invisible iris

Honey, ambergris, neroli, white peach, patchouli, and cocoa absolute. In the vial, all I can smell is sweet peach. Freshly applied, I get honey-sweetened neroli and peach, and I can detect a faint patchouli lurking around in the background. Once dry, the main impression I get is sweet peach. The peach is a nostalgic (juvenile, really) topnote. The patchouli has pretty much sunk behind the sweet stuff, and after a while the neroli does the same thing. At no time do I get any cocoa, which bums me out. As a result, once the patchouli is overtaken by the sweeter elements, Eisheth Zenunim is a little one-dimensional on my skin. It even verges on peach candy. Verdict: Honeyed peach with a hint of neroli amber haze. It's not very me. ETA: scent description

Having tested Faiza multiple times, I am feeling a bit dismayed. This is the most confusing BPAL I have tried to date. In the vial, I get sharp green orange with a heady mix of florals in the background. Freshly applied, I still get sharp orange, there is a strong black amber presence, I detect caraway, honey sweetens things a bit, and I get a sandalwood that really does smell green. Deep green and mysterious. Dry is when Faiza really messes with me. Sometimes, Faiza smells ingriguing, incredibly complex, dark and vegetal, and really sophisticated. All the notes swirl around in this deep vortex of indistinguishability. The complexity makes this probably too sophisticated for me to wear on a daily basis, but I still like it. Other times, the scent is beautiful, but either the black amber or black musk (I'm guessing?) overpowers my nose and gives me a headache. The worst was last night, though, when some note or other went funky and I smelled like dank BO. Yucko. So I guess the verdict is, Faiza is too temperamental in the way she interacts with my sinuses and my skin chemistries. And she is so full of different notes that I have no clue what's causing the problem.. unless it's the complexity itself, just being overwhelming. It makes me sad, because when she's good, she's very good. Sorry Faiza, at this point our relationship is too inconsistent for me to spring for a bottle.

In the decanted imp, Pickled Imp smells straight up like xmas. Spices and pine. Freshly applied, the vanilla kicks in and I get spiced xmas cookie. But as it dries, the holiday and baked goods vibe kind of falls by the wayside. The spices, which are dark, dusty, and dry to my nose (not glowing, candy red, liquid, glowing, or sweet), are what I smell most. So I get, with strongest first: dusty clove (this is the same clove I detect in Arachne of Lydia, which I adore), dusty cinnamon, mildly creamy vanilla, and a hint of woodsy (not sappy) pine. Pickled Imp is simple, comforting, dry, dark, and cute, but not cloying at all. Verdict: I could easily see myself reaching for this often, especially bundled up near the woodstove during the colder months. Although I'm not certain I'd ever choose it over Arachne of L. But that's hard to predict.

This was a frimp from the generous Lab. (I was glad for the chance to try an Atomic Luau Lounge blend!) In the imp, it was fruity tropical fruit fruit! Freshly applied, I got fizzy mandarine, and, oh no... As it dries, all I smell is Orange Clean. All the way through to the end. If I concentrate on it, I can pick out passion fruit and/or guava adding a pink kick from the corner. But unfortunately, the more the gin and tonic notes come out, which I think should add herbal complexity to this fruit-dominated blend, the more my nose reads it as cleaner. To its credit, Orance Clean uses real orange peels or whatever, so it’s not an artificial or unpleasant scent. It's just one I associate with a cleaning spray. Verdict: I, too, keep my distance from "Island Scents". And I'll also be staying away from Golden Wave.

In the imp, this is almost sickeningly sweet weird chocolate (maybe the weird sweetness is the gourds?), and then I detect something wheaty that I assume is the lager. Freshly applied, the sickening sweetness immediately dissipates, and cocoa and spices become more prominent, not too sweet but still a little funky. It might be my imagination, but I get a hint of sweet vegetal fleshyness that makes this blend sit ever so slightly wrong. Once dry, the funk tames down into cooked pumpkin that rounds out the cacao, and the cacao becomes dusty cocoa, and it’s joined by spices (cinnamon, clove, dry ginger, allspice) and the tiniest bit of pitch. These deepen and darken and dry out and meld with the dusty cocoa. Once completely dry, Ghoul Hooligan smells like pumpkin pie spice! And the faintest hint of something wheaty or oaty. It gives off a far-flung (across the room) but nonetheless light throw of dusty spicy cacao. Verdict: Ghoul Hooligan is warm and comforting, reminiscent of Pickled Imp but with cacao instead of vanilla. I like it more and more as I keep catching whiffs... it’s delicious but not overwhelmingly sweet.

