Insects

[ReallyZeb]

There’s nothing random about insects. And I admire that. They do what needs to be done to assure their survival… Even their beauty and grace are only means to ensure their species…

A lustrous black patchouli attar with dried purple fruits, neroli, and opoponax.

When first applied, and in the bottle, this has a lot in common with Black Moths - a very dry scent, it almost rustles, and definitely conjures up black insect wings of some type. It starts differing after the drydown, where this is a spicy but still dry fruity scent. Maybe fruity like those semi-dried plums? It doesn't have a lot of patchouli throw on me, in fact the patch is far less prominent than I'd expect.

 

 

[absinthetics]

This scent is surprisingly dusty, papery, dark and cold. But there is that strange earthy scent that beetles have, or lightning bugs.

[ziggystardust13]

I'm going to attempt to review this unique scent!

 

In the bottle and wet on skin: Hello there black patchouli! Very earthy. I happen to love patchouli so this is not a bad thing. However, not much else going on at this stage.

 

As it dries: The other notes begin to emerge. I definitely get the dried purple fruits, which lend a little sweetness. There is something else going on here but I'm not sure what. This scent is very unique. Earthy, dark, sleek, even a little dusty as some others have mentioned. It continues to morph on me...

 

Dry: This is awesome! I don't have anything like this. I don't get the neroli until the later stages. And I love this finale stage! It now smells like an expensive perfume - a damn sexy one. Like something from Dior or Tom Ford, for example. It has really great lasting power and fades beautifully.

 

Final impression: If Insects was a color, it would be darkest purple. This is a gem in my collection! If dark scents are your thing, Insects may be for you!

Edited November 23, 2015 by ziggystardust13

[kscha2017]

Open bottle, sniff: big, wet frogs wearing patchouli. I know frogs aren't insects, but my nose is identifying something wet and green along the lines of A Plague of Frogges here. Mixed with a sweet, black patchouli and sumptuous, sticky, thick, purple fruit. Quite gorgeous and unusual. I love it.

Edited December 2, 2015 by kscha2017

[sprout]

This one is hard to describe, but I'll try.

 

Wet, Dry, it's not much change. Initially, I got a blast of minty paste, the kind from kindergarten. It transported me back to being a school child. But then the perfume did take it's final form and it lasted. A long,long time! And I was transported instead to the late nineties, early 2000, when I wore big name perfume from department stores and floriental was the rage...

 

This reminds me of big, celebrity designed perfume from the nineties: Specifically, Elizabeth Arden Provocative Woman. I get the purple fruits, plum rather than grape, floral patchouli (no wood or dirt tones), plus neroli blends in with opoponax to make a blast of perfume! Citrus top,like a chypre, with a base of super sweet, resinous, heady sweet myrrh. The opoponax, patchouli and fruit merge to form a super note. It reminds me of many of the fruity chypre perfume bases from the nineties, Chanel Mademoiselle, Flowerbomb, etc. I think it is the sweet resin base combined with fruit and patchouli.

 

It's a power hitter, very sweet not vanilla or gourmand, but quite classic "parfum". It lasted all day, sweet and sexy, grand Dame parfum. The citrus like neroli burned off and left the base of cloying resin plus patchouli and fruit. Drydown was well over eight or nine hours!

 

Final thoughts- this is brilliant. I imagine it's Beth's interpretation of the fruity Oriental chypre, big name perfumes popular at the turn of the century. As in Y2K. I for one loved it! I'm not sure it reminds me of insects. But, it is big, powerful, sweet, fruity, patchouli resin following a neroli top note. Since it reminds me so much of a BPAL version of my favorite Elizabeth Arden perfume- Provocative Woman, which I wore frequently before my conversation to BPAL, I'll have to have a bottle.

[Catcircus]

To me this smells like what an insect would be attracted to. In my mind it smells like a sweet rotting plum covered in honey. I get something bright surrounding it, and a resinous smell with a touch of dark earth patch. I LOVE it!! This is a gorgeous perfume. It does smell fancy.

[zankoku_zen]

Sexy, dusty plum patchouli. On wet, this smelled smokier, like a shiny dark carapace. It has dried down to a soft, female patchouli and purple fruits blend. There's a very Lucille Sharpe quality to it.

 

Smooth, pretty, deadly. Darkly sexy.

[DiesMali]

Disclaimer - I had to get this even if I hated the notes in it, because my entire basement is quite literally an insect museum. Thankfully, these are all notes I love.

 

In the bottle: I'm not sure why, but this smells very much like lychee fruit in the bottle.

 

Wet on my skin: The purple fruits + neroli seriously makes this smell like fresh lychee, and then there's the patchouli!

 

Dry: The sweet, sharp fruit calms down as this warms and dries on my skin, and now it's GORGEOUS. This is a lustrous blue-black scent, with the fruits and this beautifully smooth, dark patchouli at the forefront, and given a gleaming kick by the neroli and opoponax. It's actually a little masculine and cologne-like at first, at least on my skin, and so very dark. Only after it's been on a couple hours does it soften and become a little more feminine, though it's still what I would consider unisex. This is not a scent for the faint of heart, but it's definitely one for patchouli lovers. I am a patchouli lover. I love this scent. Another win from Crimson Peak!

