LavenderCoffee

Abalone and Peach Blossoms does start out quite salty on my skin, but it shifts fairly quickly as it dries. It is somehow warm and sweet but also cool and aquatic at the same time, depending on which notes you catch in a given moment (an impressive interpretation of the label art). Sea salt, crushed abalone and grapefruit create a decidedly pink sea air vibe, and then peach blossoms and plum with just a breath of water lily bring some blushing sweet warmth into the picture.

Once it's dry, it smells the way the inside of a seashell looks. I'm not usually into aquatics but I am really enjoying this one. It will be in the rotation for sundress season for sure. 

ETA: Five-ish months later this is still a stunner, and less salty to my nose. I am so impressed with this because I can't consistently do aquatics or pretty peachy stuff but I just love this one!

When this first arrived I was only getting coffee bean from it - for a brief moment on initial application I got that hit of dark chocolate and coffee together that really floats my boat, but then the dark chocolate made a hasty exit stage left. There was a cloud of boozy rum that also quickly dissipated, and all I was left with was dupe of the Guatemalan Volcanic Coffee Bean SN.

Time, it needs time! I said. So today I revisit: the initial progression is almost the same, but now the rum transitions from outright boozy into what I think of as a warm and fuzzy rum scent, like in Zipline II (or at least in the same way that one reads on my skin) and the big hit of chocolate becomes a silky ribbon of chocolate in the background.

So it's ultimately very coffee bean forward, and quite nice as a trio, but it turns out I prefer cacao with coffee, bean on bean, instead of chocolate with coffee bean. TMYK 🌈✨

Unmistakably a Snake Oil blend to my nose, but also unmistakably bubblegummy, and with some serious throw right out of the gate! Comparing this to Abduction of Proserpine on the same arm, the lavender is really popping out, but it really comes in third to the SO and the candy. This is absolutely the scent I would expect to smell sitting between a certain mother and child back in 2016. 

I’ve recently learned pom is a tricky note for me, and I’ve been on tricky terms with white sandalwood for a minute, but black currant is brokering some kind of unlikely peace here and this blend is really nice on me somehow? A deep, rich fruit note befitting of Proserpine. 

When this first touched my skin there was like a second and half where my brain went "uhhh" as though there was something overly animalic and icky happening, but then it went directly to "Oh. Oh my! Nsfw!" As others have mentioned, I'm definitely getting an impression of leather, but it's a worn-in leather. imo this is less sweet and more smutty than Smut. 

The more it dries, and please forgive me here, the more the impression changes to armpit, but in a post-coital way, like the description says. Sometimes in that moment, that person's armpit is the best thing you've ever smelled. Other times, that same armpit is like, whew you need a rinse and some fresh BPAL, lol. 😅 I don't really get any booze from this at any point. Seems like a scent one would need to be in a certain mood to wear. 

This is not a scent I would have picked up for myself, so I'm pleasantly surprised at how nice it is. Fresh, sweet melon, with mandarin peeking out just after application. Drying down it is absolutely giving platonic ideal of melon hi-chew, as mentioned at the top of the thread, but somehow soft and luminous is also spot on (thank you white musk). I'm not picking up on any nutmeg, or anything cologne-y or even really floral? It's just the best melon candy you ever had, levitating in a halo of light with a choral sound effect. 

I was lucky enough to snag a bottle of this off of Etsy last month, and I'm quite glad I did. I find it tremendously comforting, and it smells exactly like these scent notes from the text, right down to the charcoal:

"dried cinnamon leaves and dried laurel leaves beneath the charcoal ...cinnamon and sandalwood smoke"

The sandalwood smoke is most prominent, accented with dry laurel (not a swaggering full strength bay) and dry cinnamon (not red hots, nor skin irritant), traces of ash and charcoal (like the end of an incense burn). A gorgeous dry incense blend.

Sooo yeah this is great. It's like if there was a patchouli version of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. No milk, obviously, but all the comfort and ease of Saturday morning breakfast cereal. 

