hackess

Wow, this is nasty on me. It's like astringent. If institutional antibacterial cleansers came in scents like apricot, this is what they would smell like. I don't know if it's the ginger or the jasmine that's hating me in this one, but it's gotta go.

Floral scents, especially white florals, tend to go soapy on me and this one follows the rule. In the imp, the lavender is really nice and I'm hopeful. Sadly, the wisteria takes over and all I smell is high-class soap. It's not a wistful blend for me.

Ack! Patchouli! Amber and resin are okay, but patchouli amps like whoa on me and turns this into Cathedral with a slightly green, woody undertone. It's churchy and smoky and just not for me.

Have you been naughty? I really enjoy this scent, but only in certain moods. Most of the time, I'm a Rose Red, Smut or Alice kinda girl, but sometimes I just gotta have Whip. The leather isn't overpowering, but it's definitely there on my skin, and moreso in the imp. To me it smells almost more like a soft brown suede, a wet leather instead of dry, stiff black leather. I get flashes of the leather when I turn my head or run my wrists past my nose, almost like a switch passing through the air. There's almost no throw on this one, but it's the kind of scent you should be smelling up close anyway.

Gorgeous perfect white carnations tempered by a couple pink roses and the sweetness of tea. It's lovely and reminds me of my mom, who loves carnations, which is why I'm sending an imp to her!

Lucy's Kiss was the first bottle I ever bought and one of my first rose-scents. Appropriately, it seems to me like more of a "younger" rose scent, girlish like the rose in Persephone. It's Victorian roses in a nursery, not the heady womanly scent of London or The Peacock Queen, and definitely not the naughty rose of Whip or Wanda. After a while, it started turning into a powdery rose, so I had to get rid of the bottle. I still have an imp, in case I want to feel girly.

Imp: Pumpkiny butter. It's really quite gross in the imp. Wet: OMG. It's like two different scents entirely. This is sweet and appetizing. The pumpkin is hiding just under the peaches. It's sweet - not at all what I thought it would be like. Drydown: Exactly like cider. It's like going to the apple gardens and picking bags of perfect apples and leaving them in your sun-baked car on top of a perfect-for-carving pumpkin. This one surprised me and I may have to rescue it from the swap pile. ETA: Today the drydown's pretty heavy on the vanilla, which means it smells like chalk made of powdered sugar and Yankee candles -- but only on my wrist. The crook of my elbow is still peachy and sweet. The bit I got on my shirt sleeve is still gorgeous apple cider.

This is the one I was looking forward to and it didn't disappoint. Slightly spicy, like orange chai tea. The cardamom is really gorgeous in this. If clove is too strong for you, try cardamom instead. It's a very sweet-smelling spice that blends so nicely with the tangerine and cherry blossom. It threatened to go soapy on me, but that could've just been wafts of everything else I was testing tonight because it passed pretty quickly.

Imp smells like juniper bushes and that lemony snow scent. It's like going for a sleigh ride through the forest at night, only your companion has a cold and is sucking on lemon menthol cough drops. It dries to something much more tolerable - almost like these lemon mints my grandmother would give me when I was a kid - but it takes forever to get to that phase on me.

... Ozone, white sandalwood, crystallized white amber, verbena, oakmoss, clary sage, and a hint of white citrus rind. Another winter Lunacy that doesn't love me! Including White Moon, the winter lunacies have either gone sour or cloyingly floral or heavy on the pine on me. Hunger Moon is no exception. In the imp, it's lemony fir. Applied, it's snow covered lemon trees over a bed of pine boughs. I love Hungry Ghost Moon, but this and Snow Moon just aren't for me. ETA Lab description

I get fig and cocoa laced with pomegranate at first whiff. No spice at all, no cloying vanilla. No tonka amping like mad, like it usually does. It's really quite nice!

Hmm. It's sweetly floral, definitely jasmine in this. It's a bright, fresh scent and reminiscent of sunny spring days. It also fades very quickly and disappears from my skin after 10 minutes, so it goes to my sell pile.

