Assimbya

This feels very pink and clean and bright. As other reviewers have described, I get mostly pear and sweet pea, a little musk and other florals. There's something very young and girl about it, in a way that doesn't feel romantic or sexual - I'm thinking more of Emily in Our Town than Juliet herself, to be honest. I would have preferred to have the lily and honeysuckle (two of my favorite notes!) show up more strongly, though I do get some more of them on dry down. It's a pretty scent, but I think ultimately it feels too youthful and fruity to be quite right for me.

I was given a decant of this by the wonderful paperflowers in her Yule decant circle! I'd never used hair gloss before and so was curious to try, though nervous about the cotton candy note. But I shouldn't have been worried - this is a sweetened, bouncy dragon's blood, It has great longevity and throw in my (very long) hair, and while the scent isn't quite me it's fun and pleasant to use. Taking this as an indication to continue exploring hair gloss!

I got a decant of this because I bake a lot and got drawn into the fantasy of a baking fragrance! Unfortunately, I think I wanted it to be something it was not, which was really quite unfair of me. I think I saw the fabric note and unconsciously imagined a sweetened, lavender White Rabbit - but of course they actually have no notes in common! On me, it was much more gourmand than I imagined. It makes me think of a lavender sugar cookie dough - definitely not baked yet, and the lavender maintains its herbal sharpness, but this is something that's going in the oven. I definitely do get a distinctive clean laundry scent, but there's quite a bit of dough stuck to the apron. It's an extraordinarily friendly scent, and very well done - I think a lot of people will love this! But it's not for me.

It's intimidating to be the first review on a fragrance without many listed notes! I don't trust my ability to pick out and identify notes yet, but I'll try and eagerly await other reviews. I found this to be an elegant, grown-up floral - a single red rose and a single white lily encased in translucent resin; definitely a substantial amount of amber and possibly other resins too. I also get something dry and woody and pale. The flowers are the brightest in this when it's wet; they get significantly dimmer as it dries, as if I'm seeing them through the resin, and the resin/wood notes become more prominent. After a couple hours of wear they take on a bit of a sour edge, but not unpleasantly so. There's something understated and melancholy about this scent, appropriate to the poem which is its inspiration. I like it, but something about it doesn't totally capture me. Maybe if the floral notes stayed brighter for longer, or if something in it softened the wood and amber. I am glad to have a decant and I expect I will use it, but I don't think I need a bottle.

2024 version I found this stunningly beautiful, the truest lilac perfume I have smelled. Somehow the other notes lend it depth and complexity without actually taking away from how purely lilac it feels. The sharpness of the white tea, most apparent when wet, gives it this living greenness, while the beeswax, which comes out more on dry down, gives it a kind of creamy smoothness. It's white and purple and bright. It makes me think of this tiny, extremely expensive bottle of pure lavender essential oil I smelled last year at an essential oil store; the proprietor said it was made with enfleurage and was their last one of the season. The way he described the process made it sound so precious and special. I feel the same way about this perfume, which is like an April afternoon in the botanical garden right here for me in the depth of winter. This made me giddily happy the whole time I was wearing it last night; I love it and will definitely want a bottle.

This scent feels very distinctively Victorian to me - there's something formal, dry, and contained, which absolutely fits the odd propriety of inviting a ghost for a cup of tea. On me it's predominantly a jasmine earl grey tea, light on the bergamot, with some subtle wood from the cypress and a hint of amber like a dusty sunbeam. Both the jasmine and the tea are quite sharp notes, with the jasmine feeling almost more herbal than floral. I cannot discern the orris, though it's a note I'm not all that familiar with. This is pleasant and elegant, but the dry sharpness of it doesn't quite win my heart. I tend to amplify sharp/astringent notes, so possibly it would be a mellower scent on someone with different skin chemistry. As it is, I am glad to have my decant and expect I will use it, but it's my favorite jasmine and I won't need a bottle of it.