Through swirling winds, the Phoenix restlessly wanders: dry leaves, Indonesian patchouli, coffee bean, twining ivy, teak, hyssop, and tonka. In the imp, this smells strongly of teak. Freshly applied, it's strong dry leaves and teakwood. I don’t know if I’m amping dry leaves and teak or what, but this stuff has crazy throw, an insistent woodsy dry scent like men’s cologne. I get no sweetness from the tonka, and certainly no creamyness. I detect a dry bark-like patchouli, but not very much of it, and there is a slight hint of the bitter harshness of an over-roasted, burnt coffee bean. But mostly I get bitter dry leaves and wood. It reminds me of heavily barrel-aged whiskey (without any boozey whine, though), and something here almost rings metallic, with a twangy sharpness. Is that hyssop? An hour or so in, there is a mere hint of tonka, but it’s too little too late. And then, especially for such an amped-up beginning, it begins to fade quickly. Verdict: Bitter, woodsy, oddly-metallic scent that leans heavily masculine, but I imagine it could be worn by the right kick-ass lady. Not for me though. eta: scent description

When I open the imp I smell sharp, tart lilac. Freshly applied, I get big springtimey floral lilac, and then ho wood and vanilla start to play out--it's nice in this stage, as I like lilac and the ho wood and vanilla make it creamy and warm. Then it smells really familiar.. It reminds me of Lysander, with the main notes of lilac and tonka. Lysander was wonky and unbalanced on me, with the cool floral and the creamy tonka never melding, but Penis Admiration seems to work better. Lilac and tonka hold together somewhat more successfully with a hint of dry ho wood and galbanum, and the sweet vanilla covers over any weirdness. But soon, the vanilla fades back behind lilac and tonka, and the scent becomes strange and curdled and schizoid and it doesn’t work at all. I don't know how to describe it, other than it's a jarring disconnect between the feel of two sides of the blend, as if mixing orange juice and milk (but instead mixing lilac and tonka), and two good things make something gross. Verdict: Lilac and tonka are both notes I really like in other contexts, so I always expect to love a blend like this. But the effect of them together on my skin has been consistently weird and Penis Admiration is no exception. Sort of like moldy maple syrup. Distinctly off, faintly nauseating.

Black Opal is a lightly sweet, cool vanilla, with a tinge of coconut, and a bit of something mineral? It’s difficult to descrbe that mineral note, but I agree there’s a dark feel here, although only inasmuch as something utterly transparent can appear dark. The throw (slathered) is potent but strangely invisible, intangible, and as if it defies gravity or lacks a bottom, it occurs to my nose as if out of nowhere, as if the scent doesn't come from my skin at all. It’s like the opposite of a skin scent: it's ethereal and clear and metaphysical-seeming while still sweet and lightly vanillic. (When I smell my wrist up close I might get a hint of musk, but it doesn’t seem warm enough to be skin musk, maybe instead a misty white or crystal musk? But just a hint of it, and it doesn't appear in the throw.) It’s really pretty, especially for someone who likes light and sweet blends. But the interest is very subtle, and I can see how it might read as generic, or boring, especially if you hear "darkness" and expect to get "earth." This darkness is clearer than earth, it's more like ether. It lasted maybe 5 hours on me.

In imp: strong and heady On skin: cinnamon jasmine Dry: A heated, slightly creamy, earthy/spicy/sweet, lilac-jasminy floral. It’s not incensey, but it smells to me like a deeply-colored resin looks, pulsating and ancient and alive. It’s not very heavy on me, but find it a little boring or cloying after a while. Something about it doesn’t sit quite right, and I'd rather be wearing another scent. While it’s okay, it’s not something I’ll go to very often.

