Kubla Khan

[Diva Urd]

Through sunlit caves of ice, roses unfurl amidst dancing waves of serpentine opium smoke and amber tobacco, golden sandalwood, champaca, tea leaf, sugared lily, ginger, rich hay absolute, leather, dark vanilla, mandarin, peru balsam, and Moroccan jasmine.

Vial: An exotic men's cologne, a few floral notes, a hint of fruit and an underlying freshness.
On: First on, it smells of opium, with a slight edge of ginger, slight fruitiness of mandarin and creaminess of vanilla, and mixed florals softening the mixture. Complex and quite interesting, and for once, the roses aren't going crazy on me. It doesn't seem to morph much upon drydown - the vanilla fades a bit, and the mandarin gets a bit stronger, but the florals and the opium keeps the scent just this side of becoming a creamsicle. I enjoy this.
Later: A strange note has surfaced - smells wet and a bit tinny... like wet hay. Dayum. This is interesting, and although I'm not all that fond of this stage, its strangeness warrants further testing. I don't know yet if I want more, though. Edited December 7, 2009 by Shollin

[aquazoo]

There are some pretty elements, but overall no notes stand out. A bit powdery.

 

[HamletsKeeper]

Bottle Sniff Butterscotch-menthol cough drops.

 

Wet Butter-menthol cough syrup. Oh here comes the tea and leather to make it slightly cologney.

 

Drydown Leather and what must be opium smoke take over coming to the fore. No more cough drops. This scent is disappearing into my skin and what I can smell isn't terribly exciting. Kind of like leather goods sitting next to a BBQ. The ginger did it's brief antiseptic thing on me, so no I've got sterile leather. The exotic elements of this scent just don't come alive on my skin at all I applied a little more and now it smells like freshly polished leather shoes.

 

Big no for me....

 

I will just say though that I mixed this up into a spray for my mother and sprayed it into the air. Now I get a wonderful sweet exotic oriental scent. What I wanted to smell the first time around. I smell the rich dark vanilla & peru balsam heavily touched with spices and the tiniest amount of smokey leather. Obviously it doesn't become that on my skin though. If you can pull off these notes you should try this scent as I think it would be heaven.

Edited October 2, 2009 by HamletsKeeper

[ouch!]

Oh I really wanted to like this but it's going all wonky on me. The notes just sound amazing. I love Champaca.

 

I'm getting a very powdery Opium scent. Smells like 20 year old spoiled perfume.

 

 

Sorry Kubla Khan, my chemistry doesn't like you!

 

 

[lilwhiterabbit]

In the bottle this smells wonderful--spicy and exotic and complex. On me, however, it just disappears completely, no matter how heavily I slather it on. It smelled like strong peppermint for about a minute after application and then nothing. My boyfriend says he can smell faint spice, but I guess my nose isn't as sensitive.

 

Since it's supposed to be a more masculine blend, we're going to try it on him and see if he's more successful.

 

**EDIT**

It's a tiny bit stronger on him, but still very faint to me. I'm afraid I'm going to have to give this one a pass.

Edited February 13, 2010 by lilwhiterabbit

[SophieCedar]

This is my new favorite!!!!! Melodic, lovely, sensual, refined, and dirty dirty dirty.

 

There's so many notes in this. it's amazing, reading the list, that I can smell each & all work together so well! Smoky, spicy, complex, sexy. This is all the positive things that everyone mentioned about it. Plus my sweetheart loves it!

[sunlitgarden]

Kubla Khan

 

I don't like smoky scents, but I thought I would give it a fair chance. It is a complex scent and I can see how many people would like it. It's too smoky and masculine for me, though. It does have a sort of freshness that I wasn't expecting (jasmine and maybe something else.)

 

Edit: At the end of the day, the vanilla smells rich and sweet, very nice. Unfortunately, I still don't really care for most of the notes.

 

Swap pile for this one.

Edited April 28, 2010 by sunlitgarden

[raisin]

This is mostly a smoky leather vanilla on me... remarkably similar to Bow & Crown of Conquest. It's less sweet, more smoky, and doesn't seem to last as long, but same general vibe.

 

I really, really like it. I'm tempted to pick up a bottle, but I'm not sure I could justify having both this and Bow & Crown when there are so many other, different scents I'm interested in. Still, though, I will enjoy having this imp around.

[Venneh]

In the imp, I'm getting mainly the ginger and tea and jasmine (my friend compared it to a Kamikaze that's been out in the sun too long, I wouldn't know). On my skin, it's mainly the tea/ginger/jasmine combo, kinda piercing, we'll see what happens. Has the BPAL snow note and that with the tea/ginger/jasmine combo does not work well on me, passing it on.

