dancingchair

The lemon is sweet and creamy, kind of like lemon curd. The amber makes this into more of a lemon candy perfume on me. It's adding a resinous dimension that makes me think of lemon drops.

Straightforward but nice!

Fizzy bergamot. As it dries, it gets more aquatic with the ambergris taking over. There's a coolness to this perfume that must be the eucalyptus.

Starts in fizzy lemon/lime soda territory and ends smelling like nice soap. Definitely a clean scent.

After I first got this, it seemed like a different herb took the spotlight. Summer Rain seems to have settled on lemongrass. It's bright and citrusy, springing up through a crack in pavement wet with a surprise afternoon shower. The other herbs are floral and grassy, not easily identifiable to me. The lavender is more subtle, like a sweet floral haze in the air. The coconut milk also doesn't read as coconut to me here, it's adding a creamy sweetness that brings it all together.

I like this quite a bit. It's definitely atmospheric. I think Summer Rain is more of a spring/summer Lilith, so it's going to hibernate for a while.

Lots of gardenia here. It is a little bit indolic to me. There is some sweetness to this perfume that might be the coconut milk, but I don't get anything identifiable as coconut. The lavender occasionally peeks through the gardenia cloud. After this perfume dries, I can sort of sniff out the tea and sandalwood.

I don't really like gardenia, and it is not as sheer as I'd hoped. I catch glimpses of the notes I wanted, but not enough to outmatch the gardenia. This could be a perfume for you if you like the idea of gardenia and lavender together.

The strawberry note is the loudest on me. It's a cooked strawberry note, not jammy but more like the sliced strawberries in pie filling. The burnt sugar note in this is very good. It's like a wispy curl of sugared incense smoke. The cream isn't very prominent to me.

This reminds me of instant strawberries and cream oatmeal. I do hope that burnt sugar note comes back in more perfumes.

The red moss here also reminds me of red musk more than moss. I get smoky, musky red leather. The balsam note is a tiny bit sour to my nose, but it fades away after an hour or two of wear.

I feel lucky to be so spoiled for choice with BPAL's leather perfumes. The leather note in this is nice, but there are other leather perfumes I prefer since I'm not the biggest red musk fan. I do like how powerful the leather note is. Most leather perfumes fade away after an hour or so on my skin, but The Red Rider sticks around.

I had a similar experience to @doomsday_disco but the cardamom pods and cumin are more balanced with the fruit notes on my skin. Wet, the spices are very strong and bitter, overwhelming everything else. Thankfully, this evens out as the perfume dries and I end up with a cumin and cardamom-spiced mango donut. There's something crispy and fried in here that makes it read as donut and not mango curry. The peach doesn't really make an appearance, but it could pretty easily blend in with the mango.

I had a similar experience with Cafe de Olla Fried Ice Cream Jammed into a Coconut Cream Pie, which ended up being a cumin party. The spices are behaving themselves here and it's an interesting effect. I might have to wear this more to decide how I feel about it.

I get all of the notes in this one. It's a bit reminiscent of my bottle of 2010 Womb Furie, since it has the same ooey gooey honey. The Snake Oil component is also a bit powdery to me, which I don't mind at all. The lavender and rosewater are like a floral blanket wrapping around the honey and Snake Oil. I get both of them fairy prominently but one doesn't overpower the other. The one note I don't get a ton of after the perfume has dried is the cotton candy. It's very prominent at first, sugary sweet with the florals.

This is very soothing and sweet. It's like getting a comforting hug from Snake Oil.

This is a black leather dream. In the bottle, it does smell a bit chemical-y, but on my skin it immediately becomes smoky black leather. There's something reminiscent of brown leather in here, like a black leather jacket on top of a pile of soft suede leather. Can't wait to try layering with it.

Wow, this isn't what I was expecting but it is wonderful. It's apple crisp Snake Oil. The apples are buttery, warm, and dusted with cinnamon and nutmeg. Of course, Snake Oil is there with its rich vanilla and sweetness. The Snake Oil musks and patchouli are perfect, making this into more than just another apple dessert perfume.

There is a lot more than a bite of apple here. Wet, I get a bushel of fresh apples, all picked from the vine. The lab's black leather note comes out more and more as the perfume dries. It's slightly smoky, complex and dark. Definitely a nice grounding note for the bright and sweet apple. I don't get a lot of honeyed amber, but maybe that will become more prominent with aging.

Before I smelled this, I was a little afraid this would end up being a barbecue kinda smell, but it doesn't go that way at all on me. I think it captures the apple ball gag image well. Glad I picked this one up, it's going to be a fun fall perfume.

Something in this goes off on my skin, which might be the bergamot in the tea or the brown sugar (brown sugar often goes weird on my skin). It's a sour note, but not like sour milk. Wet, this sour note is pretty much all I smell. As the mélange dries, I get more of the cream and tea but it's still sour.

I spent some time aging this decant to see if it would be less sour, but it's still about the same. Chalking this one up to skin chemistry.

This is honestly probably the most realistic earl grey I've smelled in a perfume, but it's more like smelling grassy earl grey tea leaves than a steaming cup of milky tea. There's something about the tea note that is dry and leafy. The other notes combine to smell like fluffy honeyed vanilla tea cakes to me. It's really nice for an autumn day.

Wet, there's a lot of nougat and cherry-like almond melds well with the hint of peach. As it dries, the peach, coconut, and marshmallow come out more. Ends up being a lot of coconut marshmallows and ripe peach on me. Sometimes that peach note goes awry on me but the other notes are so rich and sweet that it works well.

Opens with a strong, medicinal cherry. As it dries, the darker notes come out. It definitely gives the effect of a cherry ripening. The amber isn't too smoky, it's just a wisp curling around the cherries and blackcurrant. I was wishing for more tobacco, but there's enough here to add some chewy sweetness. The black musk definitely keeps this from being too sweet. It adds a bitterness that offsets the sweetness of the other notes really well.