[whoahorsey]

This one doesn't seem to be getting much love compared to the other CP blends, which is a shame, because this is gorgeous! When I first apply it, it's very cool and green -- like irridescent Elytra beetle wing green --a little sharp. Once it dries, however, the fruits and opoponax come out to sweeten it, and the black patch and neroli give it complexity. I agree with the comparisons to expensive Dior perfumes -- specifically, this reminds me of Poison, which was popular when I was in high school, although out of my budget. I think it might be the combination of fruits and opoponax. Apparently those are notes in Poison as well. However, I think this is much more complex and subtle than Poison. Insects sends shivers down my spine when I hold my wrists to my face. It's mysterious, a little scary, and oh-so-very-sexy.

 

It smells very feminine to me. I think I need a backup bottle.

[rayvn1]

"This reminds me of big, celebrity designed perfume from the nineties: Specifically, Elizabeth Arden Provocative Woman." [respectfully snipped from Sprout's review]

 

I knew this reminded me of something! Provocative Woman was my wedding scent (because that was several years before I discovered the glories of bpal) and it evaporated in the bottle a few months ago when the sprayer somehow came off. I was heartbroken, but now I have this to remind me of that day

 

Anyways, on to the review! It's sweeeeeet. Those purple fruits really come through in the drydown, and the dusty patchouli grounds it. This makes for a supremely rich scent with unbelievable throw. I'm in love

[LiberAmoris]

When I saw the relatively straightforward note list on Insects, I thought I could imagine what it would smell like. NOPE. Another great reminder to be very humble when it comes to imagining scent from description!

 

It's really tough to pull individual notes from this. My husband said 'cologney' when I asked for his take, which is probably a synonym for well-blended and without edges. I would not pull patchouli, purple fruits, neroli, or opoponax from this on a blind sniff. What it does smell like to me is the iridescent, blue-green-purple-black exoskeleton of a beetle—a bit hard and dark and shimmering. It smells nice on me but amazing on my husband, who has added this bottle to his personal collection.

[Poenari]

I like to apply my initial test without re-reading the notes first, to see which ones (if any) I can discern. My initial response to Insects was note a note, but a thought: "Unexpected!". This was not at all what I had expected from the name, and it's been long enough since I looked at the notes that I had completely forgotten them. As LiberAmoris stated above, it is hard to pull individual notes, so I read them, and was surprised to find patchouli listed first! I adore patchouli and was so surprised that I didn't recognize it. Perhaps because it's listed as an attar and has a different distillation method or concentration? I don't know. I had to google it.

 

Back to the scent: now that I know the notes, I still can't pick them out. This is beautiful, feminine, with an iridescence that is purple-green. I give up and can't beat LiberAmoris' description. I love this.

[tealeaves]

I must have the strangest skin chemistry in history, because the scent I'm getting is completely different from all of the other reviewers!

 

I tried this the day after I tried Black Moths, and despite the many ingredients the two share (patchouli, purple fruits (Black Moths has plum and blackcurrant), opoponax) the scents are night and day on me. Where Black Moths was sharp and musky, Insects is sweet and warm. Both scents are dark, but in Insects, the honey sweetness of the neroli and opoponax comes to the front, darkened by the patchouli. There's nothing sharp about it while wet. As Catcircus mentioned above, 'sweet rotting plum covered in honey' about covers it, with a sensual shadow cast over it.

 

It dries down into a darkly sensual scent, like drinking sweet, dark, heady wine naked on a fur rug. It's exquisitely well-blended, so that I can't pick out individual notes as it dries, but it does gain a sharpness from the patchouli. I'm not normally a fan of sweet scents, but this is wild.

[Little Bird]

My husband hates this fragrance. The first time that I wore it, he said it smelled like old ladies at Catholic church, and then I had to explain to him all the ways in which I find that offensive. Anyhow. He said it smells powdery, sour, and like someone put on way too much old fashioned perfume.

I think that Insects smells amazing. Insects, Black Moths and Lucille Sharpe all smell like the sexy, badass, glamorous, femme fatale fragrances of the Crimson Peak line to me, and I love all three of them.

Insects is heavy, black patchouli, thick, incensey, syrupy sweetness from the opoponax, a dark green neroli (the sort of neroli that has a dark green, weedy, oily smell to it), and a sweet, glistening purple. It seriously does conjure up an image of black beetles with that shimmery, dark green and dark purple iridescence. I don't have anything else like this from bpal, though I do agree with my hubby that it smells like an 'old fashioned' perfume in that it's bold, rich, and has a sort of smutty/animalic undertone to it and a touch of powder. It smells like old Dior and old Guerlain.

[LizziesLuck]

Wet: This is so interesting. Like nothing I have ever smelled before. The opponax is kind of the star, but I think I am also smelling the patchouli attar, which is much different than any other patch I have smelled, but still recognizable as patch. The dried fruit (I think it's dried plum, aka prunes) is sweetening it and balancing it out nicely.

