Dried Strawberries, Red Musk & Bourbon Vanilla

[zankoku_zen]

No additional scent description.

[HerbGirl]

I love this. If you enjoyed The Instructional Manual, you will enjoy this. Great waft and staying power. I was excited to see this and am glad to have a bottle.

[Threemoons]

Here's my hot take:   In the bottle: I'm actually getting crushed fresh strawberries rather than dry. Very tight in the bottle. On, wet: Immediately springs to life in a burst of fresh and dried strawberry, with a hint of some kind of creamy wood note. Drydown: The red musk in this is more of a dry, sophisticated, powdery red musk as opposed to a *grunt grunt me make sexytime now on mammoth hide grunt* red musk. The overall effect is a dry, floral, strawberry incense/strawberry dusting powder thing.  Would be awesome layered with something else with red musk or other deep, dirty scent.

 

[Penance]

Preconceived notions:

 

I've had bad luck with the Lab's strawberry scents.  Literally all of them I've tried with a noticeable strawberry scent have smelled like nothing but that bagged strawberry flavored gel that's used for making cheap pies.  They make me a little queasy (and sad because I want to love them).  But this says dried strawberries and I'm willing to give it a try, hoping it'll be different because I want to love this one.  Red musk is one of my favorite notes and vanilla is something it's hard to go wrong with.

 

First sniff:

 

Red musk.  Lots and lots of red musk.  I'm getting a bit of strawberry candy here, too, which isn't boding well. 

 

Wet on skin:

The strawberry candy almost immediately starts disappearing once it hits my skin (thank God) and is replaced with something very much like dried strawberries (not freeze-dried, dehydrated) with red musk.  I'm not sure I'm getting the vanilla from behind the other notes.

 

Dry down:

This is lovely!  In the end, it dries down to a very slightly powdery red musk and almost vanilla dust (if that's a thing) scent with a very faint breeze of dried strawberry that I probably wouldn't have picked up on if it wasn't right in the name.  It's there, but it blends so seamlessly with the red musk that it's not quite it's own entity anymore.

 

The final verdict:

Finally, a BPAL strawberry scent that really, truly works for me!  This is a very nice blend.  You can't really go wrong if you like the notes in this because they blend beautifully.

[TrailerTrashPrincess]

this turned out nothing like what i expected, but isn't that so often the case?

 

the in-bottle and wet-on-skin changed so much, and so quickly that i barely had a chance to form an opinion of the wet-on-skin scent before it settled into what it stayed as.

 

Strawberry Money House from the 90s, or strawberry incense from the 80s.  i haven't had Strawberry Money House in ages, and haven't had strawberry incense in, oh, 20 years?

 

but that's what i get from this amazing little bottle.  not the sugary strawberry-preserves of Strawberry Moon, and nothing even remotely Smut-like or Scherezade-y.

 

but like.. Strawberry Shortcake, the teenage years. when she painted her walls dark red and wore Vamp nail polish. 

[starbrow]

Hold the presses, there's a strawberry perfume that is freaking delightful.

 

Prior to this trio, only Beating the Tatami (and, lightly, Party Tricks HG) really satisfied my hunger for a good strawberry. Dies Patribus was a very cute bits of dried strawberry in cereal and cold milk, but the strawberries weren't really the star. Almost every other scent with the note has come up lacking in some way.

 

Dried Strawberries, Red Musk, and Bourbon Vanilla straight up slaps. She is bawdy, gothy, vampy, the blood-red-lipstick-wearing big sister of more innocent days of strawberry perfume. Let us not deceive ourselves, she is a perfume. Nobody will think you've dribbled strawberry juice on your arms. But the red musk does exactly what it needs to do: give the strawberry something to latch onto and bloom within. a foundation of slutty-spicy-musky perfection that lets the summery aroma of the fruit waft. The vanilla does what it needs to do too - sweeten it all up - with a little extra complexity from the bourbon. The combination is utterly charming. She's grown-up, yet playful; sultry, yet breezy. I want to wear her all day long. It's THE summer perfume for me.

 

I feel like someone on the fence about strawberry, who has never had one work for them, should at least give this a try. I think if you hate red musk, this will probably not be a winner, but you probably already know that  . But if you get along okay with red musk, and you're looking for Strawberry Holy Grail, this trio is a MUST! 

Edited September 4, 2020 by starbrow

[zankoku_zen]

Musk strawberries and musky vanilla. This is a sultry fruity vanilla blend. It stars off as fruity summery and dries down to a musky vanilla. Medium to good throw, good wear length.

[theredkilt]

Strawberries dipped in red musk. The red musk is not doing any favors on my skin. Should have known better and stayed away from it. Red musk, you you little trickster

[puellacaerulea]

I'm iffy on strawberry as a note, but I do like red musk and bourbon vanilla, so I wanted to at least give this one a try. In the decant and upon application, it's intense, super sweet dried strawberries, strong enough that I'm not really picking up the other notes. It feels sort of childlike to me, probably because it reminds me of 90s-era strawberry scents from my teen years. Over time, the strawberry fades and I get a subtly sweet red musk and bourbon vanilla. I'm good with that post-drydown stage of the scent, but the strawberry is a little much for me.

[Juliamon]

My experience echoed the previous review almost exactly: very strongly sweet strawberry like any number of strawberry-scented toys of the 90s drowning out the rest as it opens, but the red musk pushes its way forward pretty quickly and unfortunately amps up the cloying nature of the strawberry. It gets worryingly close to migraine territory, but fades into a lovely slightly-sweet musky vanilla over time. That opening's just too scary for me to want to go through it again, but I can understand those who do as that drydown really is to die for! I'd probably FS a version with half as much strawberry.

[fairybites]

The strawberry in here is strong and very jam like, or even candy. The closest thing I can compare this to is Rope Pulley from last year's Lupercalia but with an added smokiness from the musk and a touch of booze from the bourbon vanilla. This could almost be a strawberry single note, I wonder if with time the strawberry will mellow out and allow the red musk and bourbon vanilla to be more present. But with all that said, I love strawberry so while it would have been nice to get more bourbon vanilla, I am still a huge fan of this.

[storme]

Mostly red musk on me, with an undertone of ripe strawberry. Very reminiscent of Mania, exactly what I'd hoped it would be, and I love it.

[IntelligentPotato]

While wet, this reminds me of fruit snacks, but some really good-smelling fruit snacks. I really like it in this stage. Once it dries, the strawberry fades more into supporting rather than front and center, and it becomes mostly red musk with some strawberry and bourbon vanilla.

 

It goes from being a real sweet and kind of juicy scent to a muskier and more lightly sweet scent.

[lipstickonmyteeth92]

Okay so this is straight out of the mailbox because I was excited. 

 

In bottle: It sort of reminds me of my strawberry shortcake ragdoll that I had when I was a kid but a bit jucier. A strawberry/vanilla scent.

Wet on skin: Strawberry candy. But, that disappears quickly and is replaced by a fresh strawberry scent (like you've just chopped up a bunch of strawberries and the juice is running down your hands so you lick it off)  

Dry on skin (after about an hour and a half): Helloo teenage goth strawberry shortcake! This is super vampy, I agree with starbrow's review 100%. Slutty, spicy/sweet vanilla musk with an amazing summery super juicy strawberry note. This is my new summer perfume, it's playful and heady, exactly what I was hoping for.