Llanval

I was gifted a full imp of this by rivetted and it is so so different from what the notes would lead you to believe. I saw sewer moss and cement and assumed this would be dark and a little dank and a little gritty. BUT that is not the case here. To my nose, this is light, sweet, refreshing and oddly dusted with a hint of sparkling powder - almost like freshly unwrapped ramune candy, but if you chucked it down a really fab smelling sewer grate, lol. It also has a consistent, deeper base that push/pulls between the sparkling powdered sweetness and the deeper, darker notes. I know there's patchouli in here but it's playing cuddle-up with the violets and moss so well it's not immediately distinguishable. This reminds me, very strongly, of Clinique's Aromatics Elixir, but the vintage scent from the 70's/80's, not the newer reformulations. My Mum has a very very old bottle of this scent that she usually only brings out in the depths of winter. So. This is a wonderful scent, complex and surprisingly resinous and rich, and much more than the description hints at. BUT it gets the kiss of death because I smell like my mother. 😭 annemathematics review is also spot on. This is a vintage scent totally suitable for the office, and from an office culture decade that has long since vanished. Vintage vintage vintage, but in the best way. Classically understated and elegant. Gender neutral too, as far as I'm concerned. ......I was also hoping for a "fairytale sewer rat" vibe, lmfaooo!

I got the chance to test this in a very generously full imp and I really really enjoyed this scent! A lot! This opens up as sweet, beguilingly dark incense with the suggestion of stone haunting its lower reaches. I find this straightforward from beginning to end, wet to dry: ecclesiastical incense over the lightest, most ghostly stone accord. The reviewer above mentioned that this is similar to Tis Strange and I agree - very similar, but there's a more obvious strength and throw to Midnight Bell's incense and stone that Tis Strange lacks. I prefer the Midnight Bell, and would choose a bottle of this over Tis Strange. If there's dragon's blood in here, it isn't strong enough for me to notice, or I haven't smelled enough DB to pick it out immediately. Midnight Bell brings to mind a cloak of deepest, most ancient tyrian purple, edged in thick gold thread. I do wish the stone and vetiver came out stronger as I love those bpal notes to death. Will re-test the imp when shark week is over.

for a blend with vetiver in here, this is so much softer, sweeter and more femme than I expected and ngl that is kinda disappointing. I was really hoping for that lovely mouthwatering rush of freshness that I get from bpal's sage note, with a heftier vetiver showing. Alas I got sweet, bright peach, still fuzz with skin intact, helped along by clean bright and refreshing oak moss. This doesn't morph and stays very much a sweet, fuzzy peach SN through its 4 hr wear time. I wish I'd gotten what I usually get with bpal's sage and bpal's vetiver so I'm not too broken up about passing on this bottle. Beautiful peach note tho! Doesn't turn candied, doesn't lose that sweet freshness - so at least I know I can wear peach without issue, lol

Love this! I know this isn't a Halloween scent, but it fits with an All Souls Night vibe so well. Midnight Reunion is all dark, heavy smoky vetiver upfront, with the lighter, but still murky dark grave moss and hinoki round it out. I don't get much cypress, but that's okay. I love the way this dries down from a bombastic funeral dirge of shadowy vetiver (like standing at the edge of a dark, deep wood on a windless night, and feeling the shadows around you) to...well, a soft and gentle reunion. As it dries, a ghostly softness emerges and it wears idk like memories. A loved one, come back for a moment, bringing sweeter thoughts. Gentle, subtle, a bit hard to catch, but still murky dark and mysterious. This matches the scent title perfectly and I love the vibe to pieces. If you're not scared of vetiver, give this a whirl!!

This smelled so amazingly fresh and green in the imp, but on my skin it goes dead quiet almost right away, to the point that it's not noticeable after 30 min. 😔 I DO get clean airy green tea and vibrant green mosses, without much input from the ginger and fig (which I loathe and hate so yay!). I really wanted this one to work as I love both tea and moss heavy scents. Tragically, it seems my skin won't cooperate here.

Iago is not here to hang out. Iago is not here to braid your hair, or snuggle up in a onesie. Iago is here to *play*. Specifically if you would like to smell like you're at the leather ball in your newest, least broken in gear, or in the midst of a very intense leather session, please go buy iago immediately you will be very happy. However!!! If ur not here to smell like a sex dungeon, maybe give this a pass. I put this on and the new car/black squeaky leather was so intense I had to wash it off. I left a leather scent trail through the house!! I had to put on some Rentless even after I washed iago off, just to get the leather note to shush. Then it became cotton candy sex dungeon and I LIKED IT A LOT. IDK the leather is too much for me, but balanced w cotton candy it became cheeky, fun, and a little enchanting. give it a try if the leather sex dungeon vibe doesn't scare u off.

