Shadow

[blackrayne]

A subtly menacing blend of lemon verbena, white sandalwood and cedar, dimmed by droplets of the darkest patchouli.

From the Bewitching Brews...

Once on, the lemon verbena is the first thing I smell...a second sniff revels the cedar and a hint of the white sandalwood. The patchouli seems to be in hiding right now (odd, since I recognized the patchouli first from the bottle).

An interesting scent...not me, though.

[lorajc]

I agree that this wears much lighter than it smells from the bottle. On my skin it turned very cedary and lemony with only a hint of a wood note. It is one that I like a lot. I like to have a variety of scents and this is a really unique one. I like that it is lighter, but yet sort of woody. This could be a nice wood scent to wear in the spring or summer without being too smoky.

[minouska]

This smelled just awful on me at first, and then mellowed into pine and eucalyptus, oddly enough. Very green and sharp. It's interesting, but I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. I am curious as to how the scent is so strongly NOT what the components are, though.

[chin]

I found that too, Minouska! I would have expected an entirely different scent from those components.

 

Initial application: wet earth, like a cold fall morning just after it's rained

 

Drydown: still earthy, and still fall, but like a walk in the woods

 

I like that it's not sweet, I like the woodiness of it ... may not buy a larger size, but I will definitely keep the sample on hand. I find it very peaceful, very restful.

 

ADDED Feb. 4:

 

I'm posting again because I wore this last night and got a different impression! The lemony aspect came out, and ... almost ... just a slight peppery whiff. It was still woody but didn't strike me as being earthy this time.

 

I really like this one - big bottle in my future!

Edited November 30, 2004 by Shollin

[darklorelei]

More than anything, this scent reminds me of bergamot. Note, there is no bergamot here. (that we know.) I also get the vague piney sensation as well.

 

I don't love it.

 

EEp! I just reallized what this reminds me of. Lemon jolly ranchers. I like 'em, so that's ok. It had just been bothering me, cause it smellt familiar.

[jj_j]

Hmmm ... my skin turns this to definite sandalwood, followed closely by lemon verbena and cedar.

 

It's good - this is the smell of old furniture just polished, or the smell of furniture polishing rags in a pail under the sink - and as the lemon verbena takes over, it really is like a good homemade lemon meringue pie sitting on the windowsill that overlooks a clump of cedar trees.

 

Yummy, and I'm still contemplating whether I'll purchase a bottle or not.

[friendthegirl]

This is very, very lemony on me. Moreso than any of the other lemon scents.

 

It's kind of sharp and tangy.

[Ina Garten Davita]

First Impression: Oh no, lemon. I hope it works on my skin.

 

Second Impression: The lemon isn't OTT, it just lends a fresh sweetness to the lovely warm woods. It didn't turn lemon-cleaner on me at all as I'd feared. I just love the sandal and cedar. I don't get much patchouli, just a subtle undertone.

 

Final Analysis: All the dabbling really helps you learn what works and what does not. Violets don't work on my unless it's Veil and lemon does not work unless it's Shadow. I'm pleased with this one.

[Alice Aforethought]

The cedar is the first note out for me, with a lovely lemon geranium smell becoming dominant shortly after (that'll be the lemen verbena, then!) It's still and calm, rather than wild and woodsy. There's a darkness behind it that in the bottle smells more like myrrh than patchouli, but on isn't very noticeable. This reminds me of stone walls in the slanting late afternoon summer sunshine, warming up the herb garden, but with those moist, ferny nooks and crannies remaining in the shade. Astringent and fresh, but languid at the same time.

[madame royale]

By title alone I was expecting something dark, perhaps brooding. How wrong I was. I was surprised by a very vibrant, sweet lemon. I like lemon well enough, so I gave it a whirl. Lemon was all I could smell, it was so overpowering. It then morphed into…eau de Pledge polish. A bit disappointed, I forgot about it and went to bed. This morning, another surprise. Pledge was gone and in its place was an exquisite amalgam of cedar (which I adore) and sandalwood, with the barest hint of a very sophisticated, non-grungy patchouli. There was still a trace of lemon, but only enough to brighten the woodsiness.

