Lady Una

[Suu4LC]

Honey musk, green tea leaf, blackberry leaf, vanilla bean, and fae spices.

Mmm! This smells soo good in the imp! Honey and vanilla, tea, bits of berry and spices! Soo delicious! Hmm..this is interesting. I can feel the honey getting a bit powdery on my skin, but while it had a sort of weirdness to it in the beginning, it is starting to meld really well to my skin. Oh, yes, very good! I don't know exactly how to describe it, but it is so good! Musky honey, vanilla and spices! I also love that blackberry leaf and green tea leaf! It is all just blended together SO well!

Yep, this gets added to the bottle list! Soo gorgeous! Sweet rich musky honey that is not saccharine sugary, with vanilla, spice, and the two leaves are all just blended to perfection!

[mejuxtaposed]

I have an odd relationship with honey. In Lady Una it turns powerdery. I was expecting a much more fruity scent. This is rather light. I love Bewtiched and was hoping it would smell something like that, but it's much different. More sweetness and powder. It turns into an odd soapy smell. Not rose soap like I usually get, but something reminds me of soap. I love blackberry leaf in The Jersey Devil, but in Lady Una I don't get it at all.

 

It doesn't smell like cat litter or pee which is a blessing. But it still doesn't smell like I thought. Not bad. Just much lighter than I anticipated.

[MisterShrapnel]

Lady Una is fantastic. It's so warm and springlike (or maybe summer mornings on the grass), perfect for an enchanting fairy lady.

I get un-crushed blackberries with a little sticky golden honey drizzled on them, and it's making my mouth water. It's not sickly-sweet at all (probably because it's blackberry leaf), more fresh and alive (and I think the tea leaf becomes more apparent after a while, making everything a little more dewy).

Ever so slightly musky, and the way the smooth vanilla bean plays a background to the fruit reminds me of Tamora a little bit.

I don't get a whole lot of the "fae spices," but I don't mind! They might come out some day, who knows.

As a scent, this is both temptingly delicious and still melds well with the skin as a scent. I'm so glad this worked out.

This might be a top ten, because I'm completely obsessed.

[obsidienne]

... This scent is such a beautiful surprise. I honestly was not even remotely sure what it would smell like because even though I love most of the notes in it, I don't love them all: namely, I often tend to shy away from berries and even more from tea scents. That said, I have no reservations about adoring those notes here.

 

In the bottle, Lady Una is a creamy honey-sweet blackberry warmed with vanilla, faint citrusy green tea, and the spices.

 

On the skin, the notes are all balanced: everything is in perfect harmony and no one note overpowers the others. I can smell at any given time the honey, musk, blackberry leaf, green tea, vanilla bean, and, well, whatever those spices are, they smell nice, too.

 

Usually I find green tea to be very sharp and cutting in perfume (The Dormouse first comes to mind), but here that note is welcome. It balances the sweetness of the honey & vanilla bean, and provides a faint citrus-sharpness that keeps the blend from being saccharine.

 

As drydown goes further the blackberry and tea seem to fade out a bit. My skin amps honey and it's trying to do that here, but it's not quite managing because of the aforementioned balance. The spices -- whatever they may be -- are a little more obvious now.

 

Lady Una clings close to the skin, and there is not much throw. It might be served better in my scent locket, because I like to really smell my perfume. It also fades fast, which is a disappointment; the best things usually do.

 

Utterly enchanting, elegant, and fey. This blend is a must-have.

 

Edited January 22, 2009 by obsidienne

[nekogrrl]

This is just a lovely scent.

 

In imp: Sharp greenery.

 

Wet on skin: definitely can smell the tea and berry leaves. Not much else.

 

Dry on skin: the honey and vanilla are mixing with the sharp leaves, making a gorgeous scent. Nothing is too obvious.

 

10 minutes later: very soft musk/vanilla, with a hint of green.

 

This deserves a bottle.

[asciident]

Wet: Super sweet fruit.

 

First on: Sigh, went straight to plastic sugar on my skin.

 

Dry: Still plastic.

[joseybird]

Lady Una smells exactly as it should smell: comforting, exotic, and fae.

