Haji Hajima

I received an imp of this with my most recent order - the Lupercalia 2019 Madness In Which I Spent WAY Too Much: In the imp: I can smell a darker, lingering hint of cherries under the honey and vanilla. It's sweet in a food way. On the skin: VANILLA AND HONEY FOR DAYS. Seriously. The vanilla throw on this was wild for a while. Not a bad thing - just a first note. It lasted for about 15-30 minutes, then died down into almost nothing, which seems to be my particular fate with BPAL fragrances. About 2 hours later: The honey is still there, but it's faint. The other notes of spice and musk are nowhere to really be found, which is surprising to me, as my skin usually takes musk and runs with it (much to my dismay). I think the sweetness of the vanilla / honey have overpowered the other notes. Over all: It's a bummer that this one, as many of my others, doesn't have much of a staying power. While I can't smell the cherry, clove, vetiver, poppy, wine, OR musk as individual notes that linger on the skin, I think the combination of all of the above keeps this fragrance from being overall sickeningly sweet, which it might have otherwise been. On me, it smells like a more grown up version of "O", without the baby powder aftermath that O has on me.

Oh, man. So, this fragrance....It's...something. Wet: I'm not sure how to describe it, other than "pungent" with notes of almost ammonia. Once you read "cat pee," you honestly can't unsmell it. I think it might be a combination of the sweeter apple with oudh - I'm not entirely sure. On: It took a good 30 minutes for this to dry down on me. Even then, I keep catching whiffs of how it goes on wet, which isn't exactly ideal. The musk then becomes predominant, and there's that moment of, "Jesus, this is not working for me on so many levels." Musk doesn't typically play well with me. However, closer on the skin (as in partially sticking my face down my shirt; it's cool. I look great doing it and not at all like a weirdo), there's the amber and mild neroli, and honestly, this part smells wonderful. With that being said, I'm honestly not sure how I feel about this one. The wet fragrance and lingering top notes are awful, and every time I reach for the bottle to give it one more shot, it's enough to make me want to put it down. But I bought it, and I don't want my money to go to waste (and I'm stubborn!), and I know that if I give this fragrance a good 30-40 minutes, then it becomes this wonderful, intimate little secret on the skin. Not enough for others to catch, for sure (because that top note seems to be the only thing that wafts off of me), but I'm used to that sort of payoff with oils. In the future, though, I'm probably going to avoid similar fragrance combinations. I'm leaning towards that apple/oudh combination that's creating that pungent top note.

I went back and forth about buying this one for a while, but was ultimately lured in by the "peach sandalwood," thinking that it would be an interesting combination. I was a little leery of the "musk" in it, as musk has a tendency to dominate any other smell on me, but I figured why not. That, and I absolutely adore the art on the bottle for this one. It's so charming. In the bottle, I smell musk and fig. The musk isn't overpowering at all - which I thought, "Okay, maybe this won't be overpowering and make me smell like a little old church lady's purse." On wearing it, I don't get any of the peach or sandalwood notes (wah!), and, as I suspected, it turns into a one note profile on my skin. It goes on and smells mildly soapy, actually - that clean fragrance with a hint of something darker beneath it. I suspect that's the white musk. Over time, as it mellows out, I do smell more of the fig, and maybe, if I breathe in hard enough, the barest trace of sandalwood. As someone that's drawn to deep incense-y smells, this is a "cleaner" fragrance that I'm used to, and is very faint on my skin. It requires several applications throughout the day to keep it going.