Casablanca

Fresh on my skin, this is Honeycrisp primarily, and honey in solid support. I also seem to get a little floral something... honeysuckle hiding in the honey? Sunflower? I don't think I have any sunflower notes from the lab, but something in this reminds me of a sunflower body spray I used to have. Some golden flower, smelling like late-afternoon sunshine... and apricot? I'm getting an apricot tone blended into the apple.

As Honeyed Apple dries, its colorful notes dip below the horizon and musk emerges. It becomes a subtle apple- and gold-toned musky skin scent on me at this point.

It's an autumn sun in a bottle.

Pumpkin Sugar smells to me like sugary spicy pumpkin in the bottle.

But fresh on my skin, it's spicy pumpkin cookie dough. Cinnamon-nutmeg pumpkin cookie dough. Great if that's what you're after. Either way, the doughy part of the scent settles down over time, leaving more pumpkin spice.

Good throw.

The notes description has me brace for impact, but Fire surprises me with softness. It mostly smells like a glimmering coals concept scent, reminding me of Djinn and Demeter's Bonfire, but more cindering smoke, and this one is barely present on my skin.

 

And... it's gone in 10 minutes.

I like a lot of elemental scents, and I enjoy what I can smell of this, but I need it to stay awhile.

On my skin, Boober is cottony laundry and soap bubbles. There's a side of flowers, but I'm not familiar with linden other than to notice it gets used for clean or cotton themes sometimes. There's a little sugared vanilla, just a bit like vanilla cupcake frosting, or vanilla-flavored sprinkles, but it's small and quiet, and doesn't give a vanilla frosting impression in the way that say Funerary Papyri does.

It doesn't change on me. This isn't for me.

Opening the bottle, this is potent stuff, a wave of creamy black cherry.

On my skin, it's sweet, creamy, fleshy black cherry like whoa. There isn't much to break down here, but I'll try: the sweetness isn't granular sugar, but syrupy. The cream is vanillic and almondy and secondary to the cherry. The cherry is black and fleshy-chewy, and the strongest note. I don't smell blackberries as a standalone, but the cherry seems a little extra dark.

The vanilla in the cream strengthens in drydown and is the strongest note on me once this dries. The dark cherries linger, but quietly now. I can pick out blackberries now, but they are even quieter, ever so faint, almost absent. They're like a hint of dark berry dryness compared with the cherries. (And then I look at the notes again and realize they're dried. I guess that's them.)

As simple as it is, I'm fond of this one. It smells predominantly golden-orange, like a mango turned floral, and also greenly spring-like, like dandelions given larger, bolder flowers. Despite being a fall-themed scent, it makes me think of Easter, from American Gods.

It changes little on my skin, and sadly doesn't last long.

Baobhan Sith opens with a wave of gingery grapefruit, sweetened with red apple. Grapefruit doesn't usually excite me in fragrance (though I love the fruit), but this is a nice trio. I smell the clean white tea afterward.

The whole blends into a mostly grapefruit white tea on me after drydown (no more ginger or apple).

 

To me this smells too tropical to evoke its Highland namesake, but it's still a nice fragrance, good for spring.

In the bottle I smell only a faint beeswax, but on my skin this is at first more of the crunchy-sweet honey from O, but with a nutty, slightly creamy-musky tone from the ambergris. The initial honey rush calms quickly, though, and allows the beeswax and white incense through. After the first 30 seconds, beeswax dominates, followed by ambergris and white incense. I don't pick out patchouli at this stage.

The vanilla tone in the beeswax grows after drydown, becoming about as strong as the waxy smell. I still don't smell patchouli, but the incense note has grown, pale but champaca-like.

I like it, but it's mostly gone in 40 minutes.

Salty, sea-breezy kelp and moist greenery, a blue juniper scent, a ponderous cypress, a vague floral impression, and a hint of sage. The sage is nicely fresh-smelling. This is what I get on my skin at first.

After a few minutes, soap lurks on the horizon of that sea, a little shape with a little sail, but coming closer. Fast. OK, well, it's here already. Now Ogygia is sea-scented soap, lightly saged. A very pretty bar of soap, if still a bit salty... I would use this soap.

Olokun has none of the gloom mentioned in the notes -- I'd been half expecting something like The Deep Ones.

 

Instead, I get a cool-toned, lightly salty oceanic melon that's only a faint presence on me. All very soft. All very gone in a short time.

I have no prominent licorice blends and want more teakwood around, because I love it, so this one was an easy pick for me.

Kneeling Child's first impression on my skin is black licorice in black musk. Then I pick up the pervasive teakwood, with its sleek, darkly polished wood scent, adding the sophistication that I love. The licorice is sweet, but not overly so, mingled with the teak and this sort of lemon myrtle-vetiver musk. It's a nice thing I like black musk, or I might have been disappointed here. But this is a lovely dark, darkscent for those who are good with these notes.

October Dusk is beautiful. I agree with biocarolyn: this reminds a little bit of maple syrup, but without most of the sugar -- just that soft red maple note, with a little redwood behind it. It's also not very woody or leafy. Instead it's a nice balance between wood, leaves, and sweetness.

 

It smells like October made romantically red.

In the bottle, blueberry dominates, though eucalyptus is the first scent to hit my nose. The blueberry is more pervasive, though. There's something solid and inviting, like an oudh, but the whole is swathed in blue. Under the other notes, I get a little light blue musk that reminds me just a bit of that in Bestiaire du Moyen Age.

 

On my hair, my first thought is blue linen. The part I'm perceiving as lineny reminds me of Boo. Then the note mostly resolves into iris, except that I like it better than I usually like iris. I can imagine getting a laundry impression from this blend, though, even though that's not quite it.