 

On me, it smells like a blackberry scone with tea and milk, and yet (oddly enough) it doesn't smell explicitly gourmand (by that I mean that it doesn't smell like I have the aformentioned foods smeared all over me ). It may be the touch of musk, which is usually helpful in helping a scent blend in with my skin chemistry.

 

I would recommend this oil for those who love foody scents but can't wear them or can't bear to smell like actual food.

 

Another note: The honey musk note is completely different from normal BPAL honey notes. I can't wear BPAL's honey, but I can certainly wear Lady Una

[Ravenclaw79]

At first, I was hesitant... oh, honey, another honey blend, ho-hum. But I tried it anyway, and it lured me in with promises of berries, blackberries, lovely Glasgow-esque blackberries. And hours later, I've not been disappointed, though the scent isn't quite what it was ... it's settled into a nice blackberry and musk sort of scent, with a slightly honeyed tinge. Lovely.

[WidgetAlley]

Bottle: I have never had trouble with honey. I have never had trouble with green tea. I have never had trouble with blackberry. I have never smelled the Cat Pee Note, Destroyer of Worlds. And yet, when I open this, it smells like ammonia, cat pee, and unwashed body funk. It's so stomach-churning to my nose I'm having difficulty making myself test it.

 

Wet: I only put the tiniest bit on, as you can imagine. I can smell a pleasant vanilla trying to come through, but it is completely eaten up by the horrible, horrible rotting, cloying, sickly-sweetness. I am going to give this as long as I can to dry but this is, seriously, a total disaster on my skin. Oh God. It's STRONG, too. It would be. Yeah. I am not going to make it to the drydown, this is too strong and it's making me queasy. Dish soap ahoy! I can tell there is a really nice scent under all this somewhere, pretty and foody without being overwhelming, but for me it's a trainwreck.

 

Lady Una on my skin? Smells like a rotting body dipped in honey-- strong putrid sweetness, chemicals and rot.

[awesomeoverlord]

Bottle: Sweet with a sharp green edge and a slight fruityness, which I'm guessing is the blackberry leaf.

 

Wet: The sharpness recedes and the berries come out a bit more -- still green though -- definitely blackberry leaves rather than the fruits themselves, for which I'm rather grateful since the lab's berry notes tend to turn into chewable vitamins on my skin. It's all floating on a beautifully soft background of the lightest sweet honey, which, again, is surprising because honey usually turns into cloying clouds of death on me. Maybe there's some magic at work here after all. The green tea peeks its head at this stage but then disappears, never to be heard from again.

 

Dry: The blackberry leaves lose their greenness and mellow out into a very soft berry-like scent that kind of just melts into the general background of beautiful vanilla sweetness. No fae spices, but that's ok. This is honeyed skin smeared with fresh blackberry juice!

 

Overall, I really like it, though I don't know that I'm flabbergasted enough to get a whole bottle -- I'm trying to remain conservative with my bottle purchases and keep it to things I'll actually wear all the time. Then again, this is kind of what I was hoping Bewitched would be and the fact that I seem to have found a berry that will work on me is beyond amazing...

[birdiefu]

According to the notes listed, this should be ultimate love for me, so I ordered a bottle unsniffed.

 

When I first got my order and opened the bottle for a sniff, it was lovely! Smooth, creamy vanilla with sweet honey love, and it seemed to be balanced with some musk and spice. Then I put the bottle away in my BPAL walk-in closet to try later.

 

Days later, I look for a new BPAL to sample and I greedily open Lady Una and slap her on, knowing that I should really like this one. Then as the scent wafts from my hands, I suddenly think, "Peach!? This can't have peach in it - I would never order a peach scent!". Because I know peach to be my nemesis, the cat pee impersonator. So, I jump on here to read reviews and see that many others have that same cat-pee reaction. Alas, I do not smell blackberries, honey, vanilla, or anything else listed. I smell the sticky cloyingly sweet peach with sharp and sour edges, that for some odd reason smells just like cat pee to me.

