Lucchesa

2017 Hearth. There's a BPAL tobacco note that I've been thinking doesn't work on me. It's the one here, and it's in Snaky Hair'd Moirai as well. It's overpoweringly sharp when it hits my skin. But I'm starting to think that it simply needs more time to age. I recently retried Snaky, which was considerably improved from initial testing, and on retesting Hearth, I get that initial bit of harshness from the tobacco, but within a few minutes it has mellowed into something warm and comforting. Now it's letting the leather and woods come through. (I'm not getting the much in the way of cherry). Hearth doesn't have a lot of staying power on me, but that may improve with age as well. I think this one isn't going to come into its true beauty for a year or two yet.

All these lovely notes, and what do I get from Midnight Kiss? Grape juice. No cocoa, no red musk, almost no sandalwood or patch, just Manishevitz. Thanks, skin chemistry.

Independent reminds me of a lemon-lime drink powder we had as kids. Also of citronella candles. Not something I want to wear as a scent. Oh well, I'm glad I got to try it.

I think of chaparral as a place, not a plant. Scrublands, high desert, the kind of landscape you would expect a classic Western to be set in. And it is exactly what Doc Constantine makes me think of. A leather-clad gunslinger riding up on his horse through a landscape of sagebrush and manzanita, pulling up to a campfire. Masculine and outdoorsy, or in other words, unisex, it's kind of like Coyote with more smoke and cedar. It doesn't have great staying power on me, about two and a half hours, but I like it a lot.

So, shortly after I applied Hans Trapp, my husband walked into the room and asked what that musty smell was. Not really an auspicious beginning, though apparently it does have some throw . *I* like this one, though, and so does my friend Lenore, who saw me smelling my wrist as we were walking around the lake a couple hours later and asked to sniff it. It's a lot of leather and some dusty woods. I have Doc Constantine on the other wrist which adds smoke and cedar; Hans Trapp is more leather and I'm thinking the dusty note may be hay. Or matted hair, who knows? Much nicer than either the description or my husband's reaction. It goes strong for about two and a half hours on me then fades away quickly after that.

I wanted Young Pine Saplings to work so badly that I almost blind-bottled this from a forum sales page. I was giving a Hokusai talk, and I was showing a slide from Young Pine Saplings, and the notes sounded gorgeous. Fortunately I was generously frimped a half decant instead. And just as in that very old joke, it Worked. So. Badly. Every once in a while (Phantom Cow, I'm looking at you), a cream note goes horribly wrong on my skin, and this was one of those times. Sweet, spicy curdled milk. But I was able to pass it on to a swap partner for whom YPS is a major comfort scent. Sigh.

Umm, yes! I am a total sucker for anything candle-themed. It is perhaps my very favorite BPAL subcategory. So I group Thousands of Lights together with The Lights of Men's Lives, Flickering Lantern, Chanukkiyah, Hanerot Halalu and The Writing on the Slate, each beautiful, each unique but sharing that ability to, as JTobias says, create amazing ambiance and conjure up the beautiful glow of candles. Champaca can be a deal-breaker for me. It stays in line here, does not go weird and amp on me. I love bergamot but do not get recognizable amounts of it here either. In fact, it is hard for me to differentiate most of the notes in this blend because the evocative effects of the whole are so potent. There are the nutty, earthy tones of ambrette and saffron, a sweet vanilla beeswax, the incense that sends everything soaring. It's simply gorgeous, and I can't believe I neglected to review it earlier.

Someone has a very reasonably priced bottle of Old Man Ackerman's Instructional Toys on their sales page right now, so I am testing my imp to see if I need more. This is a very bright scent. Clean and bright. Citrus, sharp white musk, and ozone? I'm not getting any dust; a couple of hours in the citrus has faded but it's still clean and bright, verging on soapy. It's a higher-pitched scent than usually works on me; I love the concept but wouldn't wear this one.

The Scroll is absolutely gorgeous wet, with lots of throw: honey with myrrh and just the faintest edge of what must be Ceylon cinnamon but doesn't read anything like Big Red gum on my skin. This cinnamon is deeper and more subtle. As it dries down it gets warmer and spicier and foodier, and the throw mellows down considerably. I kind of lose the myrrh, or rather, the myrrh melds with the honey to create a kind of dirty, sexy honey. It's not the pale, crisp honey of something like Against Idleness and Mischief; it's much lower pitched and sexier. Just three notes, but The Scroll still manages to feel complex and nuanced. Lovely!!!