It's complex and velvety. Very good for autumn!

Wet, this is super pistachio. It does have that cherry-like quality of a nut extract at this stage, but that fades for me. The vanilla cream comes in strong as the scent dries. I do get the macadamia nut as a background player, adding a deeper nuttiness than the light and playful pistachio.

There's depth in the simplicity of these three notes. I get notes of lemony sweetness at some points of the dry down. The vanilla is thick and sweet at the wet stage and eventually becomes a fluffy cloud as I wear this.

I really like this trio. All the notes are winners for me and they go together very well.

This is very lavender! It's like a fluffy cloud of lavender resting on a little cushion of sweet vanilla buttercream. I think this lavender is less herbaceous and more floral compared to others I've tried, but maybe that's due to the buttercream's sweetness. There's a dimension to it that reminds me of the sort of jammy quality that violet can sometimes have.

I did a side by side comparison with Two Frames and this is much heavier on the lavender. Two Frames is sweeter and more frosting-forward. I was expecting the same deep, buttery richness of Two Frames' frosting note, but that dimension is absent in Lavender Buttercream. After spending some time smelling both, I think Lavender Buttercream actually leans closer to TKO. It's like a sweeter, jammier TKO.

I like this! It's very pretty and fluffy, good as a soothing scent or a sleep scent.

Definitely more than a bit of clove here. The clove is strong right out of the gate and pairs well with the cardamom. The hay is a background player, adding a dry and grassy depth. Amber and hazelnut both add sweetness to the blend.

This is a spicy blend for sure. I agree that it is reminiscent of a chai, with the hazelnut adding almost a milky dimension. It's very pleasant, nice for cool fall weather.

This reads more like tootsie roll Snake Oil on me than pumpkin spice latte when wet and in the bottle for whatever reason. As I wear it, the pumpkin spice comes out more, but I don't really get coffee from it. Compared to other Snake Oil blends I've tried, this one is a lot heavier on the musks and incense notes. It's quite strong, and after an hour or so I end up smelling mostly like cinnamon nag champa with a hint of Snake Oil vanilla. I tend to amp both nag champa and cinnamon, though.

I keep hoping the incense notes will soften with age, but so far they've stayed about the same. I do get more vanilla now, though, which I enjoy.

Agree that this is like baklava flavored with rose water. The hazelnut is reminiscent of a nut bark with the other notes. It's very sweet and surprisingly light for hazelnut. The honey is great, it's not taking over the entire perfume but it definitely smells like it is coating everything here. The goats milk ties it all together. It has just a little bit of musky funk that adds complexity.

I like this but I'm not sure I need more than a decant.

Smelling this from the bottle, I was nervous. It's pure banana in the bottle, the banana candy kind of banana. Wet on the skin, this also begins as strong banana candy. Fortunately, it doesn't take long for the banana to melt away into a caramel-sweet blend of tobacco and banana. The vetiver makes itself known, too, and it's smoky and dark. The cacao is more of a supporting player, adding richness and bitterness that offsets the sweetness of the tobacco and banana. It makes me think of pan-fried bananas where the banana has been caramelized so well that it's almost a little burnt and crispy.

I love this and I'm glad I took a chance on a bottle. I'm excited for the weather to cool down so I can wear this!

Wet, this smells exactly like a bear claw or an almond croissant. It is strong, sweet almond with a buttery, flaky bread note. The waft does have a rich, sugary fig note, but I don't really smell it as well when I'm sniffing my wrist. As it dries, the bear claw disappears and I'm left with a sweet steamed milk note, the same one that's in Snake Milk. The milk is sweetened, but it's not overwhelmingly honeyed or anything.

The transformation from almond pastry to steamed milk is pretty wild since the almond pastry was so realistic. I never got much in the way of oats, so this seems like a perfume that really changes based on your skin chemistry. I was nervous that it was going to be too similar to Hildegard's Cakes of Joy or Nightingale, but it's not at all. There's not much in the way of spice here, which I think is what sets it apart for me.

When I first got this, it was pure, jammy strawberry candy. I didn't get much coconut at all. Now, several months later, I get much more coconut. The strawberry is somewhere between one of those old school strawberry hard candies and a strawberry daiquiri. There's a richly sweet coconut note somewhere underneath it that kind of reminds me of cream of coconut. It dries down to fluffy coconut clouds and the sticky memory of strawberry candy.

This is something I have to be in the mood to wear, but it works very nicely for layering.

This is definitely a "your skin but better" perfume. The throw is pretty low, but it makes me feel like my skin is radiating a soft aura of good smell when I wear it. Thankfully, this does not go plastic on me, which happens with vanilla and sugar notes sometimes. It's beautifully blended and settles into a creamy vanilla cloud sprinkled with rose petals. Rose can be overpowering sometimes, but here the rose is a supporting player like the other notes.

This perfume feels special, like you're giving yourself a hug when you wear it. I was nervous about the rose but I actually really like it!

I'm not really that big on patchouli and sandalwood since they tend to be a bit too sharp for me. If you cover them in chocolate, this is a different story apparently. This perfume is all about the sandalwood and patchouli, rounded out with the smoked mahogany. They're a beautiful trio, woody and smoky and a little dirty. Much to my delight, they're smothered in chocolate. The chocolate softens everything, keeping it from being too sharp for me and adding a bitter element. The tonka sweetens the blend up, but not enough to make it too rich and foody.

I love chocolate combined with non-foody notes so this is right up my alley. I was afraid the patchouli would steal the show but it does not. It's a fun new twist on a chocolate non-gourmand perfume blend and I really enjoying it.