The Vampire Bride

[crebbsgirl]

Icy skin touched by a perfume of violet leaf, white tea, olibanum, elemi, myrrh, wormwood, crypt dust, and saffron with a dribble of blood red musk.

2012 Version:

The oil is fruit punch pink!

There's a pretty strong citrus component coming out of my skin. Combined with the violet leaf, this ends up going a little powdery/soapy on my skin. The red musk lends a fruity depth here, but it's not dominating the blend like red musk tends to on my skin. It's light and crisp on my skin, cleaner than I was expecting. Ultimately though, it's not really me.

[Alethia]

Thoughts before testing: I love violet leaf and white tea and the rest of the notes are pretty good so I'm hoping for a win!

 

Wet: Violet leaf and amazing! This is crisp and lovely.

 

Dry down: Ooh, violet leaf and tea, I love you! This actually smells very similar to The Unsteady Governess on my skin. I’m not getting a lot of, well, anything else.

 

Dry: Still just a beautiful blend of violet leaf and tea.

 

Final thoughts: I'm not disappointed by the lack of other notes in this. I love the way this smells (I've been hunting for a bottle of The Unsteady Governess), and I love that the oil is pink

 

Verdict: Keeping the decant, getting a bottle!

[jkfagtongpun]

Oh Vampire Bride... you make me very sad. This starts out with a citrus note and icy skin. I thought that from there it could go really good or really bad... it just goes kind of 'meh'.

 

When it dries I get powder and violet. I think tea notes go to powder on me. Damn.

[lookingglass]

Vampire Bride is both refreshing and a creamy skin scent. I find it captivating. There is a citrusy tea note at the beginning that I don't usually go for in a fragrance, but it is quickly backed up by the musk, making it blush pink, but not in overtly girly way. There is a delicious dusty sweetness on the drydown, and the blend between the florals and resins is seamless. In the end, it smells like...icy skin. I think of her as Snow White's evil, blond sister.

[PumpkinGuts]

At first, it's all white tea and violet leaf, crisp and ladylike. Then my skin does something terrible with it and morphs it into something unrecognizable -- something I can only describe as soapy florals and rank body odor (is that you, crypt dust?). Not for me.

[thekittenkat]

In the decant: White tea full of a bouquet of floral flavourings, but no sweet stuff any where.

 

Wet: Much as when sniffed, but with the musk slowly emerging.

 

The dry-down: The pretty pink oil melts into my skin as a delicate tea scent wrapped about with gentle florals and a little bit of red musk dribbled into the cup. A lovely and elegant scent for a lady.

 

ETA: only to say that this is for the 2012 version.

Edited November 26, 2012 by thekittenkat

[mymymai]

In the Imp (ITI): I'm so excited by the color that I'm abuzz with anticipation. It's clean, feminine, and icily floral. I can discern the violet leaf, white tea, myrrh (barely), saffron, and something that reminds me of frost.

 

Wet: The violet leaf and white tea are dominant on my skin, along with something that has a citrus edge. When I concentrate, I can get myrrh and olibanum along with that icy edge. It's gorgeous, and I'm more than a little tickled that the oil goes on bright pink.

 

Dry: It's faintly musky, and it's very much a red musk, white tones of myrrh, olibanum, violet, and white tea. This is just absolutely lovely and I am purchasing a bottle the second I tab out of this window.

[darkeyedfran]

I love the vampire bride! This is a scent I wear when i'm feeling pensive or lonely, it's a very strange scent but I adore it. This starts out very citrus on me and has a sharp presence on my skin. I am not great with describing scent but this stays sharp and has kind of an herbal quality to it. At the end the dust note really kicks in, this gets DRY, like....to the point where my throat gets dry. It reminds me of hungry vampires toward the end. This is a chilling beautiful scent, great job Beth and co.!

[Eemia]

2012 version (I had no idea there was any other version?):

 

Red musk isn't my favorite and it usually amps on my skin to a mind boggling extent but I never notice it in here. Relief. This is pretty and old fashioned in a charming way, very floral and powdery. It starts out as crisp, bright tea note with a soft greenness. There's an astringent quality fighting with a warm earthiness, and I could swear at one point I'm smelling lavender. The earthy portion is golden and skirts the edges of spicy but never settles around resinous instead. It's not sweet but it becomes more smoothly feminine and much more powdery as it wears.

 

Some aspects of the drydown remind me of Crypt Queen but mostly because of the similar dusky, gloomy, faded tones in both fragrances. It's not extremely powdery in the end, staying a couple steps away from baby powder thanks to an interesting cold muskiness that makes this a little perfumey.

 

It's not one of my favorites, it veers too much into the powder-floral genre on my skin, but I like the overall feeling of this and the imagery connected to it.

[Teaker]

Gosh this is pretty! I wasn't wild about the wet stage, it smelled too green. But dry I can pick out the delicate tea note with a touch of sweetness (the violet leaf?) and a thread of saffron. It seems light and unobtrusive. It seems like it could be in danger of going powdery though. I'll have to do a more extensive skin test and report back.