In the imp and wet on my skin, this smells like plasticky dragon’s blood. The plastic smell takes maybe 15 minutes to burn off and then it’s pretty much gone. For a little while it smells like someone crumbled up vanilla cookies into dragon’s blood, but mostly it becomes a spiced vanilla cookie. It’s nice for a little while, but it has got a ton of throw, and after a while I get sick of smelling this kind of cookie. It’s weird, because I don’t mind smelling like a cookie usually, but something about the dragon’s blood resin makes this too insistent for me. Kind of good, but at the same time weird and a bit disturbing. Like a cookie from somebody else's house, made by somebody else's mom. Or a cookie made by the Other Mother. Creepy! Maybe some of the plastic has lingered, and that's what I'm getting. I don’t know. But I won't be reaching for Dragon's Milk very often.

A complimentary imp from the generous Lab. When freshly applied, Uruk is cherryjasmineyuck. Even as it dries, the almond never quite makes it to almond on me. It goes straight from fake cherry to morphing with other notes into a cloying grapey plum kind of scent, I’m guessing from combining with fig leaf, saffron, and maybe bergamot. The floral was the other prominent component of this blend, and I think the jasmine mostly ate up the river lilies, so it ended up smelling to me like plummy jasmine. There were intimations of patchouli and incense that fuzzed and deepened it up a little, making resiny round plummy jasmine, with a hint of spice. And then, gone. There was definitely a lot going on with Uruk, but it never hit a real harmony on my skin, maybe because it didn’t stick around much longer than an hour. Not a favorite.

On wet, this is rosey, dry clovey vanilla, on the sweet side, in a nice way! The other flowers start to come out… I'm beginning to learn that red musk has this amazing ability to transform fruity and/or rose notes, which I often can't stand, into things of beauty. Once dry, The Grindhouse is sweet and soft, musky floral vanilla, with a hint of fruitiness. (A fruity rose, I think..) Sometimes musk can be too heavy for me, florals are often too heady, but here everything balances everything else out so harmoniously, it's kind of... heavenly-smelling. Literally, this is (I just now decided) how heaven smells in my imagination. The longer it's on, the more I like it. Sugared/candied flowers with an exotic, spicy depth. No single floral dominates, but I detect rose and iris. The throw is kinda faint but really pretty. It begins to fade after several hours. There’s something sweetly mysterious about The Grindhouse that makes it addictive. It’s like a floral Snake Oil.

On wet, this is tobacco honey with a smoky woodsy feel. Dry, The Illustrated Woman is an evil sort of honey. Honey from the wrong side of the tracks. I’d say the defining note for me is pine pitch. It seems to be doing a lot of work yoking together other components of the blend. There’s a sinister sweetness coming from it that flavors the honey, making it kinda pinesappy, almost like sticky smoky-industrial medicinal honey. The tobacco pulls it back from being at all foody, though, and adds another hint of corruption to the sweetness. A bit headachey for me, at least at first. The woody quality of the pine pitch is at work too, melding with the resins and patchouli, giving the blend a tough don’t-mess-with-me vibe. While the most evident notes are sticky sweet, the overall scent registers a bitter, sullen strength. I like it a lot, especially after it’s calmed down on my skin for a while. Later: The huz said he smelled pineapple, and woah, it’s weird but after he said that I smelled it too! Evil, woodsy pineapple.

Wet on skin this is big caramel plus tobacco and cinnamon leaf. And then patchouli and black currant appear… finally sandalwood makes its entrance. Oof LOVE. Dry, Tiresias is amazing. Black currant/tobacco/patchouli/cinnamon/caramel wafts are so deeply, dryly dark. Caramel has calmed down to meld well with the other notes. Now caramel, cinnamon leaf, and tobacco are topnotes while patchouli and sandalwood bring up the rear. Black currant balances the bitter spice with the tiniest hint of dryly-sweet dark purple fruit. The several varieties of sweetness and bitterness meld and balance each other really well. This is exactly what the description says: moody, dark, and sweet-bitter. It’s a provocative reinterpretation of Tiresias, for devotees of the original metamorphically-gendered seer.