Deep in the Earth is a twin to Zombi, only Zombi is the twin weeping over a bouquet of funeral roses at the freshly dug grave, and Deep is too busy trying to dig themselves OUT of that same grave. The rose is so quiet here, and with the spanish moss gives this a sweet almost rose cold cream and mosses vibe. Much more "soapy" than zombi, and with much less "salty tears of grief" vibe hanging around the whole scent. Deep is a straightforward graveyard dirt scent, with a touch of creamy but wavering into old lady perfume type rose, backed by inoffensive dirt and moss. I do genuinely prefer zombi despite zombi and I not getting along at first. If zombi was too much rose for you, or too heavy on the "grief and tears" vibe, give Deep a whirl.

I was very hopeful for this one, as I love juniper and pine maaaaybe too much. But my skin loves to not cooperate with musk and I'm left with nothing much at all after 30 min. When wet, it's a little unobtrusive sweetness from the juniper and bright pine quickly swamped under a muzzling veil of powdery musk. I adore bpal for their photo realistic forest scents, but thanatopsis isn't one of them. Forest adjacent yes, but not like Theoi Nomioi or Druid. Dark/black musk seems to be very temperamental on me, so another one gets lobbed to the gift imp pile!!

Okay so I totally get the powdered soup mix, but that ultra savoury first blast of sage and herbs calms and the chamomile turns this dusty soft and yet still freshly, sharply mouthwateringly green. Love this one, caught me totally off guard. I do actually get a hint of sweet caramel and raisins after an hour but it's hard to hold onto. The tobacco is just snuggling right up to the sage it's hard to pull the two apart. It is masculine, but no where near the dreaded "men's cologne" note that usually kills a scent for me. Schmendrick is a bright, well kept apothecary room filled with bundles of both dried and freshly picked and snapped stems of sage and herbs, the sharp green alive potential of the newly bundled herbs blending in with the drier, softer comfort of older bundles. This is a clean, herbaceous yet warmly masculine scent, filled with sweet potential. Super wearable and enjoyable for me.

so i finally get to experience the "sweaty honey" that I've seen floating around on some honey-based scents (and had quietly hoped was a myth) and that is breaking my little unicorn fan heart. i really really wanted this one to work, so badly. i love gun powder to pieces and i've fallen in love with two strongly honey-based Shunga 2021 scents with no "sweaty honey" in sight. What happened, ugh?! Mommy Fortuna is a swirl of tangy grungy baby powder and sweaty honey, with a little whistle of woody notes for the first 30 min. Then it shifts to sweaty baby powder honey and waxy OG cherry Chapstick. Where's the gunpowder?! the herbs?! Booo! I've been defeated by skin chem again 😭 if bpal's honey note can sometimes go "off" or overly powdery on you, be warned - this twopenny magic may not bloom just right on you.

i really really really want to love this one, but I'm not sure i love it enough to get a full bottle, because there was an incredible review of dracul on the BPAL retail site, and that convinced me to give this one a try. I was primed to want to love this, as I haven't found a "vampire" scent i like yet. on my skin, dracul is a whirl of lots of different scents and impressions. wet it's all fir and spices, with that sting indole from the orange blossoms. this really doesn't have much throw on me past 2 hrs, and i blame the black musk which tends to just die and go baby powder/cloying on my skin and then disappear as quickly as possible. as it dries, the orange blossom adds what would be a heady quality to the scent if not for the black musk muffler already working to blunt these notes to nothing. this is sexy, powerful, dynamic; its bitter, cruel and captivating. But it doesn't work on me because of the musk which makes me 😥 by the time we get to 4+ hrs, it's just fancy, brooding hand soap. Discount Edward Cullen, who was already nowhere near the OG, Vlad himself. I want my vampire scent to be terrifying, as magnetic, alluring and beguiling as the Son of the Dragon himself, not make me smell like a Saks 5th hand wash! Stupid skin chem.

