alouettesque

Oberon really took me on a journey. I loved it in the imp (although I couldn't figure out what I was smelling at all!) and then I was a bit disappointed when I initially smelled it on my skin. After it dried down, though, the earthiness came through and I really fell in love. It smells like turning over a wet log on a rainy day--not moldy decay but just... rich earthiness. Combined with the floral notes, it really calls to mind dark, early spring. For the first hour, it smells like fantasy petrichor, like getting lost in the woods while it's raining and stumbling into a field of hyacinths. The earthiness starts to fade faster than I would like and it turns into a clean, artisinal soap smell, although that association might just be because I used to use an artisinal juniper berry soap. Over the next few hours, it faded until I couldn't smell it at all, but by then it was just vaguely clean and herbal so I wasn't really loving it anyway. Even though I wasn't in love with it near the end, I do really want to smell that first hour of it again. I'm definitely going to have my partner try this on to see how it smells on them.

In the imp, all I can smell is SWEET. On my skin, it smells exactly like Lindeman's peach lambic. As it dries down, it's rounded out by something floral (myrtle, I guess!). By about an hour in, the tart sweetness of the peach has faded enough that it's finally balanced with the floral. It feels weird to wear this at night... I would like to wear this on a sunny, breezy day while having a picnic in a field of wildflowers. I suspect I would make a lot of bee friends because of Aglaea.

In the imp, it smells so tart and sweet--cranberries, I suppose! On my skin, the main notes are woodsy, a little fruity, and... kind of soapy? It's a really curious scent... a little Christmas-y, which must be the combination of pine and cranberry. The tomato leaf is definitely there, although it took me going out to the garden to smell a real one to realize it. Overall, it feels like a Christmas scent that is also very far away from any marketed Christmas scents I've ever smelled.

I got an imp of this 3 years ago and when I tried it back then, I remember thinking it smelled a lot like marzipan. After 3 years, I think it smells more like holiday cookies, angel food cake, and oatmeal body wash. It also smells strikingly like baby oil? I was fully expecting it to go powdery on me but it didn't, which I was very happy about! It's definitely a nice scent, one that I think would shine best in a coffee shop or somewhere else where there are other strong scents to balance out the sheer sweetness of it, but it's not one I would personally wear.

Phantom starts out very myrrh-heavy on me and then, as it dries down, it gets very powdery. I'm starting to wonder what scent turns to powder on me and I'm starting to think it's rose because I didn't get ANY traces of rose from Phantom. It wasn't an unpleasant scent by any means and I actually grew to like it after 2 hours of wearing it, when it had softened and rounded out a lot more, but the overall powderiness of it was just too frustrating.

I waited almost 3 years to try this imp and I have no idea how much it changed in that time because I didn't smell it when it was new. Thanatos is very powdery and incensey on me, but I couldn't really differentiate the notes very well beyond that. It faded very, very nicely into a soft, sweet incense. I feel like the ideal progression for this scent is like... you apply it at night before your seance/dancing in the woods under a full moon with your witchy friends/etc. and then over the course of the night, it softens until, at dawn, as you finally get ready to sleep after your nighttime festivities, it’s just this light, sweet scent that lulls you to sleep. But that’s just the Ideal.

It might be the name, but this is definitely a romantic scent. Floral, a little spicy, a little powdery, but like makeup powder, not baby powder. Grandmotherly but in a good and very youth-friendly way? My friend and I both tried this on at the same time and neither of us got much of the citrus notes that I had been hoping would come through.

The good thing about Depraved is that it is almost certainly the worst perfume (on me) I'll ever smell, so I'll never experience fear when trying scents because I know that everything from here on is uphill. On me, Depraved smelled like rotten fruit and garbage. It got a little better over time, but I ended up scrubbing it off about an hour and a half into wearing it because it was so bad. I'm sure it smells better on other people, but it was just... so terrible on me.

I really wanted to love Wilde because it has so many of my favorite scents in it. My initial thought was "fancy shaving cream," which is the same thought I have about my favorite non-BPAL scent (Penhaligon's Endymion) and I think it must be a combination of lavender and either moss or thyme? It it dries down, it gets sharper and a little spicier, too. It gets earthier the longer I wear it, eventually getting a little TOO earthy for my taste around 3 hours in. It definitely feels like a scent that starts out as oxfords and turns into hiking boots.

Wet on my skin, it reminded me of marzipan and old family recipe sugar cookies. As it dried, it got more baby powdery. The bergamot didn't come through initially for me but when I applied more, it did, which was lovely. About an hour and a half into wearing it, it got really sweet and soft, like honey and milk. I think this would be a really nice scent for a cold wintery night if you just wanted to feel all snug and cozy.