Spanked Revisited is my sex goddess comfort scent. Cardamom is my favorite spice note, and it's beautiful here, blending with the leather. At first, that's it, cardamom and leather, and frankly, that's enough, I would love it at that. But then the husky bourbon comes in, just sweetening things up in a very sexy way, plus a hint of patch as kind of a backbone. So it's warm and snuggly and makes me feel at ease in my own skin, and from that ease comes sensual confidence. The throw is very low on me, so this isn't a Snake Oil that announces your goddesshood to the rest of the world, but it means that I can wear this absolutely anywhere and channel my inner Astarte without overpowering anyone else in the room. It doesn't last as long as I like, but now that I have a bottle and not just half a stingily hoarded decant, I can douse myself and reapply at will. I absolutely love this one.

Ooh, Advice of the Dead is pretty, an autumnal floral. Marigolds smell weird, chrysanthemums can too, but this does not. It's definitely more classic floral than I expected, with less of that marigold funkiness. On my skin the earth note tends to morph into high-end perfume, so while I smell the rich dirt for a little while, in drydown this becomes a resiny, earthy floral perfume. I'm personally not able to differentiate the myrrh. This doesn't have great wear length on me, but that may improve with a little age.

Snow notes and I don't always get along, but almond blossom is a favorite floral (because almond), so I wanted to give this a whirl. Wet it's that comforting blast of almond extract which quickly dissipates, leaving a gentle almondy floral in its wake. There's something sharp as it's drying down, maybe a whiff of ozone, but then it all folds into a gentle snow note with a hint of almond blossom. I am not getting the minty note some reviewers have mentioned, which is fine with me. It has lasted an hour and a half but based on current strength I don't think it is going to be particularly long-wearing on me.

Marche Funebre is odd on me. Not bad at all, but not what I expected from the notes. I get predominantly leather mixed with what seems to be the dust note from Writing on the Slate or Adam. I'm not sure how my skin reconfigured juniper, honey and amber to get dust, but that's what it does, and it doesn't morph on me at all. Soft, dusty black leather, unisex, and it's not at all strong on me. I may pass this decant on to someone who can appreciate more of the notes.

Wow, this is beautiful. Wet it's all vetiver and pepper, as if they were a single thing, a peppery smoke. But there's some sweetness to it as well, and then as it dries down it combines with the tobacco, but on my skin this does not translate into cigarette smoke. That would be gross. Instead it's vetiver and tobacco in a kind of two-part harmony, with the vanilla singing backup. I adore cardamom but I can't really make it out here. I'm sure it's contributing some spicy complexity, though. This is dark and warm, what I consider a winter blend. But lovers of vetiver and tobacco should find lots to sigh over here. Unisex, no throw on me (that's normal), good wear length.

Nasty Woman surprised me. I was expecting it to be a deep, dark hippie patchouli, playing hackysack in your personal space. Instead, it's the most sophisticated patchouli I've had the privilege of trying. Patchouli in a silk pantsuit. I'm getting a little bit of rose, so I'd agree with those who think there's rosewater in the Turkish delight. But while rose can be problematic on me, this is restrained, adding to the overall elegance of the scent. I'm able to make out vanilla and the warmth of amber and the earthiness of fig but absolutely no oud. It's beautiful and so much better behaved than I expected. I get a little throw especially at first when wet, which is when the patch is most dominant. Then it wears fairly close to the skin on me, but it lasts quite a while. I applied it at about 8:15 this morning, and it's still hanging on five hours later. This is a scent that doesn't feel at all seasonal to me: I think it would be just as appropriate in the dead of winter as it is now at midsummer. I am so glad to have this!

I was generously frimped a tester of Hesiod's Phoenix, and it's perfectly lovely. There's nothing scary about the oudh here; it's not at all indolic like, on me, the oudh in Nevertheless She Persisted or Gaspar of India. Warm amber, warm vanilla, no throw but pretty good wear length. Sweet snuggly amber goodness.

A super generous forumite frimped me a tester of Eve 2014, and I get the hype now. It is essentially a rose blend on me, but rose with incredibly richness and complexity from all the other notes, which are hard for me to pull apart -- heady incense, spices on a warm desert wind. Morocco doesn't work on me, but this is stunning. It has average wear length on me and low throw, but that's characteristic of my skin. I have very few rose blends that I wear with any frequency, but if I had a bottle of Eve, I would wear it and love it.