this was oos when I first got into BPAL in 2019. It JUST came back into stock, so I jumped and picked up an imp to test and boy I am not disappointed. Troll is decidedly not a traditional pine forest, tho. The pine pitch is almost subtle here, giving the impression of a forest you'd smell while building and lighting a fire. The cumin, basil and clove lead and dominate, giving this an almost campfire cookout vibe. I don't mean charred meat or wood, but the spice of seasoned wood being split and stacked, then burned, with you and a mug of winter cider or wassail near by. This is such a Yule vibe, I love it. This scent lasts and lasts and lasts. it lasts hours, and it is a heady, sweetly smoky herbaceous experience the whole way through. Nothing of this scent is hateful, lurching or bitter. This is beautiful, soft cozy Yule fire log. If your skin can handle this, it is absoultely worth the experience. If you're afraid of pine pitch, try it here because it's not loud at all. I am sooooo excited to see how Troll plays out in this year's Lilith scent, Bridge Trolls.

I was so hopeful for this one, as I desperately DESPERATELY want to find a proper raging thunderstorm scent. A true, storm in summer scent. This is not that. Maybe on some other folk's skin, this is the rain drops on hot concrete and booming thunder clouds I so so so badly wanted, but this is just some pleasant aquatic asphodel that reads more like honeysuckle, and floral sweetness from the remainder of the notes. Gentle, sweet summer florals with little complexity. Maybe I'll test this again since it's had a solid 6-8 months of aging on the shelf. Maybe the ozone will behave and I'll get something other than asphodel/honeysuckle. 😥 Maybe I'll give Slate-Black Clouds Tumbling Over Eden a try, lol!

rivetted sent me a sniffie of this and I fell in love and bought a bottle (and some others) within a few days of testing! This really is a vintage scent, a genuine vintage chypre that immediately reminded me of exploring my grandmother's giant mahogany curios filled with old bone china and dried flowers, leather photo albums and that strange, comforting smell that settles on well loved and maintained objects. Each scent note has settled on top of another to make a lovely unified whole: green, soft almost twilight twinkling moss paired with soft brown leather in a close, enveloping hug. I don't clearly read the sweet vetiver but it's not smokey or spiky at all, just another aspect of those soft, comforting mosses. This is so so so vintage, I almost can't explain it. The scent got to my brain and a neon sign lit up flashing VINTAGE! GET YOUR ROARING TWENTIES VINTAGE HERE! This takes me to my grandmother's buffets AND it also gently reminds me of the sort of man my grandfather had been before he passed. He was the tall, broad-shouldered sort, and he exuded a classic, 1940's rugged soldier's masculinity that gave way to a much gentler spirit as we grandchildren arrived. So this scent reads like a lost-to-time masculinity in the softest, most comforting way. He loved Edith Piaff and wearing Amour Fou is like hearing her voice over the record player - soft, laden with age and memories, yet timeless and transporting - while being held in a pair of strong, comforting arms. 🖤

Thanks to rivetted, (again, lol) i got to test a genrous sniffie of this scent. AND HOLY FUCKIN' WOW this is an absolutely banger honeyed patchouli and black pine forest. This is absolutely incredible. Just the right balance between earthy, rich chewy patchouli and cool, gently mentholic pine forests. The honeyed patchouli stays strong and bright, only walking back a little bit as the scent dries down. The pine stays clear, clean and gorgeous, with a slight ghost of honey dust and that special cypress green smell, the softer, fuzzier impression sap leaves on your hands after you crush cypress greens. YAAAAAAAAAS, I love this to death this is so much better than I thought it would be. I don't get a strong rush of tobacco as it dries, but it's there, playing a little "spice it up" game with the patchouli. This is SUPERB patchouli and pine, with a sweetening slash of honey. LOVE LOVE LOVE this one, bottle is on the list for a 2021 purchase! Seriously, I need my bottle of Silkybat to show up like yesterday so I can compare these two patch notes! If you like patchouli and pine, this is a MUST. Do yourself a favour and check this out if the slightly higher price tag and 500 bottle run limit doesn't put you off.

like the two reviewers above me, the red musk stomps on all the other notes, and I don't get that bright peppery tomato leaf I love so much. I'm starting to realize that musk and I are not friends, which makes me want to stomp all over things too! Musk just goes powdery on me 9 out of 10 bottles - the black musk in Black Forest killed that scent on my skin, it left almost NO SCENT in under 30 min, and I KNOW Black Forest is a deep, strong forest scent. Any kind of musk, tho brown and green seem to hold up okay, just mutes the notes immediately, and then muffles them all down to almost nothing: waxy/powdery impressions of what each note might have intended to develop into. weirdly enough, I don't have that same problem with the red musk in under the foot warmer. hmm. ...still like it though, and glad to have tested it. this inferno isn't choke-you-out powdery, just soft downy waves of vaguely melancholic greenery.

