Pele

[SpinalDesign]

Whimsical, temperamental, radiant and ravishingly beautiful Goddess of Volcanoes, Fire, Lightning and Dance. She is the Mother of Eruptions and the personification of destructive power. Volcanic eruptions are said to be a side-effect of her jealous rages and her epic quarrels with her siblings are legendary. This perfume embodies her gentler, benign aspect as the capricious Goddess of Dance: muguet and Hawaiian white ginger enveloped by warm, damp tropical blooms.

Wet :The scent is sweet, light, and creamy. You can smell the floral it’s a very sweet and sugar like .

Drying : It’s a fluffy smell light and thick with floral and wine wrapped around a pot of honey.

Dry : The flower notes become stronger it’s like bouquet of freesia ,orchids, lily's, and white roses bundled together . It reminds me of my sisters wedding . The sun is glowing, white flowers and rose peddles lay on each step. Little tea light flames dance in evening dew.. The heightens flower scent and opened bottle of wine mix together. But you can feel the mist that falls from the man made waterfalls. It’s a very claming peaceful scent for me.


Aftermath : The scent is wonderfully and sinfully sweet and floral. It is very lady like scent innocent yet very charming . I can see why so many become addicted to this scent and can’t get enough of it. It’s lovely but it’s to lovely for my taste I think my older sister would enjoy this scent.

[merveilleuse]

mmmmmmmmm!

this smells like my mom when she uses rainbath by neutrogena.

only better.

mm i like it very much.

 

elizabeth

[Belladonnastrap]

Ah Pele pele pele. Where did we go wrong?

 

 

First sniff

Lovely tropical scent...makes me wish I was on the beach at Waikiki with a flower in my hair enjoying a lovely cocktail. Very very summery.

 

When wet

A really really strong floral...very overpowering. I can smell the sun in it if that makes any sort of sense. Very sweet.

 

Drydown

Still very floraly and tropical but it sort of reminds me of the type of perfume my grandmother wears...which isn't really good at all.

 

Aftermath

Ah Pele...I wanted to like you. I really and truly did but alas you just don't do it for me. It's a lovely white floral but white florals and me don't seem to get along and this gave me a headache. Will be going up for swap

[glampyre]

Pele is a nice floral.

 

I don't find it overwhelming, but my skin really likes the deep resinous musky BPALS, and this sort of gets lost.

 

It's really pretty. There are others that I prefer more, though.

[sarabeegee]

Pele is now one of my favorite oils--it is very beach-y, as others have mentioned, soft and clean-smelling. I don't really smell the ginger, or any other definite note, just a friendly un-fussy surfer girl smell. Pele is neither too strong nor too sweet, but it lasts a long time, longer than some heavier BPAL oils I've tried.

 

The drydown is pretty much the same as when it came out of the bottle on me. For fun, today I mixed Pele with some BPAL Pikake, and it smelled fabulous, a bit sweeter but still soft, as if I had on a fresh flower lei.

 

Pele would be a nice perfume for young girls, and also for women who like clean feminine non-froufrou scents.

[diabolique]

i couldn't smell anything in the bottle except for a faint whiff of watery flowers.

 

as soon as this hits my skin, it turns into a nauseating air freshener, but that may be because i have to apply a lot before i can smell it. i had high hopes for this one, but ah well.

 

i have two imps of this. i might pass one on to someone else and keep the other for layering purposes.

[DukTape]

This is friendly, definitely. The memory of the sun is in there, like walking on the still-warm sand just after sunset. I am sleeping with this one tonight. Doc doesn't feel well and maybe this will cheer him up.

[Miggins]

Sadly, although I *really* wanted to love Pele, it didn’t love me. On first wearing, to me, it smells like loo cleaner or really expensive air freshener, but that really isn’t an insult!!! It smells very clean and fresh and blue - clean laundry and sparkling bathrooms - but not for me. Pele disappeared in a record 20 minutes and then made her way to my swaps pile.

[alizarin]

Pele reminds me of Xiuhtecuhtli, but without the underlying darkness. It's light and tropical and refreshing but I'm not getting a lot of depth, at least not on me. I don't normally like florals but this is nice, sultry rather than sweet.

 

My skin also apparently ate it for lunch, I can barely smell it now but it was quite pretty for an hour or so.

