The Traveller

[thebirdofhermes]

Boot leather, pipe tobacco, and the dust of soft resins, herbs, and soil-flecked gravel picked on long, solitary travels.

In Bottle: Smooth, sweet, almost aquatic leather. Very soft and, dare I say, pretty.

Wet: Very similar to the bottle scent, although the sweetness makes me think of the resin I have for my violon bow. It comes in a huge, dark cake, and smells like honey and bitter herbs. The gravel is coming across very similar to the stone note I get out of Inganok Jewelers; harsh at first. I expect it will settle down some. The leather is currently quite fresh, but very sturdy and solid. I can't say I'm getting any specific visuals just yet, but I will say that it's a lot prettier than I expected.

Dry: Soft, worn leather boots. Sticky resin from a long time traveling in the summer's heat. Slightly dusty. And very pretty. I'm not getting the fellow from the poem and description; a wanderer musing on government and politics. No, this is a traveling lass, with her fiddle on her back, setting out to travel the world and brighten it with music along the way. She's got a lot of road ahead of her, and a lot of road behind her, but she's still bright and happy and ready to go. Not at all careworn, not yet weary of the world and it's troubles.

I can't think of anything else to say but this: Absolutely gorgeous.

[filigree_shadow]

When I first put this on, I didn't like it at all. There was a chemical scent in it that reminded me of something that I have a very unpleasant association with. It doesn't smell exactly like that other thing, but vaguely reminiscent. It reminded me of it enough that I said, "Bleah! No way. Absolutely not."

 

Well, after about 20 minutes or so, that chemical scent went away, and what's left is leather and tobacco. Maybe a couple of light herbs, and no soil. It smells really nice. Rugged, manly, a little dusty... pretty much exactly like a Traveller.

 

I initially got this decant not for myself but because I'm always looking for new scents for my husband, and I think he might like this one. Maybe with his skin chemistry he won't get that wet phase that I dislike. I'll hand it over and see how it goes.

 

[starfish327]

in the imp: leather and something so green it's coming across as medicinal and astringent

 

wet: WHOAAAAA. this has the best leather note i've smelled, but it also has the worst mint/herbal quality of any green that i've had had go wrong on me- leather and sharpie, or paint thinner

 

dry: it alternates between leather...and nothing, then green nastiness...then nothing, and then leather and green nastiness...and nothing.

 

i really wanted this one to work too. this may be my biggest bpal disappointment yet.

[surf-tormented]

I liked this though I swapped my bottle of it. Pure dirty leather, like worn boots. Unfortunately I have a lot of leather blends and currently have a Demeter spray that smells like De Sade once did, so I don't need more of the same. I would say this is earthy brown and smoking cigar leather over De Sade's glossy clean leather at the S&M club.

[wolfensong]

So I tend to get way to excited about BPAL's poetry, but when this scent hit (one of my favorite poems by Goldsmith) which also happened to share a moniker with me (I've been going as "The Traveler" on many a forum for quite a while) I couldn't help myself. I ordered a bottle unsniffed, and though there was some confusion (got shipped The Harp on the first go, but the lab came through and sent The Traveller my way) I did get my hands on this amazing, amazing scent.

 

Anticipations: Yet to find a good leather, and a big fan of earthy and tobacco scents, I was stoked for the notes alone. Add on the name and the poetry, and I about peed my pants with excitement.

 

In the bottle: dusty, very, VERY dusty. Normally I like my leather soft and supple, but this is not joking around when it says "dust" and "rock". That's what it comes through as, maybe with a few green herbs and crushed grass, but yeah, mostly dust.

 

Wet on the skin: There's my leather, there's my BEAUTIFUL leather. This is the kind of leather I like, just a shade darker than the "doeskin" I find in my beloved Coyote: saddle leather, boot leather, well-used and well-loved leather. The dry-grassy note is stronger too, and the tobacco is buttery and heady. It reminds me a bit of a Peruvian tabac, smooth and sweet (sorry, cigar geek). Also... huh, that's weird, smells a bit like gunpowder, but I don't quite get why. It's too bitter to be just regular smoke.

 

Dry: the leather is still totally present, but now I'm getting the resins that the scent description promised. These aren't quite copal resins, more like pine resin, tree resin. They make the tobacco even more sweet and lovely, but the grassy note is starting to fade. It's like the traveler has moved from walking the fells to inside a tavern. And I don't know if it's me and just the story I'm letting this scent tell me, but I am getting something faintly boozy. Not sweet enough to be bourbon, maybe whiskey? I don't know, but it's definitely a smoke-booze undernote that's vaguely reminiscent of Hellhound on my Trail, at least insofar as that scent's boozy-ness is earthy the way this boozy note is earthy.

