KindKit

2012 version. In the vial: pine! Wet on my wrist, there's a strong pine, bitter black pitch, and sharp clove. The clove quickly becomes dominant and stays that way. I do like it though. It's got the dark, bleak quality I was hoping for from Talvikuu and didn't get.

In the bottle I get a nice cologne-y combination of musk and lime. Once it's on my skin it becomes much rounder and more complex, changing a lot through the drydown: mostly musk at first, with sharpness from the lime, a hint of sweetness from the lilac, and the tobacco leaf giving a gentle woodsy depth. As it dries, there's a stage where it's mostly the lime/lilac combination that I adore in Whitechapel, but tamed a bit, less spiky. The scent does go through a powdery stage, but it's brief on me. After a few hours the lime fades, which saddens me a bit, but I'm left with a nice combination of musk, tobacco leaf, and the rosemary that finally emerges, plus a faint hint of lilac. I really love this one. It's old-fashioned masculinity of the best kind, and, yes, gentlemanly. I wish I'd bought a bottle.

My first impression was that this would be way too sweet for me, but despite its dominant honey note, I really love Anubis. The myrrh keeps the sweetness from becoming cloying and the herbs add some roundness and nuance. I want to get a bottle of this at some point.

2012 version. I liked this a lot at first: there's cool northern pine and spicy woodiness from the birch. Unfortunately as it dries the pine disappears and the birch note becomes increasingly sweet. I wanted more coldness and airiness from this scent and it's just not there, at least not on me.

I didn't get pine (or mint, or cocoa) at all from this, just a rather muted incense-y smell. I wonder if I received the wrong decant, actually.

I got Baba Yaga as a frimp from the lab and finally got around to trying it. It reminded me a little bit of Season of the Inundation--they have an earthiness in common--but while I like SotI a lot, Baba Yaga doesn't work for me. There's the earth/dirt note, and then some herbs, with a hint of floral sweetness and feral patchouli, but somehow to me it smells a bit flat and off. The different notes don't quite harmonize, at least not on me.

Oh, the LIME, the beautiful beautiful lime. I adore the immediate hit of lime on first applying it, with just the slight lilac sweetness underneath. It does go through a brief furniture-polish phase on me, perhaps because of the citron, but that passes quickly and it's back to lime and the emerging lilac. I was nervous of the lilac, but it's not overpowering or too feminine for my taste, and it works beautifully with that lime top note. The first time I wore this I didn't put enough on and was disappointed when it seemed to fade away after about ten minutes. Now I know to slather this one; it lasts better that way. I need a bottle of this, because it's been a struggle not to wear it every single day and deplete my imp.

I opened the imp with high hopes, but was immediately put off by how overwhelmingly floral it was. It's not at all what I'd have expected from the description of the list of notes. (Is it the dragon's blood that's so floral?) Anyway, it had me immediately washing my hands to get the traces of the scent off my fingers. Not for me, although people less floral-phobic than me might like it.

Czernobog has a couple of notes that I really love, myrrh and vetiver, but somehow it doesn't quite work for me. It starts out nice, with some pine and a hint of vetiver mellowed by the myrrh, but it soon becomes muddled, indistinct, and a bit dank on me. Perhaps it's all the musks? I had hopes for this one but it's not a keeper.

I found this scent gentlemanly and warm, not demonic at all. It's very nice. Wet on my wrists I got a myrrh-like note that I suppose was opoponax, and a slight dry, barely-sweet hint from the neroli. But it's a very blended, discreet scent (not much sillage) whose individual notes don't stand out much, I found. As it dried down it was warm, rich, woodsy/earthy, slightly resinous, with the clove emerging a bit after thirty minutes or so. It began to be a bit powdery after a couple of hours, but then the tonka finally showed and balanced that out. There's nothing about this scent I don't like, but nothing that I desperately love, either.

Initially I got very strong nutmeg from this, which soon developed into a more rounded spiciness and an almost-organic earthiness underneath. I'm not familiar with sassafrass as a note, so I'm assuming it's the spiciness that isn't the nutmeg. There is something of the same spice bouquet that you find in good quality, natural root beer, but without the sweetness. As it dries, the myrrh comes out, bringing a warmth and a resinous, very slightly medicinal quality. The black poppy isn't detectable to me as a separate note, but I guess it contributes to the earthy/organic thing. Overall there's a spicy, faintly smoky complexity to this scent. After a few hours it turns to mostly myrrh, as myrrh blends tend to do on me. I wish it kept the other layers longer, but I like myrrh fine as a lingering base note.

