Laughing Seagull

I blind bottled this because of the reviews saying it's the gingerbreadiest gingerbread monster, and I am not disappointed. I want to eat myself. It's like a sandwich made from two spiced molasses cookies and marshmallow creme.

No surprises here. It's lemongrass and coconut. Out of the gate the lemongrass is dominant, but it balances out with the coconut as it dries. The coconut note is similar to the scent of Ahava Dead Sea Essentials coconut moisturizer. This is good because I used to get tons of compliments about how nice I smelled when I used that moisturizer. It won't blow your mind with its originality (I hope you weren't expecting it to), but it's a nice, straightforward duet that I can't imagine offending anyone.

I blind bottled this one because I figured that since I love both gardenia and clove, nothing could possibly go wrong. I was correct. My initial test of this yielded exactly the results I expected. BPAL's gardenia always strikes me as a bit "green" and "nectar-like" and it is very forward initially, as gardenia usually is. It may strike some people as soapy. The clove takes a while to kick in, which I wholly expected since that's what it does in Twelve Tastes in the Classification of Passion (mandarin, carnation, and clove). As always, the clove is woodsy, spicy, and pleasant. At this point gardenia hangs in the background, adding a very subtle floral backdrop to the clove. The clove note is tenacious, and if you like clove you'll likely catch whiffs of it all day and wonder what smells nice (it's you!). Nectary gardenia will occasionally peek out to remind you that it's there. It may be more appropriate to call this "Gardenia, then clove" because it has two very distinct stages. I don't know if this will change as it ages. This duet is a good, simple fragrance to wear on its own. I imagine it might layer well with something fruity or cakey.

I ordered an imp of White Rider because of its simplicity and was hoping that this would be the case. I feared that Black Rider would end up being "syrupy." Everyone's unsexy suggestions have been noted. I personally find Ranger to be unsexy leather (falls into the "cozy" category imo).

So this is subjective and also kind of silly, but I'm curious. Forumites, what do you consider to be the most unsexy leather blends? I don't necessarily mean the coziest (though that can qualify). They can be unsettling or weird or cozy or nice or any other descriptor you can think of, just NOT sexy.

ESSENTIAL Cheshire Cat Bliss Twilight To a Wreath of Snow Jezebel Belle Epoque Xiuhtecuhtli Blood Pearl Blood Rose Thanatopsis Every gingerbread scent Torture Queen Pumpkin Queen Queen of Hearts TEMPTING Envy Cold Moon 2020 Lightning Ranger Don't Lick It Meigetsu Ya Nosferatu The Jersey Devil Carnal Candy Corn Smut Bleeding Walls Apple Spice Hard Candy Bon Vivant Hecate Bastet Vasilissa Chimera The Sea Foams Blood The Sea Foams Milk Dragon's Milk ACCEPTABLE Persephone Transeo Baobhan Sith The Icebergs Incubus Titania Kumiho Y’ha-nthlei Brisingamen Aglaea Haunted Wilde Soothing System Kumiho Pele Eat Me Smut Severin Tweedledee Kali TOLERABLE Shango Hell's Belle Gingerbread Invisible Man Winter Sunset Wheatstacks, Snow effect, Morning Fighter Sin Mad Hatter Peppermint and Pine Queen Block Buster Please Scream Inside Your Heart Kitsune-tsuki Perversion Coyote Tlazolteotl Verdandi Cozy Sweater and Apple Cider Dead Leaves, Marshmallow, Pistachio Cream Imp Great Sword of War Sed non Satiata WELL IT COULD BE WORSE Croquet Brimstone Antonio the Carny Talker Ouija Sjofn Night-Gaunt Maenad Juliet Fae Nyx Vice Hunger The Lights of Men's Lives Kabuki Anathema Obatala Dragon's Bone DISASTER Athens Darkness Pomegranate Sufganiyot Oberon Poisoned Apple Arcana Harlot Red Queen La Lethe Centzon Totochtin Namaste Candy Apple Smut High-Strung Daisies Zephyr Disembodied Malevolent Laughter Velvet Event Horizon The Forest Reverie Juke Joint Dana O'Shee Scherezade How Doth the Little Crocodile Plunder Jack Grave-Pig Apothecary Les Fleurs du Mal Arcana Psionicist ?????? I GOTTA RETRY THESE Snake Oil Tavern of Hell

I really wanted to like this, but the donut dough ends up smelling more like play doh once it touches my skin and the cranberry does an overwhelming hostile takeover. I don't have a good record with berries. It blows that something more or less universally loved doesn't work for me at all, but what can ya do? At least I didn't spring for a full bottle.

