Shollin

First sniff: Birdsong and bright, sunny flowers by the beach. Wearing: Bright, sunny and cheery – exactly what I needed today. Pele smells like flowers without being typically floral, somehow – tropical flowers, huge pink hibiscus with bells wide open for the hummingbirds. Hibiscus-pink is just about the right colour, too – nothing pale about this lady. The ginger is tingling along the edges of the scent, not nearly as biting as Siren’s but still making its presence known. About ten hours later it’s still hanging on – faded but still sunny and cheery. Yay.

First sniff: Kali is very rich and solid. I can’t tell whether it’s blood-red or chocolate-brown – I can smell chocolate in this, somewhere at the core, but there’s so much else going on. A generous splash of red wine over rich dark cocoa, with some lighter spices and flower petals sprinkled in, all mashed together with a heavy stone pestle. Wearing: The wine stands out most when wet, and it’s gorgeous and juicy rather than boozy, somewhat like the wine in Blood Rose. This made me smile all day, and kept its lovely body-heat warmth, the wine and cocoa getting along quite well so neither ever dominated – and though it seems like those two things would smell hideous together, they’re fantastic. Love love love.

First sniff: Torment is sharply, darkly, aggressively incensey, with a lighter aura around the edges that’s almost minty – it makes my nose cold in the same way mint does. Wearing: Sharp, sweet, spicy, incensey, sigh. Not my thing.

First sniff: Innocence lost, a rose crushed underfoot and a higher, sweeter note poised over it like the sob of a violin – yearning and sad. Wanton is very much not what I was expecting. Wearing: The scent has grown up a lot… it’s past its initial heartbreak and has settled into a sadder-but-wiser woman who’s just about ready to take risks again. Very soft, still slightly sad roses with a murky undercurrent. Once it’s dried this rose smolders… rose petals crushed in a woman’s hand until they absorb the heat of her skin. Yet another rose scent that’s managed to win me over.

First sniff: Oh, Egyptian Amber is really lovely. Smooth, flowing golden-bronze, with only a hint of spicy sharpness. I really really really hope it behaves on me. Wearing: So far (thirty seconds), so good… same as in the bottle, with the smokiness kicked up just a wee bit. It’s very smoky by the time I’m going to bed several hours later - more like woodsmoke from an oven than anything else. I’m not entirely sure I like it, but that might just be my mood at the moment - I'll try it on once more before I decide. At least I know this sort of amber isn’t the thing that goes truly funky on my skin in some of the resiny blends.

I just went searching through my enormous document of reviews from everywhere I could find 'em, and people have mentioned that scent in connection with Cathedral and Bruja. I've never sniffed it myself so I can't really contribute, but I hope this helps.

First sniff: Not your average Honey – this is darker and much richer than clover honey, with a hint of smokiness to balance the sweet. This is something I could wear on my skin and not feel like I should be stirring it into hot tea instead. Wearing: Smoky-sweet, oh my yes. Wow. If it stays this good it’s going on my favourites list. This scent is the exact colour of Anne McCaffrey’s bronze dragons – it’s too dark and smoky to be golden. Walking into work I kept thinking this is the way I wish my skin smelled. Sadly… by the end of the night it reminds me quite a bit of the boozey burned scent Hellcat turned into on my skin. I’m not entirely sure what went wrong where, but it’s nowhere near as gorgeous as it started out. That said, I’ll definitely wear it again, and keep the imp around to reapply when it starts going funny, because it takes several hours and the scent up until then is truly droolworthy.

First sniff: Wanda smells like... erm… Nerds candy. The white ones. Clearly, my nose is mad. Wearing: OK, better – now it’s white wine, not white Nerds. Still nothing like the description, but that’s my nose for ya. As it’s drying it prompted a round of “Ooh… OK… ooh… hey! Ooh.” as I noticed it going very interestingly spicy and shifting quite abruptly from white to red and the leather suddenly asserting itself underneath. Wow. Hot spiced wine – not warm, but hot enough to burn your tongue – and leather, very tight black leather. OK, it’s shifted again, and now it’s more like fruit punch, probably spiked fruit punch, over leather… (this has all happened within about half an hour, by the way). I think, now that it’s settled down to sweet plums over smoky leather, that it’s not really me. Interesting, and quite pleasant in the hot spiced wine phase, but after several hours, not me.