 

Ah, I get it now. You can’t have a shadow (the woods and patchouli) without light (the lemon). This is an intriguing blend and a larger bottle may be in my future if I can get through the Pledge phase.

[TheDarkMother]

Uhoh...lemon verbena. I wonder if it will come out smelling like anything else OTHER than lemon candy.

 

In the bottle: I can definately smell the lemons, but there is an earthier note that I can't quite place. Not so much sandalwood, but a mossy kind of smell. Here's to hoping that it keeps that scent!

 

On me: Lemon candy. Nope...wait...lemon pledge. Crap. Maybe it will mellow out to a lesser degree. One can only hope, but right now the lemon is WAY strong. I'll keep it, because I do like the scent...maybe as a linen fragrance.

[aimeebaaad]

I received this scent as a freebie with an eBay order. Personally, this is not one I would choose. It has a strong lemon scent and the cedar and sandalwood are right behind it. I love the smell of cedar (we just completed a deck on our house made of it) but this oil doesn't entice my senses. I asked my husband's opinion and he clearly did not like it. This will not be one I will buy in the future. Sorry, Beth!

[leapylees]

In the bottle this seemed almost grassy and slightly patchouli-ish to me. On applying, the lemon verbena jumped out first, and like minouska, I also got eucalyptus. This quickly mellowed to a sort of woodsy, earthy, grassy (probably the cedarwood(?)) smell. After a few hours, it's faded a lot but the sandalwood is the dominant scent with a hint of patchouli. I love it, but it's too bad it doesn't last very long on my skin (but it still might make it to my 5ml list). To me this is a very relaxing, warm summer scent, like a warm breeze.

[isyche]

At first, Shadow is strongly lemony with a woody undertone on me, and the combination reminds me a lot of just-polished furniture, although nice furniture. Then the lemon fades back into the woody scents and I'm left with a sandalwood/cedar combination.

It's not bad, but it's not really for me. It strikes me as something that might smell better on a guy.

[LupaWulf]

I guess the lemon notes arn't best on me. Much like Tempest this one isn't really a go for me.

 

 

VERY Lemon, with slight whisps of clean outside springtime behind it.

 

Wearing it I got soap. Not even lemon pledge. Nor even lemon soap. Just Plain soap. Not even a clean tinge behind it.

 

*sigh*

Might be the patchouli. Patchouli doesn't usually like me and does strange things with other notes on my skin 99% of the time outside of BPAL. (I guess only a few casualties of BPAL from patchouli is better than my non BPAL track record with the stuff)

 

Even so, I'm still trying this one more time before givieng up. (more than likely it'll get swapped or sold or given away)

[Will]

Got this one in a swap, too.

Ok everyone has the basic description of this posted already. It starts out lemony/herbal and as it dries down you start to get more warm woods, sandal and cedar. There is a little patchouli that you might not recognize if you didn't know it was there. It just kind of adds some weight and darkness to the overall scent, if you know what I mean.

The first thing that pops into my mind wearing this is a library. Not a modern, concrete and metal racks kind of library. An older, darker place, rich wood shelves, lots of niches and alcoves, sunlight coming through high windows but lot of dark corners too. Then the second thing I think of is a midnight garden somewhere exotic. Maybe somewhere in the middle east with cedars cooling in the night air and herbs growing half wild.

Anyway, it's a warm, somewhat exotic scent that I find very relaxed but also powerful in its own way, and very different from anything your non-BPAL friends will be wearing. I have a 5ml that is dwindling fast. I seem to be wearing it a lot.

[tempete]

This was a freebie from the Lab. Unfortunately, lemon verbena and white sandalwood don't like me very much. My notes say that Shadow smelled like lemon-scented cleaning product when wet, and then lemony wood on the drydown. Not for me.