I don't have anything poetic to say about this one. Buddy, that's orange soda! Doesn't last long, also like orange soda.

Something in this goes unpleasantly bitter and waxy on me for a good while. I could swear that narcissus was here, though it isn't in the note list. Heck, there aren't ANY florals in the note list. I'm baffled. Maybe what everyone else is reading as "clay" I'm interpreting as "wax." The maybe-narcissus does taper off and is replaced with pretty much pure clove after a while, and I do like clove. There are other clove scents I like more though, where I don't have to sit through a waxy nightmare to get to the good stuff.

Not much to say about this one. Yup, that's a candy cane! Lasts longer than expected. Sweet and refreshing. Love it.

I enjoy everything about this except the carnation, which behaves obnoxiously and keeps injecting a bubblegumminess into this that I dislike. Underneath the annoying bubblegumminess, there's a delicate dry grassy smell with a hint of fruity musk that's pretty enjoyable. Especially with the overbearing carnation, though, it's a little too delicate for me. I prefer The Icebergs.

The gingerbread... It's invisible!! I don't get the bready, molasses-y, lasts-forever-y gingerbread that I experienced with Gingerbread Zombie here. Instead, I get a fizzy lemon-ginger concoction. It's a nice smell in its own right, but where the f*** is my gingerbread?

This is beautiful. I wasn't impressed with it in the vial (I smelled lavender and not much else), but putting it on my skin seems to "activate" it. Once it's warmed up on my skin, it reminds me of a professor I used to occasionally pass by when I was in college. I never took any of his classes, but he would stand around outside smoking a pipe with really good smelling tobacco in it. It has a sweet, vanilla-like quality. Overall this is a lot sweeter than I had anticipated. This is a good thing. It keeps the tobacco flower from going off the rails as it so often does. In fact, it strikes me as surprisingly edible-smelling - were it not for the tobacco, I might wonder if I accidentally got a decant of lavender and white chocolate madelines. I want to wallow in a bathtub full of it.

Ranger is all cozy leather, pine sap, and woods to me. Fighter's leather gave a glossy black impression, whereas Ranger is a well-worn suede. It's lazy cuddles on a couch with a granny-square blanket draped over the back of it in a rustic little lake house. I wouldn't have known that patchouli was in this if it wasn't in the note list; I usually find patch "dirty" smelling, but Ranger doesn't strike me as dirty at all. In the last minutes before the scent fades, up-close I detect something vaguely citrusy that reminds me of black musk. I believe that this particular Ranger is more cuddly than deadly, at least to their party members. This is a snuggly, comforting scent. And much like snuggles, I wish it lasted longer.

Straight up cinnamon incense. Woody, smoky, a little spicy, kind of dirty. Amber adds powdery sweetness once it dries. Not entirely unpleasant, but too dirty for my liking.

I received this as a frimp and was afraid of it because I expected it to be exceptionally earthy and gritty - a relative of Burial, I thought, and Burial made me feel physically ill. When I popped open the Nosferatu imp I was delighted with a rich wine scent with an almost cherry-like twang to it. Sweet but not too sweet. Red. It makes me smile. There is an inexplicable coolness to it as well, but in my opinion it's not like "rotting things in a crypt." This vampire lives in a cold cave full of stalactites that drip icy water onto your scalp if you don't watch your step. You adjust to the dim light and you see an array of luxurious velvet pillows and a nice rug that contrast amusingly with the rough stone walls. Something metallic emerges eventually. Maybe you've had so much wine by this point that you've failed to notice that your companion is drinking something suspiciously more viscous. This is a vampire that makes you go, "Eh, it was worth it" as the light leaves your eyes. 10/10, exceeded my expectations in every way. I'm baffled by the wildly different reviews on this.