 

Anyway, it's blue. No fear on that account. Blueberry, blue musk. On my hair, there's only a trace of eucalyptus.

 

I'm wearing this with Aquae bath oil and kinda like how they go together. Blue Roman bathhouse, or something.

 

To add to those, King Pursued.

 

King Pursued was more oak and amber than pine on me, but YMMV.

 

 

It did. I got a lot of a very softly camphoraceous pine pitch, and little amber.

Sweet mints. On the second sniff, it smells like cold, hard mint candies hovering above a bed of slightly nutty (which is how the lab's ambergris smells to me) moss. The moss and ambergris blend together, but the mints stand out entirely, not blending at all -- this is this, and that is that.

In drydown the notes start to settle and blend. Later, Cathode turns to a flat toothpaste.

Meh.

Some kind of warm, buttery-apple sweetness -- a bit almond-like, a bit maple-like -- and spiced with cinnamon-clove.

A fall scent, unchanging on my skin, except to later fade.

 

A mingling of greeny-green moss and cypress dominate the Zombie.

The chypre brings an earthy -- not dirt, more figuratively earthy -- solidness. I get the dandelions. I'd hoped the note would bring a lilt of spring to what sounded like maybe a heavy blend, but that's not how it's working in this mix. It's more like a damp, grassy smell over it all, blending into the ponderous cypress-mushy moss tones.

 

There's no smell of zombie rot, but there is dampness, a sense of greenery trampled down, sticking together. Good for the right mood.

 

The first impression of Himalia on my skin is of toasted nuts and grain floating in creamy vanilla, like some otherwordly oatmeal. Then I smell the honey and hay mixed in, the former blending into the vanilla, and the latter into the grain. The creamy grain reminds me of Dana O'Shee, but this is, on the whole, more rich. It's been a while since I sampled Dana, and I should do a side-by-side, but this seems a bit like Dana but more complex and rich, and with less overt almond.

 

There's an almost chalky texture in the sniff -- not in a bad way. It makes me think of oatmeal softening and breaking down into smaller and smaller parts, very slowly, in milk. And then, on the end of a sniff, I get an undercurrent of vetiver. There's a goodly amount of sweetness in the rest of the blend, and it's hard to tell where that ends and the sweet part of the vetiver begins, but after a minute or two, the specific tone of it reminds me an awful lot of Death Adder.

 

The Death Adder vetiver in this grows as Himalia dries on me. This is a harvest vetiver blend!

 

Completely dried, Himalia softens considerably, with even its vetiver snake resting its head on its coils and going to sleep. It doesn't vanish, but blends in. The fragrance goes Full Cozy.

 

I like it.

BPAL's red musk goes all icky armpits on me after a while. But let's try this here freebie.

I do love the spice part of this. The initial hit of Scherezade isn't bad -- I don't hate red musk before it turns foul on me. At least not anymore.

However, the blend starts to smell gross on me after about 15 minutes. I have a friend whose skin doesn't hate red musk, so she will get this.

On the wand, Seraglio is... almond. And orange. But mostly almond, as its high-impact, heavy-hitting self. Almond in boxing gloves.

On my skin, the orange and orange blossoms bloom, but almond still slugs away. The neroli turns toward orange lollipops on me, as it does sometimes, but the almond and a little spice seem to hold it partly in check.

In the drydown, I catch clove, and then nutmeg. But after that, the nutmeg seems stronger. The rose then does something unusual for rose and sneaks up on me. This is a lovely rose that pairs well with the orange and spice. The almond starts to settle down and let a better balance through. A quite nice balance -- this rose shows restraint, and doesn't bully through the heart of the fragrance in its turn. The only drawback for me now is the slight lollipop tone of the neroli, but that's just my skin.

Once the almond settles, this is a pleasant blend. Not long-lived on me, though.

Strong spiced tea! The leaves seem like a mix that may include a little black tea, but mostly green. Kind of a smoky green, like a gunpowder, that blends into a little tobacco. Otherwise, I smell lots of spice, including the allspice. But in this blend, tea dominates on me.

In the drydown, I find the sandalwood, but it blends well into the spices, and I don't find its edges. Plunder takes on a dry, grainy quality at this point, on the edge of dusty, but not powdery. It mostly fades from me in a couple hours.

I like this, but I'm not drawn to bottle it.

At first, this couldn't smell more like I imagined it from the notes list if I had brewed it myself. Am I imagining the little tang of a metallic something here, too?

Blood manages a syrupy thickness without becoming too sweet. For me, the clove and resins keep it well away from smelling like cough syrup, but some may find the cherry syrup part of it too close.

After drydown, I seem to smell just a little unlisted red rose in this, or maybe carnation... soft petals hiding under the softening cherry and myrrh.

Blood isn't very me, but I like it. The balance is nicely done.

To add to those, King Pursued.

A white, glistening, fruity floral. There's an aquatic tone to the pear and lily of the valley; I can also find the musk in the early sniffs. Then I realize the rosewood is fairly prominent, too, but it's much lighter and "prettier" than the rosewood oil I have. It works better with the other notes here than mine would.

Waiting for the soap to show up... There. Around 10 minutes in.

The blend is still full-smelling, just soapy on my skin, unfortunately.

Ouch.

 

I can like jasmine, but not screechy jasmine -- and this same quality sometimes puts me off of lime's similarly strong and high-pitched impact. The two together are probably a headache waiting to happen, and I don't even get scent headaches.

I smell flowers behind them, but holy smokes. I'm just going to recover in a corner for a bit.