This is a soft, sweetly unsweet blend that my skin seems to gobble up.

Teak tends to be slightly sharp on me but I only get that briefly here in the wet phase. I'm not sure how you get leather to be sweet, but it is exactly that, and well-worn. Coffee and cacao combinations are my jam, and I like those notes to be front and center, but here they are background players. It's not unlike sitting in your grandfather's chair, where untold cups of coffee and crossword puzzles have been finished.

This is such a beautiful addition to the pantheon of bpal cat scents! It's very rich and complex, and kinda RICH, you know, befitting members of the royal court. It's a pale oil with flecks of what I assume is cacao suspended throughout. Wearing it is like looking through a prism, getting fleeting impressions of different notes the way you get different colors - or I suppose, more appropriately, light reflecting off a cat's fur.  

When wet, I get cedar and agarwood alternating with cacao most prominently. Dry, it's toasted cardamom time, with tobacco flecked cream in the background, especially in spots less exposed to the air like elbow and armpits. It's not a creamy scent, but it's very rich and sleek. I keep wanting to call it a warm golden brown sort of color, even though the cats depicted are not, but the amber musk picks the thread of cacao back up at the tail end of things, so yeah. Super wearable and comfy, but also slinky and elevated. 

Hubba hubba. Was not expecting to be knocked over by this one, but I love this honey so much! If Strawberry Sandalwood from the Purge had been honeyed sandalwood like this? WHEW. I must admit I sampled this because I love patchouli and I was curious. It's not reading like a patch scent but I don't care! Maybe I'm a cranberry person now?

On wet it's very much the tart cranberry and golden honey show, underscored by sandalwood, which is absolutely gorgeous. This phase fades fairly quickly on exposed skin, but if you wear some under your clothes it lingers. The drydown gives way to a less fruity/more subtle honeyed sandalwood and patchouli vibe. I rarely use my scent locket, but I might have to locket this one because I would live inside the cranberry honey combo if I could!

Freshly applied this hits the same buttons in my brain as Asleep in the Deep from the Fire Down Below collection, which also contains fruit/benzoin/labdanum. Elf Mutiny smells less ominous, and dare I say cuter, but I would not cross these raspberry cheeked seafarers! There's a pleasant touch of carnation spice and tobacco grit.

I had an unpleasant time testing this, ended up washing it off. It started out quite nice and I was enjoying the lilac, but then it went all sharp and headachey which I'm attributing to lilac/ambergris doing weird things on my skin. 

This is such a delicious golden honeycomb scent, whew. The lemon starts out quite tart and realistic, but it calms down nicely, and I can also smell the sugar distinctly. But the way this wears on me is exactly what I was hoping for - the lemon and sugar accentuate the honeycomb, which is the featured note. Sweet sunshine in a bottle.

Testing an imp of unknown age. I know it's not a fresh one anyway. 

It goes on cloyingly sweet vanilla honey cherry, and as it dries I also get the clove, wine, and other notes. The musk and/or poppy started to go powdery on me but the vetiver balanced it out nicely.

I find this a bit too sweet/heady to wear but I appreciate how the scent conveys the idea of a vampiric kiss.

Yum. Freshly applied this leads with strong pine and transitions into funky beeswax, and then sweet frankincense sweeps in. Dry, the pine is not as potent but still prominent. Sweet, funky, pine.

Ask me why Constellation (Egyptian Amber with Sugar spiked Clove) was a big nothingburger on me and this one is making me swoon - I don't know the answer! I think this might be more of what I was expecting from Constellation, because it certainly doesn't smell peppery. I love what Bluestblood said about the pepper adding definition to the scent, that makes a lot of sense somehow. On me the amber is the dominant note, and I agree with Little Bird that it has more of a perfume quality to it than a resin quality, but it doesn't read as overly perfumey to me either. I have to get in pretty close to single out the clove, like it's all snuggled under the warm amber blanket.