When applied, this smells like sweet strawberry peachy hard candy. Dry, it smells like sweet strawberry peachy hard candy with perhaps a tiny hint of cheesecake, or I might just be imagining that. And, alas, a weird bitter plastic when I smell up close. DH said it smells of strawberry-scented children’s shampoo. Not awesome. Not that it smells bad, or even cloying. Just… artificial. Boo. Doesn’t work for me.

When first applied, Darkness is strong narcissus, and in turns threatens to go soapy or powdery. But it never does. It dries to narcissus and opium. Myrrh is there, but isn't a strong player. I think it’s the narcissus that makes this smell very adult-lady-perfume-from-the-80's. When I put my nose right up to my skin, I get a formaldehyde/powder thing going on, but the throw is more pleasant (while perfumey). I *do* like the sweetness of opium that I occasionally catch whiffs of, the same almost vanillic note from Debauched, and in very late stages the opium is most of what's left, and it smells nice. This makes me want to try other opium blends. But on the whole, Darkness is (appropriately) a dark, smoky floral, a bit too floral. I don’t feel like it’s very “me.” Too serious & old-fashioned, maybe.

Wet, this is all vetiver. Dry, it's headache-inducing, skunk-funk, crazy intense vetiver of doom. No violet that I can detect, unless that's it adding a greasy sweetness to the overall horrible, nauseating stank. For me, Saturnalia does successfully evoke the BO of a Satyr, or any woodland deity categorically devoted to Assy Raunch. This is traumatic vetiver. It would deter me from trying other vetiver blends had I not already experienced a few that work. My respect goes out to all the loyal vetiver lovers of this world, Saturnalia is clearly meant for you. (not for me!!!)

It’s unbelievable to me how wearable this is, given the exceedingly cute concept. In the beginning it's chocolatey depth with all kinds of green notes poking through. Mint brings contrasty freshness, oakmoss brings humidity, and cedar brings an organic, ligneous backbone. Everything evokes a lovely green woodsyness. On my skin, the cedar and oakmoss come to the front just enough to throw your nose so that if you didn’t know there was chocolate/mint/vanilla, you wouldn’t guess it was there. This is chocolate made all natural and clean-woodsy-wild. Like if you were in a minty mossy cedar forest, and instead of dirt the damp ground was made of cocoa. It is a lovely and lovable little scent.

In imp: Sweet wine and honey! On skin: Sweet cake, honey, wine, and what I guess is a kinda weird milk note? Dry: Fresh sticky honey on buttered biscuits! Mostly a sweet, sticky, winey honey. Somehow the wine note makes it smell just a bit more like actual honey to me. With the occasional hint of buttery flakey biscuit. Or cake, but not white cake, like a cake made with dates, with that natural brown sweetness that almost registers spice but not quite. That's probably what sugar smelled like in medieval times. And so, surprisingly evocative! So sticky and good, this one. The wine tempers the sweetness and makes it more wearable but still really delicious. Good throw and it stays fairly strong for a long time (8 hrs or so before it began to fade).

in imp: spiced on skin: spiced syrupy amber dry: No musk, no vanilla/tonka, and--this made me wonder if I was sniffing the same oil as everyone else--I don’t get cinnamon at all. Maybe a bit of cardamom. What I do get, in addition to the amber, is a very prominent saffron note. At first it threw me off and I didn’t care for the blend, because I expected something spicy, like dry or bitter spicy cloves or cinnamon bark. But on me The Lion is rather sweetly spicy, in the way that saffron has this golden almost honey-like sweetness to it, reminiscent of sweet, curing hay. With expectations adjusted, I fell in love with it. A golden, sweetish, hay-like saffron in a fuzzy halo of warm amber. I smell like a sun-soaked feral feline, and it is divine. It's not the most sophisticated, mouth-watering, or sexiest scent that I've liked, but The Lion is the kind of comfortable & reliably beautiful blend that I will wear everywhere--at home, at work, in bed, on a train, in the rain, etc.