This is a challenging scent at first, because initially there's a very prominent "after the flood" scent of wet earth and crushed, just-starting-to-rot greenery, with the resinous and slightly sweet myrrh note underneath--it's like floodwaters in a temple. But somehow it's not unpleasant, and on me the really strong dirt note backs off a bit after a few minutes to a beautiful earthiness the underlies the myrrh and herbs. After a few hours it's mostly myrrh (a surprisingly sweet myrrh) but that's fine with me as myrrh is one of my favorite notes. This is a complex and really interesting scent, almost like a story in olfactory form, which makes it fascinating to wear.

I got this as an extra in a PiF package, and I approached it with some trepidation because of the dread patchouli. I'm a longstanding patchouli hater--the smell of it has been known to make me nauseated. But I liked Mary Read in the bottle, so I tried it on my skin. And it was gorgeous. It has a lot of the notes I love in Jolly Roger (salt, rum, a hint of leather) but with a bit of spiciness from the sarsparilla and a primal, earthy note that is--you guessed it--the patchouli. I can definitely smell the patchouli in this, but it's used so judiciously and blended so skillfully (perhaps it helps that it's aged patchouli?) that it's really beautiful and I can understand what other people like about it. So, not only did I find a new scent I love, I've also been freed from my absolute terror of patchouli. I'll be more willing from now on to try scents that include it with notes that I like.

2005 version: Lots of lovely spices, especially cinnamon (it's a bit like those cinnamon brooms you see around at Christmas), with some evergreen-ness and a hint of juiciness to give it a "berry" quality. I can see why folks have compared this to Christmas potpourri, but I really like it. Unfortunately it doesn't have a lot of staying power. Within an hour and a half there's nothing left of it but a faint hint of spice. Nice while it lasts, though.

When I first applied this, it seemed hardly there at all, just a hint of rum. In my notes I called it "the amazing disappearing scent." But then a few minutes later it burst into life. Lots of leather, with the rum and tobacco as dark naughty background notes. On me it sort of goes back and forth between the leather and the rum dominating. There's a sweetness to the scent (the tonka and perhaps the chardonnay, the latter of which I never noticed as a distinct note), but it's extremely well moderated by the earthiness of the leather and tobacco and the sharpness of the rum. The rum fades out after a couple of hours, but the leather and tobacco still make for a great scent. I absolutely do not smell the coconut that other people claim to notice in it (thank heavens). In the brief time I've been exploring BPAL I've tried several scents that I like a lot, but this is the first one I would call sexy. And it really is, although in an unexpected way. The leather note isn't whips-and-chains leather to me, it's furniture leather, and the whole scent to me is very "discreet nineteenth-century gentleman's club where gentlemen of a particular persuasion could take their particular friends." It's an odd, old-fashioned, mannered or perhaps constrained sexiness, and I love it.

This was a frimp; I would never have ordered it for myself because of the honeysuckle. And I would have missed out on a great scent. At first it didn't seem promising: I mostly got sweet honeysuckle with a little cinnamon, and the overall effect was pastry-ish. But over the next twenty minutes the resinous myrrh and copal opened up (they're not super incensy here, more a kind of earthiness and strength), then the cinnamon really emerged and the honeysuckle became less dominant. The whole scent just kind of warmed up and got deep and complex. Love it.

This scent behaves quite strangely on me, I think. It takes a while to open up; at first I get mostly earthiness (a nice old-leaves-underfoot smell) from the moss and slight spicy powderiness from the ambergris, with just a gentle suggestion of mint. Then after about ten minutes the mint kicks in and really does become electric. For a little while--I adore Cathode for about an hour, but once it's fully dried down and settled, everything I like about it vanishes and I'm left with a powdery, lotion-y base note that somehow makes me think of hospitals. If I didn't dislike the finish so much, I'd be happy with the hour of greatness. But the finish just makes Cathode impossible for me.

I got a partial imp of New Orleans from someone I bought BPAL from. It's not something I would have ordered myself, because I'm a guy and the description was of a very feminine scent. But today I was bored and thought I'd give it a try. I liked the earthy, decaying-vegetation note I got for about the first minute it was on my skin, but that soon disappeared into the strong sweet jasmine and honeysuckle, which I found pretty but definitely not me. Then unfortunately the scent turned very soapy on me--strong cheap jasmine-scented soap--and I washed it off. Possibly jasmine and my skin chemistry don't get on; that would be a shame, because I like the smell of jasmine in (for example) jasmine tea, and I'd have been interested to try a little jasmine in a more masculine scent.

The leather was the main note when I first applied this, along with what I thought were herbal somethings, but there aren't any herbs listed in the description so maybe that was the incense, somehow? Anyway, the herbal quality faded quickly as the rosewood came out. After about ten minutes the woods had strengthened, the incense was noticeable as incense, there was a bit of not-excessive sweetness from the tonka, and the leather balanced the mix. The rosewood kept amping on my skin during drydown, which is fine because I like it, and it never quite took over. After a couple of hours the scent is primarily leather, rosewood, and tonka, which are rather lovely together. It's got good staying power, too--I can still smell what I applied to my wrists over 12 hours ago. I may buy a bottle of this.

In the imp I got tea and citrus from this. Wet on my wrist, the floral-y herbs came to the front and I thought the scent might not work for me, but after a couple of minutes the fig appeared and was gorgeous. The herbs mostly dropped out after fifteen minutes or so, leaving lovely rounded tea and fig with a hint of ginger, and the moss to provide a bit of earthiness and keep the scent from smelling too much like brunch at a nice hotel. The figs don't make it too fruity--it's a very well-balanced scent that has good staying power on me. I like this one a lot.

In the imp: pastry. Seriously, it was all creamy and cinnamony. Wet on my wrists, it still had the creaminess in the background, but with a sharp-to-harsh herbalness that must have been the pennyroyal (I've smelled pennyroyal essential oil and to me it's an almost bitter mint) enhanced by the citron. The topnotes have a "bitter herbs and lemon peel hopped up on crystal meth" sort of feel. I'm not sure where the creaminess is coming from; it's not a quality I associate with either black musk or lavender, but it was intermittently noticeable throughout the drydown. I don't get strong lavender from this as others apparently do, but there's a powderiness too (which is one of the qualities I like about lavender). This really is a chaotic scent, with lots of different notes emerging from one sniff to the next. Unfortunately, within about an hour Mad Hatter fades down to sweet musk and a little lavender. The more BPAL I test, the more I'm convinced that my body chemistry really, really amplifies the sweetness of musk and (in other scents) amber, so everything eventually becomes just plain sweet. *sigh* Mad Hatter has amazing potential, but on me it's a little too harsh at first and too sweet later.

In the imp: I don't get much, just musk and an almost-citrusy topnote. Wet on my wrist, the cloves pop out like crazy, but other notes emerge too: the fir and balsam and an occasional sweet hint of the orange blossoms. It's complex and great. After about 10-15 minutes the fir and balsam fade somewhat and the cloves are very dominant, with the tobacco emerging in the background. It gets a little sweeter as it dries, but keeps the complexity. I never did smell the mint or cumin, though. It's possible the mint merged with the piney notes and the cumin with the darker notes. I'm still very new to this and am only just learning to distinguish particular notes; also, I'm not sure of the age of the decant I have, and if it's older some of the more fragile notes may have disappeared. I do like it a lot, and at some point I may order a fresh imp direct from the Lab to see if there's any difference.

I thought this smelled like amber in the imp, but there's no amber in it, so that must have been the musk with the amaranth. On me, it was basically musk, musk, musk, with a little bit of herbalness that soon disappeared. It was certainly nice-smelling but it didn't thrill me.

Not much smell in the imp, just some amberish sweetness. Wet on my wrists: powdery sweetness, slightly deeper notes from the wood. After a couple of minutes the wood really amps, a nice dryness with the amber dropping into the background. The musk is coming through, too. After about half an hour, lots of wood and musk, and it becomes more masculine than it seemed at first, although not as ferocious as I expected. Maybe "ferocious" and "perfume" are unmixy things. After a few hours it dries down to a golden-sweet amber note very like Golden Priapus but with a little musk. This is a nice scent that I like fine but don't love.

The Dark Side of Air: a high pitched, tangy, clear scent -- light China rain deepened by murky vetivert. Deliciously aquatic in the bottle: salt, ozone, and a sweetness/brightness underneath. Wet on my wrists it smelled pretty much the same, but rounder somehow, the vetiver coming out. There's definitely an almost bitter note from the vetiver but I like that. After a few minutes there's a lot of that tang many others have mentioned, and a kind of saturated blue-green quality. I find it almost dry for an aquatic, creating a before-the-rain feeling. I love this but I wish it lasted longer; it was gone in a couple of hours.