Your Best-Bet "Must Try" Enabling Scents

[Reinier]

2 of my favorites that always get reactions from people are Dirty and Swank. Whenever friends go through my imps they always love Morocco and Bordello and O.

[Loligo]

Hmm... I may just have to expand beyond six, because yeah, Morocco and Bordello really would round things out nicely, wouldn't they? (Which means OH DARN I'd have to order another few imps for myself to keep it in multiples of six. ;-) )

[pensive]

Hmm... I may just have to expand beyond six, because yeah, Morocco and Bordello really would round things out nicely, wouldn't they?  (Which means OH DARN I'd have to order another few imps for myself to keep it in multiples of six. ;-) )

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Tragic, isn't it.

 

My recommendations -

Alice

Imp

Neo-Tokyo

Lightning

Snake Oil *

O *

 

* I haven't tried these. Just a warning.

[magikfanfic]

1. Fruits--Kitsune Tsuki or Titania

2. Rose--Persephone or The Empress

3. Tea--The Dormouse or Severin

4. Water--Thunderbird

5. Tart--Baobhan Sith or Whitechapel

6. Sacred--Ave Maria Gratia Plena

 

This is harder than I thought and, of course, skewed by my own personal perferences.

[Witch's Dagger]

I'm thinking of this in terms of colors:

 

Purple: Beth does amazing things with violet, lavender, plum, fig, etc. Nocturne, Casanova, Vicomte de Valmont, Villain, Intrigue...

 

or:

 

Burgundy: Something with wine or pomegranate in it: Blood Rose, Kali, maybe even Persephone, though that might be too rosy

 

-----------

 

Red: This would depend on the person, could be a rose blend, like Harlot or a dragon's blood scent like Blood Amber or any of the Ars Draconis, or a fiery cinnamony scent.

 

-----------

 

Dark brown/Black: Darker woods and resins, Centzon Totochtin (though this could also go in Burgundy), Cathedral, Black Annis, Czernobog, Black Forest

 

-----------

 

Green: something herbal or piney, like Bewitched, Hemlock, from what I've heard Venom and Envy

 

or

 

Blue: Aquatics like Storm, Lightning, Tempest, Ulalume, etc.

 

----------

 

Creamy: Snake Oil, Sudha Segara, Dana O'Shee, Hecate, other almond/nut oils, other vanilla/foody scents

 

or

 

Golden: Those exotic ones you hear about: Morocco, O, Sherezade, anything with Amber or "exotic spices". Also, sandalwood and any of the Eastern incense scents like Namaste, Coiled Serpent, Sri Lanka, etc.

 

-----------

 

Other: Something unique or complex, something with a name that might be significant to the person, perhaps something more simple - a pure floral or a pure fruity scent, maybe something with mint in it, or leather...

 

For me, a good mix would be:

 

Centzon Totochtin (it has the dragon's blood/wine thing without the rose)

Harlot (very unique: cinnamon and rose)

Czernobog

??? (There's a good green one I like, but I can't remember the name )

Jezebel (very nice amber)

De Sade

[tempete]

When I made up the imp packs as Christmas presents for my sisters last year, I hadn't tried a lot of BPALs. If I were to do it over again, this is what I'd pick:

 

Everyone gets Snake Oil. That part doesn't change .

 

Light and clean: Dirty, Kumiho or Tenochtitlan

Spicy: Hell's Belle, Morocco or Scherezade

Fruity: Apocathery, Bewitched or Fae

Creamy: Alice, Black Pearl or Dana O'Shee

Floral: Seraglio, Spellbound or Wanton

Wild card: Brisingamen, Dorian or Haunted

 

As usual, there's lots of overlap between the categories. The above list is more or less my Top Twenty forced into some kind of order...

 

[Edited to add link to last year's Christmas sets, and to add, remove and rearrange scents. Now I'm happy with my hypothetical gift lists! ]

Edited June 4, 2005 by tempete

[feline.by.design]

Now that I've tried a *cough* few more scents, here's a new set of lists I'd like to add. There's differences between this and my previous list.

For a woman:

Sophia

(possible substitutions: Old Paris, Muse, Akuma)

Bon Vivant

(possible subs: Lolita, R'lyeh)

Hollywood Babylon

(possible subs: Blood Amber, Lampades)

Scherezade

(possible subs: Silk Road, Morocco)

The Dormouse

(possible subs: The Apothecary, Severin)

Juliet

(possible subs: Endymion, Ave Maria Grantia Plena)

 

I'm not much for roses, so I think my recommendation sort of reflects this. I also *still* haven't tried Snake Oil. You'll also note an absence of a lot of the "Gourmand" fragrances, like Vice and Gluttony. I'm not much for them, either, but if I were to substitute one of the above for something a bit more foody, I'd trade Bon Vivant for Centzon Totochtin.