[octopusgrrl]

In the bottle: very sharp, apple-y and sweet, reminiscent of Eve or The Hesperides

 

Wet: evokes the Islands with a fragrant group of flowers: frangipani, gardenia, lily and white ginger

 

Dry: a lush and complex floral - I wouldn't call this a light scent, there's definitely a hint of something darker and more interesting going on

 

Verdict: I would say that generally I'm more of a oriental than a floral person, but this is very intense and exotic, and I like it a lot.

[Lina]

This is just delicate and creamy. It is the way flowers smell on a spring morning. Very light and very airy. Didn't last long enough.

[Ishtar]

I agree with alizarin that Pele is quite similar to a lighter, less orangey Xiuhtecuhtli. It is definitely a white, pretty floral with a very interesting creaminess to it. I like it, but it might be a little too understated for my taste. I would also need to reapply every hour or so if I were to wear it, as it has next to no staying power on my skin.

 

I am glad I tried it and I will use up my imp, but it is not a must have for me.

[Penance]

First off, let me say that the fact that I love Pele should probably tell you something about how good it is because, as a general rule, I hate floral scents. That being said...

 

First sniff:

 

Hawaii...it's the first thing that comes to mind. I smell a lot of pikaki and some soft, tropical blooms. It's beautiful and very calming, the antithesis of what I deal with in my everyday life: big cities, dirty streets, little patches of dirty sky. It's like a vacation in a bottle, soft and beautiful and infinitely calming.

 

Wet on the skin:

 

Beautiful, just beautiful. It's stronger than in the bottle and that's a good thing. I like strong scents and I was almost afraid that this would be too light on me. The flowers are picking up some, but so is the pikaki, putting me in mind of a white sand beach with the wind blowing through the palm trees. I love this.

 

Dry down:

 

This is an absolutely linear scent, no real surprises, just an intensification of the scents I smelled in the bottle. I feel so calm and relaxed wearing this, almost like I've been meditating. It's the same sort of feeling I get from Tushnamatay and I love it, it's exactly what I need after a long day.

 

The bottom line:

 

Pele holds the distinction of being one of the only (almost) pure floral scents that I truly love. I never would have tried it if it hadn't been included as a freebie in one of my swaps and I loved it so much I swapped for a 5mL bottle within a week of getting the imp. A definite winner.

[closedacct]

I was planning on giving this to my little sister to try, she is always searching for the perfect beach scent. I just don't know if I can give this up! Smooth, creamy, soft. I detect a whiff of that white sunscreen smell (yum) and I am certain that I will be buying a 5 ml for me and a 10 for my sis.

 

Beth, you are a genius!

[Longstofly]

Hmm, weird!

 

I am another one of those people who can barely smell it at all! I put a good wet swipe on my arm and immediately sniffed it. Nothing. How weird! This is the first time I have had a scent do this to me. It smells really good in the bottle though!

[inkstone]

Mmmm.... Tropical...

 

In the vial

A blast of lush, tropical flowers--in particular the plumeria. It immediately makes me think of a tropical climate--the foliage, the beach, the crashing waves and the tropical rain. I'm very enthused about trying this on!

 

Wet

The plumeria and hibiscus really come out on my skin. And I think that's the pikake peaking out to play as well. It's very lush and creamy. I really like this. It's like sitting on a beach with the sun shining down on you and a gentle breeze wafting by. Then it does something strange: It completely vanishes! The flowers and ginger are completely gone. When I sniffed my wrist, I then started to pick up the ginger scent mingling with something wet. Where did the creamy flowers go?

 

Drydown

I figured my skin had eaten the flowers, which made me sad because I love plumeria. But as I went about my morning tasks, I started to get whiffs of the flowers again. The creamy flowers had returned! It seems the more I move around and the warmer I am, the creamy flowers come out. But when I get cold, the wet ginger comes out. How odd! It reminds me vaguely of lotion right now.

 

Final Thoughts

This is soft and subtle. It's like lying down on a bed of tropical flowers and letting the sun caress your face. This is a "Makes me smell good, instead of wearing something that smells good" scent on me. I'm a little torn about whether or not I want to spring for a bottle, but this imp will definitely be used. Very very definitely.