Edited May 18, 2010 by Venneh

[meredevachon]

I've tried coming up with a review for this one for a long time now, but greedily clutching the 5mL to my chest isn't very helpful in describing how it smells.

 

Once upon a time, a friend on LJ mentioned having gotten some new BPAL imps. Okay, more she glee-ed over getting them. I'd been circling around the idea of trying Kubla Khan, but with so many notes and some I wasn't sure about on me, I'd been hesitant to order it, so when she said it was one she'd gotten, I asked her to let me know what she thought of it, etc. A few days later, when she tried it and discovered it didn't work for her, she kindly passed it on to me, as any good enabler would do.

 

And on me, it was heaven. I immediately knew I needed a bottle.

 

In the bottle it's sweet and floral, more of both than I like. But once it hits my skin, it's perfect. Just don't ask me for any notes, because it's too smoothly blended for me to pick them out. It's lush and languid. If a purr had a smell, this might be it. My second favorite scent, surpassed only by Mouse's Long and Sad Tale.

[Dharklady]

This one definitely surprised me. It has a lot of notes and different notes seem to be popping depending on chemistry which always tends to make me leery. I don't think I would have tried this on my own, so I'm grateful that someone frimped it to me and I decided to try it on before tossing it in the swap pile!

 

Wet is smells like a sweet and sugary floral over aquatics, but it's a quick morpher and as it dries down and warms up the vanilla, a touch of leather, and the hint of balsam emerges. The aquatics fade but the sweetness doesn’t leaving me with a heavy vanilla/leather blend that has depth and complexity from the hints of other notes that burble along the edges. Like one of the previous posters said, it feels similar to Bow and Crown of Conquest, I may need to test em out against each other to see which I like more!

[ami226]

On the skin: Kind of sweet. Opium and floral? Kind of hard to tell. I can barely smell it... Starting to smell a bit like sweet tarts and floral.

 

-ETA- The ultra dry down phase is actually kinda nice. More vanillaish. I think I might keep this one around a bit longer to test again...

 

I guess this one really isn't for me. It has little throw, and what I can smell doesn't wow me....

Edited July 15, 2010 by Catseyes

[milo]

Sweet resins and leather to start with, then I get a touch of fresh hay, vanilla and musky resins. I really like this and may upgrade to a bottle, but will certainly enjoy my imp in the meantime.

[mistressfizz]

Sniff: Refreshing and spicy, hints of floral/grass.

 

Wet: Blooms into smoky opium and amber. She could be cousin to my beloved Red Lantern, less creamy, and carrying undertones of wood and leather. There's also an herbal, cologne sharpness which I attribute to the ginger and sandalwood. Very heady and exotic, with a shadowy side, the champaca and tobacco certainly give it a darker tinge. I'm liking this very much!

 

Dry: The smokiness fades and I'm glad to say the sharpness is gone as well. I'm left with a rich, musky vanilla. Not sweet or bakery vanilla, but more like a fresh bean flavor. There's hints of spice and flowers, and just a smidge of darkness lurking underneath.

 

I'm finding that vanilla is such a complex note. Sometimes it's just too sugary for me, but then in blends like this, it plays extremely well on my skin.

[a_llb]

In vial: Faintly smoky & minty, with some vanilla.

Wet: I'm not sure where the mint is coming from- perhaps that's the ice? Or the basalm/mandarin combo maybe. It smells cool & fresh, and I am getting a twinge of jasmine with it.

Dry: Vanilla emanantes through the smokiness, much sweeter than I expected. Now that the mint has burned off it reminds me of Defututa- & looking at the descriptions, they share a lot of notes: smoky vanilla, jasmine, sandalwood, champaca. After a short time, the leather, tea leaf and ginger in Kubla Khan spice it up, adding an air of exotic intrigue and mystery. The balsam and mandarin are now recognizable as themselves, sharply resinous & tangy, a stunning counterpoint to the hazy sweetness of the smoky woods & vanilla.

 

Verdict: I was confused at first with all the morphing going on, I had no idea what to expect! In the end it reminded me of a deeper, cooler, more complex and slightly masculine version of Defututa, which I have a bottle of already. If I didn't, Kubla Khan would be an immediate purchase! (Gotta have some semblance of self-control)

 

I've ultimately decided this blend reminds me on of my favorite movies; Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow- aviator leather-clad retro steampunk adventures in the exotic Orient. Maybe I need it after all...