 

For a man:

Severin

(possible substitutions: Dorian, De Sade)

Centzon Totochtin

(possible sub: Tombstone)

Black Pearl

Fenris Wolf

(possible subs: Dracul, King Lear)

Vicomte de Valmont

(possible subs: Villain, Wilde)

Jabberwocky

(possible subs: Loup Garou, the currently unreleased Val San Retour)

 

When I gave a bunch of imps and a bottle of De Sade to my boyfriend, he paid little attention to De Sade (which I promptly repo'ed), but found himself using Black Pearl and Danse Macabre a lot. I totally wasn't expecting that, since I thought he was going to use the more woodsy scents like Lear.

 

-doreen

[joseybird]

In my imp giftpack would be:

 

The Lion

 

Warm, golden, and unisex--a bright, warm, but not girly scent

 

Alice

 

Soft and pretty and sweet

 

Shanghai

 

Refreshing

 

Queen Mab

 

Womanly and sophisticated without being heavy

 

Dublin

 

Woodsy and fresh

 

Scheherazade

 

Moderately heavy and spicy

 

I was waffling on Morocco, but Alice has carnation in it too

 

A pretty good mix, I think

[OriginalWacky]

Well, I guess if I were picking out a pack for somebody, as long as they had no restrictions on anything, I'd pick these:

 

Blood. It's incensy, kinda musky, and a fairly heavy scent.

 

Tiger Lily. It's honeyed lilies, what a nice flowery scent to try. Not too heavy, but really super light either.

 

Swank. It's cool, not too sweet, boozy, and mature.

 

The Apothecary. It's green, herby, and fairly light.

 

Undertow. It's an aquatic, not terribly light, and smells much like a real lake.

 

Bliss. Gotta include a good food scent, and chocolate is usually a hit.

 

I'm sure I could come up with many more, but that would probably be the ones I'd start with for somebody who doesn't know what they'd like or not like, so they can look for which of these they like, and try more in that category.

[Lit Chick]

I'm in a listy mood, and apparently did not contribute before!

 

My starter imp pack would be:

 

Bastet - Lovely sweet incense, a warm smell

Amsterdam - Fresh and clean summer day smell

Lady of Shalott - It was the first BPAL that worked on me - lush aquatic

Kitsune-Tsuki - Gentle and bright light floral

Queen Mab - Playful medium floral

Dorian - musky vanilla tea

 

My more complex pack would be:

Antony - Amazing masculine scent, works on women too (but try on a man!)

Intrigue - A little foody. My favortie in cool weather.

Leanan Sidhe - Second skin

Dragon's Heart - Very heavy floarl

Red Devil - Deep musk, sexy

Two, Five & Seven - Rose explosion

[jewelbug]

Ooooh, glad to see this resurrected. I think my six would be:

 

For a Girl:

1) Dorian (the most lovely vanilla ever--snake oil was not for me)

2) Velvet (gotta have some chocolate/food, and this gets some woodiness too)

3) Midnight (for clean, pale florals--sweet, herby and feminine)

4) Titania (for something so fruity that is downright juicy)

5) Eden or Black Phoenix (to experience BPAL's nutty scents!)

6) Hollywood Babylon (for something dark, musky and sweet)

 

For a Guy:

1) Tombstone (a manly vanilla)

2) Severin (for something clean, light and wonderfully unisex)

3) Yggdrasil (for a light woodsy smell)

4) Voodoo (for that crazy kinda guy)

5) Dracul (cuz every man needs one)

6) Debauchery (for a deep dark musk)

 

You have no idea how long it took me to narrow it to six each. Whew!

[SueDonym]

I tried to enable an old friend I hadn't seen in a long while.

 

He came by yesterday and during the visit I brought out what now feels like an extensive collection of imps and bottles, including a swath of LEs, GC's and what I've accumulated of Arkham (he's gamer/school friend).

 

He said (and I quote)

that they all (ALL)

"smelled the same."

 

I threw things as varried as Underpants, Annabel Lee and Yog Soggoth at him and they smell the same??!!

 

 

I would put it down to him being a guy and not liking perfume, but he said he LIKED perfume!

 

Then I thought that maybe they weren't perfumey enough so I tried the more perfumey scents and even the ROSE of Peacock Queen but nothing seemed to take.

