bexone

In the imp: floral -- light but not pale -- with an underpinning of something dark and dry. Wet: JASMINE! No, seriously, all I can smell is the jasmine, and it's pretty much standing on a chair and screaming at the top of its lungs. I love jasmine as an environmental scent, and I don't mind it on me if it's tempered with something, but by itself it's aggravating my latent headache. Drying: After about 15 minutes, this turns into JASMINE! with a base note of stale movie theater popcorn. Absolutely not for me. (Note: this is persistent -- after three washings with two different soaps, I can still smell it -- but it's finally settled into a gentle enough floral that I could actually imagine wearing it. That seems like an awful lot of work just to smell pretty, though. ) I really, really wanted to like this for the name alone... but someday I will learn that Beth's "floral" and "bloom" scent bouquets just do not work with my skin. I might hang on to it and try it as a room scent or something.

This is another one from my big imp order that went on and got washed off in a hurry. I was hoping to like it (I like teas, I like spices, I like vanilla) but the Rabbit skipped everything else in the description and went straight to damp, used black tea leaves. Definitely a disappointment.

I put this on and washed it back off pretty quickly -- I'll try it again at another point in my cycle, but as it stands it's absolutely not the thing. In the bottle and immediately wet, I got the gorgeous sharpness of the lavender and carnation, two florals my skin *loves.* But then as soon as it dried the mosses -- I've never, to my knowledge, tried a scent with mossy notes before this one -- shoved themselves to the front and hogged the spotlight. As my mom said when I waved my wrist at her, "It's not bad, but it's definitely wrong." It's a shame, too, because the other three notes are all gorgeous on me.

Just a quickie review -- in a word, yummy! It goes on sweet but not too sweet, and it stays sort of comforting and warm. Wet, I smelled the sugar-vanilla-tea notes distinctly, but they mellowed into the background quickly. I'm pretty sure this is kind of an amped-up, slightly sweetened version of my natural skin scent. Definitely a big bottle purchase.

... A mixture of springtime greenery and classical Roman cologne: rosemary, bergamot, lemon rind and vervain with costus, benzoin, gray amber, cardamom, white narcissus and iris. I've worn this twice now, so putting together both impressions: In the bottle: this is very sharply green, and I can definitely smell the lemon. I love lemony perfumes, so this is fabulous for me. Wet: I swear the oil changed as soon as it hit my skin, and most of the sharpness disappeared. It smells like standing in an overgrown herb garden with a heavily laden lemon tree in one corner on a sunny day -- the lemon drifts through the scent without overpowering it. This is green. Green green green. I believe I may have described it in my LJ as "insanely green." Drying: Still green, with some chilly florals. It's making me think, of all things, of the Narnia books -- book 4, I think it was, The Silver Chair. The evil queen is described as wearing "poison green" and that's what this smells like -- gorgeous and slithering and heartless. It's also made me remember one of my costumes from the musical my junior year of HS, an empire waist confection made of acres and acres of green chiffon in the perfect shade of between-kelly-and-hunter green, with silver beading almost entirely covering the bodice and a little floating capelet/train hanging from the shoulders. I *loved* that dress. I miss that dress. *cries* At some point as it dries ides goes damp. Wet, cool, green, swampy, dangerous. This is what I want Bayou to smell like, only without all the issues I seem to have with aquatic notes. Much, much later: Weird -- not at all in a bad way -- because it doesn't actually smell like it at all, but the image I get when I sniff my wrist about 6 hours after I apply is of hiking through a redwood forest on a warm, even hot day -- I can only describe it as "baked forest" scent when the undergrowth and the trees warm up. Such a wonderful association for me. All in all, I love this. I kind of wish I'd bought more than one bottle.

In the vial, this smells like violets, violets, and violets (with some violets on the side for good measure), so I've been putting off trying it. Man, was I dumb. Almost as soon as the oil hits my skin, the violets take a step back and let the other oils come out to play. I spent the first couple of hours sniffing my wrists again and again and again and again and again... trying to figure out, first, what it smelled like, and second, why I was suddenly, desperately, missing London. This smells exactly like the chocolate covered violet cremes from the food hall at Harrod's I ate by the amount-I-don't-want-to-think-about while I was there. After a while, that faded, just a little, and the clove and incense showed up. Like someone a few doors down smoking a clove cigarette -- a scent I *love*, and associate very strongly with a period of my life when I was incredibly happy. Now, 8+ hours on, I still have a faint vanilla/chocolatey smell on my wrists, just tinged with clove -- it doesn't so much smell spicy as warm. Such a keeper! :00001651:

If I could beg Beth to bring back just one discontinued scent, this would be it. Wet: juicy, red berries, but without the cloying sweetness that a lot of berry blends seem to have -- these berries are just barely ripe. Drydown: the spice and florals come out as the berries fade. The scent is warm and red-gold. I've had people describe this stage on me as "Christmassy." Dry: much as I love everything that comes before, this is the stage that rockets this to the top of my list. The perfect ratio of amber and musk, so that the too-sweet gold scent that amber gets on me is mellowed -- it's almost as if a drop of vanilla got in there by mistake. The best way I can describe this is that I smell like the inside of an ice cream parlor -- faint scent of sugar and vanilla, lightly chilled. Which is not to say that this fades quickly. If I put it on in the morning, by lunchtime this is where I am, and it sticks around until after I get home.

In the vial: yummy! Sweet, juicy fruits with a sharp edge (that'd be the wine) and a soft, creamy background. Wet: similar to Lady Macbeth from yesterday -- a quick splash of berries -- but different. Bordello isn't as crisp. I suppose I'm missing whatever it was that gave me the citrus-y edge yesterday. Drying: The fruity note fades very quickly, but it doesn't go away entirely, and the amaretto seems to be coming out. I had hesitated over this one because normally any kind of sweet almond-y smell makes me gag, but this is more just a creamy, buttery, nutty sort of note. Dry: Okay, this faded into that background air freshener scent they use at Bed, Bath, & Beyond. Which isn't bad, but it's kind of an odd thing to smell like. I'll try this again later, because I really like it in the vial.

First sniff wet: grape soda! Followed quickly by a faint citrus note, kind of grape soda mixed with lemonade. Drying: The grape note seems to be fading as the berries come out, so now I smell like I've doused my wrists in raspberry lemonade instead. Not that I'm complaining -- I've always liked fruity/citrusy scents for warm weather, and this works perfectly. There's a kind of dry, green note hovering in the background, which I'm guessing is the thyme, even though it doesn't smell anything like the thyme I use when I'm cooking. (I've never smeared that on my wrists, though! *g*) Overall: I like this, enough to put it somewhere in the middle of my "big bottle" list -- I don't absolutely have to have it asap, but I wouldn't mind having more of it.

Wet: this is a blast of sour, sour roses on me. Eeeaugh! Only pure, unadulterated laziness kept me from washing this off right away. Drydown: the roses were still there for several hours, although that initial sour note did eventually fade, so by noon I wasn't flinching every time I brought my wrists near my face. Now (7-ish hours later -- Lilith sticks around!) the myrrh has come out, with a hint of the musk underneath it. I like this, but getting to it means dealing with that initial, horrible sourness. I've tried other things that started off badly -- Anne Bonny, and Shalimar back when I wore commercial perfumes -- but neither of those take so damn long to turn into something I like. This is the second time Lilith has done exactly this, so she's headed for my swap pile. Edited to say: Not only does Lilith not like me on first application, something about her seemed to make yesterday "invade my personal space" day. The entire time I was running my errands I had skeevy men hovering *far* too close for comfort. No thanks!

Everything I've tried with dragon's blood starts out very sweet and fruity at first, and this is no exception. Luckily, it stops just short of being sickly sweet and making my teeth ache. I don't know different notes well enough to pick them out, but I would guess the lotus is cutting through the sweetness to save my nose. As it dries the sweetness fades a bit, and I quite like it. I catch a hint of something that almost smells like coconut, which balances the initial fruitiness and seems to mellow the whole thing out. I'm pretty sure there's no amber in this, but I'm getting a similar sort of soft golden warmth at the bottom of the scent as I do from amber. In all, I like this, but I don't know that I'll get a big bottle of it.

In the vial and on first application, this was gorgeous. Minty, but with an herbal-citrus note on top -- very clean and refreshing. Unfortunately, about twenty minutes in, the herbal-citrus scents disappeared completely, and all that was left was a sweet mint. It smelled like toothpaste. Like Crest mint toothpaste. Which is a marvelous thing to have your breath smell like, but not so much with skin. I swiped it on my brother's wrist and it did the same thing. Phooey.