Precisely, realistically its description! This is a yeasty, warm, butter-enriched bread with a milky base into which herbal lavender and golden saffron have been steeped. In the moments after application the lavender is quite intense, but it calms down quickly and becomes a gentle undertone for the bread. I can distinctly pick out the saffron note, which is lovely. A couple hours into wear there's a lingering butter note which I found faintly unpleasant without the grounding of the bread around this. I got a decant of this because I wanted to have an experience of an actual pure gourmand, and I'm glad I tried it, but it's very much not for me. It left me very strongly wanting to bake lussekatter! But I don't want to smell like one, and for me I am learning that there's something disappointing about smelling it something I'd prefer to be baking. But if you do like wearing gourmands, this is an impressively accurate sweet yeasted bread scent.

(Note: testing from an aged imp) I love many of the notes in Misericordia, but unfortunately it's incredibly faint on me to the point that I have trouble quite making out all the notes. What I can tell is that wet on my skin it's largely lavender and a resiny note that might be the amber or labdanum, so with some hints of rose. As it dries, the resin becomes the most prominent note, sharp and distinct labdanum, with a lot of blackcurrant and some of the rose and lavender. I really can't make out the magnolia, which I was excited about! What I get is pretty and elegant, but whatever about the perfume is is causing my skin to absorb it and give so little scent back means that I can't do much with this. Fortunately the resin and/or blackcurrant-heavy Carmillas do a lot of what this one does for me, but the faintness (at least of the aged imp) is a disappointment.

I was excited about this one, but unfortunately my skin chemistry had other plans. One me, this is purely a sharp, perfumey amber, with an indistinct herbal quality which I could maybe squint and call myrtle. I often love amber, but its astringency here is unpleasant in a way that reminds me of commercial perfumes. I get none of the apple blossom or carnation, both of which I was excited for. Of course, when my partner tried this one the non-amber notes came out beautifully and it was the perfectly balanced scent which I hoped this would be on me. Alas! I am trying to remind myself of all the perfumes that work well on my skin and not feel too envious.

Ooh, thank you so much for these suggestions! I would have avoided Like a Girl because of the sandalwood, so hearing the way it works on you is very intriguing. I'll keep an eye out! And would love to hear how Woman Putting on Her Stocking works for you - it was one that intrigued me, but not enough to go for it. I haven't gotten into the RPG scents yet mostly because of an aversion of layering, but I'll consider....

Resurrecting this thread seeking some more skin musk recommendations! I tried a decant of Brides of Dracula yesterday and the skin musk + honey + floral combination worked like a dream on my skin and was truly one of the most beautiful things I have ever smelled. I would love some more recommendations of scents which use skin musk in a related way while I continue to long after more Brides. The only other scent I have tried with skin musk as a listed note is Vasilissa, which I like and want to retest soon, but the sandalwood rather takes over on me. White musk also tends to work very well on me, but I have and love more scents with it already (Katharina!), and it doesn't quite give the warm, sensuous melting ambrosia of the skin musk.

Nearly 20 years on, I don't quite get as dramatic a contrast between the wet and drydown stages of this scent, but I still get some, and either way it's gorgeous. On me, it's a dark floral, musky and sharp, with fruitiness from the blackcurrant and dragon's blood. The myrrh and sandalwood are sharp and dry, but somehow the sandalwood doesn't take over and become dusty on me as it often does. Its depth and complexity is a great representation of Mina - this makes me think of her post-novel, holding her dark and complex history alongside a confidence in what she's been able to overcome. This could equally well fit an alternate ending transformed vampire Mina. I feel very fortunate to have this, but also relieved that Mircalla from the current Carmilla collection has a similar rose-blackcurrant-musk combination, even if it doesn't quite have Mina's depth and complexity.

