sheridankm

Burial smells just like last summer's geo field site at night: pond mud, greenery, and earthquakes.

Lune Noire reminds me very strongly of Swan Maiden, a favorite of mine. The two share gardenia, jonquil and orchid, and in the wet stage they smell practically identical on me, with Swan Maiden a little more classically floral with the lily and muguet. Then the sweet musk of Lune Noire comes out--still very, very similar perfumes, but Lune Noire is a little dryer, a little more summery, maybe even a little sexier. Good for a hot summer night, but it's not dark-feeling at all. It's also strong, whoa. One tiny dab on my wrist fills the room with scent.

I got this imp through the forum, and I think it's had a while to age. Bengal is a light scent on me, barely noticeable even with my nose next to my skin. It smells like me, too -- that's probably the skin musk. I smell cinnamon and a little bit of sweetness that must be the honey, but it's not overpowering like every other honey blend I've tried; otherwise, maybe a little bit of creaminess. But I don't smell chai masala at all, instead this is more like unsweetened spice cookies: not too foody and not too sweet, but a little bit of a bakery smell. Subtle and comforting, not sexy in the least.

The balsam fir is the strongest note in this blend on my skin, and it gives this scent a strange sweetness. Wet, The Snow Storm is chilly, snowy, a beautiful white-draped evergreen forest, but after an hour the woods have faded and only the balsam is left as a skin scent. So, throw and wearlength are both fairly low. The sweet balsam isn't sugary or cloying at all, but it's quite strong -- this isn't a sharp, wintry forest like Mistletoe and November.

The perfected winter rose, dew covered and freshly cut. Rose Red '07: the first rose scent I have ever fallen in love with. Wet, it is the fullest, reddest rose on the bush, long stem and proud leaves extended. The scent of the blossom is lush, ripe, yet still fresh and young; the stem is sharp and green, the leaves faint and powdery. Dry on my skin, however, the rose blossom slowly fades: after an hour, I am left with only the powdery, astringent leaves. Heartbreakingly gorgeous and heartbreakingly wrong on my skin -- but the wet stage converted me, a former rose hater.

Mmm, perfectly blended apricot and clove, as if the two were simmering on the stove for a pie. Surprisingly not foody, despite that -- very sophisticated and wearable. It's a simple scent, but complex: the fruit is fresh, round, and juicy, while the whole clove note is dark and rich. This is the same wet to dry on me, but it fades quickly -- within three hours or so it's gone, and that's after a generous application.

The black tea and cherry blossom makes this very similar to Aizen-Myoo on the drydown, skipping A-M's bitter fruit stage (which is, alas, my favorite part.) It's a soft, powdery floral scent, the tea barely making an appearance but grounding the sweeter cherry blossom. There's a lovely dry hint of what I think must be the ho wood, but I don't get any mint at all. But on the drydown, the rice wine becomes stronger and stronger, until I smell as though I've been taking sips of my mirin cooking wine. Lovely premise, but it smells like alcoholic flower dust on me.

Mmm, Hi'iaka would smell exactly like my favorite florist (Brattle Square Florist in Harvard Square, for those of you know know it) if layered with a little bit of wet greenery and earth. That wonderful wall-to-wall fresh-flowers smell, with nothing else but clean air and water. (ie, no dust, glue, woods, paint, or other blecch smells that turn me away from most commercial flower shops.)

Well hello, honey single note. ...And that's all there is. For the next two hours, before it fades completely away, Samhain 2007 is straight up honey on my skin. There's not even any honey listed in the blend! Luckily, this isn't as bright or sweet of a honey as there is in Queen of Sheba, but it's still definitely honey... it would probably be delicious layered with apple and spice, but I was hoping to get that in the same bottle.

This is a steamy, thick, oppressively heavy scent on me. It instantly creates the feeling of standing in smog. The smoky base of incense and resin is lovely, and the jungle flowers sweeten it up and summon tropical heat, but then the sweet orange takes over. Ugh. I would love it if it were a citrusy orange, but this is a rotten, overripe orange, swollen and cloyingly sweet with a distinct odor of decay. It's even heavier than the orange in Ravenous, which sent me running to immediately scrub it off and /would not go away./ Oddly, this becomes a very light incense/floral/zingy citrus blend when I have my period. No idea how others smell me then, but to me it was worth buying for that one week of perfect, tangy orange.