First sniff: Fresh, blue, aquatic and starlit. Somewhat reminiscent of the other sea-scents like Tempest or Lightning, but colder and brighter – the brightness of moonlight on snow rather than sunshine. Wearing: I adore these clean-water scents for nasty muggy summer days, and again I find myself wanting to wear them all together so I can compare. Szepasszony is a gorgeous addition to the family – clear dark blue, more of a rain scent than a sea scent, and very slightly sweet in its freshness.

First sniff: Softly sad, haunted flowers sighing in the entrance hall of an abandoned mansion. A wet and lonely scent. Wearing: Beautiful soft-sweet floral that still somehow smells like a lament. You know how sometimes, when you’re having a really crappy day, all you want to do is wallow in your misery so you play grim songs or watch sad movies? Blue Lilac is a scent I’d wear if I were having a day like that. It’s very familiar to me, but I can’t pin down the reason – I don’t know if I’ve used a soap that smells like this, or if I used to know someone who smelled like this, but it’s teasing right around the edges of memory.

First sniff: Stodgy wooden incense with something airy and sweet dancing around it, poking it repeatedly and insisting, “Lighten up!” Wearing: Gold and silver honeysuckle twined playfully around dark wooden crossbeams of a rustic chapel. Anathema has a smoky undertone, but not incense smoke – it’s as if the church had been damaged by fire and rebuilt around the part that survived, so one wall still bears the sooty burn marks. It went all soapy when it dried, annoyingly. Sweet soap, but still soap.

First sniff: Dark wood and incense, similar to Cathedral but less sharp. Wearing: Kostnice goes instantly soapy, unfortunately. Like incense and soap put together. Not a good thing.

First sniff: The same cool, dark jasmine as in Wicked, softly surrounded by an aura of darker flowers. Black Dahlia to me sounds like the codename of a female spy or assassin, and I can so picture her wearing this scent – the victims have half a second to wonder “Oh my, what’s that lovely fragrance?” as she sneaks up behind them (all in black, of course) with her garrotte. (I've since looked her up and discovered that Black Dahlia was the victim, not the killer... but that first impression remains.) Wearing: Very reminiscent of Wicked – I’ll have to wear them against each other one of these days and pick one. The flowers are chilly but velvet-soft, with big showy petals. Hey, that’s magnolia, I recognise it from my great-uncle’s yard – this reminds me so much of hiding out inside one of his big sprawling magnolia trees with a book… lying on a wide branch in the cover of the leaves, and no one could see me from outside. After it dries down a bit the rose starts to take over… a sinister black rose like the killer’s calling card. (Yes, I’ve gone back to the murderess from my great-uncle’s back yard. Don’t ask me how my brain works.) I think I do prefer Wicked, as the rose isn’t quite so rosey and I’m not a fan – but this is still lovely.

Mine also was labeled Sacher-Masoch, and I have confirmation from the Labgoddess that S-M (hee hee) and Severin are indeed the same scent. First sniff: Grapefruit, I think – a bittersweet citrus that gets sweeter in the aftertaste – tickled with something very dark and masculine, but not overtly animal. Wearing: The citrus takes the forefront, and now that I know it’s bergamot it makes more sense to my nose than grapefruit, because it definitely isn’t as sharp as the other grapefruit scents I’ve smelled. There’s something very dark and solid brooding underneath – not a sinister darkness, but melancholy… no, that’s not right either, because it isn’t sad, just brooding. Joseph Fiennes as Will Shakespeare, looking out the window chewing on his quill and thinking too much. While it isn’t overtly masculine on me, this scent would be devastating on a man… I suspect the dark undertone would be boosted on a guy’s skin into a full-blown brooding-poet scent and he’d smell like he should be wearing a blousy white Renaissance shirt with the big flowy sleeves.

Carolsag, there's no guarantee anyone from the Lab will see this post - the announcements forum is for them to talk to us, not for us to talk to them. Have you tried sending an e-mail with this information to answers@blackphoenixalchemylab.com ?

First sniff: I really like Desire. It’s a bit of lemon meringue and a bit of ginger snap, all somehow without being overly foody. Wearing: There’s a sharp dry sweetness to the lemon – the first touch on my skin is less nice than the scent in the bottle, much more rough-edged. It’s strangely heady – sniffing it on my wrist quite literally makes me dizzy, though I can’t imagine why. After it dries down for half an hour or so it’s back to the lovely lemony bakery scent from before, well grounded in something darker and earthier. The drydown is very pleasant and something I’ll definitely wear again.