I swapped away Zombi some time ago, so this isn't a review with the scent right on my wrist, but it made a strong impression on me. Years ago I gave an after-dinner talk on Goya, and the hostess decorated the dinner table abundantly with dead red roses. Zombi reminded me of those dead roses, and of all the beauty and terror of Goya's etchings. I found it inexpressibly beautiful and inexpressibly melancholy, and I couldn't imagine wearing it anywhere but to a funeral. Die-hard goths who love dwelling on the morbid and enjoy roses and earth scents should adore this one.

If I were a little more financially secure right now, Eternal Virgin would have been a no-brainer blind bottle - a variation on my first love Alice with the addition of a favorite spice. Tragically, my skin was having none of it. I can smell in the decant how lovely this must be on others, but it just isn't right on me. Maybe white carnation hits my skin less favorably than red or pink. Maybe the milk note goes a bit off, which has happened with some cream notes. Either way, this was a near-miss on my skin. Sigh.

The Small Brown Cat is predominantly a cedar scent on me, a lovely, soft, sweet, vanilla-cardamom tinged cedar. Cedar domesticated, fuzzy around the edges. It curls up with you and purrs. No throw but decent wear length on me. Love!

The blend Lady Death: Savage reminded me of, which hasn't been mentioned here, is Harper, and when I looked up the notes, there are some in common: the bergamot, vanilla and labdanum. I like both of these blends a lot. I was worried about the bois de jasmine, as jasmine is usually just bad on me, but the note behaved more like wood than jasmine. Wet the citrus dominates on me, then the amber and what seems more like vanilla musk than problematic white musk begin to shine. I'm frankly not sure what some of these notes smell like, but the whole is a lovely thing in that vanilla-pale musk-floral vein the Lab does so beautifully. Unfortunately my skin devours it after a couple of hours, but it is very nice while it lasts.

Paduan Killer Swarm is orgasm-inducing when wet. So, so good. I couldn't remember most of the notes when I put it on; I definitely got the coconut and licorice, which is subtle but definitely there. It's also golden, like honey and amber and tonka. I was surprised by how many spices are listed in the components because I couldn't pick them out at all. This is just a cloud of sweet gorgeousness. No more reviewing -- I just need to lie back and smell my wrist. I only have a tiny amount of this, which breaks my heart.

So, I didn't pay close enough attention to The Moon Goddess's notes when I purchased decants. Wet, she's all vetiver, pine and lemon on me, with a little hay, sharp in a nice outdoorsy kind of way, plus I know those are all notes that are going to soften on me in drydown. Then I went about my business and forgot I was testing a new scent, and a couple hours later I was very puzzled to find that it had transformed into what smelled an awful lot like oud. I was pretty sure there was no oud in the ingredients listed. But it was hiding under one of its aliases: agarwood. I will definitely test this at least once more and pay more attention to the in-between stages, and I may well age the decant for a while to see if the oud settles down and if the leather ever emerges on my skin, but I was disappointed that that agarwood crowded out all those beautiful notes.

I am a little shocked by how much I enjoyed wearing Tricksy yesterday. It went on in a big blast of almost camphorous patchouli, if that's a thing. I'm not reading anything in there as oudh or as honey either, at least at first. I was a little taken by the wet stage but decided I was going to ride with it, with that big bad patchouli vibe, and in about an hour or so, the honey came out and sweetened it up but just slightly, and that is the phase I dig most. It's a dry, woody patch, a dry honey, and I don't honestly know what role the oudh is playing here. I got this hoping it would quench my #occupywallstreet jonesing, but this is a very different animal, not rich and chewy like #ows. But I think I really like it!

Monna Vanna is absolutely lovely. I don't generally wear straight florals; the ambergris, fruit and bourbon vanilla keep it interesting for me, though it is predominantly a rose blend. The violet and lily creep in and make it powdery around the edges after a couple of hours. This is the kind of scent that made me fall in love with BPAL, but my tastes have changed somewhat, towards darker more unisex blends mostly, though I also find myself loving those sugary creamy florals; this is somewhere in the middle. It definitely reads feminine on my Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Monna Vanna, 1866, Tate Gallery