Iulia, L'Artiste du Diable

[Marina Napoli]

White tea, sugar cane, orange blossom, rockrose, lemon balm, white mint, and honey.

This is my first experience with the Carnaval, and I am so incredibly happy I tried it out, because I'm definitely going to be ordering more scents from it! Iulia is so beautiful!

In the bottle: The strongest scents I'm getting here are the mint, orange blossom, and tea, with a slightly sweet base. The sweet scent smells more like honey than the sugar to me. It's an extremely feminine perfume.

 

Wet on skin: Orange blossom, tea, and mint, with very distinct honey scent. Just freaking gorgeous! The sugar starts to come through a bit. The throw is exactly what I want, maybe a few feet but still pretty close.

 

Drydown: The rosewood starts to peek through the other scents, which are still very much present. The honey has become stronger and the mint and orange blossom have evened each other out so the oil as a whole smells more balanced.

 

Overall, this has become one of my top three perfumes. I'm absolutely in love with this! I can't get enough!

 

Now, I'm going to go order a couple more CDs!!!

 

[LizziesLuck]

Wet: Tea and sugar with something darker, maybe the orange blossom?

 

Dry: This is glorious. I don't know quite what I'm smelling. I'm not familiar with rockrose, and every other blend I've tried with orange blossom I haven't been able to pick it out. I do smell the tea and sugar cane, a wee glimmer of mint. This is sort of smokey and dark. It's beautiful. I think I need a bottle. I will for sure be keeping and using the decant at the least, but I imagine a bottle is in my future.

[doomsday_disco]

In the bottle: Orange blossom, rockrose, and the white tea note are the most prominent to my nose, followed by a bit of the lemon balm.

 

Wet: Orange blossom, rockrose, white tea, some honey, and lemon balm. The sugar cane begins to emerge after a little bit, as well as the white mint, and I'm starting to get more of the lemon balm as well. I hope that the orange blossom note calms down a little more as this sits on my skin. It's not super strong here, but I'm just not particularly fond of the note (especially when it is paired with honey).

 

Dry: The white tea note is more prominent during this phase. It's kind of like an orange blossom white tea with honey.

 

Verdict: I took a chance on this one despite the orange blossom note, but I'm finding that it is too perfume-y for me.

[SimplySyra]

Iulia is lovely. Wet, I get a healthy blast of white tea, sugar cane, and lemon balm with orange blossom dominating the florals. Mint is a refreshing support and the honey is quite detectable as well. As it dries it fades to be less in your face. This is sweet, floral, bright, and airy. It's feminine and somewhat perfume-y without straying into something too cloying or heavy.

 

Personally, I like it a lot and can foresee myself reaching for it when I want to wear something sweet and pretty.

[agirlnamedfury]

this is actually a much stronger "tea" scent than I expected from the "white tea" descriptor. it's pretty bitter and earthy, but there's also some bright lemon in there... not floor cleaner at all, the "lemon balm" smells more like a soft lemon peel to me. it mellows out a little as it dries down.

 

this is a fairly pleasant, neutral scent, but i'm not completely sold on it.

[astarinel]

I was looking forward to this one because the previous artist tea scent didn't work on me, and I like a good tea scent but a lot of them seem to go off with my skin chemistry.

 

Citrus tea and sugar with a glimmer of mint. The tea note is fairly strong and a touch astringent, and there's that herbal mint in the background. I don't find this very sweet at all, although I love sweet scents so my sugar tolerance is pretty high.

 

In addition, I love one of BPAL's orange blossom notes (Katharina) and hate another one of their orange blossom notes (Hunger), and I don't smell either of them here. Primarily it's just light citrus tea.

 

I think I would like this better as an atmo than as a perfume. The throw is pretty low, but the scent is sort of a crisp, fresh, and energizing one. As the citrussy notes burn off as it dries, I'm left with sort of a faint slightly sweet tea scent that's nice but so faint! Definitely a pleasant, work-appropriate sort of scent.

[Nemi]

This scent reminded me a lot of Lady Una.

 

It smells of soft lemon and tea and spring.. But it fades away quite fast on me. I prefer Lady Una.

[Auspicious Q]

Lovely! I get the tea, sugar, lemon balm, and honey at first with the mint and rose in the back ground. After a few minutes the tea recedes and the sugar and honey are the most dominant with the flowers and mint still present. Over all this is fresh, sweet, floral, and surprisingly long lasting (12 hours close to my skin). It is hard for me to judge throw, but this is not overpowering.

 

For those who have tested them, this perfume is in the same family as High-strung Daisies and White Rabbit from the Mad Tea Party as well as Venus Verticodia from the 2015 Lupers. Iulia is a wonderful execution of a light sweet floral and will be a welcome addition to my spring scents collection.

