t_for_tau

Agh, that sucks. Wonder if the big Wholefoods branch in London would be an option....?

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but.... Should Posh Brats, the only authorised UK reseller, really be selling bottles of the Retail-Only Salons (among other scents) for 6.99 on Buy It Now on ebay? It seems to be undercutting the lab by quite a lot.... I don't know what kind of arrangement they ahve with the lab, but this caught my attention. http://shop.ebay.co.uk/merchant/poshbratsu...QQ_fromZQQ_mdoZ

Leather, cologne-y musk and...saffron? I would *swear* there was saffron in here. Warm, delicious and *very* masculine.

Starts off as apples, ends up as christmas candles. Sigh.

Spicy satsumas! This is fantastic stuff. Resinous, citric and slightly sharp, with the cleanness of the white tea. Lovely!

Here in the UK it's the same thing, but I've heard American people using cilantro for the leaf and coriander for the seed, I think. Neal's Yard do a lemon and coriander deodorant that smells lovely.

I'd like to add my voice to the request for a list of oils which definitely contain nut allergens - a friend of mine with a nut allergy has just been enabled, and I'd like to know what oils not to give her....

In the imp: fig! - and something woody and resinous. Fortunately, fig is about the only fruit note I like.... On: the fig stays in the foreground, but the woody resins come swirling forward. I'm not actually getting the vetiver at all. Dry: ok, this is cracktastic...vanilla-coconut wtf? Incredibly delicious, creamy, wood-resin vanilla-coconut, but still - wtf? I wonder if it's the golden amber? There's a threat of powderiness that I suspect *is* the amber. I shall have to keep this on for a while and see how it develops. After a while: I would have sworn that *this* has benzoin, rather than El Amor, because this is what it smells like. On me, Lucifer is a comforting, vaguely foody smell, with a hint of woody-resin-cologne in the background. Though this wasn't what I was expecting, it seems appropriate, and is a definite bottle candidate.

In the imp: smoky clove-sandalwood mrow. On: opoponax, how I love thee and thy cola/resin smell! And SMOKE. And benzoin and patch. Yum. Dry: Hmm, here comes the rose. It's a sharp and stanky rose, and it wants me to die. This has completely changed from first on, alas. Now it's a slightly acrid perfume scent, with rose. Like Lucifer, I need to give this ore time, to see if the rose backs the fuck off. Back the fuck off, rose. After a while: Rose pot pourri. *Nice* rose pot pourri, but none the less...if this doesn't get a lot better fast, it's off to swaps.

In the imp: hazelnut, warm woody hazelnut. On: Still warm and foods: woody hazelnut with a hint of spice cupboard that reminds me of Ventriloquist's Dummy, without being too much. A worrying over-sweetness emerges quickly. Dry: Burned nutty honey and Radox. Huh. After a while: Hazelnut cookies had a threesome with Radox and the old London Mind-Body-Spirit festival, and this was the result. I still can't figure this one out.

That was my interpretation of it, yeah.

Damn, damn, damn. Underneath, this scent is a wonderfully true dark woods scent, with a hint of creepy rot that's just perfumey enough. Unfortunately, on my skin this is overlaid with the strong smell of raw egg. DO. NOT. WANT. I want that wonderful woods scent, but my skin just seems to make it turn to eggs. Off to swaps....

If this stays smelling the way it does now, I've found my Holy Grail leather/tobacco scent. Rich, deep, worn brown leather with none of Dee's acridness, a strong curl of slightly sweet pipe smoke without the sickliness of Herr Dross, and a wash of subtle musk and incense with a slight tang of salt. This is what I hoped Dee would be, before it turned inexplicably to sunblock. Unless this changes a great deal, I'm going to want to run out and buy a lifetime supply of bottles.

Maybe one of the mods could put a placeholder post in the old location or something, to direct people here?

And you know, there's a Whole Foods in London now....

Heh, I can't be the only person who lives at a great distance from the Lab who actually has dreams like that....

Yeah, now that I've had a bit to think about it, I figure this is something they're doing for business - the retailers', and the Lab's because the retailers will re-order/more retailers may order - rather than for the fans. Still sad, though. *hopes for decant circles etc*

I wonder what the *reason* for having them be retail-only is? I am never going to be able to get my hands on these (being UK-based and not exactly wealthy). Which is a bugger, because otherwise I would be buying several bottles of Lucifer unsniffed. *feels totally gutted*

Someone in the reviews just said that Pirate Moon smelled like Old Spice Lime on them (and mentioned another scent which did, as well) so that might be worth a look....

On me, Torture King has a very similar feel (Frankincense and sweet clove, mandarin and bourbon, lemon peel and leather, grasses and smoke, lime and vetiver, ambergris and deep musk).

I definitely recommend Golden Priapus; as a guy, it's the only vanilla scent that works on me.

I don't have a helpful answer, but as this is one of my all-time favourites I'm hoping someone else does! I *do* like the men's fragrance version, though, even though it's not quite the same. That whole range of scents was fantastic, and I wish they'd bring them back.

Oh god, this is truly *terrible* on me. This is the first bpal that I've put on and actually gone and *run* to wash it off. I think it's that bitter grapefruit - it is really, really reminding me of the time I got violently ill-drunk from doing too many mezcal shots with salt and an unripe lime. It smells *exactly* like that. Now that I've scrubbed most of it off, there's a rather pleasant aquatic musk floating up from my shoulder, so for someone without the awful associations with this smell it could work out as a really good scent. Just - not on me.

GUH. I have to join the ranks of people raving about this scent. In the bottle it has a definite "men's cologne" scent which some people might find offputting (personally, I like it) - very sophisticated, expensive-smelling, sharpened up by the lemon rind. On my skin the leather leaps out straight away, and for a while it seems that this is going to be De Sade Plus on me: it's that same clean-sharp-vodka leather, with the musk and patch and oakmoss lying behind. After a while it levels out, though, and becomes simply delicious. The leather warms and mellows, and the wood comes out. The combination of leather, wood and vanilla husk (I can't smell the last as an individual note unless I really huff my wrist, just as a slightly sweetening/smoothing influence) reminds me of the leather-wood-tonka part of Dee. This is waaaay sexier than Dee, however: thicker, richer, smokier (infernal musk?), darker, deeper and just generally *more*, with that continuing hint of sophistication from the lilac cologne. I get wafts of it all day, and keep wondering what the wonderful scent is, and then realising that it's me. Another triumph for Beth and the Lab!

In the imp: ginger and honeysuckle. Uh-oh - I hope the latter isn't going to kill this the way it killed Aries '07 for me... On skin: the honeysuckle's died down somewhat; now it's a very sweet ginger. Not exactly foody, though the sweetness is almost syrupy, with a musky overlay. I can't smell the patch at all; I catch occasional glimpses of the "black spices". However, that honeysuckle's just hanging around and making it a *little* too feminine, a little too floral for me. If you like the ginger in Shub but find that blend a little too fierce and foody, and prefer something more feminine and "perfumey", this should suit you. A very lovely blend, though probably not something I'll wear much.