worth the wait. You can expect an update next year from me

I would swear there is chamomile in this blend. Perhaps it's the lavender and frankincense combining in a way that reminds me, very vividly, of the cool herbal qualities of chamomile. The sharpness of lavender usually pops out at me, yet in The Scales it is quieted, grounded. So is the lemon peel, another vocal note that stays calm amidst the pale resins. I would also swear there was clary sage here, the white sage is that pretty. Even the vetiver is not menacing but fuzzy, inviting. I am really loving the meditative frank and sandalwood with the herby top notes. It's funny that the description says it offers no comfort, because I do find this combination very comforting. It's a close second behind Bow and Crown of Conquest from this Come and See line.

Tobacco is really dominating my imp these days, along with the spiciness of saffron and a pinch of brightness from the mandarin. I'm not really picking up any red musk (very odd, since that's usually a predominate note), cocoa or black tea, but I do get the herbalness in almost a weedy way behind the tobacco, saffron, and citrus. There's a sense of wrongness the way Death on a Pale Horse smelled wrong to me. The notes are discordant, always at odds with each other. I used to rather like this one, but now it does unsettle me and I won't be wearing it, I think.

I sniffed this really early on in my BPAL adventures and loved it, and that feeling hasn't changed through the years. This is dusty herby cedar and warm, lived-in leather, with a memory of Dorian's lavender vanilla. For the Antichrist, the scent is remarkably...approachable. Even cuddly. Maybe that's the deception. But I am totally here for it, hook line and sinker. Just putting this on makes me feel relaxed, at peace. Resins predominate, but the herbs and florals soothe and temper the ruggedness. It has a throw that stays near to you but is also noticeable beyond the standard wrist-huff distance. Definitely my favorite of the Come and See line. I could see myself wearing this a lot!

This scent manages to be both pale and deeply unsettling. There is something about the way these notes comes together that turns my stomach, like the sharp white claws of the musk, florals, and lavender is tearing at the acid of the citrus and the murky earth of the vetiver. Conceptually, it's awesome; as a perfume, it's so not for me. There's no single death note in here for me; it's the combination that is wholly at odds with one another. I won't be wearing this one again.

I keep sniffing this one and feeling almost hypnotized, which has made it hard to write a review because I just want to smell it again and exhale deeply and bliss out. I can do this! I am strong! Can we just talk about the bottle art for a second? The Challenge of the Ascetic is seriously one of the cutest, quirkiest Shunga labels ever and I am so here for it. That adorable tiny ascetic and his fleshly vigil. I didn't know I needed this in my life but I do. Okay. Cap comes off. It's quiet. No surprise there. But an appealing soft incense nonetheless. Time to test. Ooooo. This...this is some good stuff. This is not your run-of-the-mill incense. I have sandalwood and frankincense essential oils, and neither one jump out at me from the blend here. Aloeswood (aka agarwood aka oud) is perhaps the creamy wood I am smelling? (Zero whiff of barnyard, thank the stars.) And the ti leaf is definitely the chilled-out, dark green peacefulness-of-the-garden vibe that permeates the gentle resins. Put them all together, I'm inhaling the calmest, most bewitching woods and incense in the world. Where most have a warmth that brings to mind burning incense, The Challenge goes in the opposite direction; it suggests a cool, dark forest, meditating alone. The longer it dries down, the more the creaminess of the aloeswood resin does the thing that good oud does, and becomes absolutely heavenly. I am just fine with the quiet throw of this blend; it fits the mood perfectly, and it lasts for hours and hours. I want to slather in this and do yoga. I am in love. Knocked it out of the park, Ascetic!

Banana notes must be so tricksy. This one is up to all sorts of pranks. In the bottle and wet, I smelled a very authentic banana laffy taffy; sweet and waxy, quite chewy, and flavored with vanilla-ish banana. Others compared it to banana cream pie, banana pudding, vanilla wafers, etc. So it's definitely a light, sugary, creamy banana flavoring, that may not really remind you of fresh bananas but rather the treats that are made with them (or their imitations). Missing in action at first are the black coconut and raw chocolate. The banana stays a consistent top note for several hours, and it's only much later that it floats away to nothing. Then, I get a mixture of dark sweet things that almost reminds me, weirdly, of oak. I think it's the woodiness of the black coconut and the bitterness of the raw chocolate that somehow are combining in my nose to give this a more resiny presence than a gourmand one. No sign of the beach or suntan lotion with this coconut, either! As has proved the case with many Lupers this year, I love the base notes and am not crazy about the top note. This is a very pretty drydown, as long as you are into those banana treats!

I couldn't really get any chocolate or cacao from this, wet or dry! It truly is the rose show up in this joint. Wet, there's some rose geranium tinging the traditional rose; it has that slight spiciness/spookiness that I associate with geranium. Then the drydown brings a very lovely deep red rose, velvet-petaled, perhaps dusted with something that sweetens and softens it, which my nose isn't picking up as cacao but it's less in-your-face rose than usual, so something is taming it and that must be the cacao. Such a romantic red rose. It doesn't really tempt me as is, but I'm not the target audience for this scent, hehe. The floral is beautiful and there is no foodiness to the cacao. When they say dusted, they really mean the lightest powdering!

