Bayou

[FebruaryOwen]

A lazy, warm deep green scent with a thick aquatic undertone: Spanish moss, evergreen and cypress with watery blue-green notes and an eddy of hothouse flowers and swamp blooms.

 

This is an imp from 2015.  I think I was excited to try it because of the hothouse flowers, plus thematically I love swamps and bogs and bayous.  

In bottle: very floral and watery

On skin: still really floral, reminds me of a greenhouse and water

After a few hours: definitely still smells greenhouse-y, which is nice.

Overall it's not my favorite but I don't hate it.  I'll keep the imp and maybe someday consider a full bottle.

[Greenwoodtree]

It started out a calm herbal that I could love, but quickly my skin turned up the volume on the flowers. UGH

[Rane.]

Have an imp of this. It is very watery, green with florals floating on top so gently. Close to Zombi in it's greeny leafy goodness. I get impressions of drifting on a raft down a lush swamp.

[Miyabi]

Tried out an aged imp this morning. Wet on skin I get a salty edge, but mainly indolic florals. It does thankfully dry down into what I think is a very strong tuberose. Lovely! But not for me, and I'm missing the aquatic notes in here. 

[Freikugel]

I'm having a hard time sleeping tonight, so I'll write a melodramatic (but not untrue) review of a frimp I received years ago. Straight out of the little vial, it was, and still is, my one true scent enemy, the Adversary of my BPAL collection: Bayou. Once my nemesis makes contact with my skin, it becomes an inescapable aberration not unlike the Hounds of Tindalos from the Cthulhu mythos. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around how impossibly bad this perfume smells on me. It lost none of its power after all this time.

 

It's difficult to describe it even after reading the listed notes. Salty, swampy, maybe even moldy, like a generic men's body wash left in a forgotten corner of a condemned gym. Which among the individual elements could be the culprit? I have very bad luck with foresty or herbal perfumes like Burial,  Baba Yaga, Crossroads, Black Forest, and Yggdrasil, so maybe it's the cypress or evergreen. I suspect the Spanish moss may be involved as well, but I have no basis for that belief- I'm just dubious of it because I associate it with Bayou. Not sure what "swamp blooms" smell like, but if the note is similar to what's in Machu Picchu, it's probably not that. Unless jasmine is involved, in which case it almost certainly is. This perfume also does not wash off even after vigorous scrubbing. It fades when it feels like it after a minimum of six hours. The only other scents from BPAL that come close to Bayou's staying power, for me, are 51 and Snake Oil.

 

I don't hate aquatics outright - I really like Sea of Glass and Lightning, and while Lyonesse is salty, buttery, and overall confusing on me, it isn't terrible. This is an altogether different beast! It could be that this scent just happens to be the perfect storm of my personal death notes all combined into one. I keep the imp of Bayou around to glance at nervously when I'm deciding on new imps or bottles to buy. It acts as a cross-reference red flag for any concoction sharing similar notes. As a cautionary tale... [insert thunderclap SFX]

[ShadowEtienne]

In the Bottle: Swamp blooms with background trees, I'm tentatively hopeful, not too much moss in the bottle which was making me uncertain from the description

 

Wet on the skin: Little bit more bitter than in the bottle, but definitely getting those swamp blooms that I was looking for, some aquatic notes as promised, the trees have been eaten by the flowers

 

On drydown: Bayou has gone a very strange direction on me... It's not very strong, but I think that it's the combination of slightly swampy aquatics and moss is making my brain go: meat. It has some notes I really like! These "swamp blooms" are really cool, and the hints of trees are great! But I don't think I want to smell like meat. (This imp was rehomed to a friend.)

[Weirdgirlpilled]

WOOF I don't think this is my thing  On me, this is so powdery and floral and weiiiirdddd! no wood no delicious moss, just straight up funeral home grandma. Which is great, but not the scent I was expecting, nor the scent I can see myself reaching for often. I am so so sad my skin chemistry bungled this one all up

[Jarek]

In the bottle and wet on me, and for roughly an hour after application, there was this kind of sweet stinky scent going on that was admittedly off-putting. Though not bad enough for me to wash it off. I'm not sure if it was the florals or the evergreens or what.

 

About an hour afterwards and for the rest of the time the "stinky" went away and what's left behind is a lovely aquatic with some florals and maybe a bit of trees. Really, really liked it at this stage. Not so sure it's worth waiting an hour to get to it though. Sad because I picked this out to try and I really like aquatics.