Delight and Consternation

[surlygurl]

Bourbon vanilla, custard accord, white rose, cocoa absolute, oudh, lemon blossom, and skin musk.

 

Hey... whoa... wait. This works on me? It shouldn't. Cocoa and rose hate me, lemon is funky, etc etc etc. But really? Fresh on, I get those fake fruit candy sticks dipped in chocolate (lemon fake fruit, of course). As it dries, I get a little of the plastic wrapper, too. I think it's the custard that saves the day. Custard, vanilla, oud and skin musk. And the fact that lemon is really lemon blossom doesn't hurt. The blend is just this side of foody, not lemon or cocoa. Nothing really identifiable like one would expect.

I'd love to get more than my little tester - especially since every bottle seems to be different. Not sure I want to spring for a bottle and have it be the 'wrong' mix of notes.

[ReallyZeb]

In the bottle: Delight ... a lovely lemony, slightly custardy, vanilla.

 

On my skin: Consternation Where did all my custardy goodness go? It would make a lovely laundry scent but that's all I get, clean, fresh, soapy smelling laundry

 

ETA: with a different imp I get far more cocoa and custard on the drydown ... now I don't know whether to go for a bottle or not!

Edited March 20, 2013 by ReallyZeb

[parrot_suspect]

This starts off promising, with a strong cocoa note, progresses into a lovely foody skin musk, but then the drydown, on me, has the dreaded plastic note that is present in some vanillas. Darn.

[mymel0dy]

In the bottle... cocoa is pretty much all I get, which is odd because there is pretty much no sludge in my bottle at all.

 

Wet on my skin... roses. No cocoa, no custard, no vanilla, nothing but roses, well maybe a bit of the oudh peeking out.

 

As it dries... it just goes sweet and floral. No lemon, no vanilla, not custardy goodness. The barest hint of cocoa if I am thinking about it as I sniff my wrist. Really it is just sweet and floral.

 

In conclusion... I bought Delight and Consternation because I was hoping for a less sweet, less sugary version of Boo. Instead my chemistry amped up the floral notes and killed all the other. All in all it is pretty and I don't regret buying it but had I known it would turn out this way I would have bought something else.

[whisperstilled]

So glad to be back getting new BPAL again! Let's do this:

 

In Imp: Cocoa, creamy lemon, musk, oh my GOD this is good. From a distance it reminds me enormously of the Lace scents, I'm assuming that's the bourbon vanilla blending with the cocoa.

 

On skin: Clean and foody at once, how surprising! The clean is definitely a lighter musk, but as it dries the lemon is growing strangely astringent. Thankfully the cocoa is peeping through, which I think will ground it and keep it from going all lemon soapy. I'm really surprised! I fully expected this to be mostly foodie, but on my skin the scent has gone very cleaning product-y. The throw is more creamy.

 

Drydown, five minutes: Musky indeed! The foodiness has gone out of the scent almost entirely. This scent does indeed almost verge on cleaner-y, but just veers out of that territory. Now that it's settled on my skin I do get a little of the custard and vanilla, just enough to keep the skin musk from being overly harsh, but this is definitely not the warm and friendly scent I was expecting! Not terrible, but not what I was hoping for. I'm glad I stuck with a tester on this one. 3/5

[zankoku_zen]

Lemon vanilla custard, with hints of cocoa and skin musk.

 

Custardy, lemony, warm.

[ljaylh]

I only bought a half-decant of this, but my half-imp has about half-sludge and half-oil

 

OK.. this one was a 50/50 chance for me - I love bourbon vanilla, I love cocoa, I love oudh.. but lemon hates me (lemon amps ridiculously on me), skin musk hates me (it goes bitter and sharp), and rose hates me (although white can sometimes be OK). The X factor was the custard - I don't think I've encountered that before in a BPAL so that was the one note which intrigued me. I have been waiting for years for Beth to make a bourbon vanilla + oudh + cocoa blend, so I figured this was as close as I'd get for now and decided to give it a shot.