Masculine leaning soap. But not so terrible that I have to wash it off. I like this quite a bit even with the soap, as it reads more like someone has taken a lake and crystalized it. This is heaps of the idea of salt and the sweetish wafting of DBR. The DBR is whisper quite on me, not easily picked up. I may need to slather this to get the full idea. This is a less complex version of Cycling for Pleasure, which I loved a whole lot. This is a very gentle, pretty aquatic, and it calls up the idea of a flash of red-gold metal on churning water, but i was looking for blood and sea salt so...c'est la vie!

This starts as sweet, sugared yet fresh greens of the nondescript sort. I think I'm reading the absinthe and that's making this scent a bit more conventional than I usually prefer. A touch classically powdery but not so much that I want to scrub it off. This is green, vivid and sweet. The absinthe is subtle and doesn't lend this scent a blast of alcohol-like sharpness, more like its responsible for the airy quality of this scent. The currant is there dark and berry-like deep in the background. I don't know if its the rose or the ferns that lend this its powdery quality, but I do enjoy the lushness of this greenery. Can't ping the lilac/lavender directly but they're in here, lending a heady floral quality through the dry down. A drop of bitterness, yes, but not obtrusive. Not the close to nature green scent I go absolutely *feral* over, so not a bottle for me. But still a really lovely experience.

thanks to rivetted, i tested enough of Alien/Siren to get a good feel for how it wears and this one! this one is really really really cool. this is the murky, creeping, unsettling, salty deep dark ocean aquatic i have been searching for. this stays, from wet to dry down, the perfect salty, murky, smoky black kelp and dark water scent. the cthulu scent i was hoping to find in the arkham line. on second testing, i get no citrus, this is just straight up the description of this scent. don't clearly get the violet leaf and i have less than zero familiarity with siamese red benzoin or davana but none of it does anything i don't enjoy on my skin. don't know if i can genuinely smell the squid ink or not, but there is an inky quality to this, like the results of a finely ground calligraphy ink stone. whatever it is, whatever is going on in this bottle, i am HERE FOR IT. ambergris isn't detectable either, but i don't know enough abt wearing bpal's version of it to clearly make a judgement, but it isn't making it tough to wear, for anyone who is iffy on ambergris. this does smell oily and sebaceous but not in a bad way, this is a really unique experience and if you aren't afraid of aquatics and laundry detergent/dryer sheets doesn't kill a scent for you, absolutely give this a whirl. this blend didn't give me any laundry detergent/dryer sheets, unlike one or two other aquatics i've tested and i haven't figured out what keeps it at bay in certain blends yet...but I am trying!!! this is another "to buy" bottle i'm tossing on the long loooooong list.

thanks to rivetted, i got to test a super full imp of this and i! AM! IN! LOVE! this is water, cool and clean and crystal fucking clear, welling up into a basin of concrete and elevated urban funk. i know! i know that sounds v. weird but this is incredible. i can so clearly smell the smog of the city, the grime of pavement being blasted by the sun, urban funk - the lingering impression of motor oil. and all of that over the most crystalline, perfect expression of pristine lake water and unobtrusive florals/greenery. on me it's very long wearing and it takes several hours for that fantastic urban funk note to burn off and leave just the crystalline expression of water and growing green plants. delicate yet funky/odd, yet supremely wearable. initially, i wrote off the whole olla collection as being supremely not my thing. oooops, wrong again - love the shit out of this, total surprise, instantly got slapped onto my 2021 bottle purchase list.

I cobbled together 2mls of this because the honey and goat's milk made me too nervous to blind bottle. I'm usually ☠ abt foodie blends but this intrigued me so...turns out I like Shunga foodie scents just fine, haha! This starts with a sweet bloom of golden, dusty honey pollen pinned down and smoothed out by goat's milk, wow!!! Right there underneath is a swirl of cedarwood and tobacco leaf and all the other notes I can't specifically identify but know are there. The cedarwood and tobacco leaf really ground this, pulling down the airy but somehow!! somehow!! creamy yet dusty sweetness to make it earthier, more like a place than a perfume. Like sitting on freshly hewn cedar benches in a theater, tobacco smoke, sweet treats and the scent of beeswax candles thick in the air. Despite usually not really enjoying foodie scents, I like this one a lot. Gonna stash it away for autumn proper, Hopefully I'll be able to find another imp or two to add to my bottle, lol.