[sarada]

What a fascinating transformation! I have had Shadow marked as a possible interest since I first visited the site a year ago because I love sandalwood, cedar and patchouli more than just about anything...and I even like verbena quite a bit, but that lemony scent can get really overwhelming sometimes, and all scents that contain it tend to just be lemon on me.

 

Well, Shadow is a very playful little fragrance and one I shall surely order a bottle of if the discontinued alert ever goes up for it...because after the verbena burns off it is an absolutely stunning cedar/sandalwood! My first impressions were just pure lemon, similar to many of the other blends that have it as a top note, like Embalming Fluid and Phantasm. The patchouli immediately begins to assert itself and there's a strange stage where it actually smells, like...ummm...weed, to be perfectly honest! I love the way that the patchouli sticks its little hippie head out and I wave hello to it. Then about a half-hour later I suddenly sniffed my wrist and it's pure, delicious woody cedar and sandalwood. How did that happen?? I'm not sure what the verbena might be contributing after it burns off, but this is definitely right in between the verbena scents that stay lemony, and the woody scents that I love so much.

 

I have so many bottles I want right now this isn't an urgent want, but I have a feeling I'll be using it a lot in the summer so I can get my wood fix without having something too heavy and smoky. If they ever phase this one out though I will definitely stock up!

[theshapeshifter]

I'll freely admit, although all the notes in Shadow appealed to me, I ordered it primarily because I adore the song of the same name on Viggo Mortensen's album 'pandemoniumforamerica'. After ordering, I saw how few reviews it had, and the mixed nature thereof, and got slightly apprehensive.

 

There was no need. I love it.

 

In the imp: Zingy, in-your-face lemon. So bright that my first thought was, "THIS is named Shadow?"

 

Initial application: Oh dear. I was worried at first, because the initial ten or fifteen minutes of this was lemon Pledge, all the way. It's not a scent I mind, but not something I'd want to wear all day.

 

After an hour: Bye-bye, Pledge. This morphs into a lovely light woodsy scent. The lemon never totally disappears, but it becomes more like a bit of something dancing on the surface, like occasional peeks of sunlight through a deep forest canopy.

 

Over the course of the day: The patchouli gradually crept up over the next few hours, so that by the mid-afternoon (applied around 10 am), it was an incredibly mellow patchouli blending with fresh wood in the foreground, with that bit of lemon hanging in to provide a refreshing note. Definitely a big-bottle candidate - and I'll want to try this on the boy, too.

[surf-tormented]

To quote Bono:

 

"She wore lemon

to colour in the cold grey night

she had heaven

and she held on so tight."

 

 

Woah, lemon! It is so lemony nothing else seems to matter!

[aurianrose]

It smelled very strange to me in the bottle, but the minute I put it on, I got a really lemony smell. It was nice, but very unusual. After about an hour, I started to smell hints of pepper and a really strong cedar. I don't think this works well with my body chemistry, but I could see how it would be great on a guy...

[slave1]

In Bottle: Patchouli and wood.

 

On Skin: This is much too smoky/incensey/woody for me. The lemon gives a nice distraction with it’s crisp sour yet sweet note. This isn’t my taste but a pretty scent for someone who enjoys these notes. I don’t really think the name fits though, since the lemon gives such a bright yellow feel…

[FireInCairo]

Hmm... I'm not too sure about this actually. I think it's kind of like Lemon Pledge. It's not unpleasant though. I guess it's kind of like a very strong version of Love's "Lemon" perfume. It might actually be nice on a fragrance ring. It would certainly keep the mosquitos at bay...

[pekeana]

Shadow is overpowering in the imp.

 

On my skin, it's all wood with just a hint of lemon.

 

I smell like a freshly-polished table.

[WindStar]

In the Imp: lemon? what lemon?

 

on application: oooh..there's the lemon...yikes!

 

After about 30 minutes though, it has mellowed and I really like it. It makes me think of the choir loft at the church I used to attend...all that incense has stuck around up there and made it smell just like this...