 

So the lemon is a main player here - but instead of amping up all over the place and being all HI I'M LEMON on me, it's a lovely soft powdery lemon, so win #1: lemon blossom is better than lemon. On my skin, it's like the lemon is there... but it's just dancing around the edges of everything else, and it adds a lovely fresh and clean tingle to the darker notes in the blend. I really can smell the custard - it's just like the smell of a steaming hot jug of custard that you're just about to pour over your apple pie.. delicious, but not sweet or foody. SO win #2: custard accord is awesome. The skin musk is something I definitely could have done without - it's sitting as a top note on my skin, and it's amping more than I'd like it to. And the rose.. well, where is it? I'm hardly noticing it at all, but I can detect a slight floral-ish waxy sweetness which I'm presuming is the white rose.

 

OK - so those are the not-so-good bits.. the omg-crazy-good bits here are the vanilla+cocoa+oudh combination... it's sublime, dark and slightly smokey, and definitely cocoa rather than chocolate. This just makes me wish that all the other notes (rose, lemon, skin musk) weren't in here - once again, I wish I had a Note Removal Machine^TM handy because I would rip that lemon and skin musk out of there!

 

A half-hour after I first applied it, the scent has faded significantly and mostly what I have left is the lemon and skin musk, some residual hints of the custard, and the dry duskiness of the cocoa. The funny thing is.. on my right arm, it's quite floral + lemon custard with a clean/bright tone, but on my left arm it's more cocoa + vanilla + oudh with a musky tone . Curious and curiouser.

 

So overall - very very nice. I'm a little disappointed that the uh-oh notes are the stayers - but ain't that always the way? I've ordered a bottle though, because I find that lemon and skin musk tend to dull and soften with age where bourbon vanilla, oudh and cocoa tend to deepen and get more rich, so perhaps in about six months from now this will be more to my liking. But for now, it's soft and pretty and clean and nice.. not my thing really, but very pretty nonetheless.

 

PS this would make a wonderfful room spray. I might sacrifice my half-imp to make up a little spray bottle!

[PumpkinGuts]

It is the yummiest vanilla lemon custard dusted with cocoa powder. Before my skin ruins it, that is.

Floral soap. Why, skin, whyyyy?! I am heartbroken. Will keep decant for huffing purposes.

[becca_s]

This starts out as a lemon/cocoa combination on me. After it settles into my skin it turns into something beautiful - a musky mix of cocoa, vanilla and lemon blossom. The lemon blossom doesn't dominate the scent like I was scared it would. In the background there is a hint of what must be the custard, I don't get any rose from this. Overall, this is very comforting and wearable. I need to get a bottle of this one.

Edited March 15, 2013 by becca_s

[sharkdiver]

This is amazing! the dry down on this is what I imagine Katrina Van Tassel to smell like, though I never actually tried that one!

 

Wet in bottle: vanilla custard with a hint of cocoa (I do have just a tiny bit of cocoa absolute/sludge in my bottle, but not a lot.)

 

wet on skin: Vanilla Custard dusted with a subtle cocoa, with a hint of lemon peeking out around the edges...this is really pretty!

 

Dry: this is stunning - I normally avoid most rose notes, because rose really amps on me to holy hell, but I hadn't yet tried one of the lab's white rose notes. As this dries, the white rose blooms beautifully on the skin, and it's not IN YOUR FACE ROSE! the vanilla and custard back up the white rose to make it this gorgeous CREAMY sweetened white rose, and the skin musk balances it all out to get this stunning perfumy (but not overbearing in any way) sweet, creamy white rose blend. It has a light throw on me, and stays close to the skin, but it's lasting pretty well so far! I applied it at 8:15 am, and it's still going strong at 9:30am, so that's promising! I can't stop huffing my wrist!! The cocoa and the lemon blossom seemed to disappear as it dried on me.

[astarinel]

For what it's worth, my decant is very sludgey.

 

It goes on very strong on the cocoa note, which is definitely bittersweet and not sugary, backed up by creamy vanilla and a little touch of lemon. It's this strange sort of gourmand scent that stops short of being actually foody, with the oudh and florals peeking out in the background. As it dries the foody aspects are the ones that fade away, and the rose in particular starts to come out.

