myth

Spicy and dry at first. A waft of Big Red gum over the top. Wooden spice cabinet with chewing gum. I don't smell the amber, just the spices and resins. Lots of cinnamon. Too much cinnamon and not enough anything else. Once the cinnamon calms down a bit it is incensy and nice, but it seems similar to one of the past phoenixes I already have, I just can't quite recall which. I like it, because I like resiny spicy blends, but I don't love it because the cinnamon is too forward for my taste and the scent overall is drier than I prefer.

This smells like oudh and butt from the wand, with more of the same on my skin. I don't smell any amber or leather, or any of the other notes really. The oudh is harsh, an olfactory scratchiness, and the castoreum accord is amping over everything else. It's so funky it nearly makes me gag, and it becomes even more horrific as it dries. I finally had to go wash it off, and I try to not do that because I like to let a scent play out. Now that I've done that, in the scent residue that remains I can smell the leather, black musk, frankincense, and patch, which would be a nice scent if this was all it had ever smelled like.

Fear of Bats
 A flutter of leather becomes a swarm of buffeting musks, tangled with a white flash of sandalwood and near-inaudible shrieks of eucalyptus and elemi. This was one of my favorite Weenies that I tested at the Dirty South Lunacy last weekend. At first it is mostly a woody incense. The sandalwood in this is the kind that smells like smooth incense, not the scratchy powdery kind. I wasn't sure what elemi was supposed to smell like, so I looked it up, and it is in the frankincense family. So elemi + sandalwood = velvety wood incense. Are bats velvety? Because this smells like velvet feels, smooth and fuzzy and soft on the senses. The leather is in the background at first. As it dried the leather shifted forward and the other notes faded, but even the leather here is kind of fuzzy and soft, more of a suede than a polished leather. I can catch a whiff of eucalyptus when I sniff from the bottle, but I smell nothing of it on my skin, and I never smelled anything that struck me as a musk (merged with the leather?). The final incarnation was lots of leather backed by that woody incense. The YMMV caveat here is that I was testing this alongside other stuff, while in a room full of perfume stink (lol you can smell us coming down the hallway of the hotel our event is held in), and the testing location was on the back of my hand, which is not always the most accurate location and which tends to disappear before a scent gets to the absolute last dry-down stage. I think I might need a bottle of this, but I want to try it again in more isolated circumstances before deciding. It was one of only two Weenies that made me contemplate a bottle though. So, if you skipped this one because you were afraid of the eucalyptus, you might want to rethink it. I stuck my hand under the nose of another attendee, and her response was "oooooh" and when I told her what it was she said "oh I passed over that one because I thought it would smell like Vick's" and immediately went to try it on herself. In eucalyptus' case I think "near-inaudible" is accurate.

Ugh, this is so so good. Just perfectly what it says on the tin… crisp bright apple, slightly sharp, but mellowed by a cloud of sweet marshmallow. I didn't like Boo, because anything "fabric" does not wear well on my skin and when I tried Boo the perfume it smelled like scratchiness and plastic on me. So, I don't love Boo, but I do love this, and if you didn't like Boo for whatever reason but do like apples and marshmallows you're going to want to try this. I’ve been spraying this all over myself ever since a beautiful angel person I am lucky enough to call friend surprised me with a bottle of it over the weekend. I don't wear the hair glosses in my hair because they break my curls and make me frizzier (I can't do any 'cones in my hair), but I do spray them directly on me. I wish this one lasted longer, though, and I'm going to try rubbing some into my hair at the nape of my neck to see if it sticks around longer on hair than on skin. YUM.

I wasn't sure about this one from reading the notes, but I got lucky. Opium notes can be iffy on me, prone to being heavy/perfumey/powdery, but not here. And this isn't the harsh, sour tobacco a la French Tobacco SN, but the much calmer tobacco leaf note that I like. This is a pale, woody incense of absolute gorgeousness. I love it.

This atmo is GORGEOUS. I usually just get decants of atmos because I have SO MANY, but as soon as I saw the notes of this one I pre-ordered one from DSLE. This was an excellent call on my part. So, so good. The golden amber comes through, sweetened by vanilla, grounded by patch. The cedar and sandalwood add a smooth, woody incense to it. Just stunning. If these sound like your notes then run, don't walk, and get a bottle of this, because I have a feeling down the road it will be as sought after as the L'Estate atmo is... it's in that same incensy-amber vein, but I like it a lot better because it doesn't have the cloying bit of floral to it. I want my house to smell like this always. To me THIS is the smell of opening a BPAL box (because all my BPAL tends to be in this note range, yep). Speaking of which, I keep all my atmos in a cabinet in my office, and every time my accountant comes over and opens it to get checks out he takes a deep inhale and comments on how good it smells. Buy this now.

