annemathematics

I love galbanum, but it always amps on me like crazy, taking over and drowning other notes out. but...not here! there's just a whisper of it in the opening. then it dries down to soft resins behaving, well, kinda like clay. having done ceramics for years, I'm shocked at how much this reminds me of dusty dry clay at the bisque-fired stage. it's so evocative and comforting, with a cozy dry warmth. this is a 2017 top ten for me. bravo, beth!

2013 was the year I placed my first ever direct lab order! so this is a special year for me and I luck out because the scent is perfect for me and gorgeous on me. huzzah! I've enjoyed some dark bpals, some metallic bpals and some smokey bpals. wet I get black patch and dark smokey vetiver, but as it dries all the notes come together and form the most perfect gleaming accurate metal scent. very pure clean steel, with light hits of resin just around the edges. proud, authoritative, austere yet regal. I love this! happy anniversary, bpal!

Incense-blackened oudh and bourbon vanilla with tobacco absolute and 9-year aged patchouli. I'm a sucker for all of these notes, and the perfume they are brought together to create here is lovely. it is however on the soft side. if you are drawn to big delectable vanilla, gritty sweet tobacco or funky filthy patch, that's not what you'll find in this bottle. rather, P&D is more of a subtle experience with each of these notes. it's a little smokey at the start from the oudh, and after a few hours of wear, a soft and respectable patchouli can be sussed out. but overall, this is all about the blend, and it's one that I don't quite have the perfumer's vocabulary to do proper justice to in describing. it's very pretty and wearable and gentle. as I have and treasure so many fine bpals that showcase the big-n-dirty side to the listed notes, it's wonderful to experience this different side to them. a lot of vanilla blends and tobacco blends tend to have a sweetness to them, sometimes caramelly, sometimes plain old sugar-dusted, and this does not, which I am liking. it's a yin to many of my yang bottles.

This is the House of Unquenchable Fire's less haughty, very nurturing bohemian sister. Same gorgeous champaca classed up with light touches of frank and vanilla, only here with a big warm patchouli playing partner. It's beautiful. eta after a few weeks of settling and a few times of wearing, the above still holds true, but just adding that after about two hours the soft, floral-tinged patchouli becomes the main focus of the scent. still groovy, but that HoUF connection is faded. fyi.

just wanted to add in a new favorite lavender bpal from 2017: 18 June 1860: On this date, the first wet plate photograph of an eclipse was taken. Shimmering amber, collodion, silver nitrate accord, and white lavender. also the lilith scent goddess of mischief is a fantastic perfume featuring....lavender!

in the bottle, this smells like rich floral honey over chewy, leafy patchouli. i'm anticipating a rich earthy honey HG variation! but applied and worn, it's quite different. airy dried leaves with occasional wafts of woody (woudy?) patch and very very light floral (saffron!) honey. like walking down a very dapper street on a windy autumn day, getting wafts of the fine colognes and perfumes of the gentlefolk you pass on the street. it's gorgeous and I love every stage of it, from bottle huffs to the actual scent-in-my-hair.

the chattering raven from last year's anniversary scent is fantastic!

something about the personality of this scent reminds me of coyote. not that they are dupes, but that they would hang out together and be good friends. the musks overlap a bit between the two scents, but while coyote is warm fur navigating sun-dappled grasses, chiroptophobia has those musks swirling about in cool night air (eucalyptus) wrapped up in a cloak of leathery wings. chiropto is verrrry snuggly, cuddly, adorable. the leather note is strong at application, but at dry down I've got mostly a nice soft mix of musks and light sandalwood, brightened with the hint of euc. beautiful and brilliant, I'm of course quite batty for it.

Hinoki wood, grave moss, vetiver, and cypress. lately I'm drawn to scents that evoke forests and wilderness, and this starts out like a fairy tale woods at dusk, with inky, goth, velvety moss-and-cypress branches casting spiky black lace shadows. there's a trace of grit from the vetiver. this wet phase is stunning, gorgeous. dry, this morphs into something soft and gentle, like pale worn suede. throw is gentle and my skin noms this within two hours. eta: it's been over a week and this beauty has upped significantly in throw and wear-length. it's also morphing and shifting in the most welcomed and delicious ways. currently: dark, gritty woodsy open, leaning more unisex aka cologne-like in the dry-down.

this plays so differently on my skin than it does for the two reviewers above me. the dead leaves is doing that wonderful soft cologne thing that I love the pineapple is bright with the slightest hint of sweetness, but I'd have trouble identifying what it was if not for the notes list in the title. it's not syrupy or heavily sugared like the actual fruit and it smells nicely natural for a scent that's likely born in a lab and not the wild. the vetiver is a little smoky when freshly applied but recedes graciously into the blend and doesn't stand out. the patchouli is also very much a team player here. this is one of those scents that's blended in such a way that none of the individual notes stand out. it's much brighter and lighter than I expected considering the big resins at play here. it's very cheerful and uplifting, unisex, nothing boozy/cocktail-like at all on me. medium throw and lasted about four hours. I love dead leaves blends like this one.

very very light diaphanous purple scent. a little bit of violet that's not sweet and while smokey, is less smokey than the two incarnations of la befana that I've tried. everything in here is played in moderation: the orris isn't uber-dusty, the lavender not so sharply herbal. everything is swirled together, very much a blend vs individual notes. soft and delicate and restrained, low through and comparatively brief wear length.

this opens with the varnish and polish of the wood, settles down into bright shiny wood over warm, dusty myrrh. I dig this. funny how these scents from a horror story are so cuddly to me. leans unisex, hints of glam.

on my chemistry, this is mostly patchouli. the most gorgeous, soft, dusty, soothing, warm, snuggly patchouli ever. at least that's what wafts about me in the air. if I huff my skin, I get a beautiful gentle blend of saffron and labdanum. a little bit of musk dust.

beautiful swirls of ambergris, very subtle frankincense and something underneath that's kind of deep and rubbery...reminding me of old monster toys like the one pictured above. even with the touch of toy, this is a beautiful, cozy kind of scent. cool swirly blanket of fog over city street cozy. this scent softly hugs my skin for two-to-three hours before dissipating into the night.

this one is totally unexpected on me: it smells like a young girl's perfume blended into a tropical cocktail. the dead leaves and pineapple didn't go tropical but this one did. zz's mention of coconut milk above makes complete sense to me. bright, sweet, creamy pretty perfume.