 

Dry: The dark dried fruits mixed with the oppanox smells like a combination of cola and prunes, which is actually really cool. I like it. I am not sure I would ever wear it, but I am so so glad I dried it, it's different than anything else I have ever smelled.

[freyasfae]

Oh, wow, this is a scent I would not have picked on my own, but I was swapping with someone and all of the Crimson Peaks have been so beautiful that when I saw they had a decant of one I asked for it. My first whiff of this, I thought I may like patchouli. I learned I could get along with white patchouli with Edith, but usually the reds and black variations of scents are too potent for me, but this is just stunning. It is sophisticated yet perverse. I love it.

[sammy]

I can't get enough of Insects. I was initially drawn to the notes in Black Moths and was going to blind buy a bottle of that when I got a decant of Insects in a swap. And Wow, how it wowed me instantly. I knew I had to purchase a bottle ASAP (and I did, along with Shadow in the Elevator).

Insects is like no other patch blend I own. It isn't dirty patchouli (Shadow in the Elevator smells like Insects Black Patchouli sister to my nose, similar yet still very different), but it isn't clean or bright smelling, either. There's something here that I can't exactly identify which makes this all at once sexy, fierce, gorgeous, huffable, earthy, slightly sweet (the fruit probably lends a hand here) but not cloying. It isn't overtly fruity, for you fruity fearing friends o' mine. This scent has become my Crimson Peak Streets of Detroit (that is my most favorite of the OLLAs). Something dark, dangerous and deliciously amazing.

A scent that I can't stop slathering. I love it so much so that I quickly purchased a backup bottle. ETA on 5/27 wearing it more and reading a bit about opoponax, it may be really one of the shining stars in this blend, the thing that gives it the sweet resin like quality which isn't coming from just the fruit. There's something else other than the patchouli that I couldn't put my finger on, I'd smelled it before but couldn't remember in which blends. It may very well be that and it is glorious. I haven't been able to stop wearing it.

ETA one more thing...I just read neroli is also sweet and honeyed so that may also be lending a somewhat honeyed sort of vibe to the blend but ahhhh it's just so goooood. Get thee some!

Edited May 27, 2016 by Sammy

[Cali]

Woooh, more CP scents!! Ahh how I love this movie.
Lovely musky, a sweet sister of black moths. It seems like something I should hate but this is glorious somehow??

Dusty, dark, sweeeeeeet and soft. What hasn't been said about this. As freyasfrea mentions "sophisticated yet perverse" is a very good way to sum this up. Oh this is good.

[theredkilt]

I like opening up my bottle and inhale its fumes. That is just beyond words! My eyes just roll in rapture and i proceed inhaling again.

 

The overall feel is as if something dark and purple is shimmering over a black veil. One of the rare instances when a blend can conjure up such a vivid image in my mind.

[Bassmastadroog]

This is actually now in my top 5 favorite scents, and in addition to Rose Red, this will be my second scent in which I have to get backups of, especially since it is going away forever. It is one of the most unique scents I have ever smelled.

 

It's very iridescent and dark green/blue to me. There is a fresh coolness about it, that is slightly juicy and dark. Quickly after, the purple fruits show up, and round out the freshness in the most sophisticated way. I think the patchouli attar lends earthiness, but it's such a clean earthiness.

 

The opoponax shows up later in the experience, and is so lovely and sweet. My god. I am so in love.

 

Nice throw, looooong lasting.

[Joyleaf_]

Cicadas make this high screeching noise in the middle of a muggy summer day. For myself and other Southerners, its not quite summer unless the unholy shrieking of very large bugs can be heard throughout the house. These things make sounds that can be heard for miles through reinforced steel probably. Its grating, harsh, and impossible to ignore and happens during the season where you feel like your will to live is sweating out of your body and pooling onto your clothing.The season where its hard to care about anything thats not cold liquids and air conditioning repairs- and these bugs make you care about their pointless annoying lives.

The point is that this is the scent version of that sound. This makes it seem like its unpleasant, which its not, it just demands attention in a way many of my preferred blends dont. It precedes me into the room and slaps everyone in the face with a fish. I love it and hate it in equal measure.

[celestia]

♔ Insects

 

In the Bottle: Dark fruity plums spiked with minty smooth resinous patchouli

 

Wet: The opopo-nope-ax dominates this blend with a strange ashy sweetness. I also dark plums enveloped by crushed black velvet and purple smoke. Neroli here must be the minty aspect because it normally manifests as an anise-like note to my nose. It calls to mind the iridescent sheen from a green bottle fly. Where Black Moths had a powdery dusty warmness, this has a shiny metallic-like coldness.

 

Drydown: This is a resinous patchouli- it’s not earthy, not dirty but it’s also not clean. I do think it has a mint-like syrupy quality that carries well into the drydown phase which making it more difficult in identifying the patchouli from the rest of the notes- but it smells thick and plush. It is not for me …at all. Though I can appreciate it on those who like these scents.

 

TL;DR: Minty dark green patchouli and spiked black plums.