Smaragdina

Oh, whoa, this looks interesting. My list: 1. Impressions of the Floating World 2. The Antikythera Mechanism 3. Streets of Detroit 4. Jareth 5. Père Noël

Oof. This is straight dark, filthy, animalistic oudh on me. Rub-your-face-in-the-dirt oudh. After about an hour or so it smooths out and calms down a bit, but I was hoping for more carnation; this is still too much for me.

Caveat: I'm one of those rare souls who's never liked Snake Oil because it does that weird plastic thing on my skin. This starts out promising - I can't even pick out Snake Oil under the thick wafts of creamy, poofy vanilla. If I hadn't just found the god of creamy, poofy vanilla in Cotton Phoenix, I'd be super excited. (To compare, Cotton Phoenix is a lot sweeter and floofier on me in its wet stage. There's some wax and maybe lemon here that reins it in) A half an hour later - boom. Plastic. Oh well.

This is a half-opened rose dusted with saltwater. For once, it's a rose that I don't amp to death. The downside is that my skin eats it very quickly... but while it lasts, it's lovely! Sidenote: I instantly wanted to compare it to The Waltz (which also has white rose and ambergris), but these aren't as close cousins as I thought. The vanilla amber and musk in The Waltz round it out and makes it a lot fuller and... not more feminine, but girlier. I have a hard time picking out individual notes in The Waltz. Trois is simply a dressed-down rose single note that the ambergris roughs up a little.

Nope. If I spend some time huffing and considering, I can pick out dusty hay and a few dusty threads of worn leather. But the top note on me is just musty cardboard. Not for me. EDIT: Alright - after an hour or more the cardboard is gone and this is a very pretty, sweet, dusty leather/musk. But the cardboard phase isn't worth it.

Am I smelling... anise? Seriously - the top wet note reads as anise on me. It mellows into smelling like a densely-packed box of unsweetened earl grey tea leaves. The tea is dense and maybe a little musty, but the bergamot props it up. I can't really smell much lavender, but I know I'm mentally comparing it to my stash of lavender earl grey tea that's very lavender-heavy, so take that with a grain of salt. And every once in a while, there's these wispy wafts of... am I really smelling anise? Huh. Lucky for me, I love anise. I've been searching for a good black tea scent. This might be a keeper!

CLOVE CLOVE CLOVE CLOVE CLOVE CLOVE CASSIA CLOVE CLOVE CLOVE CLOVE CLOVE CLOVE CLOVE I sneezed.

This perfume is absolutely hysterical It smells like every generic perfume you've ever smelled. It smells like the perfume department at Sephora where you can buy concealer in fifty different shades of beige. It smells like the hair of a fifty's housewife. It smells like a fifty's housewife with lipstick stains on her collar because she's having an affair with Susie who lives next door. Susie wears pearl earrings and lipstick with a name like Immoral Coral and this perfume sits on her vanity counter in a disconcertingly rectangular bottle. It smells like Channel No. 5 and I need to stress that I have never smelled Channel No. 5, but it smells like the idea of it as seen in a Cosmopolitan issue. It smells like the little paper snips of sample perfumes that have been in your purse for the last month. It smells like those free samples if they were softer, and fuller, and weren't sodden with alcohol. It smells like pale pink and white roses and amber and more free samples. So many free samples. It smells like the light in that creepy Folger's commercial. It smells like the sales pitch of a diamond-jewerly saleswoman in a pencil skirt and a sensible satiny blouse when you know the price of diamonds is artificially inflated. It smells like a white convertible and a pair of Jackie O. sunglasses and a french manicure and a white-and-black polka-dot dress with a sweetheart neckline and Immoral Coral lipstick. It smells like a newscaster with Marilyn Monroe hair smiling at you on a jittery analog tv screen, which is exactly what it is supposed to smell like, and I am almost crying with laughter because they got this exactly right.

