Raucous Games Inside a Bathhouse

[zankoku_zen]

Wild plum, sweet incense smoke, white ginger, red sandalwood, labdanum, white tea, and pink pepper.

[storme]

Wet: tea, plum and ginger (my dream!)
Dry: this has stayed really good; a pretty, light citrus scent with a hint of plum and incense. I'm not getting much of the wood or the pepper,  but there's a hint of the smoky incense in the back. This is a really pretty, summer-y scent!

[picturesofmeghan]

i’m very new to bpal but i hope that this is helpful, as this was the scent i was most excited about.

wet it’s plummy (jammy is the word in my head) and a little ginger. as this dries, the plummy smell receded and this unfortunately smells a little bit like a laundry detergent of some sort on me. the incense doesn’t really come out on me at all. it’s floral and could be very nice on someone else. 

this has a lot of potential, though. it reads very ‘young’ to me in the bottle. i think with age, the plum will steep and come out more, as will the incense.

[starbrow]

This one is so hard to pin down.

 

As a plum ho, I will say first and foremost that this didn't ping my plum button as I'd hoped. Every single note is one that I loved, yet when I blindly smelled this, both in bottle and on my skin, I got something in the realm of grapefruit and black currant for me. Off. I don't know if maybe the white tea/ginger/pink pepper are conspiring together to make kind of a grapefruity citrus zing, and the plum is reading more black currant? It's not sour in the sense of like a sour apple pucker. It's a red plum. Unripe. The opposite of sweet.

 

But partner's blind impressions were sweet and floral. A bit soapy. Like WHAT? But also...I can kind of see it. Strangely. There is something sweet and perfumey-floral and clean (white tea?) and almost white musk + oakmoss hanging out in this one. Very, very weird.

 

Okay, I get it. BATHHOUSE. It's gotta be this wild cacophony of scents in the middle of something really clean and effervescent. Maybe a bit Herbal Essences. Did I say it? I said it. Oops.

 

I think I am in the minority here, but also I don't think aging is going to make this what I want it to be, so off to another home it shall go!

[Jenesis]

This is very light and pretty! My inexperienced nose gets red/summer fruits with a sweet undertone. Not much on the ginger. Clean and light.

[Casablanca]

Freshly applied, Raucous Games is a gorgeous plum and white ginger blend on my skin.

 

The plum is ripe and luscious, and reminds me of both wine and raspberries. It actually smells like a blend of plums and raspberries, perfect together. The white ginger reminds me of that in Implacable Beautiful Tyrant hair gloss. Behind these, I find a delicate white tea, a faint whiff of smoke, and a complex, hard-to-distinguish background.

 

The plum and raspberries fade quickly, leaving little ghosts of themselves. The blend becomes more about the white ginger and incense smoke at this point, though the red fruits still linger a bit.

 

This one is a beauty, though I hope the plum lingers longer in age. I may need more of this than my friend's decant I borrowed to write this review. 🙂

[zankoku_zen]

Plum, white tea, and pink pepper. Slightly smokey, ripe fruit, and white tea. Gorgeous. Great throw and wear length.

[VetchVesper]

So, funny story. Before going to bed, I grabbed a random Luper bottle in the dark and sniffed before applying. I was surprised at how humid the perfume smelled. Damp, steamy, like a fruity jungle. I was very amused when I read the name.  

 

This is tart plum, dripping with moisture, but it's somehow not aquatic. It dries out and gets more incensey as it wears, but the plum stays the focal point on my skin.  I don't really get tea.  It's a fun, bright blend, and I will really enjoy wearing it this summer.

Edited May 15, 2021 by VetchVesper

[rivetted]

I'll have to agree with the above: wet, fruity, & steamy. 

There's a lot of sweetness to this, but it is overall a very clean & fresh smell.

I put it on last night straight out of the shower & proceeded to lounge around in a robe. It was perfect.

 

I kinda love the Bathhouse vibes of this collection, I feel like so many of these Shunga 2021 scents are reminiscent of a very expensive japanese spa (specifically thinking of the Kabuki in SF) and I am now falling in love with aquatics. Who knew I wanted to smell like a fancy bathhouse! I sure didn't. Maybe, I can even just imagine the massages now..

[torischroeder9]

In the decant: Smoky plum. For when regular plum is just not enough sexy. 

 

On my skin:

 

Wet, the incense smoke note is fleeting, and I'm left initially with mostly juicy plum. As it dries, though, the incense smoke comes back out -- possibly aided by ginger and pepper -- to add a touch of dryness, smoke, and spice to the plum. 

 

Given time to develop, the plum seems to start to make a resurgence -- maybe helped by the sweetness of the labdanum? -- with the incense smoke trying to keep it in check. It plays like that for a while, with the incense eventually succeeding. It's still very plummy, but the incense smoke serves to keep it a little more sophisticated and a little less... Bordello (given that this is a Shunga, the comparison seems appropriate). 

 

If the incense won out either sooner or more decisively, I think this would be a slam dunk for me. As it is, though, it stays juicy-plum forward (more than my olfactory preferences can take) longer and stronger than would make me seek out a bottle. 

[wolf_truffles]

I'm getting mostly plum, tea and a bit of pink pepper. Ginger is hanging around giving this a very subtle depth but it doesn't read as spiced to me. The plum tea (which is really what it ends up being) is soft, clean and light. 

[Little Bird]

I love the lab's wild plum note because it smells like a perfectly ripe, juicy, dark, sweet plum.  Very deep purple.  The tea here starts off screechy and lemony, but quickly mellows out to a scent that smells delicately green and grassy, more like green tea, with a pinch of white ginger to give off a little spiciness and heat that dries down more tropical floral to me.  In this stage, it's like slicing into a perfect plum with the juices running over your fingers, sitting next to a steamy cup of green tea with hints of tropical florals coming in through the windows on a cool breeze.  If it stayed in this stage, I would be in heaven, but around the half hour mark, the whole thing starts to go very powdery (probably the red sandalwood) and loses all of its complexity and more interesting notes.

I prefer the "Wild Plum, Green Tea, and White Jasmine" trio for my wild plum and tea fix.