I was very very lucky to find supreme_c0rt's sale's page, and she hooked me up with Tennis Match (and now we're playing doubles, lol) because HOLYYYYYYY SHIIIIIIIIIT this is everything I was hoping it would be: juicy fresh grass, with plenty of oakmoss and bright, green dandelion sap. The white pepper plays around very quietly with the oakmoss to give this a real, uh, tennis match vibe, lol. I know it's just my brain playing tricks on me, but I really get a bit of a leather vibe, like the leather wrap on an old wooden tennis racket. This is a wonderful scent-memory for me - late August afternoons playing tennis with my cousins on the old, well-loved court kept up at my great Aunt and Uncle's family reunions out near Mount Horeb, ON, which if you know Canada's rural areas, is very isolated and all but a ghost town now. As it drys, it becomes more oakmoss and white pepper dominant, but that stage almost feels like watching the onset of evening from the lawn you've spent all day playing on. The scent moves from the bright afternoon sunlight to the cool moss toned beginnings of a summer night. I really enjoy this scent, from start to finish, and while I'm a little 💔 I missed out on a full bottle, I am so grateful to supreme_c0rt for giving me the chance to experience this scent in full! I will be desperately hunting for any amount of this scent from here on out!!!

Jasmine. Honeysuckle. Funk. This jasmine came DIRECTLY for my throat and sent my flyiiiiiiiiing!!! But unlike Mr. Bezos, I actually made it more than 100ks over the Karman line. Launched at light speed straight into a dimension where everything was jasmine. Even the atoms. Oooooof. Wow. Big nope for me. But on the right skin? This would be a beautifully heady rush of overwhelming but diaphanous jasmine&honeysuckle florals with a drop of real world, street-level funk. If this had some crystalline rain or dew, then I'd say it's the perfect expression of the fantasy of New Orleans.

Lilac. Lilac for days. But not the bright, green, sun-blasted heady dream of lilac I was hoping for. Oh no, I get old lady lilac WTF?!?!? Are you 🤬 kidding me?!?! Well, this is a total heart breaker 💔. I nearly blind-bottled this, and OH BOY did i dodge a bullet. Within 30 min, this is the most generic, blah fancy soapy/old lady lilac scent on me. Barely a whisper, and far from magical. Ugh, i cry. Now i want to test an imp of the OG scent to see if the grass I so desperately wanted is there, and plays better with the lilac. Lilac is one of the only florals I love without hesitation and I'm bummed my skin chem spoiled this for me.

thanks to a surprise frimp from roseus, i was able to give this scent a test before my Last Unicorn decant circle ships and oh my gosh, every time i step out of my comfort zone with bpal lately, I am rewarded with a delightful experience. I am NOT a gourmand lover, i am NOT a foodie fan. The idea of a white chocolate note in this bottle initially put me off even *trying* this. But again, I was wrong. This starts out with a big sweet, creamy rush of white chocolate and twinkling lilacs. It's the only way to describe this bottle. I get sweetness of a different sort from the coconut, and a green clarity and brightness hiding under the weight of the chocolate and lilacs from the lettuce and oakmoss. The first 10-30 min are rough, because it's so much white chocolate, but paired with the literally twinkling lilacs, it somehow saws the rough shriek of the lilacs off into the same sort of magical creamy blossom breeze that i liked so much in cherry blossom vulva, but not quite as creamy. Only knock against it is the lasting power is low on me, and I easily lose track of this scent after 2 hrs. Others can smell it on me, but I can't. This is exactly the sort of frosted lilac magic I didn't know I needed so badly. This is a bottle purchase for me, which is CRAZY, for me - the foodie hater, lol. Plus I despise/loathe/repudiate gardenia and I get none of it in this bottle. no gardenia. Just sweet white chocolate that doesn't really read as chocolate and twinkling, frosted lilacs and greens. truly a glittering frosted purple scent, magical and fae in nature. Sweetly beguiling, and yet not entirely earthly. Just like a unicorn should be. I liked this so much more than the Lilac Wood, can't believe it!!!