Imp: More lavendar than anything. Initial application: CEDAR! Lots and lots of cedar. Something vaguely sweet in the background - the awapuhi?? Drydown: Ginger heavy over the woodsy smell - kind of reminds me of cedar sawdust. It's kind of pretty, but not for me.

I so wanted to like this! I've seen so many reviews comparing it to Smut, and I definitely get the sense that it wants to go in that direction, but it goes plasticky on me - smells almost like those clingy decorations for windows. Then the clove comes out VERY strongly and it's like I'm in the club, surrounded by smokers. It's even making my eyes water. I'll take Smut over Passion any day.

Creamy caramel - sticky, sweet, and nauseating in large doses. Anything with butter goes rancid on me almost immediately. Didn't last long, thankfully.

Very, very green at first application, like bathing in an herb-oil infusion. Then the verbena hits and all I smell like is cleaning products. Definitely not for me.

I've tried both '04 and '05 and they are identical perfect red roses, covered in dew. I almost want to say they're dusted with snow, because I get a very clean, cold feel from these imps. Wearing it, I feel like Mena Suvari must have felt in the scene from American Beauty. Absolutely beautiful. A must for rose lovers.

Who doesn't love Smut? I put some of the '06 on and held my wrist up to the boyfiend's nose. He grinned and approved. Then I told him what it was named and he said, "You HAVE to get more of that!" So I ordered a bottle of '07; here's hoping it smells the same: sugared dark booze, very smooth and a little mysterious. Smut '06 was NOT the drunk reek that other boozy blends turn into on me; it's sexy and gorgeous. Smut was also not the very masculine scent that most musks become on me. It's primal and warm. ETA: Smut '07 is just as good as its older siblings. This is one of my absolute favorites. Eight hours later and I can still smell it all over my wrists and hair. I feel like I should look disheveled from a recent turn in the sack ETA2: It lasted through TWO showers. Unbelievable. Thank you, Beth, for a perfect scent.

CTIII: MCCXVI (1,216) Imp: Sweet almond cookie dough Wet: Morphing into...cinnamon? Definitely cinnamon. (Please don't let this turn into a ginger snap!) As I inhale more and more of it, I can feel the cinnamon hitting the back of my throat, as if I were sucking on one of those red disk cinnamon hard candies -- it's that pronounced. There's definitely peach and possibly a bit of pumpkin, nutmeg, and cider in this. Drydown: My skin soaks this one up. The throw lasts maybe an hour, but the cinnamon stayed put, and added the tiniest bit of vanilla. The peach and cider are very strong now; it's like Jack without the initial "OMG What IS that" stank. I'm still sniffing my wrist and getting cinnamon, nutmeg and the sweetness of cider. I get wafts of it all day! Edit: I've completely rewritten the above review because I was so, so off the first time. Sometimes, it's nice to be wrong. DCIII (603) Imp: Vaguely citrus, but mostly syrupy sweet. Wet: Ew. Cheap lemon dish detergent. I can taste the soapiness. Drydown: This one lasts even less time. Bizarre. After a minute, it just smells like I washed my hands in a reststop bathroom. Zero throw and no long wear time + a scent I cannot stand = put in the sell/swap pile.

A wonderful antidote to an all-nighter oozing with drunken, addled perversion and debauchery. A fresh, crisp white linen scent: perfectly clean, perfectly breezy. (GC - Sin & Salvation) Oooohhhhhhhhh...how calming. It's clean and refreshing without the overpowering ozone that some other crisp scents have (though, I do like Lightning). Imp: It almost wants to turn into baby powder. I had scratch-n-sniff stickers in my youth for Easter that smelled like this: spring and powdery and clean. Wet: Still threatens to go powdery, but instead it's the scent of freshly washed sheets. All I can picture is a Downy commercial and collapsing into a big bed covered in fresh linen. It's not soapy or detergenty, though. Just clean. I've smelled spring breezes like this, the sunny day after a night's rainfall. Dry: There aren't many scents I can sleep with while wearing, but this might be one of them. It almost reminds me of one of the soaps my boyfiend has used in the past. Sadly, these "clean" scents are gobbled up by my skin and don't last all that long. I tossed a few drops into my hair and it neutralized the scent of my shampoo, but that's about it. Verdict?: Imps only. Nice for relaxing me on hectic, hormone-fueled days, but not for me as a regular perfume.