 

Throw: close, but not too close. This won't ring in a lot of compliments at the office, that's for sure, but it will definitely stay in your nose for quite some time.

Last: my skin eats most things, and this lasts about two-three hours. I am happy to reapply it, though, since it seems to have such seamlessly blended layers.

 

Notes I detected: dust and rock, dry or crushed grasses, leather (soft and supple), smooth and sweet tobacco, tree resins, and maybe gunpowder/smoke/booze.

 

Really loving this, it's gone beyond even my highest hopes. This might join Coyote in becoming something I wear every day in my hair, while I layer other blends elsewhere on my skin.

[pinkgyrl]

This is pure new car smell with leather seats - when I bought my third car, the seats were supple beige leather. This scent takes me right back to that first drive after I purchased it and every time I opened the car on a hot summer day from that day forward. This is calming to me for that reason - because driving is soothing to me (I listen to music and just escape into my own world). It's a very masculine scent in my opinion and is practically like single note leather to my nose and on my skin; it's not my favorite leather blend unfortunately because I like when my skin allows all the notes to come out and play and give a scent depth, but if I want to smell simply and strongly of leather - this would be the scent that I would choose.

 

Naughty Rating: It's worth at least three dates and first base (hehe)

Edited June 6, 2012 by GirlinDenial

[catalyst]

I liked this one, but it wasn't spectacular. It's mostly boot leather, but more like suede leather.

 

I have no idea why, or how they do it, but this leather is like those tall suede boots like you see at ren faires, whereas the leather in The White Rider is refined, like fine kid gloves, and the leather in Fighter is like that cowhide that's smooth on one side and rough on the other.

 

I'm starting to think that leather is something of a chameleon that takes on the traits of whatever it's paired up with.

 

Anyway, this leather is picking up the very tiniest amounts of the other scents that are with it, but after about fifteen minutes it's almost entirely suede boots. Which is a good thing. Not a total "Holy crap I must own this," but nice.

[Penance]

Origin:

 

5mL from the Lab (eBay) and a decant (the basis for my review) from...somewhere. Keep in mind that both were well-aged by the time I got them, so my review isn't of the fresh-from-the-Lab scent.

 

Preconceived notions:

 

I've had a decant of this one for quite a while and it took me a long time to get around to testing it. not entirely sure why. Maybe because leather (in perfume) and I have a complicated history (it's always had the tendency to be awesome or make me nauseous and that's even more the case since I went vegan a few years ago) or maybe because of the herbs and gravel mentioned in the description. I'm not a big fan of herb scents and gravel/rocks really don't work for me in Lab scents. There's something harsh about them to my nose and they tend to ruin otherwise awesome scents.

 

I'm hoping to love this because the Lab's leather is a hit more often than it's a miss and I love pipe tobacco and resins. Hopefully the pros will outweigh the cons.

 

First sniff:

 

Somewhat sharp leather, like polished but beaten up shoes, complete with a little bit of shoe polish (which is undoubtedly the chemical note that so many of us get from some of the Lab's leather scents), with hints of herbs and tobacco. So far, so good, although I hope the sharpness dies down.

 

Wet on skin:

 

Softer leather mixed with pipe tobacco and resins. I'm not sure what resins are here. It smells a bit like copal. There's a sweetness to the scent, but it's not just coming from the resins, it's in the tobacco, too. I'm not getting any dust or gravel, which is fine because I'm not a fan of either.

 

Dry down:

 

The Traveller dries down into the most beautiful leather/resin/tobacco scent. Seriously, so good!

 

It's masculine, but most definitely not unwearable for the ladies (in case that's not obvious since I'm wearing it and loving it). It makes me think more of Victorian smoking rooms than weary travelers with dusty shoes. It's soft, musky, leathery, resinous, sweet and a little smoky. Definitely a winner.

 

I only wish that I'd not been on my BPAL hiatus when this came out so that I could have bought a couple of backup bottles (assuming I'd been brave enough to try it in spite of the gravel, dust and herbs and the possibility that it would have been too sharp for me when it was freshly made). I'm just glad I managed to find a bottle because my decant won't last long.