Queen of Sheba is entirely honey on me, but it took a while before I recognized it as that -- I was entirely overcome by childhood memories by something in the scent, but I couldn't figure out what it was! Eventually I realized I was smelling the honey, but I couldn't identify the note because it doesn't smell anything like the comb-rich local honey I eat. Instead, Queen of Sheba is sticky McDonald's clover honey, the kind I always used to dip my chicken nuggets into. The spices are quite muted, but nice. I wish I could smell more almond. This would be a lovely blend if the honey weren't quite so flat, sweet, and strong -- I just smell like a fast-food joint with this on.

Hi'iaka starts off with a promising bloom of orchids and gentle greenery... it's like walking into a greenhouse, lush and humid and full of plant smells. Not too sweet, very fresh (but not zesty or clean in that fake aquatics way, more of an "alive" scent.) After 45 minutes or so, when everything has dried, the distinct orchid note fades away and Hi'iaka settles into a pleasant, tropical, well-balanced blend that doesn't really smell like anything in particular. Nice, in the end, but not nearly as interesting as its wet stage. Throw is slight, a little less strong than Pele was on me. I might layer this with something a little deeper and more green, less floral, though I don't yet know what that would be. EDIT: A week later and this is now one of my favorites. The orchid lasts a few hours now, and I smell a deeper, non-floral complexity beneath it.

BUTTER BUTTER BUTTER BUTTER A strong, fake butter smell, too, or what happens when you melt butter in your microwave and it ends up vaporizing. This stuff is so strong that it has scented my entire closet from inside the imp, and a tiny dab on my wrist is completely overwhelming. So, butter. I can smell brown sugar in there, too, and maybe a tiny bit of clove. But there's absolutely no pumpkin, which leaves me with a wrist that smells exactly like cookie dough before you add the flour. The peach comes in very, very lightly after it's all dried down, but it's still knocked flat by the butter which never really quiets down, even after settling a bit. I actually like this quite a lot, once I get past the BUTTER BUTTER stage that lasts about an hour and a half. But even then, it's so foody that I wouldn't want to wear it unless I were cooking, and then it would blend in with the kitchen smells. Not particularly autumnal, and unfortunately nothing like pumpkin.

Rose and lemon! Wet, the lemon gives it a slightly chemical smell, but the rose and subtle apple save it from becoming floor cleaner and instead create a scent very reminiscent of old-fashioned, rose-shaped scented soap. As it dries, the lemon and apple (the latter of which was never very strong anyway) fade away completely and I'm left with an ordinary rosy wrist -- quite true to the smell of a pale pink rose blooming in early summer, but not at all exciting or delirious as the name would imply. A rather staid, traditional scent, in fact, with some throw to it.

Bumping again: it's funny, because Prada smells just like candy on me (and my mother, who loves it to death.) Sweet, deep, dead-sexy candy. I can't smell a bit of patchouli, which is good, but now that you mention it, I can detect a bit of that dry grass smell... which just makes it better. But I think I'd need a lot of vanilla in the background, or something else sweet and rich. Mmmm. I'd love to cobble this together with BPAL.

Brisingamen smells just like a perfume my mother used to wear. And... that killed it for me. Staid, traditional, department-store spicy amber. On the other hand, a powerful, fur-wearing older woman could probably pull it off and be completely, terrifyingly commanding.

This is my kick-ass, good-impression-making, job interview scent. Aizen-Myoo makes me feel so happy and confident... it's bittersweet and herbal in the imp, and makes me think of Christmas for some reason -- maybe it smells like holly and evergreens a bit? It's really lovely, and my favorite stage is when it's on my wrists, still wet, with that delicious bittersweet fruity smell. Then the cherry blossom comes in and the fruit sweetens up, and all of a sudden the snow has melted and it's spring. A little too sweet near the end, but otherwise -- perfect. (A frimp, too! But one of my favorites.)

Eos is so summery! I feel a little weird about reviewing it on an autumn day when the smell of apples and smoke is drifting in through my window. But it's a beautiful scent, so it should be shared. In the imp, Eos is strong and sharp -- think florals mixed with floor cleaner. It softens immediately on the skin, however, turning into buttercups and sweet hay. Honeysuckle creeps in as it dries, with just a tiny touch of jasmine following in the background. This is a bright scent, and VERY floral, but it's not sickly-sweet. I think it must be the skin musk that grounds it, and turns it into a late-summer perfume for me instead of a springtime scent.