[Honey]

Wow, complex scent indeed!

 

 

Imp: I smell sweet and spicy. Incense, sandalwood, champaca, tea, ginger, vanilla and something floral (jasmine I think). There is something, I don't know.. sharp and sour in there as well. Yeah, yeah.. the infamous gherkin appears.

 

Wet: Sour-sweet. Gherkin. Only faintly spicy.

 

Dry: Tobacco, vanilla and spices. Oh, hi, leather. Something floral that smells a bit too sour to my nose. Wow, now it gets smokey once it has dried down completely. Like bacon without bacon. Yeah, mostly smokey leather with tobacco and vanilla. Rich, savory and very manly, too.

Edited July 18, 2011 by Honey

[yakiguri]

Wet: Plastic and something golden yet cool, like the sun during a clear but cold day. Come on leather, stop with the plastic, you're normally GREAT on me, don't ruin this like you ruined VILF...

 

Dry: The plastic note luckily tones down and morphs into a golden, spicey, smokey leather with vanilla peeking out every once in a while. This is what I wanted Liz to be. I like.

 

Later: The spice and vanilla slip out more and more, until finally the scent itself disappears into nothing. This was all within ONE hour. Brilliant while it lasted, but I can't see myself buying a bottle of something that's gone so quickly.

EDIT: Having left my imp alone now for several months, I re-tried Kubla Khan and WHOA. O_O I'm learning quickly that while BPAL's leather note can be plasticky when fresh, give it a few months to marinate and it turns it sexy, spicy awesomeness. What I experienced in the dry phase only briefly is now deeper and much more pervasive. However, I'll still refrain from a bottle as KK's close enough to VILF on my skin, but not as complex.

Edited April 19, 2012 by thatbrownelf

[perzephone]

I like this scent. It is extremely complex, and no one note stands out above the rest, but it's a nice, well-balanced perfume.

 

I do pick up hints of leather and tobacco, kind of like one would expect a reading room in an old-timey men's club to smell. Or maybe the after-party at a jockey club. I work in a smoky, badly ventilated casino and I'm a non-smoker, so one might expect me to not like the smell of tobacco, but I do. At least fresh tobacco, cigars, pipe tobacco, that kind of thing, and Kubla Khan has it in spades, but it blends in with the rest of the perfume scent.

 

This is where my lack of sniffing experience leaves me in the dark. I have no idea what champaca should smell like, or lily. Jasmine smells like honeysuckle, and has a dry green-tea like tone that I can pick out, but I honestly don't know for sure what the other scents are in Kubla. It is just a nice, mature, professional perfume, one I could imagine on an established business woman. It's feminine, but not overtly sexual or tartly playful, and it doesn't have that powdery 'old lady perfume' flavor.

 

My husband hates this kind of perfume, and that's all I heard from him from about 8pm til about 3am, which was 4 hours after I had been out of the house & at work. I probably accidentally rubbed some off of my arms onto the dog - and she likes to lay next to him on the couch. Plus whatever came off on my non-work clothes that I left draped over my chair. I thought it was funny how it lingered, until about 4am when I started to taste the perfume. Then I got a headache, my sinuses swelled up, my eyes started itching, and I found myself in the midst of a horrible allergy attack. When I got home from work, the first thing I did was take a shower, but I could still taste the perfume, and it left a lingering after-smell of skunky musk, which was tolerable. I'm surprised I didn't get a rash because that's what usually happens when I have a bad reaction to a topical, be it lotion, perfume or whatever. I'd wear it again in a heartbeat, but unfortunately, I don't think I can.

[melrose]

Wow, after seeing the list of ingredients, it's no wonder I was at a loss for words when I sniffed it in the imp, and first on, wet. I wouldn't even begin to be able to guess a category.

 

Near drydown: sweet, plasticky, smoky, but the blend of those three is better than I expected.

 

Far drydown: no such animal. It disappeared quickly.

[Teaotter]

Wet: Smoky sweet opium.

 

Drydown: the leather peeks out from behind the opium a bit.

 

Dry: This reminds me of a sweeter version of Boadicea, honestly. There's that smoky vanilla/ginger/leather thing going on, along with a very feminine musk. This one is sweeter, with the opium floating over the top and bringing more vanilla with it.

 

Verdict: Boadicea is one of my top three perfumes ever, so you can bet I'm getting a bottle of this!

 

ETA: I should note that both rose and jasmine are usually scent-killers for me, since they amp and make everything smell like floral soap. Not here! Which was a lovely (and really rare) surprise.

