bellumed

http://www.latimes.com/features/image/la-ig-scents-20121028,0,1297996.story

 

"Also for those on a budget, the website of L.A.'s Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs offers an entire spooky, scented world."

 

On a budget. Ahahaha. Oh, if only you knew.

Boo '12: Starts off dessertlike but not in a pleasant way, more like in the family of cream cheese frosting and marshmallows, too sweet and a little off. As it dries, well, the Lab is spot on as always: clear scent of freshly laundered linens and marshmallow fluff. At one point I may have gotten a brief whiff of coconut? Sort of sickly on and off (this may be attributed to the “coconut” thing, we’re not the best of friends), this reminds me quite a bit of Sue’s Great Old Puppet Show. A few hours later, it’s more of a straightforward sugar and cream. I may swap this one, I’m not overly in love with it.

It's crazy how different people's reactions can be to BPAL. My roommate's immediate response to smelling the imp was "Ooh! Very pumpkin-y! And spicy!" As for me, I get a quick whiff of spice as I open the imp (and no or barely any pumpkin), quickly pushed out of the way by the scent of fizzy lifting drinks! The Lab’s ability to bottle the effect of carbonation never fails to delight me. I also get some citrus with an edge, from the lemon juice.

 

On my skin, the bubbles start to fade away over time, as they always do. I can certainly smell ginger ale; it reminds me of Bon Vivant, which I've always gotten ginger ale from rather than champagne. What remains is mostly the dry smell of the booze.

 

I would've liked this one more if it stayed as it was in the imp, but I like it well enough anyway.

Nothing foody about this on me. Would've liked some vanilla, caramel, and carnation... instead got the sandalwood, patchouli, and booze. Oh well, I guess.

Imp: Grape that almost goes to Kool-Aid, but with an herbal edge to prevent that.

 

Wet: It smells like grape medicine, but thankfully it’s not strong enough to be obnoxious.

 

Dry: As it dries, High John loses the Kool-Aid entirely and most of the medicine to become a leafy scent, and then, yes, it develops a laundry vibe. Clean smelling and a little grapey. I can see where some people are smelling cologne; for me HJtC wavers on the line of laundry detergent and cologne, closer to laundry.

 

High John the Conqueror is inoffensive but not particularly interesting to me. It doesn't last long, I can't smell it at all a few hours later.

 

I will say that I had a very confident, happy day, but I'm not sure I would chalk that up to voodoo.

Oh, this is nice.

 

The dominant notes here for me are the peach and red musk. It's the descriptors that make this blend interesting: Chinese peach is somewhat drier than the juicy peach I might expect. As for " red vegetal musk," it lives up to its name, plant-like or earthy, grounding, I guess. I like Mischievous Spirit because it's a little fruity but doesn't have that have that big, bubbly quality some fruit blends have.

 

In the end, this creates a light, fresh scent that would be well-suited to late spring or early summer IMO.

In imp: pumpkin coffee bread. Mmmmmm!

On me: Immediately blooms into cinnamon goodness (the gentle cinnamon of baked goods, rather than the hot cinnamon of candy), with that lovely pumpkin bread in the background. I reapplied last night to go out, and when I woke up this morning my wrist smelled like coffee-flavored syrup. Handy and amusing!

 

Notably, I got a very strange fruity odor when I tested this once before, so I’m glad I tried again—-just a passing skin chemistry thing, I hope. Now it’s foodie and wonderful.

A sour cacao and wood scent, quite similar to Ein Kuss Von Krampus. The cacao smell is stronger in the imp than on my skin, where this blend becomes a dry bark (maybe just a little bit powdery, not very noticeable). I prefer something a little sweeter and more feminine, so I think this will have to go to swaps.

To me, Katharina smells like fruit juice or cocktail mix, apricot (or peach) and orange. It smells good enough, but not really what I want in a perfume. I'll keep the imp I have, though.

I don't know what the birds smell like (or if you'd really want to smell like them!), but in terms of concept:

 

Athena is associated with owls, so maybe Athens from Wanderlust?

