rosedamask

My bottle of Heavenly Spark has a lot of sediment at the bottom, and needs to be rolled/held upside down a few times before everything gels together, otherwise I just get a weird kind of smoky, burnt hot dog smell. But the rolling is so worth it! Once everything's melded together, it's beautiful. I mostly get a dark polished oak (like the panels in an old library), with pillowy red roses and an overlay of esoteric incense that gets more pronounced after a couple of hours. I'm really excited to see how this one ages.

Alas, Clermont started out with so much promise, but now I think I may have to destash. When I first tested it fresh out of the mail, it was a beautifully smoky, velvety rose, with both notes perfectly balanced. After leaving it to rest, though, the opium tar takes over entirely, and now it goes soapy-smoky on my skin. And so the search for the perfect rose incense continues on! Fingers crossed for Heavenly Spark from this year's Liliths.

Whoa, this is very different to what I was expecting when I read the notes! I totally agree with Jenjin and LizziesLuck about the wine and syrupiness, and was wondering whether it was a bottle mislabel before I checked the reviews here. On me, Crucifixion is like a dark, tart berry wine with a liiiiittle bit of incense around the edges when it's sniffed up close. I'm not getting anything floral, which surprises me - I blind bought some Crucifixion because I was looking for a rosy/floral incense that didn't go too sour/powdery on me, like Rose Cross does, but the wine-like quality of Crucifixion takes it a totally different direction. It's a very intriguing perfume, but I think I'll destash, because I'm already happy with my go-to berry/wine scents.

This is so beautiful! Chiffon is a great word for the vanilla in The Bride: it's like smelling big, fresh, dewy-petaled magnolias and honey-sweet skin through a sheer, floaty veil. It's very light and delicate, but still has great longevity on me so far - there's good sillage for the first few hours, then it moves into something more skin-close but still very sweet and striking. I'm glad I blind-bought this! It'll be gorgeous to wear outdoors in the spring/summer.

Oooh, yess, Lampades and Anactoria are both ones I want to try! (I have some Mircalla already, because I couldn't resist that namesake, and I do like it a lot, but it missed out on Top 5 because the vanilla/orchid/musk doesn't last very long on my skin and it goes more straight-up herb rack too soon for me.) I will definitely check those out!

Let's do this. As of now, my top 5 are: 1) Blood Countess 2) Lady Lucille Sharpe 3) Yvaine 4) The Brides of Dracula 5) Mme Moriarty 2015

This feels like a very heavy, grey scent to me - a sweet, honeyed smog. It reminds me of CP Edith Cushing a little, in its greyness and its cut-it-with-a-butterknife thickness, and there is a lot that I like about this - but alas, where Edith was creamy and foodie, this has a lingering Play Doh quality that I can't seem to shake. If I can't rehome my decant, I'll try it again in a couple of months, to see if aging has helped with that, but I think this might not be one for me.

I got an imp of this in my last BPAL order, and I just got around to trying it now. In the bottle and wet on my skin, Hades was intensely sweet and treacly, but on the drydown, it turned very smooth and black, and definitely lived up to its "palpably sacred" description - it made me think of ancient rites being performed down in a underworld throne room of exquisitely polished onyx. There's also a kind of swampy, almost medicinal undercurrent to it at times, with all the cypress and floral notes bringing in a dark verdant vibe, so I felt like Hades' proximity to the River Styx was also very much honoured in this blend. It's a sombre perfume, but has a really fascinating kind of austere beauty to it. It's not something I'd use as one of my regular scents, but it is a very fitting tribute to its namesake god, and I'm glad I got to try it out.

In the bottle: Thick, buttery vanilla - very rich and sweet, like something you could eat up with a spoon. Wet: The sweetness of the vanilla is still there, but as notes like the grey amber and white patchouli come to cut through it, it becomes a much more distinctly Edith scent - the vanilla's thick like her yellow satin skirts, now, rather than like a creme brulee, and there are the most gorgeous wispy hints of something strange and unearthly hovering just over it. Dry: As things balance out between the vanilla musk and the other notes, I keep thinking of Edith in her park outfit with the gauzy white blouse and the seance hands belt and the signature gold skirts that I started to be reminded of during the drydown - it's a warm, solid kind of perfume, but also one that has a hint of hazy otherworldliness about it, which is entirely perfect as an evocation of its namesake. It's a little bit more understated than Lucille (or maybe I was just less heavy-handed this time), but it definitely has lasting power, and I could even smell it lingering in the air whenever I came back into a room I'd been in a few minutes before. Edith is definitely a keeper, and I'm SO looking forward to wearing this more throughout the winter. (I'm also really curious as to how this one would layer with Lucille, which is also quite golden/ambery on my skin. I might have to try that soon.)

In the bottle: definitely lush, and rich, and DARK. Like shoving your nose into the moths' den of a wardrobe where she must be keeping all her mother's gowns. I can't pick out any individual notes yet (except maybe the ylang ylang - I'm reminded a little bit of Lorelei, at least), but the overall impression is IMMENSE. Wet: it's very subtly musky on me so far - I can smell the amber, I think (there's a definite chrysalis-appropriate smell here), and what I'm guessing is the plum musk, although it hasn't gone FULL PLUM on me like plum notes usually do. It's a deep golden scent, right now. Dry: It DEFINITELY delivering on the whole up-to-your-waist-in-Victorian-aristocratic-decay front - it's a little musty in the best and most Lucille-appropriate way, although the more sweetly redolent notes are coming out now (black lily, I think). So far it's like you smell the whole trappings of her attic room in Allerdale Hall, and her skirts moving through the dust, then you get more of something rich and yearning and alive, like Lucille herself, and it's a very beautifully balanced scent. I think the Peak Lucille stage lasts about ~three hours or so on my skin, but even after it's faded a little I still have to keep ducking my head down to get more of it in all its sad dark grandeur, and it's still going strong eight hours after application. Lucille's quickly become one of my all-time favourite characters, and her perfume does not disappoint at all! I'm so looking forward to wearing this again, after I've worked my way through the rest of the Crimson Peak BPALs I got today.