Edited September 24, 2011 by TeaOtter

[Marie_Nightingale]

The description of this scent sounded so sexy and I was ridiculously excited to try it on. It smelled like plastic and cough syrup the moment I put it touched my skin. I don’t get any vanilla at all and the leather (which is one of my favorite scents) turned weirdly sour. So very sad. I think this one’s going to the sale pile.

[absalem]

Okay, so my experiences with Kubla Khan have been kinda varied. I'll tell you why first of all, then I'll dissect the scent as best as I am able. Kubla Khan was one of the first imps I ever bought from the lab. When I first tried it on I was recovering from a cold, so I could barely smell as it was. . . it was kind of a bright, ozone-y, citrus-y, sweet incense. It disappeared fairly fast (my skin absorbs perfume, but it was even faster then usual) and I remember thinking it was pretty - but not the amazing show stopper I'd expected. A month or two later, someone frimped me an (presumably) aged imp in a swap. DEAR LORD. I had rediscovered Kubla Khan, and it was AMAZING. Aged Kubla Khan is a richer scent, with the vanilla, opium, and incense more prominent. The lasting power was also astounding. It was everything I wanted and more.

 

I'd also like to mention that by the time I realized I LOOOVED aged Kubla Khan, my comparatively fresher imp had aged enough to last longer. Kubla Khan of all ages is now one of my top ten scents.

 

Wet: It smells....strange. I agree with everyone who says this is a very well-blended scent. I detect a kind of fizziness - almost like soda - that I suspect is coming from the mandarin, ginger, tea, and maybe even opium and the woods coming together. The smell is almost ozone-ish at the beginning, which could be because of the icy-caves, or I could be mistaking something else for ozone. Sweet. Maybe a spot of the incense and leather? Somehow warm despite the fizzy-ozone.

 

Dry-down: It seems to slowly start to introduce vanilla and the incense strengthens. The bright fizzy ozone aspect softens, but remains present. With my fresh imp, I noticed the scent pretty much disappear at this point, although if I huffed at my skin there was still the lingering fizzy-incense. With my aged imp, the scent seemed to pick up speed around this point and gain some throw.

 

Dry: There was now something deeper (the woods?), rounding out the scent. It tends to warm up further around this point, although it never truly loses it's gingery fizz. I never really get any floral from this. If I smell any floral, they are so well blended I can't pick them out.

 

Sweet incense, vanilla, leather, mandarin, ginger, and guh. This scent is so good. Good throw, good longevity. It seems too sweet for a guy on me, but I also turn things sugary, so I agree that this would be a great unisex scent. Classy, unique, hinting at wild insanity beneath a shell of opulence. But, er, that could just be my interpretation. If you find yourself not liking Kubla Khan, give it a couple monthes. It may surprise you.

 

5/5 for aged, 4/5 for fresh.

Edited January 17, 2012 by absalem

[ReallyZeb]

I ought to love this from the notes but it is the vilest thing I have ever smelt that was actually for sale - it's even displaced Delousing Powder as my most hated scent.

 

All I get from it, wet or dry, is what I remember strong carbolic soap smelling of, and it turns my stomach so much I actually had to wash it off I think it's the leather that does this, as it reminds me a little of Highwayman which I also didn't like.

[Tiada]

Reading the description, I really hoped for LOVE with this. I don't dislike it, but I'm not in love by any means.

 

IMP: smokey, leather, and JASMINE (damn it. Jasmine can so quickly be a kiss of death for me, and this one smells like it right off the bat...)

 

WET: Well, it's JASMINE. I do smell the sandalwood, and a hint of the smoke, but it's mostly choking me out with jasmine. Not a single hint so far of the scents I wanted to show: vanilla, tea, ginger, or any fruit at all.

 

DRY: The vanilla makes an appearance, but not the strong runner. Leather sticks around that I smelled in the imp, and I do get amber and a hint of the ginger now, and thankfully the jasmine seems to have faded into a tolerable floral breath. Not bad!

 

I'd put it as a 3/5.

[stellamaris]

Am I wrong to like this so much? Is it weird? This does not smell like men's cologne to me, it smells like heaven. Despite the list of ingredients, this smells super fresh and clean to me, and so salty! It's like sea air without the vile smell of whatever "aquatics" are, I hate those. This seems like the perfect everyday scent, that no one would hate or go ew is that patchouli? (don't worry it never stops me), but truly something that I could wear anywhere. This is really good, I am going to pick up a BB of KK. Love. Even the leather is good in this, this is purely all good.

Edited June 14, 2012 by stellamaris