Lady MacBeth

[DiesMali]

The essence of ambition, covetousness and manipulation: sweet Bordeaux wine, blood red currant, thyme and wild berries.

In the imp: Sweet juice.

Wet on my skin: Sweet, slightly winey berries.

Dry: Uh-oh, the berries are turning fake. Sigh. As in a couple other blends, the berries overpower everything and turn this from what started out as a lovely sweet wine and fruit scent into fruity fake berry shampoo or bubble bath. I am hoping this blend will ripen a bit with age, so I'll stick it in the box for a few months and see what happens. After all, having played Lady M in a stage production, it's a scent that should have been better on me than it is at the moment.

[loubric]

I got this as a frimp from BPTP

 

In the imp it smells like a rich sweet wine with juicy berries. On me the grape is much more prominant, the dry down is so so sweet. Hints of herby sweetness are trying to come through giving a gorgous background scent.

 

This sexy and sopisticated and I love it.

[Malaena]

This one is sweet berry candy all the way. Not for me!

[doomsday_disco]

In the imp: Super sweet! The wine, berries, and currant make this a juicy, candy-like scent.

 

Wet: Wine and berries like whoa. I feel like it is even more juicy now that it is on my skin. It goes through a phase that makes it almost like a fruity candy scent, but seems to become slightly more tart over time.

 

Dry: Still very fruity, but the thyme note has emerged during this phase to keep it from being too sweet. But even the thyme can't save it – it is still way too berry-sweet for me.

 

Verdict: Berry-dominant scents aren't my thing, and this one is no exception. While Bewitched seemed like an actual picking-berries-in-a-forest kind of scent (with the berries being tamed by notes like sage and dark musk), Lady Macbeth is far sweeter and rather candy-like. I won't be reaching for this scent again.

[Mothling]

When I read the reviews describing Lady Macbeth as a wine scent I just HAD to order an Imp. Sadly all I am able to smell is strawberry bubblegum, in the Imp as well as on my skin. I'll definitely let this one age for a while. Who knows, maybe it will mellow out.

[roseus]

In the imp: wine and berries.

 

On wet: Okay initially this smells like fruity scented erasers from childhood, but that quickly changes into a more sophisticated berry scent.

 

Dry: Primarily juicy, sweet berries and just hint of thyme. This faded very quickly on me.

[Emily Iscariot]

Oddly enough this one goes straight gumballs on me. I'm not mad at it at all but at the same time I wish I could find the wine and berries!

[Casablanca]

This stains my skin almost like iodine.

 

From this notes list, I'm expecting a boozy cough syrup, so I'm surprised to find that Lady MacBeth isn't boozy at all, even though it smells like sweet red wine, and not cough syrupy at all, even though it smells intensely red and a bit syrupy. The red currant, berries, and hint of thyme are lovely with the wine-that-is-not-boozy.

So I guess there's a wine I can wear after all, and not just the yummy ones I can drink.

[milo]

Oh dear, this isn't very good on me. I'm getting sweet, sweet, artificial grape, not unlike Grape Bubble yum. This is a very juvenile scent on me, so if you like Jailbait, or other sweet, fruity blends, this will be right up your alley.

[lizabelle]

This is so...odd. Delightfully so. Wet it's like if you took red wine, made it bubbly, and then somehow solidified it into gummy candy. Over time it gets deeper and more sour than sweet, which I actually like--I was a huge fan of fruity sweetness as a teen and now I never want to smell that way again! The berries develop to be rich and downright jammy, which is lovely. In fact the drydown is reminiscent of cooking your jam berries down with a bottle of good red before canning. I seriously thought I was done with fruity scents, but between this and Manic I am A-OK with smelling like pie. Maybe a full bottle is in my future.

[Soupy Twist]

This is interesting. It's heavy berry juice, which deepens as it dries and develops an unspecified herbal edge — like you'd mulled some berry juice with herbs. It's more of a liqueur than a wine. I may have to try this in the early summer.

[Pixie-elf]

Grown up Grape sexy fun dip.

Okay, so, it starts out wet as a lovely wine. Then it morphs to beautiful currants.

Then? It dries in to a beautiful mixture of grape and currants. No wine. I love the fuck out of it.

Mainly cause the wine note doesn't work on me and keeps going sour.

But my brain's conclusion is "Grown up sexy fun dip." and I'm kind of loving it.

[achildoftime]

Grape fun dip is right, but I'm not fond of it at all. I don't get any subtleties or change, it's just a mixed berry/grape powder candy. I'm not a fan.