 

At some point, (I think when I threw out Gingerbread Poppet) I called bullshit and he said well no, that they didn't quite smell the same BUT that they all were fundamentally similar, claiming to smell an alcohol base??? I think he was having trouble describing the oil or just didn't understand the difference between essential oils and regular perfume. Or maybe the fact that the bottles were alike threw him off if he's a visual guy (brain can read similar in very different things if grouped and some people get off on perfume bottles rather than the scents).

 

He reacted better when I put Mata Hari on my wrists and let him sniff, so maybe it's just that he likes perfume on women...or likes women who smell good.

 

I don't want to push it, and although he refused imps and decants for himself he willingly took some to pass along to another person.

 

Moreover I recall not being overly excited about BPAL until some imps took hold on my skin and the idea of it fermented for a while.

 

However, what *should* I have done here? Any advice?

 

I wish I'd coerced/sweet-talked him into actually trying some on his SKIN which I think is the big teller, but I just couldn't get him excited about any of it. It's not that I really NEED him to like BPAL or anything. (Yes, I'll still be friends with you if you can't appreciate my "thing")

 

I'm just puzzled as to why it didn't take.

 

Plus I'm heading to visit cousins who like smellies and I don't want to repeat errors.

[elfmaiden]

LOL! Yeah I know the feeling about guys like that. Hee hee.

 

I bought a small bag of times to work, about 15-20 is and let the people at work go through them. I made there they were scents that I was okay with giving away (I have ALOT of them!) and just answered any questions.

 

I know I probably shouldn't have brought them to work incase of a spill, but eh. There's nothing else better to do at work, THEN NOT DO WORK. HA HA. Yeah I just didn't try to overwhelm 'cause I can get excited.

[ivyandpeony]

I think you hit the nail on the head - you should have made him try some things on his skin instead of letting him just sniff the imps and bottles. The scents can be so intense and overwhelming from the bottle, especially if you aren't accustomed to oils. Add to that the fact that he sniffed tons of them, and that could account for it all blurring into one big smell for him.

 

Maybe you should try this for your future encounters. Every time you get together with him, swipe each of his wrists with a new scent. Let him smell them wet, then don't let him smell them again for 30 minutes. I think he'll be amazed by the development of the scents.

 

Are there any commercial scents that he likes? You can google those to figure out what notes are in them, and let him try BPAL blends with those notes.

[oakmoss]

I suspect he's hopeless. He probably likes the idea of perfume, and when a woman smells like perfume, he thinks that's nice, but he's probably one of those people (many of whom are men!) who can't distinguish scents very well. It's a hunter/gatherer thing, I suspect.

 

(Waiting for Lycanthrope to throttle me. )

[Electra]

Some people just aren't into this sort of stuff. *shrug* Even if they think it smells good on other people, they're not going to go head over heels for it themselves. I have a lot of friends like that. Most of my friends, actually. They may compliment me on the way I smell, but that doesn't mean that they're interested in trying my perfumes, or in wearing perfume themselves.

 

Also, some perfume houses just do not work for certain people, no matter how hard they try. Case in point - yours truly and L'Artisan. I think they smell nice on other people. I like the descriptions. I love fragrance. Every single L'Artisan fragrance I've tested (and I've tried a lot of them) has been similarly horrific on me - and it's not for lack of trying to like them. I don't know what it is about L'Artisan that just doesn't work with me, but I can't wear it. Maybe something about BPAL doesn't jive with him. Or maybe, like I said above, he likes it when other people smell good but he's just not a perfume person himself.

 

Cheer up! It just means more for you .

[fiddledragon]

It may just not really be his thing. I'd also suggest, though, that if he still seems interested in trying them, that you get him to try one at a time and wait until they dry down on his skin. With a few exceptions, my boyfriend tends to think that all BPAL smells very similar before it dries -- that sort of "generic bpal imp box" smell. There is that certain edge to wet bpal...I don't know if it's just a very common note or a natural stabilizer or what, but it's all he smells at first and isn't something he's all that fond of. But dry, most oils just keep increasing in complexity.

[Dinerdulcinea]

all the same?

 

Maybe he doesn't have a good sniffer???

[styro]

I threw things as varried as Underpants, Annabel Lee and Yog Soggoth at him and they smell the same??!! [...] Then I thought that maybe they weren't perfumey enough so I tried the more perfumey scents and even the ROSE of Peacock Queen but nothing seemed to take.

 

At some point, (I think when I threw out Gingerbread Poppet) I called bullshit and he said well no, that they didn't quite smell the same BUT that they all were fundamentally similar, claiming to smell an alcohol base???