This isn't exactly a "me" scent because it turns out to be very earthy (I think due to the sage mostly), but it isn't unpleasant. The caramel note is so subtle to my nose that I wouldn't know it was there if it wasn't for the notes list. Minty tobacco is at the forefront - an herbal mint such as the one in Envy, not a candylike mint. It fades away after a while, as mint tends to do. I smell the white musk more than the black musk. Despite containing caramel, it's not really sweet. Overall, white musk and tobacco seem to be the stars of the show here.

Queen reminds me of Dragon's Milk but I like it less. It opens with something sharp and unpleasant. I had thought maybe it was labdanum or Bad Honey at first, but the consensus seems to be that it's vetiver. I think this has honey and amber in it and I could swear that I detect heliotrope lingering at the end. I'd rather just have Dragon's Milk, but this will do while the Ars Draconis collection is MIA.

Got this as a frimp with my most recent order. It is definitely not what I expected. This is a Pennsylvania thing, but let me tell you what this smells like initially: someone spilled Frozen Run on a rosewood piece of furniture. To give everyone else a chance to figure out what I'm talking about, the scent is comparable to wintergreen, teaberry, or black birch with a rosewood undercurrent. I recognize that woodsy note from Red Queen. I'm not wild about rosewood but I do like that teaberry smell. Then it dries into an explosion of overwhelming waxy lilac. I'm not a lilac fan.

This was a frimp that I expected to hate because my track record with honey and orange blossom (both individually and together) is horrible and rose and sandalwood are very hit-or-miss notes. The odds were against this one. It's unexpectedly nice, especially when wet. The honey in Jezebel is somehow different from any other honey scent I've tried. Normally I find honey notes unpleasantly sharp, but this isn't the case with Jezebel. My guess is that either it's a different kind of honey, it's uniquely softened by its companion notes, or it's just a smaller quantity than usual. Regardless of why it is the way it is, this honey is fruity and pleasant. Jezebel does get a bit of a funk while it's drying. I don't know what the source of the funk is, since orange blossom, roses, and sandalwood all go funky on me sometimes (but sometimes not!). The funk dissipates after it's completely dried. This may be a locket scent, and it may be the one that gets me to give more honey scents a chance in the future. Much to think about.

This is definitely a cousin of Cheshire Cat, sharing a couple of notes (lavender, black musk) and the two are borderline indistinguishable from each other after several hours. The opener makes all the difference though. Cheshire Cat opens with juicy grapefruit while Mad Hatter is like cracking open a jar of those tiny pillow-shaped butter mints that I go nuts over. The waft is nice butter mint-y goodness, but if I sniff it up close I get a very "drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth" kind of vibe with a hint of "my high school gym bag." To be fair, the Mad Hatter probably would be into drinking orange juice after brushing his teeth. The overlap with Cheshire Cat and the toothpaste-orange-gymbag bit makes me reluctant to want to spring for a full bottle of this, but I'll be keeping an eye out for more pennyroyal scents.

I once saw someone describe La Croix as tasting "like someone yelled the name of a fruit in another room." That's kind of what Machu Picchu is to me - like someone yelled "amber" in another room. I can imagine that there's probably amber in this, but I can only smell a weak, strange latex smell with the vague idea of a specific kind of amber (that I don't like) if I shove my nose right up into it. I was expecting something brighter, sweeter, more floral, fruitier. I guess the "mountain breeze" blew away everything else and I'm left with the sticky, sap-oozing stems of cracked and blown-over plants.

This was a good way to learn that I hate hemlock. Started as a nice crisp, juicy apple scent with a haze of sweet opium smoke and a floral breeze and devolved into an acrid, horrendous green scent that I hate. It suits its name, but at what cost?

Reminiscent of Brisingamen, but with the addition of gummy peach candies. I find myself wishing for a little less amber, though that would drag it dangerously close to "peach single note" territory.

This is initially a giant bowl of maple syrup and vomit with a tiny fragment of French toast floating in it and something vaguely nauseating wafting in the background. I was actually tempted to wash it off because I found the initial smell incredibly overwhelming and unpleasant, but it becomes more bready, spicier, and tolerable once it dries. I wouldn't call it funnel cake though. Not sure what kind of funnel cakes they've got going on in California. EDIT/UPDATE: I retried this in 2023 and it has aged nicely. The "vomit note" is gone and it has evolved into a yummy french toast with syrup or monkey bread scent. It is still VERY STRONG!