In imp: Oh, most holy of holies! On skin: I think I just died from pleasure. The most delicious chocolate hazelnut. Dry: Same mind-blowing pleasaure as before. Shifts around a bit, sometimes goes to chocolate-caramel, sometimes to pure chocolate. But it always smells heavenly, and it lasts a decent length of time on me. A funny thing about foodie blends. When I got into BPAL, even though I have a huge sweet tooth, I never, ever thought I'd want to smell like dessert. And even up until my most recent lab order, I think I was in denial. Like I was ashamed of it, I wanted to be more sophisticated than that!! I'd say the moment when I finally had to admit it, straight up, was when I tried Bliss. Man, even my husband says he's tempted to wear Bliss. This stuff isn't even perfume... It's like, virtual reality.

in imp: Cocoa and patchouli on skin: Cocoa, patchouli, and then flowers begin to come out, then leather… lots of shifting, here. dry: Seamlessly blended, smooth, deep, dark, round, velvety, dry, cocoa/patchouli/leather/resin. The flowers (which I couldn’t i.d.) were tamed by the other notes, and the dankness of the patchouli mostly dried out. (DH tried Tezcatlipoca and claimed that the patch was too dank for him, said he felt like he smelled like pot. I kinda agreed.) On me, the patchouli doesn’t register so much as patchouli, but as a dark/organic/earthy component seamlessly integrated with the dry/soft/mysterious cocoa and the tough confidence of leather. And yet, the leather here is on the gentle side of leather. Confident but not aggressive. A brown to black colored scent good for someone (like me) whose nose can be overwhelmed by heavier or more cloying black notes. I get a similar dark sophistication as The Great Sword of War, but I think Tezcatlipoca would work for a daytime or casual work scent, made more approachable (and less apocalyptic ) by the earthy patchouli. I find it unisex, dark, and somewhat dry, but with a softly organic and vaguely magical, mysterious, or reverential feel. I believe there is a bottle of this in my future.

A complimentary imp from the Lab. In imp: Green gold syrup On skin: Bay, fruity honey Dry: Sticky honey (not what I’d call ‘dusky’ or ‘powdery’ honey, like in O, and not fruity anymore either) tempered by the slight herbal bitterness of laurel/bay leaf. Something smells almost like lemon pith, I think that’s the piquant edge of laurel. While the main note comes off as lickable and sweet, the laurel gives it balance and interest, with a hint of masculinity and an appealing medicinal quality. It reminds me a little of Manuka, a pungent tea tree honey from New Zealand. But I love the Grecian reference of the laurel--it works as an Ancient Greece blend, for those who dislike the wine notes from Wanderlust. (Come to think of it, I guess hemlock would work for that too.) It's very nice. One of the few daytime, warm-weather-appropriate, not-too-sweet scents that has really drawn me. It makes me want to try other herbal honeys from Rappaccini’s apiary. Lasts a nice while on me, even when applied sparingly.

A complimentary imp from the generous Lab. In imp: Plummy flowers. On skin: Mostly plum and jasmine. Dry: A pretty, light, slightly quirky, fruity floral. Jasmine doesn’t dominate, all three florals seem pretty coherent, and together they’re quite gentle. The white musk adds a misty vibe, and the plum sweetens and helps unify the florals. Then there’s something slightly dark, like a shadow you see flit past the corner of your eye. Maybe it’s a deeper note from the plum, or the orchid, but anyway there is a faint shadow. This blend is still too fruity-sweet for me. On the right person it would be a nice springtime/summer scent, I'd imagine.

In vial: Musky citrus. On skin: Airy, misty citrus. Dry: This is pretty, but I wouldn’t call it girly or even demure. It's what I would wear if I wanted a minimalist scent, modern and fresh but still natural. Citrus notes and musks make it light, airy, misty, translucent. Florals and vanilla keep it from smelling like household cleaner, but other than that they are muted. Sandalwood contributes a natural & understated warmth, clutter-free simplicity. This is the smell of a person with a clean and simple home. Almost zen. I’m a bit surprised at how much I like this. Lasted 4 hours, applied sparingly.