I did not think I was an amber person but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna need a bottle of this. 

This goes on smelling a bit like chocolatey tobacco to me, thanks to smoky amber. Clove and pepper not present in the bottle pop right out on my skin, adding spice without being spicy. Dark and unsweet, softened by wafts of vanilla/amber.

Still reads cozy choco-tobacco-y to me when dry. Sensual, unisex. Lower moderate throw and decent staying power.

Purchased my bottle from the lab on Etsy, the silver marker on the black label is hard to make out: looks like CCCCIV, but that's not a thing? 

In the bottle and freshly applied, this smells weirdly clean! My first thought is that this is a cheeky mashup of O and Dirty - O on clean sheets! I fished out my decant of Dirty, which I think is pretty recent, and it seems like my theory is a possibility. Once it dries down the aged vanilla amber takes over, the cleanness settles into the background, and it's quite lovely. This scent stays close to the skin for me.

I don't tend to like overtly clean scents, but I do appreciate a clean component in the mix, like Cotton Phoenix, and this seems to be in a similar genre.

As advertised, this is a sweet sparkly celebration of a scent. For the curious: sweeter than Champagne and Absinthe and less absinthe. 

I always feel like a time traveler popping in to review something aged over 10 years. This one is AMAZING. If you have one of these hidden away in a drawer somewhere go sniff it!

Still very much a rich chocolate cherry in the bottle, but I didn't smell the bottle first - I just popped a drop of it onto my wrist, and when the scent hit my brain I could have SWORN it was a Snake Oil variant! Perhaps they have some exotic musks in common, and the sweetness of the chocolate cherry steps in where the vanilla would be. The aloeswood/oud brings a deliciously slinky darkness and depth. I don't usually go for a cherry, but this is my kind of cherry, and I'm tremendously pleased to have this. 

This is much nicer than the copy would lead you to believe. I mean I can't presume to know what you believe, so I suppose it is nicer than I thought it would be - quite comforting!

Bright lemon and herbal lavender are prominent on initial application, but dissipate quickly. Once dry, the lavender behaves more like lavender fougere and the frankincense warms around it, with some sage lingering over the top. It's gorgeous and softly sweet?! Gonna give this one a full SOTD treatment soon. 

Bright, clean, and dare I say chilly? This has an invitingly minty feel to it. Not overly anise-y to my nose, nor bittered by bergamot: nicely balanced and fresh. Low throw.

Oh Pink Mood! I love anise and I think you have to like it at least a bit to enjoy it here. I like this because it's such a delicate anise experience. Without refreshing my memory of the scent notes I get vanilla-anise-soft floral and it's just dreamy. I could not tell you which florals, just that they are demure and deferential to the vanilla-anise. It doesn't smell pink to me, but it feels pink, if that makes sense. 

Stays soft and close, lingers in a lovely way.

I am head over heels for this scent. I'm a fan of vetiver, patchouli, and oud to start with, so do with that info what you will. My TL;DR on this is that it's basically Tea, But As A Perfume. 

Sniffing the bottle, there's a punch of sweet almond with strong black tea and lemon.

On application, all the big scent notes pop out in unison: patchouli, tobacco, oud. They're tricky to pick out from each other, but somehow they all underscore the tea so that it isn't lost in the mix. I don't get anything indolic from this oud, but I can tell it's in there for sure. Similarly the patchouli doesn't belt out its patchouliness, but you know it's present. It's an incredibly rich, dark, chewy tea scent.

When dry, almond is no longer clearly discernable on my skin but its sweetness remains to balance the bitter lemon. Vetiver is more apparent on my exposed skin, but when I wear this scent under my shirt it stays huddled in with the other notes. Overall it still smells like Tea Perfume and it's so gorgeous. I can't get over how these bolder scent notes bolster the tea so well, it's alchemy for sure!

Note to fellow slatherers: I always put too much of this on because I love how it smells, and you really don't need much of it because it lasts and lasts.