noumenon

Allergies generally manifest as sinus headaches or ear nose and throat irritation. Vertigo and prolonged dizziness are something you should discuss with your doctor. Either of those things could be signs of something far more serious than a perfume allergy.

At first EGM was a heartbreaker - the chocolate went plastic on me almost immediately, and I don't usually get plastic from scents. After about 20 minutes, the cinnamon red-hots drowned it out, especially right at skin level, and there's a sweet liquor-type scent, probably the cherry, floating up to my nose.

 

It's funny...I was expecting something childlike and foody, but the spicy cinnamon and strong cherry liquor make me think more of something a woman would wear after being scorned on Valentine's Day.

There are a lot of top-note florals in here. It's the orchid, I'm pretty sure, and the rose is the flightly, volatile kind of rose from Lucy's Kiss more than a deep rose like Rose Red or Parlement of Foules.

 

It has a bit in common with Kindly Moon - very perfumey, but also incredibly feminine and lovely. Kindly Moon has a super-sweetness to it that isn't in Abhisarika, however.

 

I was looking forward to the cream accord, but I don't pick anything like it in here. Fortunately, it isn't going to powder on me. It's staying pure floral.

 

Good perfume, but completely anathema to floral-haters.

Man, this rocks. It's Alice after she's put cream and sugar in her tea.

 

The carnation and orange are always there, gently flavoring the sweet cream base.

 

I put it on 7 hours ago and I can still smell it on my arms and in my hair and it's still got some throw.

 

Masterful. I'll need another bottle before this goes away!

This is a review for Red Lantern 2007:

 

I had not yet discovered the Lab when Lupercalia was unveiled in 2006, so I recently went on a swapping spree and acquired three, year-old bottles of Red Lantern. They've all aged differently: one is a rich caramel and coconut, one is all dark, mellow, almost chewy opium, and the other is a nice mix of the two. They're all lovely.

 

Everything about Red Lantern 2007 is fresher, brighter, more clearly defined than aged 2006: even the sharp resolution and vivid red of the label stand out compared to the darker, maroonish tint of last year's label. Same design, though.

 

I bet the scent is exactly the same as last year, but the contrast with year-old Red Lantern is astonishing: In the new bottle I can smell the Asian spices, not the five-spice you throw into stir-fry but the glorious smell of those huge curling incense spirals that burn for 1,000 hours in Vietnamese and Chinese temples.

 

The opium note is alarmingly clear...I've never smelled opium in real life, but if I smelled this in a room, I'd know something illegal was going on. The caramel, while present in the bottle, is just dancing around the edges, sweet but very far away from what's happening right in front of you.

 

Now it's really warm and settling into my skin and the coconut and caramel are becoming more prominent. But the caramel isn't like the foody caramel of the aged bottles - it's an aloof sweetness...as if you've just tasted it a minute ago and you're sated and you couldn't eat another bite. The caramel - food in general, love, thirst, work, school, worry, grief, trouble, sadness - that was all just a minute ago. The opium, the seduction, the addiction...is now.

 

Just amazing.

I won the genetic lottery when it comes to skin chemistry and this scent is all WOAH PEACH on me. And it's throwing itself around the room like crazy - I've been wearing it for three hours now and I only put it on one wrist.

 

Wet, I get sweet, gooey body-shop peach, but as soon as it dries and warms up, the fig and honey float all the way up to my nose and keep coming hour after hour. When I stick my nose against my wrist, I can smell the softest, gentlest, most nonthreatening and inoffensive sandalwood ever.

 

I don't think my nose is smart enough yet to pick up the thyme and Apple blossom, but whatever they're up to in here, they're doing a heck of a job. It's very deep and almost musty....almost like a bouquet that's gone right past dry and is starting to decay...but that's not a bad thing. Just trying to paint a picture of what this scent's "musty sweetness" is like.

What does the entire snake pit plus 3 5mls plus the panacea releif pack look like you ask?

 

 

OMG FREE PORN! Thank you, Tramp!!!!

Brand new imp straight from the Lab - I get more ginger than lemon when I put it on....but dry it's all warm graham crackers, or maybe snickerdoodles, on my skin.

 

It gets very faint after five hours, but I still catch a gentle whiff of it if I turn my head or stand up. Boy, it's lovely. I can totally understand why it's got such cult status!

Rose Red for Christmas. For my New Year's trip to Iceland, however, there's only one choice: Jolasveinar! As soon as I saw the story of the Jolasveinar in my tour book, I realized I now have a perfect perfume for every occasion.

First of all, Bitter Moon has the most gorgeous label I have ever seen - it completely stands out from the rest of my collection!

 

Bitter Moon had a nasty wet phase on my skin. The sage (or maybe it was the blue hibiscus, since that's the only other one I haven't smelled before) came out smelling exactly like the Vomit flavor in Berty Bots Every Flavor Beans.

 

But I didn't give up! Not only because the reviews on this thread are positively glowing, but also beacuse I BELIEVE in the Lab. They've never left me smelling like vomit flavored jelly beans for long.

 

Now it's turned into a stunning floral, with lovely blackberries as well. Other scents, like Baneberry or Bewitched, have stronger, sweeter berries than this one, but I'm so happy with how Bitter Moon turned out in the end.

Oh, this is wonderful. When I put it on, the pure cake scent wafts up to my nose - cake, a spritz of lemon juice (NOT lemon verbena - pure juice), and a butter note that's much mellower and yummier than the one in Jack and Pumpkin Queen.

 

Then when I stick my nose against my wrist, I get a big surprise - the cake scent isn't there; hanging close to my skin are the odd, uber-earthy spices and frankinsense that everyone reports.

 

It's so strange to have both at the same time, completely not interacting with each other. Strange, but DELICIOUS.

 

Sol Invictus is growing on me. The first time I sniffed it (in my mad schmear-fest when I tore the package open), I thought it smelled like Pine. But I've given it some more chances, and I realize now that I was picking up the sharpness of the orange peel and frankinsense together, which came out of the gate first when I put it on.

 

After it's dry, the amber and juicy oranges and tangerines come out and stay. Amber lovers are going to be really happy with this, and people who like Moxie (but don't mind losing the herbal background notes) would probably like this too.

 

It's so funny that the first thing I thought was that it was a green scent, and now it's a creamy orange lovefest. But not candy - it's actually very mature. I love it on myself, but if I accidentally put some on a boy, I don't think he'd mind, either.

This is a really beautiful white floral blend. I agree with the two reviewers in this thread who saw the similarity with Asphodel - I've got both on me right now, and the only difference is the saffron note in White Moon. Asphodel also has a little bit of green in it that White Moon doesn't have.

 

Without having both on my arm at the same time, however, I wouldn't really be able to tell the difference between them. Which is great, because Asphodel is always in the catalog even though White Moon has gone poof!

Oh my gosh. This is stunning, not just for those who love rose, but for those who would love the surreal experience of smelling something so real, so authentic, you'd think the object must surely be right in front of you.

 

It's not just authentic floral rose; it's the green of the stem, and the velvet, meaty texture of the thick, lush petals. It's the coolness of the leaves and the scent of the silver droplets of dew that have gathered on the bloom.

 

And the scent is so strong that you feel like you're pressing the rose right up to your face. It is so strange to be smelling Rose Red and not be standing in a botanical garden. Surreal, even.

 

So, wether you want to hallucinate legally or just smell like Rose, wow. You can't go wrong with Rose Red 2005.

I agree that it has a lot of throw and lasts a long time, but I love this scent! When it's wet, I can smell all of its ingredients at once - the wood of the orchard, the cranberry and the spices in the cider. As it dries on me, the apple amps and the spices remain, with the sweetness of the cranberry becoming the high note.

 

So it's a lot like dabbing apple cider behind your ears, but the scent is unbelievably warm, autumnal, golden and authentic.

So, so so beautiful - it's high and clear, as others have said, and it's got great throw and lasts a long time without ever fading into powder on me (though admittedly, I don't get the powder reaction too often). Peach blossom is the only part my nose can detect, the rest blends wonderfully.

 

It's one of my favorite all-time scents, and gets me a lot of compliments!!

"Ironic" is one of those fantatstic words that everyone wants to use all the time, but in fact its definition is so narrow you're almost always incorrect when you use it.

 

But Dirty IS Ironic. True verbal irony, raised to the level of situational irony if someone actually walks up to you and tells you that you smell dirty when you're wearing it.

 

It smells divine...like I just pulled my clothes out of the dryer and washed my hair. My mom was coming to my house today, so I had to run around like a crazy person cleaning up, and right when I had everything in order and was ready to jump in the shower, she showed up early. So I doused myself in Dirty and smelled as clean as my kitchen counters.

 

I LOVE this one...I'm almost afraid if I get a bottle of it I'll use it as a "shortcut" more often.

I never would have guessed this from the description, but all those wonderful ingredients blend into...mulberries! Which is funny, because that isn't even an ingredient. But the soft woods, and wonderfully plant-like smell of laurel, mixed with the sharp and tangy mandarin and lily remind me of those sour, earthy berries plucked right off their stems. It dries down into the wood and pepper on me, which is also really delicious. I really like this one.

Wet: lemons dredged in sugar.

 

Warm on my skin, the ginger and sage come out in the most wonderful, almost masculine way. In fact, a boy could totally pull this off.

 

It was a little faint this time around, but I'll try wearing it after applying some lotion...hopefully that will keep it around a little longer. This drydown is not to be missed!!!

This is a really spectacular black tea with mint scent...It's as if I was drinking this instead of sniffing it! It's almost exactly like F5, and a kissing cousin with Embalming Fluid.

I'll be damned...Xanthe does smell like a Cherry Blow-Pop in the bottle! I owe that poor Will-Call sniffer a drink for all the endless pestering I did after she posted that.

 

But it smells nothing like that on the skin. Before it warms up, it smells like a yummy foody Yankee Candle, but once its warm, it becomes a lush, complicated, sweet scent. The guava is the high note, with apple blossom just under the surface, creating it the perception of wetness that conjures up the image of fresh-cut guava instead of flowers.

 

It's just amazing... and it has a soft, deep and warm feel to it just like Moriarty, without having any notes in common. Hmmm...I wonder what they'd be like layered together....

 

Also, it doesn't have a long lifespan on me...it faded significantly after 90 minutes., but that's a lot longer than many of the other scents I've tried. And maybe the reason it faded is because I keep dragging my nose across my arm to smell it again and again...it's so yummy!!!

Someone else compared this to Lush's "Flying Fox"...I'll add that it smells exactly like Lush's recently discontinued Arabian Bright hair treatment. It's an absolutely decadent blend of middle eastern herbs and spices that heightens my senses and makes me feel like a completely different person when I have it on.

 

I wore Seduction to a party last night, where all the men in the room turned out to be gay. But two of them dry humped me anyway, so I have high hopes for this.

Pics of my new bottles are in the gallery!

 

the new Panacea Imp Labels:

http://www.bpal.org/index.php?act=module&a...=si&img=517

 

Moriarty: http://www.bpal.org/index.php?act=module&a...=si&img=516

 

F5 (so cute!): http://www.bpal.org/index.php?act=module&a...=si&img=515

 

I love my macro setting.

The last time I paid $12.50 for something that smelled like this, I put it on my expense account at a fancy hotel bar in Manhattan: Mojitos!!!

 

If you've had one (or 30), that's all you need to know. If you haven't tried that delicious mint-lime-rum-and simple-syrup concoction yet, then you're going to think you're drinking F5 the first time you have one.

 

Sweet heavenly goodness! F5 has great throw and lasts four hours and counting!!! If only my buzzes lasted this long.

Oh this is so interesting! There's no misfortune in the bottle whatsoever. I'm not adept enough to pick out all the notes...the patchouli and vanilla that I know are in here kind of blend together into a sweet true cedar scent to my nose. But I only think that because I love cedar, so I guess I'm looking for it. If you hate cedar, think of it as patchouli and vanilla.

 

When I first put it on it gave off a rich red scent - patchouli and pomegranate were the strongest sensations. In less than an hour, the scent became very delicate and warm, like a cedar log sitting in the sunlight. Now, about 3 hours in, it's almost of metallic...I think I'm picking up the red musk all by itself.

 

Going in expecting a strong, overbearing and dark figure, and finding something warm, intriguing, thoughtful and beautiful instead, I would believe anything Mme Moriarty the Misfortune Teller told me.