Deidre

I'm trying to plan my next imp order, and I'd love to walk around smelling like fresh, juicy, non-synthetic strawberries. Could you help me in my quest for sweet red goodness? Oh, and don't hesitate to list LEs too, just in case I stumble across them around the corner of a swaps post... Many thanks in advance!

This is a very simple, sweet, fresh apple scent. Very girly and bright; probably a bit too much for me. It smells very clean, like a good shampoo, but is a bit one-dimensional. I'll keep it and wear it, though.

I mostly get a citrusy white tea from this. It isn't unpleasant, but very, very perfumy, even if it warms up a little bit after a while. I'll keep the decant, but probably won't need more of this.

I really wanted to love this. I'm an apple fiend, and Ladon is the closest I have to a signature scent right now. In the vial, this is a lovely light and fresh apple scent. But on my skin, it very quickly morphs into a completely nondescript, vaguely musky mishmash, and an hour or so later all I can smell is a bland, slightly nauseating sweetness. Bleh. Oh, well, I'll stick with Ladon then...

This one seriously threatened to go into shampoo territory - both peach and white musk tend to do that. However, it dries down to a sweet, clean, vaguely peachy scent that isn't unpleasant. It is nice, but a little too one-dimensional, so it probably won't be a bottle purchase.

To me, this is mostly red musk and incense, and sometimes a very faint wisp of tobacco. Nice but kind of generic - I'll keep my decant and wear it, but nothing I would need to hunt down actively.

Hrm. In the vial and wet on the skin, this had some potential - it was a pretty nice scent, musky, sweet but not overpowering, with a touch of incense (I know it isn't listed, but it might be due to the amber/red musk combo). But then it dries down to something completely generic, like so many blends containing red musk. It is still nice, and not something I minded having on my wrist, but not terribly exciting. I guess that if an imp comes my way I might wear it occasionally, but it's nothing I'd buy myself.

I got frimped a sniffie of this from a lovely forumite, and decided to skin-test it. In the vial, wet on my skin and dry, this is SWEET. I think it's time for me to accept that even though I love the scent and taste of fresh mangoes, the Lab's mango note just smells fake and overly candied to me. I mostly smell the mango here, its sweetness enhanced by the pomegranate and the berries, and a bit of red musk underneath...not for me, sadly!

I do agree with Little Bird - when buying perfume online, a customer should be able to trust the description and the fact that they will not get something completely different (I'm speaking both as a rather poor student who only treats herself to perfume occasionally and as an international customer who has to pay high shipping costs with every order and thus thinks twice about ordering anything). I think it's justified to expect a perfume to smell roughly the same, even with slight variations - and since I'm short on money, I have to rely on decant circles and such to know what I like, and the possibility of getting something completely different when ordering a full bottle is a bit off-putting when you are saving every penny to treat yourself to something once in a while. And I do think the Lab uses synthetic ingredients too (from the FAQ : "Our products are as natural as possible without compromising the safety and health of our customers. We will not use any component, natural or synthetic, that is deemed harmful to either the environment or the individual", implying that they do use synthetic ingredients), so that should cut down the variation potential...

This one was love at second sniff. It actually made it to my sales page, because when I got it it smelled sharp and strange and I was both underwhelmed and disappointed. Turns out all it needed was a few days - I retested this on a whim, and yes, there still was that initial sharp note - I'm guessing it's the orange blossom, maybe combined with the berries, but it calms down immediatly on my skin and then everything melds together into a warm, honeyed, fruity musk. I love it!

After giving this little beauty a day to settle, I'm ready to review it It's really beautiful. In the bottle I smell sweet, fresh, juicy coconut, with a sweetness I associate with pineapple; I can't really distinguish the florals, but they must be there, supporting the whole scent. This actually smells like a piña colada without the booze! It stays pretty true on my skin. This fades in about three hours, but it's really nice, and I don't mind reapplying or wearing it in my hair to increase the wearlength. Beautiful, beautiful, very summery, fresh, fruity, sweet without being cloying. Wonderful

CVIX : Coffee. Lots and lots of coffee from the bottle and wet on skin. When I sniff close, I can smell Dorian underneath. After a while it gets sweeter, but the throw is still very much bitter coffee. Dorian comes out more and more, making the coffee creamier - quite nice!

Hi! For peach blossom, not peach, you might want to give The Temptation a try. It's absolutely wonderful! And La bella Donna della mia Mente has this not listed too.

Vasilissa smells pretty much like Jingo-Kogo, for those who liked it.

If anyone is pining after Jingo-Kogo, they should try this. It is almost the same scent to my nose. Since Jingo-Kogo didn't work on me, this doesn't either - too sweet, and the sandalwood goes all sickly-cloying on me. A shame, because it sounded quite good...

I got an aged imp in a swap...this starts off almost foody, very rich and spicy with a fesh zing from the citrus and the herbs. The foodiness calms down a bit on the skin, and it becomes just beutiful, creamy, spicy and sexy. I didn't find this masculine, really, I was just completely in love with it without thinking in terms of masculine/feminine, but on the drydown I could call this unisex, yes. Why doesn't this get more love? It's absolutely amazing.