To me, this seems to be the same rose note from Fleurs du Mal - soft, perfumey, and slightly dry. The Victorian spices are subtle at first, but lend a classic perfume sensibility, and on drydown the rose recedes a little and the spices take over. Though the rose reads to me as dry, I can see the sensibility that other reviewers are describing as watery, and in fact, smelling this without being told what it was, my partner thought it was an aquatic. This definitely reads to me as pre-vampire transformation Lucy; I don't get darkness from this. It reminds me a bouquet of dried roses resting on Lucy's vanity. This doesn't last very long on me at all; less than two hours later it's basically gone. It's lovely and I'll definitely use my imp, but I don't think this is among the roses truly winning my heart.

This is a beautiful, but somehow also unsettling scent. Unlike other reviews, I do get the blackcurrant, the same on as in Mircalla, but with the honey and the sharp floral ylang ylang and the intense clove, there's something that feels almost bodily about it, in a way that's very difficult to describe. It's not directly a blood scent (though the clove certainly brings us close), but adjacent to it. This feels very sexual to me, in a spicy floral way. I like it a lot, but only feel comfortable wearing it in particular settings.

This is a beautiful, gentle floral. As others have pointed out in their reviews above, the notes are impressively balanced - I distinctly get rose, lilac and wisteria throughout wear, though the balance of the three shifts over time. It starts with rose for me, then wisteria takes over, then I get a more even balance of lilac and rose. The first time I wore this I liked it but wasn't particularly impressive - I think I wanted a more intense rose. Subsequently it's really grown on me, particularly as I've come to appreciate the wisteria note more. There's something smooth and quietly elegant about this scent without being fancy; it makes me feel like a nineteenth century woman in her dressing room in a chemise and petticoats, not yet fully dressed to go out. I'm not sure yet whether I'll get a full-sized bottle of this, but I'm considering.

Definitely a sister scent to Alice! But this is tea decidedly without milk, much more astringent and almost citrusy. The white tea (which smells a lot like green tea to me) is quite dominant on my skin, but I clearly do get both the spice of the carnation and a light, clean rose. This feels like an early spring scent to me, for the moment when the snowdrops and croci are at their most beautiful, and so there's something wistful about wearing it in December, when that time is still a couple of months away. It's quite light, but also distinctive. I like this quite a bit, but I think I'll need to try wearing it in warmer weather to see if it's something I'll want a bottle of.

This starts off, as others have said, very green; sap, thorns, and just a hint of a not-fully-bloomed rose. As it dries on me it becomes more floral, which is a cool effect - like the rose blooming! - but unfortunately also goes rather soapy on my skin, and fades quite quickly. The green early stage creates an impressively vivid image and so I'll definitely keep the imp and I imagine I'll wear it at home sometimes, but it doesn't even come close to challenging Two, Five, & Seven for its spot as my favorite BPAL rose. I look forward to comparing it to Rose Red and Peacock Queen soon!

I get quite a lot of sweet anise/absinthe at first, with a perfumey note that I think might be the same "Victorian perfumes" one in Penny Dreadful. As it dries, I start getting both a sharp woody/ozonic note as well as very clear labdanum. I find labdanum very identifiable and not quite like anything else as I've started to get to know it, and there's this distinctive rounded blunting quality which balances with the ozone. The perfumes stay like a backing through, along with a hint of absinthe. It feels quite Victorian, maybe a little late for Shelley but also quite fitting for her - strong and distinctive, sweet and sharp with a headiness. It doesn't feel very me and it's not a scent I imagine I'll wear often, but I quite like it for what it is and am glad to have tried it.

The Bluebeard version that this perfume most evokes for me is Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber," and its young heroine, newly wed to Bluebeard, entering into the unknown and sinister luxury of her marriage to him. The salt water-bathtub sensibility of this very feminine aquatic rhymes for me the range of water images in that story ("the amniotic salinity of the ocean"; "my tears in a flood"; gold bath taps). It's a bright scent but to me also feels somehow underground? I keep picturing an elegantly tiled pool of saltwater in a windowless room. But as I write this I am also remembering the pool of tears in the opera Bluebeard's Castle, and this scent is such a perfect, gorgeous representation of that image! This doesn't change a ton for me on drydown - unlike reviewers above, the salt sticks around for me, as do the rose petals, which are definitely a subtler note than the salt water. This is a soapy aquatic, but intentionally so and in a good way! It's interesting - I have some many other visual associations with the Bluebeard story that if I had tried to come up with perfume notes for this character I don't think they would have even come close to this one, but it turns out to be such a brilliant interpretation that ingeniously talks to these different versions of the story. It's not a perfume I find myself wanting to wear out; it's lovely to wear while at home, especially while quietly reflecting.

