The Jeweled Spider

[Franny]

He was looking at Mr. Nancy, an old black man with a pencil mustache, in his check sports jacket and his lemon-yellow gloves, riding a carousel lion as it rose and lowered, high in the air; and, at the same time, in the same place, he saw a jeweled spider as high as a horse, its eyes an emerald nebula, strutting, staring down at him; and simultaneously he was looking at an extraordinarily tall man with teak-colored skin and three sets of arms, wearing a flowing ostrich-feather headdress, his face painted with red stripes, riding an irritated golden lion, two of his six hands holding on tightly to the beast's mane; and he was also seeing a young black boy, dressed in rags, his left foot all swollen and crawling with blackflies; and last of all, and behind all these things, Shadow was looking at a tiny brown spider, hiding under a withered ocher leaf.

Shadow saw all these things, and he knew they were the same thing.

"If you don't close your mouth," said the many things that were Mr. Nancy, "somethin's goin' to fly in there."

Cigarillo smoke, spatters of ice cream sundae, a supersized mug of coffee, a pile of fruit, and a little bit of curried goat.

This is, fittingly, so damn smooth. Hints of coffee and the sweetness of a sugary fruit note (actually this part reminds me of sugar skull) with creamy vanilla and smoke just rolling over the top of it. Not an extremely smokey note, but like vanilla smoke with no harshness, just smooth as hell like Mr. Nancy ought to be. I don't know that I get anything I could identify as curried goat, I suppose it is some kind of spice or musk grounding the blend? I don't know, I can't smell it. Perhaps it will come out in time. This is really REALLY good. I'm so happy I got this.

[Bunny Butt]

I smell hot fudge, light fruits and toasted spice in the bottle and immediate application. The spices seem North African like cinnamon, allspice, cloves, coriander. The fruits are apricot and champagne grape, quite light. The tobacco leaf comes out on dry down. The smokiness is very light. Medium throw. This was the surprise must buy for me of the AG scents.

[zankoku_zen]

Fudge, ice cream, coffee, tinges of papaya and spicy curry in the way of cinnamon, all spice, clove, coriander. This one is a foodie mess with enough spice to keep it from being bland. Fun, complicated, and complex.

[LizziesLuck]

Wet: Oh wow that's yummy. Rich chocolate, tobacco, spices. Hints of fruit. Soooo good. THEN it starts to smell like goat, and I swear you don't want it, you should just give yours to me. No really, I'll just take that for you.

This is reminding me (yes ok, you caught me, it doesn't smell like goat..) of Café Mille, only a bit sweeter and more gourmand. It has that same coffee, spice, tobacco thing going on, but this is a much richer tobacco. I think I like this even better. The little hint of tropical fruit is so nice. I can't stop huffing this, I need a bottle, like NOW.

 

 

Dry: Less gourmand, more smoky (in the most pleasant way possible - like toasted spices, sort of?). This is GORGEOUS. And I need a bottle, and likely a back-up, just in case. Don't let the goat scare you, go and try this!

[sarandipitee]

Oh god this is chocolate heaven. Nice spices, smooth coffee and a litttle bit of smoke which is awesome as smoke can be headachey.

 

The curry comes through and it's more of a tickle your nose spice vs an overall like curried takeout. The fruit is very faint in the background.

 

I'm torn on ordering a bottle because drydown has none of the delicious chocolate. Instead it's all spice, with a bit of coffee and smoke. It's completely different from anything I've tried in the BPAL collection. I'm going to try my tester again in a few a days and see if the chocolate stays around more.

 

Everyone needs to try this one, though. So unique.

Edited June 9, 2017 by sarandipitee

[annemathematics]

this is a BIG scent. booming throw and lasts for ages. it's honestly too foodie for me to wear, but I do appreciate its richness and complexity. the label art is stunning.

 

thunders open with a big voluptuous chocolate, fruity sweetness shining underneath. in the background, smoke and musk make this different from straight-up foodie scents. I get the coffee both supporting the chocolate and swirling with the smoke. big! booming! rich! all from a tiny spider!