If you can track it down : Te Po was straight-up cherry cola cough syrup. I loathed it, but you might like it

(I didn't review this yet? Time to do so) ...huh. I love vanilla, and I was sure to love this. I get vanilla at the beginning, with an edge that probably is the rum; nice, but nothing special. And then, on my skin, this becomes something strange and almost...fizzy, the brimstone and herbs don't play nice here. Well, cheers for another dodged bullet - I was glad I could try this, but this is going off to swaps to someone who will love it more. Oh, after a while, the fizziness calms down. But I still don't love it, and I have more than enough vanilla GCs and easier to find LEs, so I won't try to hunt down more than one decant of this. Still swaps.

Hmmmmm. In the vial, this was a rather bright, sweet plum. Then, first applied, all I could smell was patchouli - which I don't like that much when it is too sharp. Then it faded a bit, and the plum came out again. Hmmmmm. I don't know. I is sweet and a bit spicy, and reminds me of Madame Moriarty, which is a favorite, but still. A little too sweet. And now the incense is coming out. I burned incense in my room when I was a teenager, and I still like the smell, but not that much in perfume. Oh well...off to swaps it goes, I guess.

After all the fuss about Jingo-Kogo, I was quite excited to finally get to try it. Meh. It's quite soft, reminding me a lot of a toned-down Haloes (which was just kind of okay on me). A little soapy, a little sweet. Really, nothing to write home about, in my opinion. So, I'm thorougly underwhelmed, and quite a bit relieved to have dodged a bullet, again. Seems like the most popular scents just don't do it for me.

Who needs Monsterbait : Closet when there's a GC that smells almost exactly like it? This is rich, foody, and spicy, without any butter (which I hate hate hate, so I'm quite relieved). I could have done without the rose, but it's really tame and, as previous reviews have said, it probably helps toning the foodiness down and making this wearable. Very good. Bottle. And my quest for Closet and Crumpet Rebellion officially ends here.

This is nice. Really, really nice. At first, I get that sharp, weird scent that made me wrinkle my nose at Snake oil and throw it on the swaps pile. And I can still smell it going on discreetly when I put Snake Charmer on, but it behaves, so I'm happy. Wet, this is sweet but not cloyingly so (like Snake Oil was - I found it a bit nauseating, but nothing like that here), a little fruity (less than I hoped and expected, but perhaps it will come out later), spicy, and red musk goodness (red musk just as it should be - in the background, not too overwhelming, blending in with the other notes). I'm really impatient to see how this ages. As I said, it's nice now, but it will be good after a few months, oh yes.

So I finally got my hands on a bottle, aged five months, of this little beauty. I was afraid of the patchouli, which I'm not exactly fond of. I can smell it in the bottle, it has that sharp tang I dislike, but it disappears very quickly on my skin. After that, it's all red musk and vanilla and the occasional fruity whiff, smoke and sex and seduction and it's perfect. I feel like I'm never going to need another BPAL after having found this one. I'd love to know what the male population thinks of it - and I'll be testing it soon. ETA : I've been wearing this quite a few times after my review, and it only gets better and better. It is all the best things about perfume rolled together : sweet, musky, spicy, fruity and warm. Oh, dear. I want to smell like that for the rest of my life.

I almost passed on this, based on how it smelled in the imp. Strong, aggresive, and not at all what I like. Plus, there's patchouli in there, which I can't stand... ...but I put it on anyway. And oh. In the beginning, I can smell cardamom, cloves, and pepper; it's a strong mix of baking spices, it reminds me of making christmas biscuits with my mom. The acrid and pungent component I smelled in the vial fades very quickly, and leaves only the glorious spices. As it dries, it mellows further; I think the cloves come out more and more, and perhaps a hint of carnations. It's soft, spicy, and gorgeous. Keeper? Yes, and hoarder. It should age well, too. And I think soemone mentioned it would be a great layering scent, which I second; I can't wait to try it out with something vanilla-ish like Love's Philosophy. Edit : I layered it with Love's Philosophy later on, and, again, oh. It smells gorgeous, sweet and spicy. those two scents complement each other perfectly, the spices take away what might be too simply sweet in Love's Philosophy, and the vanilla and cream soften Clemence further. And - somewhere during the drydown, this started smelling almost exactly like Storyville. I will test it again to be sure, but I think I might have found a valid substitute here. Wonderful. Wonderful! Second edit : this has a lot of throw. Woah. My brother, sitting on the other end of the couch with a cold, complained of me having put on too much perfume! And it was only one swipe of the wand.

More Bell eh-pock, I think. I'll give a try to explaining l'heure verte. Try to say "leg vegt". But the E in "leg" is long and you round your lips. And for both G's, give the sound some... extra vibration. as if you were trying to say gggg and a rolling R at the same time. Yup yup, eh-pock it is indeed! I have noticed that english-speaking people tend to pronounce the "o"s, when followed by a consonant and an "e" (like in "époque", or "mode", or "encore") like a long "o". But it's always short; we don't take the final "e" into consideration here. It's funny, because I sometimes get the impression that people pronounce those long "o"s with the feeling that it's very elegant and "french" somehow. And, really, it is elegant (I love it when people have and english accent in french - it sounds so...refined), it's just not...well, french. Anyway, eh-pock. But L'Heure Verte is really difficult to explain, I don't know. Perhaps Nia's explanation is better than anything I could say myself; it shows the "mechanics" of that darned soft "r" very well!