Wow. Oak bark is BARKING right out of the gate from this blend. Very strong oak, but without the polish or varnish that comes along with a lot of oak blends, so it's really raw and unfiltered wood, which makes total sense for oak bark. Cocoa is a distant second, notewise, and frankly it's not a foodie gourmand like you'd expect from Box of Chocolates. Here, it's a light dusting of raw dark cacao powder, more bitter than sweet, but deep and grounding. You might not even guess that it was there if you were smelling this blindly, because it supports the woodiness of the dark oak so well. This is a GREAT option for someone who has trouble wearing chocolate, as long as you like oak. Very unexpected but a wonderful treat this year.

YUM! Even though this comes from the box of chocolates, this is less confectionery chocolate and more chocolate cookie with raspberry icing. The dark chocolate stays true on the skin and doesn't go sour, and the berry note is light and pleasant, definitely a little candied versus the juicy tartness of fresh fruit. I think you have to be a fan of both chocolate and berry notes to enjoy wearing this one for any length of time, but considering that I usually don't like chocolate-with-fruit combos, this one was oddly tempting. I think I'd like a decant of it a whole lot.

Woof, that is some kickin honey cream. Thick gloops of sharp honey, freshly squeezed out of a honey bear, onto blobs of cream that are definitely dairy based, and the combination tends to go a little sour to me, while still richly gourmand. It's the kind of honey I can't wear because it's so sharp, it goes right up my sinuses and into my brain like a spike . Honey, why you gotta do me like that? Faintly beneath the honey, there's a whiff of milk chocolate like the whiffs you get from the bottom of an empty trick-or-treating jack-o-lantern basket when all the Halloween candy is gone and the memory of chocolaty sugar rushes remains. It wasn't not premium milk chocolate, but there were some winners amid the tootsie rolls and off-brand wrappers. I wish the chocolate was a little more prominent and the honey was a little softer, but there are lots of chocolate blends out there, not as many honeys, and especially honey cream. So this is for those foodies who really dig the bright/rich varieties of honey and are craving a little chocolate to amp up the sweetness.

There are two categories of sniffers when it comes to Black Cherry and Oud, and I wanted to depict both for a more accurate picture of what your experience with this scent could be like. So: Science! A scent card was doused in some of this blend, allowed to dry a bit, and placed in front of a sampling of 10 people. Results: one camp (3 people) that smells sweet candied cherry fruit, like a lollipop, when it's wet, and on the drydown has a floral ("lilac") or cleaner-scented-like-florals atmosphere, with perhaps just a tinge of farm on the breeze. The other camp, in both blind smells and when knowing the notes, smells lots of indoles (like, the amount of indoles in fresh poo) with a drop of cherry underneath. When testing this out at Lunacy, the pooud camp was by far the majority (about 7 people). Fresh, this is a very indolic blend. It may age into something a little less ripe. I can tell you, hours later after drydown, the cherry has disappeared and it is all pungent oud. Not for me, not for me. But there is a definite minority that finds this sugary, fruity, and enjoyable. Oudh rating: 💩💩💩💩 (out of 5)

Juicy, tart-sweet grapefruit is by far the strongest note at first, but it does a great job of keeping the cherry grounded in fruit rather than in almond. The citrus is almost a little fizzy,selt of course not as fizzy as the Champagne and Maraschino Cherry, but it does remind me a little bit of a grapefruit seltzer. The drop of cherry juice is very subtle, and even more subtle is the neroli for the first few hours. It is definitely hiding in the shadow of grapefruit for a long long time. Then, on drydown, a very beautiful neroli emerges that is classic heady orange blossom to my nose, very grounded and peaceful, equal parts sweet, citrus, and woody. Dapples of brightness from the fruits keep the neroli from becoming too heavy or serious. I really love this stage. I wish it was a different citrus at the beginning, because grapefruit and I really don't see eye to eye, but it's a beautiful blend wet to dry and it was in my top three of the Cherry Bombs.

My favorite Cherry Bomb, but that's because it's allllll fig, all the time. Plump, ripe fig meat, luscious and dark and woody. This is not for the fig haters, or even the fig tolerators; this is for the fig devotees, who just can't get enough of that Mediterranean fruity goodness. This is so rich, it almost smells like fig cream, it's that wafty and gourmand. I didn't get any almond from this blend, hallelujah! I also didn't get much cherry at all. Whatever's there is backing up the fig with a splash of juicy red fruit, rather than the more candied almond-extracty type of cherry. This is the perfect choice for someone like me who doesn't do well with most cherries and does amazing with fig. Just be forewarned that this fig is not shy in the slightest, and it will demand that you adore it or else it's here to ruin your day. I plan to dig up a decant of this and see if I need a bottle!