[Jenjin]

Expansive and bizarre, i'm getting a great big coffee note along with swisher sweets and creamy sundae notes. This smells like sitting in an ice cream parlor, eating a melty sundae while drinking coffee and someone is smoking sweet tobacco outside. It is very exotic and mysterious, all the strange notes meld together and become a magnificent incense blend that is really quite wearable like the darkest, gothic purple smoke cloak. Reminds me of a darker, dirty Dusky Shroud and the only thing the goat note adds is "delicious"

Edited June 8, 2017 by Jenjin

[torikitty]

OMG! I'm in heaven! When it's wet, I can smell all the individual notes. The coffee and the sundae are more apparent. When it's dry, the curry really shows up. Mixed with the tobacco, it's glorious. It reminds me a bit of one of the pumpkin patches that had curry. Sweet, spicy, foodie. This just screams "big, comfy sweater during the fall". Big throw. Definitely getting a bottle of this.

[Elspethdixon]

In the imp/wet - rich chocolate-coffee ice cream, like coffee candy. Utterly amazing.

Freshly applied - creamy coffee candy/mocha sundae with an edge of curry spice. Weirdly good, just this side of cloying.

Five-ten minutes in - the coffee candy sundae has become a wave of sweet, spicy curry. I want to eat my arm. Not in a sexy way, but in a "how long is it until lunch, again?" way.

Fifteen-twenty minute mark - All curry, all the time. I had goat curry for lunch once at a local restaurant in Bermuda, and Jeweled Spider is pretty much a dead ringer for that lunch, complete with a hint of the iced coffee I had with it (so A+ for realism, I guess). I love gourmands, but I'm not sure curried goat stew from the beach-front bar next to Mangrove Bay is something I want to smell like all day long. I may keep this imp around for the nostalgia value, though - that was the first vacation my wife and I ever went on together and that day was our favorite day of the trip.

Two hour mark - The curry has faded away, but it took most of the rest of the scent with it. I can get traces of soft tobacco-cooffee-vanilla-hint-of-savory-spice if I press my nose directly to my wrist, but even that is fading now. (ETA: Actually, a trace of tobacco hung around as a nose-to-my-wrist skin scent for several more hours)

[Blood onmy hands]

Starts off like warm, melty milk chocolate and a sugary mishmash of a fruit smell (sort of reminded me of dried pineapple and canned fruit cocktail scent).

I like white chocolate with fruit, but milk or dark chocolate mixed with fruit just never works for me. I don't like the taste or smell.

Very quickly, though, this morphs into more of a dry curry spice with swirls of cigar smoke and hints of toasty coffee and sweet chocolate. It actually reminds me of several of the Cuban/Havana inspired fragrances that I've tried, which all seem to be a cigar, spice, and tropical fruit thing with hints of coffee.

By the half hour mark, this is all curry and whiffs of cinnamon on my skin. Dry and spicy with a little sweetness.

 

I tend to like gourmand scents, but this is like a mishmash of foodie things that I don't really enjoy (the chocolate + fruit and the savory curry drydown). Still, it's interesting.

[gloame]

Okay so right away, this smells so yummy! Almost orangey, but not that overwhelming orange that always happens to me with citrus. The chocolate comes out almost immediately and it's also super yum. The coffee's kind of an afterthought on my skin, and I was hoping for a bit more of it. It does seem to fade within the first hour and then I can hardly find it on my skin. If you're worried about the goat curry, don't be! This smells delicious! Just wish it would last a bit longer on me.

 

Where I'd wear it: New Orleans in the autumn, eating chocolate tarts and drinking chicory coffee

[galahad]

In the Bottle:

Definitely cigarillo/cigar smoke, creamy sweetness and coffee

On the Skin:

Sweet, creamy coffee and rich, spicy cigarillo smoke to start with and soon after a vague fruitiness emerges. Then some ice cream with a berry sauce. Gradually the curry spices come out, very dry and toasted. Fascinating and actually quite nice.

On the Drydown:

The transitions on this one are fast and furious! Dries down to a creamy spiced coffee with the memory of cigar smoke. And there is still a vague fruitiness. The extreme drydown is dry curry spices. This is very wearable and really nice.

[patina]

Milky coffee at first and nothing but that. