baranoouji

I loved Skuld in "Ah! Megami-Sama!" so I had high hopes for this. This is pots and pots of gooey, sticky honey. Instead of O's glittery, powdery amber, the ylang-ylang adds indole into the honey. Maybe when Skuld and Noble Scarlet get a Goddess First Clas license and start breaking hearts, this will be her smell. Unfortunately, my skin goes crazy with sweet notes and there's just not enough bitterness/darkness in Skuld. :sigh: It's really very good for what it's supposed to be, if you get my drift.

Wet on skin: At first, it's all pure alcohol on my skin. Sexy in that scientific way. Dry down: Berries: cranberry and juniper. Both scents that my skin promptly amps to "almost drank so many of these cosmos that I'm going to hurl!" sweet. The scent is very true and very interesting. Unfortunately, I am learning that my skin turns berries into berry bombs!

I now know that moonflower is one of those "Danger, Will Robinson!" notes for me. Oh skin, why must you amp white floral notes so much? Beth could have put sulfur in this and I wouldn't be able to tell, with the moonflower note peaking.

At first, I smell like flowers slathered in butter! Then, I smell like flowers and gingerbread. (I cannot get over the BUTTER EATER smell!)

Rose and narcissus (white, pointy, herbal) duke it out almost continuously on my skin. Eventually, the roses give up and head for home. Narcissus stands on the platform, waving his trophy in the air.

[frimp from filigree_shadow] There is a very strong first blast of honeysuckle. Eventually it wears off a bit, and lets something leathery (the vetiver?) through. In the long run, the smell is big big big big flowers and leather. It smells very interesting, in the same way that I can't resist reading something inappropriate.

[frimp from filigree_shadow] On me, no chocolate, no cocoa, nothing remotely related to a nib. But I've noticed that BPAL's cocoa note does strange things on my skin. However, the wine and blood smell is there, which while true to life... kind of freaked me out a bit. I felt like I had accidentally bitten my tongue all day, and kept checking to see if I had. To avoid that weird "did I injure myself?" train of thought, I'll probably send this to someone else. Thumbs up for the "verity" of the scent!

Midnight Mass is less woody and more sweet than Cathedral, but not foody sweet like All Soul's.

In the imp: someone earlier joked about saying "pine" 1500 times in their post. I see what they mean: pinepinepinepinepinepine. Wet on skin: Piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. Again, pine trees, pine forest, pine-sol cleaner. Dry on skin: Uh-oh. Houston, we have a berry problem. More specifically, pine tree has vacated the way for the waxy-fruity berry smell. (As opposed to the fruity-fruity berry smell.) I smell like one of those BB&W blends, but in Winter Berry. (Don't be worried: I suspect that my skin amps up berry and white flowers like nothing else.)

In the bottle: whoa! Minty! That must be the pennyroyal. Wet: Unsweetened mint, in fact, it has a quasi-medicinal aspect. This is the sort of mintiness that you find in BenGay or those Tiger Balm things. Dry: Still that bitter mint smell. Overall, the smell is very Mad Hatter-y, but also more of the Crazy Grandma.

Iago made me think of the closet at the boathouse: cold, damp, slight mildewy, full of leather laced boat shoes and component parts oily with slide grease, and the pungent funk of unwashed teenage rowers. Academically, it's certainly an interesting smell and one that made me grin. Those were some of the best times in my life. But... dear god, the funk. And not in the George Clinton and the P-funk sort of way.

In the imp, it really does smell vegetal! On me, it's violet and iris. The other components didn't even stand a chance. Eventually, the violet turns powdery on me, and I smell something waxy and thick stomping around. Eventually it dries to a darker musk. Not bad, but not unique with regards to what I already have. For the most part... It's very strong, very in-your-face, and probably not something for me. Will I keep it? Awk! Nevermore!

The first thing I got was a jumbled white flower explosion. Woof. Way too heavy and headachey for me. I think my skin must just broadcast white flowers, because flower scents just become overwhelming on me. Ode to Melancholy settles down to a lavender + musk = soap in the guest bathroom smell for me. Eventually, it's just a sweet smell of faded wisteria. Soap and wisteria isn't a bad smell, but it isn't very melancholic for me.

Dove soap?! No cinnamon, no exotic spices, no hedonistic incense, no burning winds across my face. Just crazy-assed amounts of Dove soap. Fine, Silk Road. Be that way. See if I don't send you to the cornfield.* *By which I mean, swap pile. Edit: So having realized that I tried this while my skin was doing strange things, I thought that I would give it a second take: It smells like cinnamon and something oily/soapy, and something bready. I can see where I thought that it smelled like Dove, but it's more defined with other smells. I can't tell if I want to eat it or put it in a bowl in my bathroom.

I didn't start out wanting to like Dr. Seward, but I do. It smells like sweet smoke and spicy wood. I really like it, but I wonder if I'll get sick of the sweetness in time. I'll probably wear it for a few more days before I make up my mind about finding more.

A review in three word: "Cherry and highway." For awhile it smells like cherry and asphalt and even a bit of rubber tires. Eventually it mutes to a sweet and soapy little cherry/orchid number, but that's awhile in coming. It's not exactly bad, but I'd have to be in a specific place and time to be compatible with Neo-Tokyo. Specifically, I'd have to be in a moped zooming down the city streets while the soundtrack from an action anime blares in the background. I don't think I'd buy a bottle of it -- maybe an imp at a time. (You know where this would be perfect? At an anime convention.)

Eww. It seemed perfect: tea, moss, fig, ginger... but it turned out to be better as a unrequited infatuation. On my skin, it turns into an unholy variant of Simple Green. This brings back memories of swabbing the deck, which I would prefer to avoid. Edit: I gave this another shot after I realized that I wore this on a day when my skin was being funky. It started off with the Simple Green again, and then turned into what everyone else on the forum has said: sweet & green soap. It's very pleasant, but I quibble on it for two reasons: 1.) The Simple Green stage 2.) Soap as perfume is not something I'm totally on board for

Numb = Nine Mysteries. That is to say, mint and violets. So I kept Nine Mysteries and gave Numb away to a friend.

I bought this unsniffed because of my clockwork girl obsession. :tickticktick: In the bottle: Very sharp. Smells like the feeling you get when you lick a cold metal spoon. Wet on skin: It's Berenice's mechanical cousin -- but even Berenice had a little something to prove that she was human. Kataniya goes past cerebral and into inhuman -- no aloes or musk to keep the flowers from going on steadily. Almost sneeze-inducing in floral strength. Dry down: It's flowers and that metal-ozoney smell that Beth uses. (Also, for some reason it makes me think of Barbie dolls.) Personal opinion: My sister would probably like it on me -- she thinks I should wear more florals. My boyfriend would not like it on me -- he is used to me smelling like "green tea and bamboo, or incense, coffee, and old books." I'm not sure that I personally think that I smell nice with it -- Kataniya doesn't strike me as something I'll wear to "smell nice." I'd wear it to feel a little less human, a little more mechanical.

In the bottle: Repulsively bubblegummy. Only thing to do is to hold one's nose and apply. Wet on skin: Green tea at first, slightly bitter and vegetal. But instead of running away or being all flighty with mint or citrus (which gah! I really don't like because it just dominates everything else on my skin), the green tea is carried along by the grass-sap smell of the bamboo pulp. The bamboo pulp lasts longer, being reflected back and forth by the oude. The bubblegummy smell must be the oude, which turns deep and endless while it contains the green tea. Chandler Burr puts it better than me: "It knocks you over, clubs you like a falling stone. Its vast dimension is what astonishes: a huge smell, spatially immense and incredibly complex, a buttery layer as deep as a quarry, entirely animalic in impact, and yet the oudh itself is not actually an animalic, spicy without being a spice. The fungi - the tiny organic bugs that have eaten, digested and defecated this sensual wood - have left behind their fragrance and oudh is the smell of this rotten, priceless wood and billions of tiny dead animals." Dry down: Bamboo and oude spiral around endlessly. Delicious, wonderful, mysterious -- wonderful enough to hoard a couple of bottles. Why only a couple? Because of the green tea, it's good for productive days. Because of the oude, it's just as good for clubbing at night. This flexibility is good, because Holiday Moon lasts and lasts and lasts. (And everyone will be wondering why you smell so darn good.)

On me, it is all soft mint and fruit. And I'm not a big fan of "fruit sweetness." Nice enough, but not very distinguishing. Even if it is aloof, it is anonymously aloof. I'll keep this, but only for those days when I am working hard to be inoffensive.

At first: Lily + fabric softener (must be "winding cloth linen") makes me feel as if it is washing day. I have to wash clothes! I have to be brisk and useful! I feel like I'm at Target! WHITE LINENS TALLYHO! Later on: The laundry day smell finally dies down. I smell the white musk (Berenice doesn't talk about the delights of the flesh, but she thinks about it when alone.), the clear aloe (Slippery and green -- just try to get Berenice in a private conversation.), and the amber (Powdery and crystalline -- Berenice is terribly smart after all.). Do you know who would wear this perfume? Lady Thomasina Coverly, from Arcadia, scribbling at her iterated equations and waiting for a kiss that would never come. I like this perfume a great deal, but when I wear it, I feel like I'm 14 again -- smart, hard, and lost.

In the bottle: Eeeep! Infinite sweetness -- butterscotch schnapps with a curranty undertone. Dentists everywhere are frowning. (I had to sniff myself into hyperventilation to catch the currant though.) On skin: Mmm, caramel yes yes yes, but wait -- there's more! The caramel smells like Recchiuti's burnt caramel squares -- daring in its almost acrid bitterness, sensual in its buttery glide. I am catching powdery amber here and there, and the naughty-sweet smell of tobacco (one of my favorite smells!). The coconut is beginning to come in, and it isn't a sweet coconut -- it's the darkish and sweet smell of latik which is so very very redolent of home in my mind. To add to that feeling, an undernote comes out that I've only smelt in Hungry Ghost Moon -- ho wood and spices and incense. (Is that star anise? Five spice? Or aisle five at the local Asian grocery?) But I blink and there's something almost... coffee-ish around the smell. Not coffee itself, but the smell of a bustling coffeehouse, and the smell on my clothes after a study date there. This is wonderful -- in fact, what I thought Miskatonic would smell like. Dry down: Ah, opium, there you are. Alone, you would be intolerable. But here, you are followed by golden amber. That's alright then -- I'll keep raising that red lantern.