The Red Egg

[suki]

The bird perished in the flames; but from the red egg in the nest there fluttered aloft a new one-the one solitary Phoenix bird. The fable tells that he dwells in Arabia, and that every hundred years, he burns himself to death in his nest; but each time a new Phoenix, the only one in the world, rises up from the red egg.

 

Crimson eggshell musk, myrrh, Chinese cassia, and coffee absolute.

Full disclosure: Myrrh almost always goes horribly wrong on me. But I adore the other notes so much that I was willing to take a chance. Hopefully all will go well!

In The Bottle: This has the sweet, incense-y smell I recall of headships my mom used to go to when I was a small child. I think the red eggshell musk and the cassia are largely responsible

Wet On Skin: That eggshell musk is cray-zeeeee. I was expecting the kind of red musk, but lighter, that is present in Smut, but this is entirely different. It's still "red" and musky, for sure, but it's got an almost fruity thing going on with it. It does, strangely, remind me of eggshells, in terms of a thinness and a fragility. I'd like to see it in other scents in the future, for sure!

Dry Down: A small amount of the powder aspect of the myrrh is coming through, but it seems to be held in check by the musk, which for me personally is a big relief! Sadly, I get no coffee and no cassia, and I was really looking forward to those. The musk has morphed slightly and is somehow reminiscent of violets (just a little! Not in the soapy way, more in the rough candy way)

In All: This is different than I expected but better than my secret fears, too! I like it and suspect it will improve with age.

[sprout]

I was anticipating a skin reaction to the cinnamon but fortunately that didn't happen. In the vial, this was mostly cassia.

 

Wet on skin the cassia is the most dominant note but the musk is present as is the myrrh. Unaged myrrh is unpleasant to my nose or maybe it's just my skin. Coffee makes this a little bitter. This phase oddly evokes a red egg. It's almost like flan with coffee liquor and cinnamon (my nose reads the cassia as cinnamon). In a way this phase reminds me of the Trading Post scent Great London Spaghetti Hunt. It is not unlike a creamy egg based dessert sprinkled with cinnamon.

 

Drying there is a phase where the myrrh becomes quite powdery and amps. My skin does this fairly consistently and YMMV.

 

Drydown phase revealed the musk. I love the egg shell Musk. It is delicate and light as an egg shell and seems fragile. It is different from white musk. It is a bit reminiscent of the musk from the Monster bait series.

 

I really like the imp and will be pursuing a full bottle because I enjoy Musk based scents and this Musk is Heavenly. The Red Egg nailed the concept for me. The unpleasant myrrh powder phase should improve with a little age. Brava!

[LizziesLuck]

Wet: Really strong coffee at first, and then a fruity musk comes through that wants to turn to plastic on me. Juuuust on the edge of plastic. Still lots of coffee too. Interesting. Not sure what to make of this yet. Getting no Myrrh or cassia so far.

 

 

 

Dry: I will test this a second time, for sure, as it's fresh out of the mail today, but I really am not sure how I feel about it right now. The musk is not red musk. Or not typical red musk. It's a lot fruity, a little plasticy. Doesn't entirely work with the coffee on my skin (today, at least). All I am getting from the Myrrh is a vague dustiness. No cassia. Had potential, but I'll let it rest and give it another go.

[zankoku_zen]

Roasted coffee, porcelain, and cassia. This one did not smell good on me. It was the mixture of the roasted coffee + porcelain egg shell. Great throw, good wear length.

 

Of course.

[roseus]

In the imp: Very fruity, and red.

 

Wet: Fruity red musk, with thin coffee. Not in a bad way, just like a light wash of coffee under the musk. There is a powdery porcelain note like zankoku_zen mentions, it smells like the powder note in Pediophobia to me.

 

Dry: mostly coffee and myrrh. Roasty and warm. The musk is so light just a touch fruity, and fragile! I don't know how to describe it exactly. It's a gently smoldering scent.

[Blood onmy hands]

I was hoping this would be a moderately spiced myrrh and red musk, but the cassia is so strong on my skin. It's a sharp, woody, red, bold cinnamon smell. I can smell the coffee in the drydown, but it's that powdery, bitter, burnt coffee that I got from Europa (that doesn't really smell like coffee to me much at all, and more of baby powder and sour, burnt metal). This is a scrubber for me. Like Europa coated in cassia.

[sunlitgarden]

In the decant: This smells very "essence of BPAL". Kind of how my imp boxes always end up smelling. I can smell the musk and coffee primarily, with some cassia also. It's a bit sweeter than I was expecting.

 

On my skin: I see what people meant by this being somehow "delicate". Normally, with notes like red musk and cassia it's kind of like a BOOM to my nose, but this isn't really like that. It's gentler than I was expecting. Some scents with coffee notes have smelled not so great on me (like stale grounds) but this is behaving better with my chemistry. It's sort of a rich, warm spiced coffee at first, almost like a non-chocolate and non-foody El Dia de los Reyes. As it dries it starts to get a little powdery. On me myrrh can be either strong and bitter or sweet and powdery, and this is the latter variety. There is something almost floral about how this smells on my skin, which confuses me because there are no florals listed.

As it dries I lose the coffee and cassia and am left with more of a powdery-musky base that still smells "floral-like".

Overall, I like this. It's very much a "BPAL-y" scent (as opposed to some I've tried that remind me of more mainstream perfumes) which is appropriate for an anniversary scent! But I liked the decant/wet stages better than the dry stage, which is too bad because the dry stage is what ends up lasting by far the longest.

[Lucchesa]

The Red Egg is an odd duck. I wasn't sure what to expect from crimson eggshell musk, but I expected it to be a version of red musk -- hopefully one that doesn't take over on me completely. Instead, it was a very gentle, almost fruity musk, and I would have guessed there was dragon's blood in the mix somewhere. The myrrh and coffee were similarly gentle, though perceptible, but I didn't get any cassia at first. Low to no throw on me. In fact, I thought it was completely gone at one point, but it kept coming back, like oh, there's the coffee, or ok, still kind of musky and interesting, and only after a good two hours or more did I get any cassia at all. It very rarely happens to me that a note shows up so late. Anyway, I think I like it but don't need to hunt for a bottle.