Dry vanilla mint with rosewood, balsam, green sandalwood, green mate absolute, and sage. I love this one. vanilla and mint more elegantly aromatic than foody, over a base of warm dry woods and a rich non-herby green element. I can't describe it better because the thrill of it makes me pathetically incoherant. Eta there is a richness to this scent that is right on the line between wonderful and too much. I could easily see myself overindulging and then not being able to wear it ever again, like too many times on a carnival ride or eating too many sweets/too much greasy food, etc etc. This triggers the part of my brain where something in the horror movie is dangerous but the character can't see it because the beauty has lured them in. A carnivorous plant that ate bpallers might smell like this. Enticing and delicious but with something sinister underneath.

Blackened cacao with thirteen herbs for navigating your fortunes through lucid dreaming and trancework: lemon verbena, helichrysum, nut sedge, Roman chamomile, naab, lavender, citronella, galangal, wormwood, patchouli, tulsi, hoja madre, and mugwort. I have not yet attempted to navigate my fortunes with lucid dreaming or trancework. I have instead come home from work and torn open my box and tried on this scent first thing. And I love it. I'm still trying to make sense of it. The whole is so nice that I'm not motivated to sleuth out the individual notes, but fresh on I get the rich dark cacao and a chorus of high and bright notes: the lavender, wormwood, citronella, verbena. It dries down to a pretty perfume mostly featuring these notes. The cacao drops back and I get some warmth from the patch. A few hours in, it's mostly patchouli. Slightly funky patchouli. Kinda like if patchouli went to a costume party dressed up in a dirty vetiver getup. I know this 13 won't be for everyone, but for me this perfume continues my winning streak with bpal blends containing mugwort, wormwood and cacao. Looking forward to seeing how this shifts with time and age.

On this date, the first wet plate photograph of an eclipse was taken. Shimmering amber, collodion, silver nitrate accord, and white lavender. Bright, herbal, not-sweet lavender with a bit of the lab's magic-metal-smells over amber. this is big, rich and smooth. I'd kinda hoped that this would take me back to darkroom days by evoking those lovely funky developer/stop/fixer chemicals but it doesn't smell like them. this is a blessing I think for most people, who might not enjoy that level of chemical funk. this is a beautiful perfume, one that I recommend for fans of the lab's lavender scents. eta, having read the haute macabre review of this, I'll just add that to me/on me, I don't get anything even slightly soapy.

thank you to puddin and the goblins for making this, and for my lovely fairy for getting me a bottle! I love these three notes but I got it for the champa. I've been spraying House of Unquenchable Fire on my entry hall curtains and the beauty of that atmo lit a grabby hands fire on all things champarific. however, where HoUF is big and bold and baroquely opulent and regal, SFMD is soft and gentle and natural in feeling. i thought SFMD might be kindred to ask the nearest hippie, but there's nothing stoned or filthy about this scent. light and pretty patchouli perfectly balanced with the smooth comfort of well-worn sandalwood supporting a beautiful, light, feminine champaca. this is so so pretty.

and if you venture over into the realm of trading post wares, the amber patchouli hair gloss is one of my favorite scents ever. exactly what it says it is, but perfectly so!

czernobog the gc for the musks! interfector for the tobacco exorcist for the labdanum (a note used in many glorious amber blends) coyote for that musk qandisa and the cat and the many fine honeys in the rappaccini's garden doc constantine and wild men of jezirat al tennyn from the carnaval hmmm, most of my fave patchouli scents seem to be LEs

how does it compare to the irresponsibly unwatered christmas tree?

The Phoenix bird, dost thou not know him? The Bird of Paradise, the holy swan of song! On the car of Thespis he sat in the guise of a chattering raven, and flapped his black wings, smeared with the lees of wine; over the sounding harp of Iceland swept the swan's red beak; on Shakespeare's shoulder he sat in the guise of Odin's raven, and whispered in the poet's ear "Immortality!" and at the minstrels' feast he fluttered through the halls of the Wartburg. Night-black feathers of patchouli slick with Oman frankincense, opoponax resinoid, King mandarin, polished terebinth, sweet myrrh, and lavender. I reallly love this dapper glossy raven. the more I wear it, the bigger the love grows. very juicy mandarin swirled with lavender and a touch of sweet pine over dark patch-centric resins. this is a mood brightener for me, each time I've worn it. the opening reminds me of a non-sugared Pere Noel, with the citrus-lavender combo, only here instead of candy and anise, it's dark, rich (but not entirely without sweetness) patchouli with resins and the barest hint of pine. this wasn't at all what I expected (I anticipated dark and brooding) but I'm so happy to have my expectations dashed and blown away. what a beauty!

a sweet and creamy rose scent that reminds me a lot of the 2016 luper BO, Frau bei der Selbstbefriedigung. big throw and lasts overnight!

well they can't do anything with orders that don't exist, so you should prob place your orders first.