[thebarricadebabe]

I was nervous about this one because in the imp it was straight up fake grape candy, and that's not really my thing.

BUT when it is on the skin, it depeened out for me into something kind of dark and wine-y as opposed to candy, so this is a definite yes for me. Good staying power too. I even received a few compliments!

[whoahorsey]

This reminds me so much of BBW Sun-Ripened Raspberry, and I'm not complaining a bit! That was my favorite lotion in my 20s, before I discovered indie companies, and this scent brings that time in my life back to me thanks to scent memory. This is gorgeous. I want a bottle! This smells like picking berries in a sunny field on a hot spring day in Texas.

[Juliamon]

In the imp: Gummy bears! It's all berry, not a hint of anything else.

 

Wet: Imagine if you got home from grocery shopping to find that the carton of milk you bought was leaky and got into the car rug and no amount of washing ever got it out entirely. On a nice cool day it's not noticeable at all, but in the heat of summer that car becomes a metal box full of sour milk stink. You can't afford a new car or to get it reupholstered, so you eventually sigh and buy an air freshener (not the cheap cardboard trees but a nice fancy one designed to stick in the vents and boasts a "real berry scent!") to cover it. And it mostly works! Except there's always that hint of sourness lurking underneath, haunting you forever, or until the car finally kicks the bucket at least. I'm totally not speaking from experience or anything.

 

Dry: The air freshener needs to be replaced.

 

This is my first time trying a BPAL wine note to my knowledge. I don't know what to think of it going bad in a manner eerily similar to my experience with the blood musk in Drunk Astronomers. Am I reading too much into the theme? It's worth noting that it isn't boozy at all, and has excellent throw. I'm putting off scrubbing it to type this up and it's still punching me in the face from the keyboard. This would be amazing on skin that doesn't do what mine did!

[Lucchesa]

"You smell fruity," my husband commented when I put on Lady Macbeth. So, good throw and decent wear length, but the sweet wine note is all grape on me, so this is fruit, fruit, fruit and a little thyme. If grape and berry and currant notes are your jam (pun kind of intended), you will like this one a lot.

[muined]

Bag o' fruit snacks left out in the sun. Not complaining.

[sunreon]

i smell like grape koolaid. bleck. overpoweringly obnoxious sweet grape koolaid.

 

mom says she's expecting the Kool-Aid Man to burst through the wall any second now. OH YEAH!!!

 

oh no, koolaid man. no.

Edited February 11, 2020 by sunreon

[bambi]

In the imp, this is lovely. Very berry-forward, fruity goodness. When I applied it, the thyme really came out for a few minutes. It added a layer of herbal loveliness that made the berries a tiny bit grounded. The wine came out a bit, too, and the overall impression was of a sweet sangria made with berries and thyme. Unfortunately, the berries start to get a waxy smell, and this devolves into a bubblegum-y, fake berry scent. I wish it had stayed the way it was in the wet stage 😓

[skyturtles]

Out of the imp of unknown age, I get sweet berries with some booziness.

Wet on my skin, I get a hint of thyme with the bitterness of red wine. The berries are threatening to turn into a drugstore scent perversion from the 90s.

I was really excited for this one and it's not quite living up, but like I said I have NO idea how old this imp is and how time has aged it.

Edited September 16, 2021 by skyturtles

[Lecter]

Got this as an imp, fruity and sweet, like berries! Didn’t last for very long on my skin

[llamadolly]

This was one of my very first introductions to BPAL, and years later remains an absolute favorite. I grew up in an area that grows a lot of cranberries, and am obsessed with cranberry wine. That's what this reminds me of: rich, tart, sweet without being syrupy. Wet it smells juicy, and as it dries it becomes more wine-like. I wear it all the time in the winter and wore it to Sleep No More in NYC pre-pandemic - one of the actors told me I smelled good. 🙂

[Cali]

Squiiiishy, thick purpley goodness!! To me it's plummy, maybe even figgy?

But man how beautiful. Not super picking up the wine, and only slightly getting the thyme, which i think makes it slightly more sappy. Gonna need a bottle! 

[MolyH]

I don't get any wine or thyme out of this at all. On me, it might as well be a tart berry single note. Which is not unpleasant, but I get the same thing but better out of Strawberry Moon. And I was so curious about what wine would smell like too! For the most part, this turns too juvenile and girlish on me to really fit the theme.