 

It's interesting and really unique, which I don't find myself saying often given the sheer amount of perfume I've tested over the years, but it never really sings on my skin. It's definitely worth a try if your perfume niche includes gourmand but not sweet and foody.

[OctoberGwen]

FYI: My decant's got a bit of sludge.

 

This starts off okay, with mostly cocoa and white rose with a hint of lemon blossom. I can tell it's probably going to be too sweet, though.

 

Sure enough, after several minutes it begins to veer into nauseating, cloying, must-wash-it-off sweetness. Something about the bourbon vanilla (which almost never agrees with me), the custard smell, and the skin musk combined is just not working on my skin at all.

 

Faugh.

 

This is almost a combination of perfumey and foody sweet. Not for me!

[brilliantcat]

Imp: There's definitely sludge in my tester. I made sure to mix well. First sniff: vanilla lemon custard!

 

Wet: Vanilla custard with a hint of lemon and cocoa. It's definitely foody at this point, leaning toward gourmand rather than true foody to me.

 

Dry: It's gone soapy and rose-y. It reminds me of a tiny, round, well-coifed elderly grandma-type. Elegant and dainty, and smelling faintly of the cookies she's baked for tea. Definitely not for me.

[ajansuz]

I received one of the bottles with lots of sludge, nearly the bottom fourth of it. After much rolling, the oil looked black with light behind it, none even managing to make it through. For all of that in the bottle, the cocoa registers as little more than a dry, woody sort of note beneath a strong floral with rose predominant. I smell no lemon or custard whatsoever, although I can detect the skin musk as one of the more perfumey notes. It's really pretty and feminine, just not what I had expected from the description.

 

Wet on me, for about a hot minute I can smell the cocoa. It's a dry, bitter chocolate, and I have a moment or two where I think it's going to deliver on what it promises, soft, lemon custardy goodness. Then rose and skin musk happen. A lot. I'm a rose lover; however, this white rose is different from its red cousin. Rather than being a true floral on me, it's a more chemical-y perfume floral, and therein lies the problem.

 

On the dry down I'm taken right back to my eight year anniversary in 1998 when my husband bought me a bottle of Romance by Ralph Lauren. Dead ringer for that perfume on me. I checked and discovered they share several notes, but man, I really wasn't expecting a clone. I wish my skin chemistry didn't so often make skin musk a heavy perfume scent rather than what it's supposed to be. That's not to say this doesn't smell good. It does. But it's not at all what I was hoping for or expecting. Romance is a date night, elegant floral perfume, not something you can wear casually or to the office, and the throw from this is every bit as strong as I ever had with that. Once it gets to that point, it doesn't morph at all, and it lasts for hours. I could still smell it on my wrists the next morning, and I did not slather. Through the years I've moved away from those types of fragrances. This is one of the rare ones I might actually rehome so that someone else can enjoy it as it ought to be. This was my only Lupe disappointment this year.

[Blood onmy hands]

Delight & Consternation must vary a lot, because the bottle I received is about 1/3 full of the sludgey cocoa absolute, and some people got bottles with no cocoa absolute. Even with the tons of cocoa absolute, though, this doesn't really smell very sweet or chocolatey on me (and I mixed it well before applying). I bought it mostly for the vanilla and custard accord that's supposed to be in it, and was hoping for a vanilla & rose scent. I don't get any vanilla or rose, though. This is tons of funky smelling skin musk and sour lemon blossom on my skin. It reminds me of rest area bathrooms and floor cleaner, like someone tried to cover up something dirty with lemon floor cleaner. Turns slightly baby powdery in the drydown. This is another one for my sale page

Edited March 28, 2013 by Little Bird

[neuilly]

I LOVE this scent. It's quite a morpher on me but I enjoy all it's stages. It's start of really foody-cocoa-custard on me, and it even reminded me of my beloved orange 13. Later it turns into a really seductive skin musk. Beautiful!

[kolibri]

Decant from ralenth's Lascivious Lupercalia decant circle. Preceded by Dolce Stil Nuovo.

 

 

In the imp: Vanilla custard. Soft but woofy base note. Little bit of floral.