Maraschino cherry is total almond, very sweet and syrupy, almost lip-balmy, like the Lip Smackers interpretation of an ice cream sundae cherry. The fizz in this Champagne is really, really cute, almost soda-ish but with a tad more refinement, and that's what sticks around after the cherry burns off. I enjoy the sugary-bubbly drydown of this scent, where I get a young, fun, teenager-on-their-first-trip-to-Europe vibe, something reminding me of a champagne-and-tulips scent I really enjoyed from Bath and Body Works. I really didn't enjoy the top notes of the maraschino cherry, though, and I wouldn't be willing to suffer through that just to get to the champagne at the end. I'll look for other sweet champagnes from BPAL, I think. But this is someone's perfect junk food cherry and bottle-popper.

A very sweet cherry, as if some sweet pea was decking the fruit out with frilly pink ruffles. I do pick up almond in this cherry (almond is my nemesis), but strangely it's not a total ruiner. The really fun part is the pink pepper, which is bright and lively and a little spicy, and that's the note that comes out more and more as this cherry bomb dries down. Hours later, the pink zippiness of the pepper lingers and the almondy-cherry is quite faint - which makes me happy. One of the best of the cherries, but still not really in my wheelhouse, and I didn't expect it to be.

ANDES MINTS! Seriously, those little chocolate mint rectangles you get at Olive Garden or wherever? Green Lovebird is giving off serious Andes vibes. Something about the sugar and pistachio together maybe are reading as vaguely chocolately to my nose, but it's in the background, while WHOA VANILLA MINT dominates the foreground. To me, this is pretty far away from an herby mint leaf; Green Lovebird is all about the sugared mint flavoring in a confectioner's treat. Those who go wild for that gourmand sweet vanilla mint will be really into this. While I get tons of those first two notes, pistachio itself is hiding somewhere in this blend and I'm not able to pick out the specific creamy/nutty greenness of it under the WHOA VANILLA MINT. I think a slightly more even balance of pistachio and mint would have made this lovebird a huge winner, but it's still very good as is! This has impressive throw for the first couple of hours, before it calms the eff down and turns much softer and poofier. While mint sweets aren't really my thing (I prefer mint leaves in blends), they are someone's, and I'm happy to report that Green Lovebird delivers the goods on that front.

Simple perfection. Three notes that braid together exquisitely into a gorgeous plait, one that was instant love for me. Imagine the softest, prettiest tobacco leaf picked when it was just budding, with just a hint of spiced smokiness, combined with the warm comfort of sweet rice milk and the calm tranquility of frankincense. It's so classically Shunga, and exactly what I hope for in a Shunga blend, yet somehow the sum of the parts is so much greater than the individual notes might belie. A Vision's throw is intimate, as you might expect, but up close it has beautiful presence and is incredibly soothing. Not quite foody, smoky, or incensey, but the perfect Venn diagram center of those three categories. I will wax more poetic about it as it ages, I'm sure, but fresh, it's the standout of all the Lupers I've tried so far. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.

Exact quote while smelling my sniffy-card of this after Lunacy: "MMMmmm! Why didn't I get this? I would totally wear this." I'm always looking for new variations on red musk that aren't just, red musk bomb. I think we all do that for some of the louder notes we enjoy, whether it's rose, jasmine, patch; for me, a big one is red musk. As soon as I smelled the drydown of this one, I knew it was for me. In the bottle, I got a lot of red musk, some fruit, and a lot of warm wood. Basket of Mediterranean fruits, yum. Skin-testing, the fig swam into focus as the apricot sweetened the red musk. It only gets better over time, as the blend becomes almost cashmere-warm and rich with resins, sticky apricot, and pulpy fig meat. This is far from generic red musk, which is itself a dark and somewhat fruity-spicy, "sultry" type of musk; here, it really plays well with others in such a classically Lupercalia way. Bottle time~

I love sea salt blends. LOVE them. I get a nice blast of salt from Beach Scene, and a lot of wood that does smell water-logged; aquatics, but not totally swimming in the smell of the water. (Probably the kelp is contributing to that too?) But...I really don't enjoy the white patchouli note in the midst of it. I really wish it had been left out of the blend and replaced with perhaps grass, a sunny amber, or really anything that was less screechy. Boy, does it screech. Loud, piercing herbiness that is like bright sunshine after a night of too much to drink: headache-inducing. I think that if white patch plays nice with you, and you enjoy salty aquatics/woods, this could be your scene. If you had any issues with Dalliances by Candlelight, Closing the Bamboo Curtain, or other white patchouli blends, testing is advised.

YUM! Super duper sweet strawberry that for once does NOT go plasticky, fake, or lipsmacky. This is one of the most authentic strawberry blends since Eat the Strawberries, and Beating the Tatami Shunga is a little more complex and layered versus the fresh simplicity of Eat the Strawberries. I would even love a decant of this, and I am not a strawberry girl. So what makes this so good? I think what I actually really love about this is the ti leaf. I love the lab's ti leaf note; it's an almost clovey-spicy herb note, and it elevates every blend I've smelled it in. It definitely grounds the strawberry, and gives it allllmost a strawberry tea flavor. With, of course, lots of sugar (candied fruits!). I didn't think I would be as into this as I am, but it's good.