Wet, this is lovely on me - soft, delicate florals, predominantly wisteria and rose with a little calla lily, sharped by the delicacy of the frankincense, but on me the sandalwood comes out more on more on dry down, and after about 30 minutes of wear it's unpleasantly woody and acrid, as sandalwood unfortunately often goes on me. Disappointing, as the wet phase is so lovely, but it would work better for someone whose skin chemistry didn't do this with sandalwood. (Nothing that I have two imps of this, one new and one several years aged. In the new one I get more of the florals than the old one, but both follow this same progression.)

Not having tried any other lace scents to this point, I am really enjoying comparing this to My Soul Acquiesced in It, the other vanilla rose in the Carmilla collection! Comparatively, Millarca is creamier, sweeter; less cold and translucent. I get a hint of tart blackberry and definitely a fair amount of soft rose, but the creamy vanilla is most definitely the dominant note on me. It's a soft, sweetly feminine scent, but there's something almost ominously off about it, as as if all the sweetness might be concealing something - I could imagine wearing this to a tea with someone to whom one wanted to be quietly barbed. I prefer My Soul Acquiesced in It (as is probably obvious - I just can't stop talking about it everywhere in this forum!) as a more adult, complex scent, but Millarca is lovely and I am really glad to have it too, and especially to be able to compare it with Mircalla.

I second @theredkilt's suggestion of You Are Mine, You Shall Be Mine, You and I Are One forever from the Carmilla collection! I've only tested it once so far (and will try to write a review after a second test), but I found it a beautiful clove which balanced well with the blackcurrant. I also got a lot of clove from Seven Inches of Blood, though I know not everyone did and the other notes are intense. As far as the GC, I really liked the clove in Sybaris if you haven't already tried that one!

I found this scent to be almost eeriely realistic. Gently sweet beeswax and a hint of smoke at first, and then as it dries the smoke becomes more prominent, as if the candle is continuing to burn out. Plus that ineffable just extinguished candle scent which isn't quite smoke or wax. I feel quite wary of smoke notes and so while I felt curious about this one I didn't initially want to get it. I am so glad my partner did, because wearing it is such a cool experience, and it's amazing to see how the lab is able to capture this kind of fleeting moment. The smoke is definitely there, but it's clearly candle smoke, contained and sweetened by the wax. Much to my surprise, I love this. I hope it gets a lot of appreciation.

This scent is like sitting peacefully in a Mediterranean garden. It opens with the neroli, which is slightly sharp in a pleasant way but does fade back into gentleness as it dries, very much like a breeze. After that, the honeysuckle is the strongest note, though I can distinctly get both the tea rose and osmanthus as well, with the amber as a backbone. I was not able to distinguish the vanilla chiffon, but didn't mind. On me it was a lovely nearly pure floral, layered but in the way that the floral scents might be if I was sitting in the garden and getting the scents of each of the flowers in it alternately. Softer and more complex than Katharina, which I wore right afterwards to compare the orange blossom/neroli note. I found this delightful and very soothing, but it's definitely an uncompromising floral.

Smooth yet strong floral aquatic with a hint of fruitiness in the background (cucumber?). It starts primarily violet + aquatic on me and since violet is one of the very few floral notes I don't typically like on myself I was rather disappointed. However, after about an hour of wear some other floral notes come out as well - I get lily and a very light rose - which I like more. I'll have to test this a few more times to see whether the violet-only early stage is tolerable enough for me to keep this around, but if so I'll probably keep my frimp, though I don't imagine this will be a bottle for me.