[kscha2017]

My impressions were very similar to Auspicious Q: White Rabbit + Venus Verticordia = Iulia, L'Artiste du Diable. In fact, I chose to divest myself of both WR & VV in favor of Iulia's blend of tea, sugar and fresh herbs.

 

Editing to add that every day this sits on my shelf, the more I like the scent. The milky, sugary tea is stronger now and the greenery is brighter. This is a very refreshing, rejuvenating scent. Fits perfectly with Iulia's storyline. I may need to grab another bottle.

Edited October 21, 2015 by kscha2017

[stubbornfire]

As with Xanthe, this decant was for my mom so I know Iulia won't be up my alley. I was curious and wanted to give her a shot anyway though. 8)

 

Very much mint, honey, and lemon! I can definitely find the sugar,although it smells like it blends itself right with the mint and the lemon quickly - I start to not get one without one of the others pretty soon after applying.

 

I didn't specifically get rose or orange blossom,but it was very sweet and feminine! And those notes may have come out more had I left it on longer than 15-20 minutes so.

Edited October 16, 2015 by stubbornfire

[zankoku_zen]

Sugary lemon, rose, orange blossom. Touch of honey. It's a honey-touched lemony orange blossom. I get a whiff of mint as well.

 

I think this one smells very similar to the Gennivre version.

 

Sweet, feminine, floral.

Edited October 22, 2015 by zankoku_zen

[sarandipitee]

Very syrupy and floral. Honey is the most predominant note. Reminds me of a honey based LE that I can't name - a Luper I think.

 

Nice, sweet but nothing remarkable on my skin.

[lady_pandora]

I'm kicking myself for missing the Carnaval back in the day, because every scent I've tried from it in its reincarnation has been a hit. With Iulia, I barely got the imp cap off before saying "Ooooh, I'm in big trouble." In a good way.

 

Iulia starts out strongly honey--I actually would have guessed beeswax; rockrose is labdanum, I think, so that may be why the whole thing comes off as vanillic at first. There's a bit of citrus too, and a brief moment when I can find a little mint if I go looking for it. It dries down into almost orange blossom single note on me, but it's a seriously awesome orange blossom note, one of the best I've sniffed. I can't pick out tea, which is fine because I'm not really a tea-perfume person anyway.

 

On me, the other BPAL this is most similar to is Alma Venus.

[Lunasariel]

In the imp: I'm getting primarily tea, with maaaaaybe a hint of citrus and/or florals. Right now, this is one I'm regretting waiting to order - this is promising to be the perfect light, cooling summer scent, in the vein of Juke Joint or Manhattan. But will it have enough grip for a cold, rainy day like this one?

 

Wet: Starts out with a big ol' blast of citrus and mint, slightly cut by honey. Man, is this a turnaround! I can't distinguish the tea at all, and the florals not a bit. But it quickly settles down, and the citrus and mint start playing better with the others. From afar, it's this delicious complicated honey-citrus-mint-floral (and my skin looooooves it some honey and mint), but up close, it actually becomes less complicated and settles down into a citrus tea with maybe just a hint of florals. Right now, I'm totally getting both the White Rabbit and Alma Venus comparisons.

 

Dry: Honey-mint tea, but not as warm or cozy as that might sound. In fact, this has an oddly... hollow feeling to it? I keep getting whiffs of it here and there, but mostly it's just a sort of cold, vague sweetness. If I really shove my nose into my wrist, I can get something approaching the lovely warm zingy orange blossom honey that I was hoping for, but only then. I'll probably let this sit for a few months, and see if it's more suited to springtime than cold October.

[tziporra]

Arrrrrrgggggggggggg.

 

In the bottle, insanely beautiful. A little mojito-esque, what with that mint and honey going on. And the heady floral overtones. Just lovely.

 

On my skin, not so much. First we muddle through the Horrible Tea Drydown which is the sour thing tea does on my skin that makes me want to cry. And then when we have made it through that we are left with an amped sugar note that is cloying in it's too muchness.

 

Alas. I loooooooove this in the imp. Probably wonderful on everyone else but me.

 

Tzi

[Musamea]

in the decant: light tea, pulpy sugar cane, and citrus; delicate and sweet

 

wet: the lemon tea from Dorian, minus all the vanilla and fougere, with swirls of honey (which my skin loves to amp); a bit headier than it was in the imp; as it dries, I get a bit more sugar and orange blossom, but it's still mostly honey's game, no mint at all

 

dry: reminds me a bit of the drydown of Embalming Fluid, but heavier on the honey than the lemon, and not quite as sweet – if anything, there's something warm and the tiniest bit salty about this tea. Interesting, light, and definitely one for the tea and honey lovers!