 

As for DC/LE scents, there's Screeching Parrot from the Atomic Luau Lounge, The Little Sparrow from Marchen, The Little Bird, and Pet Magah Bird.

 

Not sure what other "critters" you have in mind, but BPAL has tons of animal-based scents.

This is incensey and sexy and delicious, but there’s something in this that I just don’t love. It smells kind of like cherry, but I’m not sure whether it’s the dragon’s blood or the black currant, seeing as it’s my first blend with either. I do want to like it otherwise, but cherry totally ruins a perfume for me. A bit frustrating, tbh. The cherry does eventually fade out, but I think I’d rather just find some other resinous blends that I enjoy. Too bad.

In imp: Oh no! How disappointing. It’s like someone took a chemical/artificial scent (I can see the Pez comparison) and tried to mask it with my beloved citrus. Do not want.

 

On my skin: Thank God, that’s better. Lemony, still a little candy-ish, but nice now. Over time, becomes less candy-scented and more flowery. It’s frustratingly light, though. My skin ate this a little bit.

 

I'll keep this, at least to give it another test, but Lolita could have been much better for me.

Oh! I somehow expected this to have a “sandy” feel like Bastet did, but it doesn’t. It’s actually very creamy. It has plenty of spice, and it’s not just sweet but sugary, close to the sugar I get from High-Strung Daisies, but not as strong at all. In fact, everything about Morocco is very light and close to the skin. The spice (cassia, I suppose) keeps it from getting really boring, but I’m not in love with it. Morocco is fine, not great. I've heard plenty about how much aging improves this blend (my imp is not much more than three months old, I believe), but I'm not sure I really want to bother with that.

 

EDIT 8/25/13: Well I have held onto this, and a year later it has grown on me some. It's still a very subtle, creamy skin scent, but now lovely and well-blended.

I put off trying this for a few months because I get a big wave of grapefruit with a bite of ginger from the vial. If I smell very, very carefully I can catch some apple blossom. This is... fine, I guess, but not my favorite combo. But just because BPAL loves to prove you wrong, this was a surprise hit! As soon as it touched my skin, the apple blossom burst to front, smelling gorgeous. Grapefruit and ginger slid to the back and finally made a little room for tea. A keeper after all!

Oh, yum. Judith is just as lovely as I hoped she would be. It starts with a nice focus on the mandarin—not a bright, juicy orange; it has a spicy warmth and it’s tempered by the other notes. It reminds me of Black Death, although it’s more feminine where Black Death leans masculine. There’s also something foody that other people have described as caramel or toffee or treacle. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I definitely smell it. Final stage, all I get is a light but present musk.

 

I'm so glad I snapped up a bottle before the Salon left, because I adore this.

Some people get books from Penny Dreadful (which, obviously, is book inspired), and it also has that dirt note you said you like.

 

Personally, I got a somewhat library-ish feel off of No. 93 Engine, but I doubt that's the norm.

Ooh, very interesting. In the vial, No. 93 is beeswax. All beeswax. BEESWAX CENTRAL over here! On me, it's a very serious herbal blend. Not mechanical but scholarly. Like an old-timey academic gentleman poring over crumbling books in the library's basement. I think the beeswax is helping that along still, giving a kind of "reading by candlelight" vibe. I wouldn't say it's strongly masculine, just not feminine at all. Since I like my perfume to be a bit more traditionally girly (food and flowers, yay), I was torn on this one.

 

Fortunately, once it dried I started to smell the lemon balm! I wasn't expecting it to show up, but lemon is one of my favorite notes, so that makes me happy. Lemon balm tipped the balance, and I will certainly keep my imp.

Ahh, see, you guys tried to scare me off with all of that going on about "almond and cherry." Luckily it didn't work.

Bastet is warm, spicy, and exotic. A surprisingly light “golden sand” moreso than the rich dark brown of my favorite sexy myrrh blend, La Petite Mort. Really the only downside is that it doesn't last too long, only a few hours. Still, Bastet is a keeper for sure.