 

Wet: Lemon scone and hot cocoa. Then, it's a lemon blossom perched on top of a just-caramalized crème brûlée. I wanna ROLL in this - but the foody notes are mostly close to the skin, while the throw is all powder and rose. I can tell this is going to go to powder on me, which makes me sad.

 

Dry: Yep. Powder.

 

Later: Something's happened (body heat? chemistry shift?), and all at once, the scent came roaring back.

 

 

Overall: I love it. So weird that it powdered-out, then came back with a vengeance to wreathe me in sweet deliciousness all over again. And when it returned, it was as a unified scent; there was no more morphing or changes, but instead it stayed lemon blossom/crème brûlée until the moment it faded completely around 8 hours later.

 

I was going to pass on this one, but now I may add it to the bottle list.

Edited March 30, 2013 by kolibri

[porcelina]

mmm!

 

delight and consternation is so creamy-yummy. it reminds me a teeny bit of boomslang, in that they are both musky cocoa-based perfumes, but this is much lighter and sweeter. soft musk, creamy cocoa, a touch of rose (which stays pleasantly in the background and does not take over- amazing) and lemon blossom- this is a really lovely blend. i wish it lasted longer on my skin, though.

 

for the record, my bottle has no cocoa sludge- i kind of wish it did! maybe then it would have some of the mega staying power of its cousin boomslang.

[milo]

Musky, perfumey chocolate at first. More like a milk chocolate rather than a dark or cocoa. Fades to a lovely, slightly perfumey milk chocolate. Delicate and creamy, I really like this, and may hunt down some more.

[Ajila]

In the bottle - I suppose it musk be the skin must, but it's mostly just hazy to me

 

Wet on me - A light soapy floral scent which I can only presume is the lemon blossom

 

Dry on me - A soft, skin musk

 

Overall - I bought this blend for the Bourbon Vanilla and the Custard Accord and they just didn't deliver

[Soupy Twist]

This might have sludge, but I shook the imp up pretty well before testing it.

This offers neither delight nor consternation; it's boring. Mostly sweet musk with a touch of dry cocoa, which quickly dries to a generic powder. I really love bourbon vanilla and I was disappointed not to get any.

[freyasfae]

I didn't think the lemon would come out so quickly in this, but it does. Immediately on my skin it is all foodie, cocoa, vanilla, and custard with a hint of rose, but the lemon blossom enters the picture rather quickly. After some dry down, the lemon blossom isn't really much there anymore, but the oudh and skin musk are there to ground the scent, but very subtle overall. The lupers just always delight me with their way of being foodie, not foodie.

[Elspethdixon]

I had high hopes for this blend based on the listed notes (custard! Vanilla! White rose!) but I can only assume the bottle I got hold of didn't age well, because it's all consternation and zero delight. Consternation is, in fact, probably too mild a word for the horrible cleaning solvent reek that greeted me on opening the bottle.

 

I was prepared to get very little chocolate and lot of lemon-custard since my bottle is one with no chocolate sludge, and was a little worried about the lemon element. I should have been a lot more worried. This is Little Bird's "funky smelling skin musk and sour lemon blossom floor cleaner" grown vast and powerful with age, with an added helping of windex on top of it. I have no idea if it morphs on skin once dry, because I washed it off within three minutes, it was so bad.

 

I guess I at least now know to avoid any form of lemon note like the plague.

[bellumed]

I have Elspethdixon’s bottle (hello!) so no chocolate sludge, but fortunately I LOVE lemon! So the blast of creamy lemon I get is pure goodness. It reminds me of a subtler, less sugary version of Lemon-Scented Sticky Bat. The bourbon makes this a little “polish”-like fresh on my skin, but it eases quickly and leaves behind custard, clean lemon, and a strong rose that eventually takes hold as the most powerful note. Not an all-time favorite, but more delight than consternation for me.

[LizziesLuck]

Wet: Hmmm. Chocolaty, for sure. But also really clean smelling, I think from the lemon blossom and skin musk? Makes for a weird combo - chocolate and laundry? It's also sugary and creamy. Not sure what to make of it, quite yet.

 

 

Dry: Light skin musk (which seems to always be lemony on me, and I think I have finally determined it is the only musk I don't like!) and that's about it, the rest totally faded. It's not bad, just not stellar on me.