I tested this on the back of my hand at will call. I had the opposite experience from Andra, in that it faded quickly on me, but, the backs of my hands are pretty dry right now so that may be down to where I applied it. It's marshmallow, though. Super sweet sticky marshmallow. It's like a sugar-amped version of Stekkjarstaur... instead of the slightly musky not-over-sweet quality of Stekk's marshmallow, this is full-on in-your-face sugar rush. It's delightful, but I bought two bottles of Stekk so I kind of feel like I don't also need this. But if you missed Stekk...

Most of my atmos tend to be dark and incensy, so I was hoping to add something a little fun and fruity to my collection. I thought this would be good because it didn't have any floral components—florals give me a headache, but the lighter-note sprays that include fruit notes usually seem to have them. Sadly, to me this smells like someone sprayed the room with cherry Chapstick. I'm afraid this one won't be staying with me.

I didn't expect to like this because chocolate, especially milk chocolate (which is what I was assuming a soufflé chocolate would be), does not work on me. Boomslang and Lump of Coal are pretty much my only exceptions to this. But when I applied this, I barely smelled the chocolate. Instead I immediately realized that it smelled exactly like a slightly chocolately version of Mother Ginger. There is some orange (as there was in MG), but mostly it has that distinct, buttercream-ginger feel that Mother Ginger has. As a note ginger is usually either dry/spicy like the powder you'd use in cooking, or it is fiery and planty like the fresh root. This ginger is unique in that it is very vanillic, to the point that the image it evokes in my mind is buttercream frosting. This was exactly the reason why I liked (and have a bottle of) Mother Ginger, and it is why I'm liking this one now. I was afraid the chocolate might amp and turn to first to wet dog and then eventually cardboard, which is what chocolate does on my skin. Instead this one quietly disappeared, leaving only this delicious, rich, vanillic ginger scent. A surprise keeper!

Well, I have to be the voice of dissent here, I'm afraid. This should have been a good one for me... I dig incensy sexy blends, sandalwood, vanilla, oude, and myrrh, but I don't dig Sinus Amoris, nor find anything about it the least bit sexy. It's heavy, powdery, and something in it is sharp and pricks my nose. This smells like a stinky grandma perfume on me. It's nose-curling harsh upon first application, and as it settles in it turns into a heavy powdery scent that is so cloying I feel like I might suffocate when I inhale it. Hours later I get a waft of incensy sandalwood that has finally lost its powder, and that I kind of enjoy. I just can't wait out the overly perfumed grandma in a head shop main phase of this for a tiny aftertaste of something that I only kind of like. Oh well. It's loved enough that I should have no trouble rehoming this bottle.

While I am writing reviews of atmos that I got a decant of and loved so much I was forced to upgrade to a full-sized bottle despite having enough atmo to scent several houses for the rest of my life, I thought I should stop by this thread. Because this is that atmo! (The other one was Revenant Rhythm.) This is just beautiful. When my decant first arrived I did what I do when I smell all my atmo decants, which is twist off the top and pull the sprayer out a little to take a huff from the bottle. At first huff I thought this was going to be too perfumey for me. But I guess I got a little on my hand when I did that, because later on I kept catching whiffs of something lovely and incensey and thinking "what IS that gorgeous scent??" Well I finally figured it out. And this went immediately to my bedside to be used on my pillow. After using it every single night for a couple of weeks I decided this was my One True Bedtime Atmo and got a big bottle. This is a nice soft sweet lavender, not the harsh herbal kind. The sweetness is given an extra boost by the vanilla. The oude and sandalwood give it a soft incense vibe. It's lovely and calming. I have a very hard time falling asleep, and I have been using various calming scents in an attempt to train my dumb brain that when it smells (bedtime smell) it is time to turn off and get some rest. It's probably as close as there will ever be to an atmo version of the Agony of Loss (French lavender, cedar, armoise, white sandalwood, awapuhi, and the smoke of burning love letters). My dear friend Brooke Stant and I are both fans of Agony of Loss, so I gave her my decant of this atmo last time I saw her because I knew she'd like it, too. My will call sold out of this, so I think it was quite popular, as it should be. If you like lavender but don't want a harsh herbal lavender, if you want a sleep scent that is incensey instead of medicinal, this is your jam. It lives on my bedside and I use it every night. Beautiful.

