lilacea

This is dusty, musky honey and just a touch of pink rose. The kind of rose smell I'd imagine you'd get if you took pink rose petals, dried them, and turned them into a finely milled powder. After its initial sugary sweetness, it tames on my skin and develops that "womanly" honey smell that O has, so slightly powdery, sweet and intimate. It's an uncomplicated scent, and I find great joy in that. Long lasting, skin hugging joy. Sweet, feminine, with an infinitesimal touch of dust underneath.

One of my all time favourites, I've been inspired to review this (finally) after trying Zorya Polunochnaya. That's not to say the two smell the same, however they evoke a very similar feel to me. The Girl was such a surprise, ordinarily I really don't like a lot of florals, especially jasmine. However the jasmine is so tame in this and quite seamless. Initially the scent is sharp, sweet, and quite creamy. The floral elements are like cool night blooming buds, all pristine and white. The dry down is where it becomes special. It has tenacity, a beautiful lingering skin musk, it becomes almost pearlescent. It's feels like it blooms on the skin. It's a hard one to pin down individual notes for, to me it's an incredibly evocative scent. It's comforting, close, floaty, so pretty, so enlightening. It's like an instant mood lifter without the usual bright notes I associate with the scents that have this ability.

Floaty, creamy vanilla, a very delicate soft sandalwood skin musk, and some perceptible floral element I can't pin down. It's like boronia or frangipani, or a super, super subdued jasmine or mogra attar. There's something that reminds me of a really soft amber, but it's not amber-y per se. Sits very close to the skin.

Zadock Allen sounds really good , thanks for that. Thank you for these sugesstions so far, I'll be looking into those most definitely. I've got some Bocal De Sang here too, have only really tested it once I think, will have to pull it out again.

Bumping this to ask for more recommendations of red wine notes. I've recently realised that I do quite love red wine notes and would love to find as many scents as I possibly can that contain it. Suggestions of LEs are welcome too, as I've noted most of the GC suggestions from this thread already. If you know of protos or other hard to find stuff that have red wine notes, do let me know, because I'd love to find as many red wine scents as I can! Thanks a bunch.

It was an Egg Nog Latte Christmas for me.

This was recently included as a frimp for me from Coffeewithjack. I proabaly wouldn't have tried it otherwise, the mention of cherry and anise together didn't sound right with me. But, oh my, it's devine! Immediately when I sniffed the imp, I picked up red musk and cherry, quite a nice combination. I'm slowly developing a liking for red fruits, and cherry is becoming more of an interesting note on my skin. On first application, the cherry is strong, red, voluptuous, gleaming, swollen, deep red cherry, fruity and very, very sweet. It's like a glacé cherry or a cherry liqueur. It pretty much out-plays the red musk even at this point. But once it begins to dry down, the cherry settles. It still retains it's deep quality and adds just a little sweetness to the blend. The star anise isn't too strong at all, but I did pick it up before looking at the notes. I think it plays well off the sweetness and high pitched density of the red musk and cherry, lending it an earthier, more balanced tone. As it wears, it becomes sweet grounded red musk. I love it. If you like Gothabilly but find it hard to come by, grab some Kabuki. It lacks the vanilla note of Gothabilly, but I imagine layering it with a creamy vanilla heavy blend may bring out an interesting scent.

This certainly is O with carnation. I'm having a hard time making a conection with it to the O I know, as I amp carnation so much. There's honey and a touch of dusty amber, but the carnation is at the forefront here. I'm getting a slightly creamy vanilla note too. It is however a lighter carnation, not super spicy like some can be, and I think this is because it is in combination of such smooth flowing notes that keep it in check. I'm also picking up the lightest hints of tea. It's a light, clear floral honey blend, not at all heavy, but I am glad that carnation didn't make it into the final product as I am not a big fan.

I had high hopes for this. The description sounded divine, like the most intense, sexy, come hither red musk perfume. Unfortunately there's something in this that smells like pee. I highly suspect there is jasmine in this, or another very simliar sickly floral. I'm guessing the honey is also one that turns sickly on my skin, I seem to do well with honey most of the time, yet sometimes I just hit one that really doesn't agree. It's a really light, yellow honey in here. I'm not getting much of the red musk at the forefront. It's certainly not that warm, heavy, voluptous red musk I was expecting, and it's certainly not the dominate note on my skin. I think the other notes are just squashing it. There's an acrid plastic note at the very bottom too which just doesn't help matters. It does however have a pleasant sweetness, and a delicate whisper of spice. Perhaps on the right skin thnis would be lovely, but on me, it's just too light on the red musk and too heavy on the other elements that don't play well with my skin.

I can see why this became so sought after for a while there, it's good! As expected, it's easily identifiable patchouli and vanilla. First up the patchouli is potent, but it's a great patchouli, like one that is softened and smoothed by age. The vanilla helps to further smooth it out also. Drying down, the vanilla becomes richer and a little more noticeable as the patchouli settles somewhat. It's thick, creamy vanilla, which pleases me a lot. It's certainly a patchouli dominant blend though. As for the hemp note, it's not something I immediately read as hemp, it just adds a bit of a woodier element to the patchouli. It's more like a hemp seed than hemp leaves or the like. Just a note though, it still comes across as quite a hippy fragrance, I mean it's hemp and patchouli, how could it not be? But it's still fun and a great patchouli centric fragrance for those who adore patchouli. Damn it, the boy just came home while I was writing this, bent down to give me a kiss, then proclaimed "you smell like weed?" . Hhhm, so... ummm... maybe keep that in mind when you're wearing this.

Got a response from Bill, apparently our order was affected with several back orders, but he didn't say what specifically. He let me know it was all packed and ready to go, and would go out later that arvo. No CnS yet, but Bill's word is enough to set my mind at ease. So hopefully stuff is moving now.

I placed a large group order just a few days after that date and haven't heard anything yet re:CnS or anything being on back order (the last item listed for backorder on the forum is FRM). I feel bad because I've got a bunch of people wondering what's going on, and for a few it's their first experience with ordering from BPAL (I did explain that it is the busiest time of the year for the lab and it does usually take some time for large weenie orders to go out, so they're aware it can take a while, but I think a lot of people are looking at the 21 day TAT mark and getting anxious that we haven't got CnS yet). I sent off an email today (while I remembered to do it), so I hope to hear back in the next couple of days. If I find out there's something on backorder, I'll try to remember to post about it.

If you loved Black Pearl, try out Misericordia from the VILFs. It's more complex than BP, but it has a very similar resonance.

Zephyr has a similar feel to Queen Mab, but it's on the muskier side I find, albeit a very light musk.

Floral blossom cotton candy. Oh yeah, there's a touch of soft, billowy, powdery blossom in here on top of the sugary sugar. Like a super soft lemon blossom, or a really clean, light orange blossom. More so in the wet stages, drying it becomes more like spun cotton candy, but while wet it's more super rich sweet sugar. The more I sniff the more I'm convinced this has light orange blossom in it, and very possibly a touch of amber grounding it. There's most certainly vanilla in hear as I'm getting that slight plastic edge. Delightfully done, syrupy sweet and fluffy. Caveat: this is straight from the mail box (I could not resist), so I'll try again once it has had time to settle and see if there's anything new to note.