Edited October 23, 2004 by inkstone

[tempete]

Although I'm not a huge fan of pure floral scents, I gave Pele a try because I thought that the Hawaiian ginger would balance the floral notes. Unfortunately, Pele dries down to a floral bouquet that had a creamy or buttery feeling, which was really off-putting. I gave the imp several tries, and ended up swapping it away.

Edited October 31, 2004 by tempete

[Caitfish]

Pele - I really wanted to love this. Like, REALLY.

 

In the bottle. I can't smell a damn thing. Maybe sensual overload, but I can practically stick the little sampler unit into my nose, and I can't detect much. On a second try, after many coffee beans and sinus clearing green chiles, I can smell the Hawiaan Ginger and some florals - maybe.

 

I put a *ton* on, and I can definately smell the ginger now. I smell clean, and ocassionally my nose detects a soapy scent.

 

Alas, after 15 minutes this is utterly gone. I'm so sad.

 

That being said, Hawiaan Ginger is one of my all time favorite scents, that's why I wanted to love this so. Maybe all that green chile has destroyed my nose.

[tart]

I was really looking foward to Pele, but it just wasn't intense enough for me. I was hoping for a deep, exotic scent but Pele is mostly just clean florals. When I rubbed my wrists together, the scent came out more. Very pretty, but I would like Pele if it was somehow more concentrated.

[sarahmarie]

Pele was nice on me, but as other's have said, it was very light. I like light - florals tend to give me headaches, so I needed it to be light. But it was so light I could hardly smell it. That's never really happened to me before, but as others said - my skin just ate it, or something. It also turned a bit soapy on me, as florals tend to do on my skin.

 

But, before it faded and went all funny, it was very pretty. It struck me as being a pink scent, light and feminine. It's soft, but it has a little crispness because of the ginger. It was more complex and pretty in the imp - just not so much on my skin.

[Gin]

Oh Pele... thou art divine. Clean, soapy white flowers.

I hope Beth doesn't find this offensive, but it reminds me of Philosophy's Amazing Grace. I really love this one. I don't feel like I'd have to be in any particular mood to wear this, it would be perfect everyday. I think I need a 10ml of this.

[NoirRosaleen]

I really wanted to like Pele - I love plumeria and ginger. However, aside from maybe a hint of those two, mostly this was a soft, generic floral on me - just like Juliet, Desdemona, Ouija, Bayou (believe it or not), Catherine, Psyche, the list goes on...they all kind of smell the same on my wrist. I might trade for this again later and give it another try, but I was really wishing for something more exotic than what Pele turned into on me.

[zapevaj]

Pele is one of my all-time favorite BPAL scents. I like scents that smell "warm"- light in summer, heavy in winter. Pele is an awesome summer scent for me. I don't smell any powder or soap in it- just clean, rich flowers- Hibiscus, Passionfruit flower, things like that, with a little bit of light spice (probably the ginger).

 

I don't think of myself as a "floral" person, but this is just not-girly enough for me, so if you're normally leery of florals, definitely try this one. I agree that it doesn't seem to be the raging-volcano Pele; althoguh this scent has lots of character, it's a happy scent, not a tempestuous one. It's Pele on a good day.

 

-Rae

[rhubarbbear]

now, normally, i can't do straight-up florals. too...flowerly.

 

pele, however, is an exception. i think its the pikaki, but this floral blend has a clean, light, not-overly-floral tone to it. its very nice! its a blue sky, clear sunshine kind of scent for me. i think i will wear it more in the summer months, but as winter drags on and i miss the sun i may reach for it more often. i do wish it were a tad longer lasting on my skin!

 

overall i would rate this as a 'strong like' on my bpal scale. i think it is my husband's favorite scent so far, however!

[yellowrose]

Wow, but I really wanted to like this scent. It's like stepping into a tropical garden just in one sniff of the vial.

 

WET: The white flowers are overwhelming the beautiful muguet. (Yes, I know. It is a white flower as well, but you know what I mean!) Sadly, they do not like me. A headache is almost instant from the sweet intensity. Perhaps the pikake is the culprit here.

 

Even after washing it off (and scrubbing), the headache persists, but I am still drawn to keep sniffing my wrists. It has lasting power and Pele *is* a lovely scent. I just happened to get the intensely wrathful side of her.