[sunlitgarden]

I was frimped a sniffie of this, with about a drop of oil in the bottom, enough for maybe one test. The year is not listed on the decant (which leads me to believe it's 2011, but I can't be sure.) I've had the decant for awhile so it's not the 2015 version. Preconceived notions: I sniffed the 2012 version at the Seattle Will Call and for some reason orange was the dominant note to me despite it not being listed. Violet is generally not good on me, but violet leaf seems to behave better than violet flower, and most other notes I'm neutral or positive on, so I think it's worth a try.

In the decant: Hmm..I think what I was parsing as "orange" back then was the white tea and the elemi. It's a tough scent to describe... kind of resinous but in a "light" way, rather than heavy/dark. White tea always adds a sort of fresh note into any blend to me, and the elemi is also lending almost a "sunny" quality to this blend (despite it being called Vampire Bride...)

On my skin, it's actually pretty sweet. It still does smell almost citrusy. Elemi is a note I've been learning about lately and I'm learning to recognize it; it's a resin that smells lemony. I'm mostly getting light, sweet white tea and elemi. There's something a little spicy in the background. It's actually a pretty nice scent but not something I would associate with vampires at all!

Edited October 6, 2015 by sunlitgarden

[PrinceofcatS]

This scent is very different on me than in any of the other reviews I've read!

 

My skin seems to only produce warm notes, no matter what you put on it, so while chilly scents and green ones and pure florals all call to me, none of them develops on my skin. It's like the perfume version of being, in fact, a vampire bride, and ending up with that which you love dead in your arms by the end of the night.

 

On me, this scent is soft, gentle incense wafting over green notes - like ivy creeping over a tomb that should house nothing with blood still running beneath the skin, yet somehow does. It's not icy at all on me, but it doesn't become warm either. I was surprised to find that on me this smells almost exactly like Morocco - a scent I had an imp of and used up and never got around to purchasing in its full size - but with an added, complex layer of soft greenery. This is, I suspect, the violet leaf and tea, but I wouldn't expect them to have this sort of scent. Nonetheless, I love it. It's delicate and pretty, yet otherworldly. I actually liked it much more than I expected to!

[Argentwolf]

2015 version:

 

At first application, there is white tea and violet leaf, very dry and almost spicy. As time goes on, there is something deeper to it, but also sweet. The myrrh, perhaps, mixed with the olibanum? And probably also the red musk. Hmm, actually yes, there's a bit of a...nutty tone, that's very faint? I wonder if this is the 'peanut butter' note that people talk about with red musk. And just a few inches away from my wrist, as I lift my hand, there is a nice, crisp blend of floral scents coming from my skin. I do like this as a floral. It seems to be fading already, though, so I don't have huge high hopes for its longevity. ...Yep, an hour later and it's already fading quite a bit. Ah well!

[Aviatrix]

Strangely, I am not getting any red musk on me, even though it tends to amp on me. I get a very faint blend of violet, spice, and dust. Quite pleasant, but ultimately too faint for my tastes.

[Cali]

(No idea what version, was generously frimped by a lovely forum member). Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
Light, icy, lots of white tea with the red musk being quite apparent. Powdery once applied to skin - less icy, a very comfortable, calming scent. Though it's not as cold, there's definately a chill, something unsettling... What a perfect blend.

 

EDIT: Five months later I have swapped for a bottle out of curiosity what it'd do on my skin these days; I swapped away my imp. After testing Crimson a couple of times it genuinely made me feel sick and I had to get it off my skin then and there. Was afraid it was either the red musk or saffron that made me feel that way.

Alas, I still had hope (with this being considerably less red), but whatever note it is, it's struck again. As much as I love this scent, I can't do it. My body just reacts to it horribly. Too bad... off to the swap pile it goes!

Edited September 10, 2016 by Cali

[cassiejaynebunk]

White tea and violet, and a little lemon pledge like soneone just cleaned the crypt... lol not what I was expecting.

[DiZZysTARdust]

In the bottle this is very green, and freshly on i am immediately reminded of witch bride. I was positive narcissus or something related was in this. This is an interesting blend, it's like a layer of sweet green floral with the powderiness detectable yet distinct beneath it. After a little time to dry the green floral element kind of sharpened, and i think it must be the eucalyptus and tea mixing with maybe the sweetness of the frankincense/myrrh? The eucalyptus def becomes distinct but does not dominate at all. More like, it makes itself known then melts gradually back into the blend. I don't get red musk at all, not the sweet fruity kind nor the dry bitter one. After this is well and truly dried it does get a touch drier, as if the green and powdery elements are combining, but it stays sweet overall. This is a very perfumey scent to me, i could totally see an undead bride walking down the aisle in this

Edited February 13, 2020 by DiZZysTARdust