jrk1857

As they stared blankly in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realised all they had seen and all they had lost, a capricious little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the water, tossed the aspens, shook the dewy roses and blew lightly and caressingly in their faces; and with its soft touch came instant oblivion. For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi-god is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before. Mist and dewy roses, aspen leaves, and translucent yellow blossoms. My husband, who is made slightly nervous by BPAL, encouraged me to buy this one because of the aspen leaves. He has a tree thing, with which I am completely sympathetic. Also, roses and yellow blossoms sounded pretty nice. After this one, I'm considering collaborating with him on all my perfume purchases. As it goes on this one is mostly what I would consider to be "translucent yellow blossoms"--a beautiful golden floral. After a bit of drydown the roses and leaves show themselves, but they stay firmly in the background. The rose note is quite faint for me. This is golden autumn light in a bottle; the sun shining through yellow leaves, interpreted perfectly into perfume.

This goes on strongly floral, but not in a bad way. A rare exception to my distrust of overly floral perfumes. It helps that the plumeria is more of a fruity note on me. Fruity light floral. After a few hours the musks and amber are more apparent, but the flowers aren't completely gone. Less feminine than earlier. I often have trouble with oakmoss and sometimes with jasmine, but not here.

There's a strong note here, reminiscent of clove. Must be how my body is reacting to the herbs+frankincense. I like it, since I usually can't wear clove. Underneath the clove is a beautifully complex floral/herbal musk. Can't even begin to be more precise than that, but this is lovely.

I'm not so sure, here. I love citrus, and this is definitely citrus. Bright and clean and happy. But, it also smells like environmentally friendly bathroom cleaner. Which I kind of like the smell of. This is going to take some continued experimentation.

I read all these comparisons to Snow White and started to panic. But, rest assured, you other people out there who found Snow White to smell disgustingly of coconut. There is no coconut here. Also, this is, on me, nothing like Rose Red, which was very sharp. Snow White and Rose Red look at this perfume in envy. I found the comparisons to Katrina Van Tassel much more apt, but this isn't nearly as overpowering at KvT. This will be perfect for winter events around family with a more conservative idea of perfume. It isn't department store generic by any stretch, but your Aunt Edith isn't going to ask why you smell like a dirty hippy.

I never would have ordered this blind--my limited experience with anything aquatic has been very negative. But, when I saw this in Whole Foods I could only remember the rose and amber. So, I tried it. I didn't think too much of it until I was back in the car, and then I ordered it with my very next order. Amber usually smells very soapy on me until it has had time to age, but not this one. There is something a bit sharp/soapy if I put my nose to my wrist. Not sure if that's the tears or the amber. The throw is all beautiful amber and rose, though, in the best incarnation of each. The gold is a tiny bit metallic in the background, but not the strongest note by far. Very pretty and feminine.

First applied, this was a blast of vetiver. I had a bad flashback to Highwayman. Mercifully, in this case the blast was short before the vetiver drifts back to the background. Priala quickly dries down to a beautiful, resinous spice. The cinnamon here isn't burning--Inferno left huge red blotches on me--but rather warm and gentle. Since I can't wear blends with clove, I'm very happy to have something spicy that doesn't burn. This is amazingly pretty.

Ack! I smell like a dirty ashtray. I have known vetiver that I liked, but this is not it. It's starting to settle a bit, and I can sense other, more pleasant, things in the background, but that first 15 minutes almost made me ill. Into the swap pile!

LXXVII I'm not so good at determining individual notes, but this strikes me as Dorian+fruit and flowers. The fruit note isn't too strong, something that blends in very well. It could easily be bergamot. The floral is one that I usually shy away from, perhaps a lily or jasmine note. Something's a bit soapy in the background, which suggests jasmine. Strangely enough, this smells more like tea than my bottle of Dorian itself does. This is lovely. It smells like ultra-girly shampoo, but (and I never thought I'd say this) in a good way. (I either have really weird luck, or the lab is tricksy. My order also had a bottle of Gennivre, and this CT seems like a cross between Gennivre, minus the mint, and Dorian.) ETA: After trying out Hairy Toad Lily, the floral is definitely lily. Not the exact not of Hairy Toad Lily, because it isn't so sweet, but something in that family. Also, the soapiness seems to be dissipating quite nicely even after just a few weeks, which makes me wonder about amber. Amber always smells like Dial on me for a while, although if it's here it isn't much.

Oh, dear. I smell like an ashtray filled with wet menthol cigarette butts. Something here deeply disagrees with me. And, as it dries it gets more and more like cedar. No lavender, no fig, no pretty.

Wilde=love. I'm a pretty girly girl, yet for some reason I'm in love with some seriously manly perfumes right now. This is one of them, even though it does smell much more commercial than most of the lab blends. The notes all meld fairly seamlessly on me. There's a little tickle of something in the very back of this that is unpleasant. Dorian and The King of Hearts strike me the same way--I love them both, but a close sniff catches in my throat almost like the smell of curdled milk. It isn't strong enough to keep me away.

When fist applied, this was a huge waft of cumin and pomegranate. Like someone in an Indian restaurant got something very wrong. After that first blast, though, whatever I'm reading as cumin settled down, leaving a pleasantly spicy note. The pomegranate also settled, making the scent a lot more cohesive. That said, I'm not really sure how to classify the settled blend at all. I find it intriguing, which based on my BPAL past means I'll probably fall head over heels for this after a few wearings.