First sniff: The sharpness of the citrus in Aizen-Myoo knocked me back a bit. It smells like a kumquat tastes if you accidentally bite the flesh with the skin – sweet layered with bitingly bitter, and bright yellow-orange. Wearing: If it were possible for a citrus fruit to be crunchy, that would be this scent. Bittersweet citrus peel with the perfectly crispy crunch of an apple. After a few minutes on it sweetens considerably into almost a honey scent… not sticky like honey, but very golden and smooth and not-too-sweet and YUM. This is the second scent in a row that I've liked far more than I expected to - Dissipation was the first. Yay.

June Gloom, yeah - especially after reading blackrayne's review! But of the ones you actually have, I'd go with Twilight - it's a fantastic warm purple floral that smells like a garden in the rain.

I heartily second (seventh, tenth, whatever) Jolly Roger and Pele. Xiu... thingie falls into my own category of "what I want to smell like at the beach" - it's not the beach itself, but it's very tropical and pretty - big tropical flowers in the shade just beyond the line where the trees meet the beach. I like it muchly.

First sniff: Hmmmmm. Very dry powdery fruit… almost like SweetTarts. And checking the description, there’s no fruit in Dissipation at all, so we resniff… and decide it’s more like root beer. Hmmm. Will be interesting to see what it does on my skin. Wearing: Fizzy lemonade. I don’t have a clue what in this smells like lemon, but it’s lemony. And fizzy. And bright and cheery and I like it a lot. It’s not quite as definitively lemony after it dries down a bit, but it’s still bright yellow and very bubbly. Liking it muchly. (I may already have mentioned that.) And it’s odd, because it’s not the sort of scent you try on once and fall madly in love with, or the sort that makes you keep sniffing your wrists and going into an eye-rolling inappropriate moan like some of them do to me (*cough*Rapture*cough*)… it makes me giggle and I can’t help but like it.

First sniff: Big dark leaves shrouding a stone patio near an Italian kitchen. There really is something in Alecto that reminds me of Italian food. Olive leaf, I’d wager. Wearing: When first on it’s dark green and … somehow kitcheny and sinister at the same time; the herbs have a very sharp edge. It turns fresher and brighter as it dries, and while the sharpness is still there, the green leafy/grassy scent stays on top. It kept the odd kitcheny-ness throughout its wearing... not really my thing.

First sniff: The faint glow of a burning stick of incense in the close darkness of a tomb. Wearing: There’s a peppery bite to Tisiphone, and it’s warmed up a lot – still very dry though. It clings very close to my skin – I can hardly smell it at all unless I have my nose right up against my wrist. After giving it a couple of minutes to settle, I do smell flowers – it’s more like floral soap, actually, and still very faint.

First sniff: Ulalume is really interesting – it reminds me of both camping and Christmas simultaneously, and there’s rain in there somewhere. Woodsiness and spice and the faintest breath of white flowers on the breeze. Wearing: Oddly, the first drop on my skin is the same white-melon note as in Ingenue. That dies quickly and I’m left with Christmasy spices brushed over pale flowers growing in the shadow of the woods with a foxfire glow. Very pretty. It's faded by the end of the night, but I'm used to that from soft floral scents.

First sniff: Watery lavender-blue flowers, with big flared petals, floating in a clear crystal bowl in a great hall. Wearing: I wish I was better at picking out specific floral notes. Queen Gertrude reminds me of jasmine, but it’s far less sweet, softer – almost fluffy around the edges – and very pale purple. It smells like something an older woman would wear without being an old-lady scent, if that makes sense. An older woman like Lauren Bacall – that same sort of elegant, unflashy dignity. About twenty minutes on it’s gone powdery – at this stage it smells quite a bit like Lush’s Bathos, which definitely isn’t a favourite of mine. It sticks, too – it’s been about ten hours since I put it on and I can still smell it faintly on my wrist.

First sniff: Danse Macabre is dry, incensey and sepia-toned, with a touch of gentle woody spice. Wearing: Incense + my skin = sharp-sweet and unpleasant. Drat drat drat. I really liked this for the first, oh, minute and a half before it went funky – it’s strangely warm, raspy-dry, with the barest ghost of sweetness hovering over.