I can't even. This is glorious. So back when BB originally came out I got a decant from a circle, and liked it ok, but it immediately went redonk HTF and expensive and I didn't quite like it enough for the prices it was commanding. I've casually kept a eye out for a good swap or reasonably priced bottle ever since, but never found one. I was pleased when I heard this was coming back, and even moreso when it did it in All the Things. Now, I officially have Too Many ATMOs. For real. I'd need a couple more houses to use up all the atmo I have, even with some recent hard-core destashing. So I pretty much never buy full-sized atmos any more, because I just don't need that much of any one scent. When RR came out I bought a full-size of the bath (bc I do use up my BOs) but only got a 1 oz decant of the atmo. But ever since it arrived it seems to be the only atmo I can use. Every time I need an atmo my hand reaches for RR, as though possessed. So when I placed an order for Snake Charmer gloss at the Post, somehow (that possessed hand again probably) a bottle of RR atmo fell into my cart with it. Puddin has effectively dodged the question of whether the Post RR items would be GC like the perfume is going to be, and I just couldn't take a chance on ever running out of this. Every timeI spray it around my house I just swoon. I told myself I'd sell the decant when my big bottle arrives... but I might not even do that. I can't even describe this. For reasons I can't explain, I love the atmo version more than any of the other RR products; it's just the best incarnation of this scent to me (not that it smells different from the other products, because I've smelled them all together and they all smell the same, just that for whatever reason it makes me happiest smelling it as a home scent rather than on me). It's sweet and golden and beautiful. It doesn't smell hippyish or headshoppy to me (altho I don't dislike those things), it's not a heavy scent (and I have those bc I love them) it's just... I dunno. Glorious. Buy some.

This is a prototype that was gifted to me. It has a white handwritten prototype label that does not specify the series. This is piney and musky. It starts more piney, with a sweetish top note that reminds me of the sweet pine note that is in the Holly King prototype. Then a masculine musk comes up, and it leans kind of cologne-like, but still with this sweet top note. After 15 or 20 minutes it morphs again briefly and throws an aromatic wood note that I can't quite place, sandalwood or cedar maybe. That seems to disappear fairly quickly, or maybe I just amp the musk over it, because it turns cologne-musk heavy here. I don't mean like a dark musk; it's the kind of clean, almost airy kind, that just makes me think of a classic men's cologne. After a little while that settles back down and I can smell the sweet pine note again. This is kind of a morpher, and makes me think of a well-dressed man in a forest; there is something both refined and wild about it. I wish I didn't amp the musk like I do, because it is the kind that gives me a bit of a headache, so this goes through a phase where it's not really wearable for me, before it turns back into something I can deal with. It didn't do this to me when I first got it, but my skin chemistry seems to have changed over the past few years.

The 2007 version of Beaver Moon and Very Pink Surprise Cake are both favorites of mine, so I was pretty excited for strawberry doughnuts after reading the reviews. And at first it was a pretty great strawberry scent and I thought I might need some. But alas, then it dried down, and this bready grainy scent came out. I was wandering around will call trying to think of why it smelled so familiar, and commented it was making me think of a granola bar or something. Someone standing nearby gave my arm a sniff and said "yeah, it smells like a NutriGrain bar." And that was it, exactly. My stepmom always used to have those, the whole grain bar with the fruit filling inside, and once this dries it smells dead on to a NutriGrain bar. Welp, I like to smell like cake, but I don't like the grainy/bready scents, and I definitely don't want to smell like a NutriGrain bar. So this one turned out to not be for me, and I mourn the strawberry doughnut that never was.

I would never have tried this one except that I was frimped a decant of it, so I felt compelled to test it even though it is a laundry list of things known to be terrible on me. From the wand it's very high-pitched, a perfumey white-noise scent, borderline screechy. On my skin I can smell the watery green bamboo, which never works for me. I can also smell a strong floral, and florals are my nemesis. The screechy white noise effect is probably coming from the silk; fabric notes tend to read as a high-pitched airy/dusty musk. Basically everything in this is known to be problematic for me to one degree or another (the only exception being that I like wood generally, except polished woods, and lacquered seems to fall in line with polished). Lots of floral as it dries. It smells like what I used to think perfume smelled like, which is pretty much exactly why I never wore perfume before discovering BPAL. I only put a tiny dab of this on and I still had to go wash it off because it was amping over my two other much more generously applied test spots. So, if you look at this and think, "it's full of my death notes," it probably will be. No surprises here.