A stirring yet gentle perfume. The scent of love and devotion mingled with an undercurrent of heart-rending sorrow. A bouquet of white roses, labdanum, and wild orchid. (GC - Sin & Salvation) My signature scent! What I love about Magdalene is the labdanum and orchid and how they keep the rose down to just an undertone that only comes out in the drydown. When immediately applied, sometimes I get slightly greener wafts of the labdanum, sometimes they're woodsy and spicy. Sometimes the orchid is most powerful. The woodsy/spicy notes last throughout the scent's lifetime on my skin. Ten minutes after applying, the white rose starts to come out, but it's not anything like Two, Five & Seven or any other rose scent I've tried. It's somber, haunting, like the scent of a funeral bough. What I like about scents like this and Alice is the combination of a gorgeous soft note with something spicy. In Alice, it's spice of carnation and bergamot tempered with rose and creamy milk. Here, it's innocent rose spiked with the exoticness of orchid. It lasts long enough that I don't feel the need to slather myself in it (which doesn't stop me, of course). It's probably not supposed to be sexy, but I feel like a damned goddess when wearing this one. Verdict?: Bottle! Which, according to my CnS tracking, was delivered today! SQUEE! (12/20)

The essence of ambition, covetousness and manipulation: sweet Bordeaux wine, blood red currant, thyme and wild berries. (GC - Illyria) I'm so glad the red wine doesn't really come through in this scent, because reds, even sweet reds like Bordeaux, give me massive headaches. Lady Macbeth is one of my favorite oils and I've gotten so much of it that I've started putting it into lotion. To me, it smells like the seduction of power. There's a hint of that fake berry smell of black cherry candles, but it's sweet without being waxy and cloying and blends with the stronger scent of currants. It's really a beautiful scent. Verdict?: Bottle, eventually.

A shot of pure, self-indulgent euphoria! A scent that is very, very wicked in its own way: the serotonin-slathered scent of pure milk chocolate. (GC - Bewitching Brews) Imp: Creamy milk chocolate. Wet: Ack! That sickening smell of too much melted bittersweet chocolate. It's briefly overpowering but I'm giving it a little time to mellow. Dry: It got a little better. I have this cocoa butter lotion from Jergens or some other Walgreens brand, and it smells exactly like Bliss once it's mellowed. It's nice, and I'll have to see if my boyfiend stays true to his word by not keeping his teeth off tasty-smelling me. Verdict?: Imp only. I won't wear it often enough to warrant a bottle.

I can already tell I'm addicted to rose scents. Two, Five & Seven was one of the first imps I ordered from BPAL almost a year ago. Imp: Roses. Wet: Freshly cut roses. Dry: Sugared roses! I love this. It's not too cloying, and the drydown leaves the roses smelling sweet - not dusty like the potpourri in your grandmother's closet. Has great throw and wear - I usually repply once during the day just because I like being surrounded by the scent.

Antique amber frames a series of distorted, eternally warping clear crystal and glass notes. (LE - Carnival Noir) I got a 5mL of this from happygophucky in a fairly unbalanced swap (I definitely came out ahead!) because she's unable to wear aquatic scents due to asthma. It found a good home! Bottle: Crystalline and a hint of citrus. Wet & Dry: I initially feared the amber note, but it's gorgeous and soft. The crystal notes remind me of the ozone I love in Lightning. Drydown is quick, but I get wafts of it all day and don't feel the need to reapply. Verdict: This one stays on my shelf for when I'm not wearing rose blends.