[Malaena]

Iulia starts off with a blast of tea and sugar. It smells very clean with some lemon balm peaking through. The blend is then taken over by a flower that I can't identify. It's definitely not orange blossom and to my understanding rockrose is not a floral scent. It smells like an old-lady floral. Icy and stuffy. A good bit of musk underlies this.

[emanomaly]

The tea, lemon balm, and mint blast through on application, and for a while it smells like pine sol, or some kind of cleaning agent: astringent in a not-so-awesome way. After the initial drydown it gets very sweet and syrupy. Like a mix of pine sol and cough syrup (I assume this is due to the rock rose/labdanum, which always has a heavy syrupy smell to me). In the long haul it settles down to the honey and the rockrose. Kind of a powdery, plasticy, white-musky scent on me, that reminds me of the way brand new doll's heads smell. I don't get any orange blossom at all which is sad coz I lovvvvvve orange blossom.

 

I was super looking forward to this scent becoz every single note except the rockrose is a big hell yeah for me, and it sounded absolutely perfect. Unfortunately on my skin this turns into something very... fake smelling. I had hoped for something more along the lines of Avunculus, Alma Venus or Embalming fluid, all of which I love, but it just doesn't work on me. Of course it is winter and some of my favourite smells are acting really funny on me, so I reckon I'll save her til spring and give her another whirl.

Edited December 29, 2015 by emanomaly

[milo]

I LOVED Genevieve back in the day, and always wondered why I gave her up. This version is even better. I'm getting fresh tea with honeyed orange blossom, which works amazingly good on me ( orange blossom). Fresh, airy tea blend and so glad I got a bottle. This will get a lot of use in the summer.

[Casablanca]

This perfume oil smells nothing like the macabre tone of its art. It's a light and lovely sugared white tea, with orange blossom and smaller amounts of lemon, mint and honey. Rockrose (labdanum) will be serving as a base note and fixative here, but I'm not sure I'm picking it out.

I like this enough to want more than one bottle. For me, this could become a go-to white tea fragrance.

[Little Bird]

I like Iulia more than Gennivre. Iulia is both more complex and softer on my skin. The original was astringent tea and tons of honey, but I can smell the creamy orange blossom, soft lemon, hint of cooling, watery mint, and a delicate sweetness from the honey rather than an overpowering honey from Iulia.
Sugared white tea with hints of creamy orange blossom, soft lemon, cool mint and floral honey. Complex and gentle enough that the mint-citrus-honey isn't immediately reminding me of cough drops. I would very much like to drink a tea like this. As a perfume, it's a little too clean for my tastes, citrusy and springlike.

[PeculiarHeroine]

I was hoping that I would love this. I was hoping that it would be a summer classic, light, fresh, shimmering on distressingly hot days.

Well, I've sort of got my wish, but something about Iulia is not sitting perfectly right with me.

It starts out a little sharp to my nose. It mellow out into a scent that my significant other described as "clean", and I agree. It mellows down to a bright, scrubbed skin sort of smell.

I was so charmed by the idea of Iulia. I just wish she and I could get along perfectly in person.

[nolifeking]

Iulia is like enjoying a nice cup of light honeyed tea with a couple of mint leaf and a slice of lemon tossed in, sitting under an orange tree in blossom

Fresh, clean, just perfect for summer

i'm wearing her often theses days, so glad I swapped for her ♡ I just wish my skin didn't drunk her so fast :/

[MonkeysInk]

I usually avoid the Lab's honey (I know, I know...) as my skin amps it to the point of annoying everyone around me.

 

Being from the South, this sounded like sweet tea in the afternoon in my Granny's garden. I was not disappointed - this smelled exactly like sitting in the shade with a big, cold glass. The mint kept the honey in check, and I wore this all day enjoying the light smell. I definitely get honey, honey, honey, but not in a bad way this time.
 

ETA: I found another imp of this in my stash in 2020 and tried it again.  Now it’s all honey with a smokey bit of rockrose poking thorough.  It dries down into a powdery honey scent that I don’t love.  This is an ephemeral scent that my nose best loved fresh.

 

ETA (again): found another imp.  Honey, honey, honey, with some dark, smokey tea.  It’s a shadow of what it was like fresh, much like the morning after a carnival leaves town.

Edited January 10, 2023 by MonkeysInk
found another imp, wrote some more review

[theredkilt]

This is a such a beautiful honey blend, very appropriate for warm weather. It is so well rounded and the honey/sugar cane/ white tea are the main players, while the mint and lemon balm show up shortly in the opening stage. On me it last 2 hours tops, but still it feels very comforting and delightful.