That’s so freaking weird. In the imp and wet on my skin, I’m getting some odd, kitchen-spice-herbal scent. No, wait, I know what it is! I’m smelling chives. Chives, like used to grow in my front yard as a kid, and we’d occasionally pick a stalk to chew on while we were playing. It’s not as harsh and loud as actual chives (if you’ve ever smelled/tasted them, you know what I’m talking about), but it’s noticeable. I’m guessing sweetpea must be the culprit, but WTF?

 

As it dries, that sharp smell becomes more subtle, but it’s still there. It’s only starting to share the stage with something else (amber?).

 

After a couple hours, it gives over to the amber, clean and BABY POWDERY. It’s better than what it was at first, but still not great.

 

This is easily the strangest reaction I've ever had to BPAL. I won't be holding on to MLAST.

 

This is either the fifth or sixth day I've worn this scent, trying to work up a review for it and always having mixed feelings. What I can say is that O is a soft, slightly sweet (I did not get the SUPER SUGARY thing some people are reporting) honey blend. It's pretty and femme-y rather than sexy, despite its basis.

On the one hand, I'm not exactly a rabid honey fan; it's always kind of "meh" to me as a smell, as much as I love it in tea. Therefore, I'm not overly excited about O. However, it is quite pretty, and it earned me the most enthusiastic response I've gotten about any BPAL I've worn, which I guess means it smells great on me, if not to me.

So I think I will keep the imp of O that I have for occasional wear. It just didn't blow me out of the water with sex appeal.

I just realized why Embalming Fluid is my one true GC love: It's very reminiscent of a scent that Bath and Body Works had when I was in high school called White Tea and Ginger. I used to spray it on my hairbrush, then comb it through my hair. Embalming Fluid, with its green tea and lemon, is extremely similar to this.

 

Ha! My mom has declared every perfume oil I've held out for her "powdery." Embalming Fluid is the only one she's approved of. No wonder: White Tea and Ginger is her favorite B&BW. They still sell it, by the way.

 

New request: my favorite B&BW ever is the delicious and discontinued (and now priced higher than a bottle of BPAL) Sunset Mango from the awesome Temptations collection. Mango seems to be a pretty rare note here, but is there anything from BPAL that is very mango-y?

This is where my Newbie Nose really comes out. I've mostly been testing things that were relatively food-based: I know what orange, vanilla, etc. etc. smell like. But do I know enough about flowers to pick out any of the notes in this blend? I wish I did, but I do not. So in the vial, all I can smell is (relatively generic) "bouquet," though I can say I don't get anything tropical at all from this scent. On me, though, this is very much a clean laundry smell. It's not just that Blue Morpho smells like it would make a good laundry scent (though it would); it really smells like a floral laundry detergent! I actually do like it, it's not chemical detergent, just "scrubbed clean and covered in flowers." I will certainly keep my decant.

I’ve tried to review this before, and I keep wanting to come up with more to say about it. But… I can’t. This one’s pretty simple: Bubblegum and pepper in the imp, then bubblegum, pepper, and florals on me. Not a favorite, but cute enough.

Deeply fruity with chocolate in the background, a true chocolate rather than cocoa powder. orata hit the nail on the head:

 

those Cadbury fruit and nut chocolate bars: a little bit of dark chocolate, and a lot of something sticky, dry-fruity, almost boozy-smelling, and dark like raisins

 

are exactly what comes to mind. As soon as I put it on my skin: BAM explosion of gummy quince, pear blooming underneath. Soon it all comes together into indistinguishable but very tasty fruitiness. Any traces of chocolate are gone.

 

I like this a lot, but not for the reasons I thought I would. I was hoping to be on a chocolate and vanilla cloud, but instead I just got a delicious fruity blend. Downsides are the throw and wear length, as UTM faded pretty quickly from my skin.

I’m getting chocolate powder and something unpleasantly sour. Those bitter notes have to struggle to get out, just buried under sourness, but eventually they get there. That’s much nicer already; not as awesome as I’d like, though. At last, hours later, it fades to a barely-there cocoa powder. I think I’ll keep my decant, but I definitely don’t need a bottle.