Ice Prince, anybody? I think I'm in love. "Crystalline musk, winter lily, bergamot, plum, and frozen pine boughs."

This is exactly the review I was coming here to post. In fact, I was starting to get alarmed when I read a page or two and no one else mentioned celery. Pretty floral+bad, bad celery. I can only hope that full dry down is better, but I'm not sure I'm willing to smell this way for that long.

I love this one oh-so-much. (Whichever BPAL is the newest tends to be my favorite, so right now this is it.) Amber tends to become yellow Dial soap on me, and I do get that here at a certain distance from my wrist. The throw, though, is a beautiful golden spice, with just the tiniest dab of cedar. It's a lovely and complex scent, which is especially nice given that most spicy perfumes flatten into generic cinnamon when I wear them. I have a feeling this is definitely this year's holiday party choice, even over my "real" Yule blends. It's the perfect balance of sexy grownup perfume and comfort scent. It isn't manly at all on me, although I could definitely imagine a man wearing it.

This was my first bottle of BPAL, but (unless I'm overlooking something) I've never managed to write the review. I love this fragrance. Of course, I have no problem smelling like lemon. I would, in fact, come pretty close to wearing Lemon Pledge as perfume. On me, this is mostly lemon verbena. The other notes are very quiet, and serve mostly to soften the lemon and make it seem less edible. The tea, especially, is far in the background, which would have disappointed me if I didn't love the lemon so much. This is definitely a pale, faint perfume. It fades quickly, although I can still smell it for hours if I get close to my wrist. It's my go-to summer blend, since in our usual oppressive heat any perfume can quickly become very heavy.

I adore this. It's pure mint and lavender on me, in almost equal proportions. Minty, lavendery love. A little medicinal, maybe, but also clean and energizing. It's great for clearing my mind when I need to settle down to work. It's also excellent for headaches, because sometimes my stomach can't handle the stronger mint smell in Grr. And, let's face it, I'd just smell like this all the time if I could. Alas, this fades quicker than any other BPAL I've tried. I get half an hour, tops, from an application. This may be my first BPAL heartbreak.

Wet this had me very worried. Something in the background smelled much too much like curdled milk. After about 20 minutes, curdled-milk note went away. Now this is very much, as the previous review noted, a woody and resinous smell, with just a bit of floral in the background. A hint of citrus keeps it from being too heavy and oppressive, but the citrus notes don't jump out. This is going to be a great cold-weather scent for me this winter. ETA: I wound up being a bit disappointed the first day, because after a few hours this ended up on a weirdly dusty note. Today I tried again, though, and I got neither curdled milk nor dust. It's also (yay!) more citrusy, although still not strongly so. Mostly, the wet and very dry stages shifted to something more pleasant. I'm guessing either my bottle needed a little more time to recover from being shipped, or my very high stress levels on the first day made it "off" somehow. In any event, this has gone from good to really, really good.

I'm not an anxious traveler. That said, I tend to get nauseous during landing (motion sickness) and I can't sleep on a plane to save my life. Safari=no nausea and two very nice naps on my last trip. I wish I'd had this around in the summer when, for some completely unknown reason, I started getting motion sickness on the bus every day. The fragrance on me is the loveliest lavender ever, without much else. The throw is pretty minimal. I really like that it's something fairly unlikely to offend my neighbor on the plane.

I get the same lavender and lime that almost everyone does, but something is "off" in the background. My nose kept saying "Shellfish?" Thankfully whatever I was interpreting as shellfish dried away in a half hour or so, but it's enough to keep me from picking up a whole bottle of this.

This is exactly the kind of sweet, foody scent that I won't wear during the day, but I love it at night. The first night I used it, I accidentally wiped it across one edge of my pillow. Now I find myself always wanting to sleep against that edge. (Quite handy, actually, since one of my shoulders is acting up and I'm a side sleeper.) I think I'll be getting a bottle.

When it was wet this was a fairly innocuous fruit scent on me. So much so that I forgot about it while I was making my breakfast. Partway through eating, I thought: wow, something smells really nice. Then I realized that it was Masabakes, having completely changed its character in 20 minutes. Now it's delicious incense and a little spice, with just a bit of black currant behind it. Lovely, in a completely grown-up way. Unless something terrible happens, this one is going on the bottle list. The lab's frimp system at its very best--I would never have tried this on my own.

So, just now I tried on Voodoo. Voodoo was terrible. Beyond terrible. Ashtray full of clove cigarettes terrible. I washed it off, frantically, and then slathered on some Phobos. And then I realized that the Voodoo wasn't all gone, but that lemon+leftover patchouli was delicious. I've seen some citrus and patchouli scents, but the variability of people's experiences with patchouli makes me a little nervous. Is there such a thing as a citrus and patchouli that's mostly citrus?

This starts out for me like the world's stinkiest clove cigarette, smoked by someone wearing too much patchouli. About the time I got up to wash it off, it settled a bit, but this is definitely not working for me. My first BPAL failure.

This is a classic case of getting what you expect--white rose and cream it is. Very, very sweet while wet, but thankfully it settled down as it dried. I love the cream note, which is gradually taking over. A lot of the other reviews have called this innocent/virginal/sweet, but (maybe because I put on a little drop too much) I'm getting something a little sexier, in a very old-fashioned way. This is like the perfume your grandmother would have worn when she was still young and hot and stealing her sister's boyfriend. This is much girlier than anything I usually wear, but it's definitely a keeper.