 

I agree with what's been said so far about scent fatigue and the importance of trying the oils on the skin. I've found that twelve scents on the skin at one time is a manageable number for someone new to BPAL (wrists, forearms, and elbows, on the inside and outside of both arms) and for "palate-clearing" purposes, it helps to keep some ground coffee beans on hand for them to sniff between trying different scents. Psychologically, it also seems helpful to mark the different swipe-spots on the skin with either numbers or the initials of the scents being tried: it lets people put a mental handle on the scents, e.g., "Oh yes, I'm really liking 3 better than 4."

 

In addition to that, it might help to try some more specifically "masculine" scents on your male friend: some of the ones that I find have gone over well with male (gamer) enablees so far have included Jolly Roger, Bluebeard, Black Forest, The Black Tower, Yew-Trees, Nuclear Winter, etc.

[darklorelei]

Um. Alcohol? Yeah, no. I'm hypersensitive to the alcohol that's used in commercial perfume, and there's nothing like that in BPAL scents, even in the boozy ones.

 

That said, there's definitely a "BPAL smell" to many scents, and that's what my imp box smells like.

 

I think going with more 'type' scents might be good, with fewer notes.

 

And he definitely needs to try them on HIS skin before he passes judgement. I recently went to a meet-n-sniff, and two girls had the exact same oil on, and it was drastically different on each of them.

 

But for boys: Villain, Severin, and Whitechapel are awesome. Very clean, without whatever makes some of the heavier scents smell slightly similar to one another.

[Mountaingrrl00]

I'd suggest sending him to the site and getting him interested in the literary descriptions of the scents. That might be a good approach with your cousins, too -- even if they like smellies, the descriptions will give them something to anchor their sense impressions once they sniff what you bring.

[GypsyRoseRed]

I've come across several other people like this (male friends), and they really can't distinguish between BPAL scents. C says they ALL smell like patchouli! All of them! It's crazy. I think it's a combination of a less than refined sense of smell, and being accustomed to regular perfumes.

[styro]

I'm curious as to which scents BPALers have found to be the most consistently successful for enabling.

 

I'm not talking about your personal favourite scents: I'm talking about the tried-and-true scents that you find yourself reaching for when you want to introduce someone to BPAL (someone who perhaps has no idea of their own scent preferences)--the scents that you've found to have the widest crossover appeal.

 

Over the past year, I've tried scents with a group of friends that includes a foody-scent-lover, a rosy/spicy-scent-lover and a clean/fresh-scent-lover. Often, the Lab's most popular scents (e.g. Snake Oil or Antique Lace) will appeal strongly to one of us, but not to the rest; only rarely has a scent appealed to all four (or even three out of four) of us. So far, Bordello leads the list of scents that I've found to have good crossover appeal; then Dublin, Empyreal Mist, (non-minty) Hamadryad, and Morocco; then Bewitched, Dorian, Dragon's Milk, Lampades, and Xiuhtecuhtli.

 

I've been keeping an eye out in the recs threads for scents described as best-bet enablers with wide appeal, but the only one I've seen mentioned as such is Prague.

 

So here's my question to experienced enablers: if I were trying to put together an "all-purpose enabling box" of a dozen BPAL general-catalogue imps--plus one LE scent just to introduce the concept of an LE--what would you recommend putting in it?

 

ETA: I'm specifying a dozen as a maximum because I've found that that's a good non-overwhelming number of scents for a newbie's first session--and I'm looking for GC scents because I'd like them to be as accessible as possible to my hypothetical newbie, should she find herself hooked.

 

(Note: I've been enabling both sexes lately, so I'd be interested to hear what you'd put in either a "men's enabling box," a "women's enabling box," or both.)

Edited August 11, 2006 by styro

[GypsyRoseRed]

Well, so far the scents I've used to enable friends/colleagues/family have been -

 

1. Antique Lace

2. Bordello

3. Xiuhtecuhtli

4. Jolly Roger

5. Dorian

6. Scheherezade

7. Al-Sharain

8. Morgause

9. Velvet

10. Obatala

11. Drink Me

12. Brisingamen / The Great Sword of War

 

Interestingly enough, I only really love six of those twelve blends, but overall, they cover quite a bit of ground in terms of scent type. I've noticed that some of my guy friends really liked Jolly Roger and Xiu for themselves, but not Dorian. Hmm. Don't know why that is. Anyway, that's my enabling kit. And I don't let anyone mess with my LE's, but if I really want to hook 'em, I bring out my sniffie of Shub.

[oakmoss]

In no particular order, these are the ones I remember people loving on first sniff:

 

Prague

Alice

Obatala

Midway (LE)

La Bella Donna Della Mia Mente

Gypsy Queen (LE)

Morgause

Edited August 11, 2006 by oakmoss