 

Brings me back to my first realization that peaches=cat pee years ago. I was working in a vet clinic and chatting with the vet in his office. I swore I smelled cat pee and wondered if a cat had snuck in from a room or treatment area and left a pee-pee spot. I began to sniff around the room and the scent seemed to be near the vet's desk. As he humorously watched me seek out this "pee", he picked up from his desk and took a swig out of his 1.5L bottle of peach tea. Then I realized that he was drinking the cause of the offending odor. This is what Lady Una smells like on me, and it makes me very sad.

 

I think what scares me the most out of Lady Una is that if she does not contain a hidden peach note, then there is something else that turns into cat pee on me (despite no other non-peach BPAL doing so), and I have to watch what I order!

 

Since I like the in-the-bottle scent, perhaps I will try Lady Una in a scent locket later.

[magikalbrownies]

this one is right up there with my giant vulva of great honey scents. in the bottle, honey blackberry and vanilla goodness. applied: it just gets warmer and warmer as it dries on my skin. i smell the vanilla and the blackberry. this is a seriously lovely scent and im so glad i swapped my milk moon 07 for it.

 

overall: thank goodness i have a bottle of this stuff coming.

 

 

[donnatron]

Bottle: This is one of those scents that is just completely unlike anything else I've ever smelled. In the bottle I get a strange, musky honey with a sharp herbal/berry edge. It's unusual and definitely smells... magical.

 

Wet: It remains pretty true to the bottle scent for about ten minutes of the drydown. Then I get a soft hint of vanilla bean warming to my skin.

 

Dry: Yeah. This is completely unlike anything else in the BPAL ouevre. It's pretty awesome. Sweet honey and true vanilla bean. Sharp/sweet from the black berry leaf. Just a generally sexy, golden scent. Unusual. Hard to describe. Definitely one of those scents that needs to be experienced to truly understand.

 

Throw: Minimal. It's gorgeous but even with intense slathering I have to reapply a few hours later.

 

Overall: It hasn't shot to the top of my list but there's something very appealing about Lady Una. Will definitely use up this bottle at least.

[AnArtfuldodger]

Wet: On me, this has the same base-scent as Monsterbait: Closet does on me, of all things. It's a bit heady, but the honey comes into play as well, making it heady and sweeter.

 

On the drydown: The vanilla kicks in (my skin loves vanilla), but I'm still getting the base from Closet, but unlike Closet (which is love) it's less sweet now, and I'm not sure if I like it. :/ It's quite strange.

 

After three hours: I'm getting a faint scent of a plain french vanilla candle, the Closet base-scent seems to have worn off.

 

I don't ~~love~~ it (I wish the fruitiness others have mentioned came out for me...I'm not getting any though)....but I don't dislike it either. Hmmmmmm. I may have to test this a couple more times. Huh.

 

Like.......but it doesn't have any real *kick* to it on me.

[ephemera]

This may actually be my summer scent. I tried this one a whim because tea and green scents don't usually work, but I thought the honey musk might mellow it. It absolutely does. This smells like a hot summer evening, with the slight breeze that moves heavy air, sluggish with the scent of a thousand flowers in the dark. The vanilla and the honey musk keep this from turning sharp on my skin, and the blackberry leaf, green tea leaf and fae spices help to keep this summery. This may be a bottle scent!

[TheOneTheyCallLuna]

This is delightful. It is...wow, I mean I thought I was going to like it a lot, but it has exceeded my expectations. It has managed to raise the bar for all BPAL to a higher level of excellency, because I can't remember the last time I was this utterly blown away by everything about a blend. There is seemingly nothing wrong with this blend, and everything about it is oh-so-right.

 

To begin, it has throw for days and never seems to quit. It is sweet but not overly so...the delicious honey note is tempered by the other notes in the blend. The berry is juicy and ripe without dominating. The green notes are present without making me feel like I smell like I've just finished rolling around on the ground. The vanilla is fresh and organic smelling without even the slightest tendency towards going plastic or cloying.

 

This smells like the most magnificently magical warm summer night feels. I'm hooked!