Not sure how masculine you'd be willing to go, but have you tried Jareth? That was mainly white musk, sweet tonka, and leather on me. There's also Knight in Shiny Armor (which doesn't read as particularly masculine on me), which is lavender-heavy, though it may be too herbal for you with the oakmoss and sage. Seconding the recommendation for Jareth. It reads as Dorian + leather to me, and the scent is "white" enough that it doesn't lean too far masculine.

Tea and Music is missing the "music" note (music note? Huh? Get it? I'm so clever). This is a single note sweet tea on me. Which is a bummer, because tea + leather sounded like everything I ever wanted (I was thiiiiiiiiiiis close to blind-bottling this one and am glad I didn't). It's pretty, but I apparently amp bpal's tea note; The Dormouse, which I have a bottle of, is almost identical on me and The Dormouse has the added advantage of smelling like tea in a peony garden instead of just, you know. Tea. Tea and Music is also gone in about thirty minutes. I mean, I like tea. I just like other things with my tea, you know?

Uh oh. On me, the "thread" of jasmine is a bald-faced lie. I think I've just been socked in the face by a boquet of dripping, cloying jasmine flowers. It's literally the only thing I can smell and boy howdy, can I smell it. I had to wash this off my wrist after five minutes, no joke. The drydown may prove wonderful, but the wet stage "cause of death: drowned in jasmine" isn't worth it to me! ...Granted, I amp jasmine and was worried it was gonna do this. But I had to try it for the name.

So I need to preface this by saying that I ordered ten decants from this year's lupers. Nine of them I applied, sniffed, went "eh," and didn't give a second thought. This? Insta-bottle. Insta-TWO-bottles. ...Do you know how many other bpal scents I have backup bottles of? Two. That's it. (Streets of Detroit and the Antikythera Mechanism, but I DIGRESS). I don't hoard. Now I'm wondering if I should have bought three bottles of this. I am terrible at picking out individual notes, so you're just gonna get my impressions. Tl;dr, VioletChaos' review of "putting vanilla in a steamer and then steaming your delicate underwear" is EXACTLY RIGHT. This literally smells like STEAM - I have no other way to describe it! The scent is very "high" (is the benzoin giving me that back-of-the-nose impression?) and slightly fluttery-damp in a very good way. It's steam, and vanilla-steeped silk. It smells like a wood drawer of fresh-washed expensive silk lingerie. Completely innocent and lovely except that it's a drawer of unmentionables. It is stunning. It has good throw and lasts absolutely forever on me - I can put it on in the morning and still smell it at midnight. It's not really a morpher; by the end of the day it's a little sweeter (the silk lingerie has a light dusting of vanilla-tinted powdered sugar) but that's all. This manages to be all at once innocent, feminine, unobtrusive and work-appropriate, and DROP DEAD SEXY AS HELL. I AM IN LOVE

This is extremely potent chilly, crisp cucumber on me. No green tea in sight, alas. I second the reviews that say this smells like fancy Bath and Body Works / spa soap. I won't be upgrading to a bottle as it's basically a vaguely-minted cucumber SN on my skin, but it's nice. It has very little staying power on me (which I expected) and very good throw (which I didn't).

Wet and in the bottle, I'm definitely getting the "pink" quality of the ice. The rose is light and dewy, and every now and again I swear I get... strawberries???? As it dries on me, the pink-ness fades almost immediately and I'm left with what's pretty much an ice single note. My other experience with BPAL's ice/snow note is Go To Sleep, Darlings - this is softer, gentler, less-ozone-y and a little less sweet than that, which I'm putting down to the amber. Still, it's close enough to Go To Sleep, Darlings that I'm a bit disappointed. I wish the wet phase stuck around. Lovely, but off to the sales you go! When I... actually sell things...

Wow. I've never really understood what people meant when they said a scent turned "soapy" on them before now. This is aggressive, screeching soap on me and nothing but. Nope!!!