I'm not terribly familiar with common perfume notes, so I thought ozone would smell like that scent that comes in just before the rain... as I later discovered, that smell is actually due to soil bacteria reacting to the change in humidity, and there's no hint at all of that smell in Tempest. Instead, Tempest is a very clean, somewhat floral, "breeze" scent that makes me sneeze. It really does evoke the image of a thunderstorm rolling in, whipping up a strong wind from the lake... but at the same time, that cleanness makes it sort of the Platonic ideal of laundry detergent and fabric softener, especially in the stronger wet stages. Dry, this goes a little bitter on me. It also fades fast. It'd make a better room scent than perfume, I think, unless you need to fake wearing freshly-washed clothes...

Ohhhhh. This is what I came to BPAL for. Pele is just gorgeous, light, musical, and deep -- this is my new favorite for sure, and I can see it cheering me up in the winter with its summery flowers. I went swimming in a forest pool in Hawaii, and white ginger was growing along the edge of the water. Pele smells like that swimming hole to me, blended with muguet and (maybe imagined) fragrant plumeria. Throw is minimal, close to a skin scent, and it fades fairly quickly. More of an excuse to apply often!

Anubis smells, weirdly, like a garden center in the imp -- sunlight, dirt, and leaves everywhere. On my wrist it's pleasantly dry-smelling, herbal without being medicinal or too "green," with a base of faded incense that's not at all heavy. Very comforting, actually, and the whole thing smells airy. It's not something I would ever have ordered, but I'm glad it came as a frimp -- I can't ever see myself wearing it but it might make a great scent for an outdoor dinner.

I wish this were plumeria! Or even pear. On me, though, it was mostly tickly champage, with a faint, generic floral behind it. But not at all the lovely plumeria I smelled in Hawaii... I thought it'd be better as a room scent, but the candle wax and oil combination recommended elsewhere in the forum failed miserably and I only smelled plain candle scent. If I get another imp, I'll give it another try -- but the floral and fruit in this was not at all distinctive or strong on the first try.

As a geologist, I'm disappointed that I don't like this better. But it's just so sweet. Overwhelmingly sweet and creamy, very "high," and bright bright bright. This brings to mind pale yellows and whites, not the deep, dark lustre of black opal. More practically speaking: this smells like a coconut-vanilla-sugar skin cream. It's not as foody as that, but I can't identify the other notes -- there's something almost floral in there, similar to something in Eos, but that's not quite it. It's actually really nice, and not cloyingly sweet at all. But it's too young and bright for me. I wish I could smell those mossy notes others have been talking about, I think this would be just beautiful with some sort of earthy shadow beneath it.... I might hang on to my imp and see if I can't layer it with something deeper. Edit: After another testing, I realize that while wet, this smells very similar to the air freshener/bowl cleaner often used in nicer public or office toilets. At least in that stage, it's a pretty generic chemical smell.

Whoa. This makes my eyes water. I was expecting the violet to smell the way violet tastes in candies... but this is strongly herbal, so maybe the vetiver is dominant here. It's like being face-down in a patch of wild herbs and thorny plants... a deep, earthy smell, with crushed greenery and damp dirt. Not masculine, despite the herbiness, though it's not feminine either... not at all something I would name as a perfume or cologne smell at all, actually. This is a lonely scent, one that makes me feel alone and lost rather than sexy. But if you want to feel wild (in a wood-dwelling barbarian way, I mean) and mysterious, this might be it. A little too uncivilized for the Roman festival, but the Germanic tribes might like it...

This stuff is strong. Not only could I smell it from inside the closed imp, not only could I smell it from outside the box when it was left on my porch -- I could smell it from inside the house, behind the glass door. Since it was a frimp, I had no idea what I was smelling -- there was just this cloud of overpoweringly sweet, fake orange and "bleargh" mist. Ravenous doesn't change at all on me -- it's exactly the same after an hour on my skin as it was in the imp (and across the room, and down the street...) I'm new to perfume, so I was surprised that the patchouli doesn't have that stereotypical hippie smell. But it is powerful, and I think it'd work well on someone with a much more forceful personality than I do. I'd be happy to send mine along to someone who would like this.