LadyKalessia

In the bottle, the opium is the first thing I smell, with a bit of backing from the narcissus, and a hint of deep myrrh. I'm a little worried at just *how* dark this smells. Wet, on skin, the opium mixes weirdly with the narcissus for me. It reminds me of the decaying remains of an old eau de parfum we found in my grandmother's things... But not unpleasantly so. I think that's the narcissus talking. We'll see how this dries down. On the dry down, this is a nice, subtly spicy scent. It really does make me think of a perfectly coifed, dark haired, doe eyed woman in a red 50's evening gown. I'm imagining my grandmother in the height of her youth and beauty... It's spicy but understated on my skin, and just a bit floral. Sophisticated is the word I'm looking for. And those last breathy notes have great staying power... I think this is a cocktail party scent for me.

In the bottle it smells of sweet almond and *coconut*, with a hint of sweet vanilla and a touch of something green. Wet on skin: The almond comes out, and that green picks up too. Not sure how much I like it at this point; it's almost overpoweringly sweet, and I'm not getting that "creamy" that everyone talks about. On the dry down it's much lighter and sweeter and *greener* than I'd expected, given how it smelled in the bottle. The green seems to be fading fast though, which I'm quite content with. Several hours later I'm still getting a little bit of the green, though the almond and vanilla are gone, replaced by something sweet and just a little spicy. Halfway through the day the green disappeared, but the vanilla/spice stayed on. It has great staying power at that level, and is very light, but strong. I approve! I'm also a little sad that I can't even imagine how one would get the "Hawaiian Pizza" effect from this. Guess my skin chemistry is just -different-.

In the bottle I get a lot of sweet vanilla and flowers, with maybe a tinge of sharp mandarin biting through. On my skin it goes very, VERY green, with something sharp and not altogether pleasant cutting through. The lily of the valley takes a backseat, and the opium and sandalwood are in front. The vanilla has disappeared entirely, hang it all. The mandarin never made an appearance out of the bottle, either. On the dry down, the lily of the valley is just barely there hanging on around the edges, with the opium and sandalwood still having it out. It's a nice subtle scent for all that, once it's dried down a bit, still a bit biting to my nose... and almost gone after half an hour! That's disappointing. An hour later, it's just a whiff of a memory, and starting to go sour on me like an old grandma scent. Washing it off now. What I find amusing about this is that the description fails to mention that the Belle Époque was also called "The Gilded Age" by many, because the gilt and glitz of high society was covering up the hard lives of the poor and working classes post-Industrial Revolution. Mark Twain wrote a whole lot about it, but the overall impression I get is of flowers and light cloaking a sort of sordid decay. Which is pretty much where I stand on this one: the flowers are nice, but it's a little too dark for me in the end. Edited to fix my silly italic tags.

This is another one that wingedcorset gave me, back before I started getting into BPAL, because she didn't like the almonds. I like almonds. I blame my mother, who has some funny story about biochem and sniffing some keytone mix or something to back her up. Anyway: In the bottle, it's got a very biting, green note to it that I really dislike - not as bad as Maenad in the bottle - underlaid with some very sweet notes that get lost in it. On my skin the green tones down a LOT, and a soft baby powder sort of scent comes up. The almonds and honey come out to play, with maybe a bit of musk as well. After about an hour, the green scent is completely gone, and it's all almonds and something sweet that might be vanilla. At the end of the day it died down a *lot*, so I had to get my nose riiiight up to my wrist to smell it. At this point the almonds are almost gone it seems, and there's mostly that warm amber/vanilla thing that might actually be "honey". This is a very warm, sweet scent, though it seems to fade away pretty fast. I like it, though it doesn't really drop my jaw. It's a nice sweet scent, but not overly so. It's strong somehow, and assertive, but remains feminine. I think if it weren't for the die-down, this one might become a little cloying.