[Suusje]

After testing Lady Una it immediately became a favorite. It's simply gorgeous! In the bottle it just smells odd. It sort of tickles my nose and not in a good way. On the skin the oddness disappears very quickly and I'm left with a soft, smooth, creamy, slighty fruity and gorgeous scent. It's such a soft scent that I just slathered myself in it and it's lasting for hours. I applied it around 7 am and now it's almost 7 pm and I can still smell it. I can only smell the honey now but it's just so pretty. I think I"m in love

[thelaurenator]

TO. DIE. FOR. This scent is fantabulous. I get the honey musk loud and clear, and as well as the vanilla, green tea leaf and a blackberry note. This is a winner!

[ShadowsDance]

I can only smell honey from the imp.

On my skin it's honey, and fruity green tea. There's something about the green tea note that I'm not sure I like.. my skin seems to be amping it in a strange way. :/

[SheCreature]

I can't make out any individual notes in this, it's all too well blended into a delicious cloud of absolute perfection. It's a bit vanilla-ry, kind of warm but in a subtle way and still lovely in hot weather.

This is probably my favourite bpal ever.

[Leopard403]

This is very smokey to my nose, which I blame on the musk and the spices, with a very creamy true vanilla bottom note. No real honey or blackberry to this sniffer, which is sad because I bet for those who smell those notes this is a really amazing blend!

[revinn]

Lady Una is my favorite character in Stardust, and even though I generally dislike honey, I thought I'd give this a try because it sounded so magical.

 

Intial Smell from Bottle: Honey, but it's not the same dry, powdery honey from O that I disliked. This is sultry, sweet honey. Very promising.

 

Wet: I guess I'm smelling honey musk? It's so nice, light and fae but still sensual. I don't smell any blackberry or green tea leaf yet, but the vanilla is creeping in. It smells like a real vanilla bean.

 

Dry: There's the blackberry! Oh, I'm so glad it doesn't turn to cat pee on me like it did on some other reviewers. It's dancing just over the honey musk and vanilla, with just a touch of something indescribable. It's so evocative of the character, playful and light, with a sensual side. I love this, and I think my faith in honey has been renewed.

 

Out of 10: 9

[odalisque]

In the imp: strawberries and honey. Oh, no, is this going to be a berry fail? BPAL berries always seem to end up being either dryer sheets or fakey candle scents on my skin. But I can smell the musk too, yay! And ... something like almonds?

 

On skin: Sweet and heady with no berries of doom. Whew. There's this really foody almond smell. What's it remind me of? Oh yeah, Eat Me! Only it doesn't make me want to spew! So that's good. I'm going to guess it's the vanilla bean and fae spices. Something the slightest bit like wine -- blackberries maybe? Although the listed notes don't include blackberries, only blackberry leaf. And there's something very fresh and almost camphoraceous, but not quite -- must be the green tea leaf.

 

It dries to this incredibly smooth, plush musky-creamy smell, with the honey musk, vanilla and green tea very much in evidence. The leaf scents are very fresh, like a breath of breeze. I have a hard time, personally, with the green tea, but it's really appropriate in this blend. It's a little playful, a little different and wild, a little, dare I say it, fey. I really dig that honey musk, but not so much the fae spices, so I don't know if it's for me, but it's a really delightful representation of the theme.

 

ETA 4/2010: Okay, so one year later I've spent a lot of quality time with a nicely aged bottle of Lady Una and I can tell you the aging makes all the difference in the world. The strange buttery note ("buttery cat pee" is it exactly) ages out, hooray! I've come to like the green tea a lot, and it takes the honey and vanilla and makes the blend a really cool fresh one. It is my staple for summer, by far the "coolest" scent I own (I am not into mint or citrus), sexy, light and gorgeous.

Edited April 24, 2010 by odalisque

[BuxomM]

Wet it smells like sweet blackberries (it's slightly soapy and reminds me of a candle). As it dries the green tea and honey musk come out. It's sweet fruity slightly green and floral. I was frimped this and didn't think I'd like it but I love it!

Edited June 13, 2009 by BuxomM

[annanwater]

When I first put this on, it smelled rather like a Christmas tree, which did not bode well. However, as it dried down the warm honey musk came out, and mixed with something that smelled like jasmine, but I know was not. Sadly did not get either blackberry or vanilla, but it's still a lovely scent, and I will be wearing it often.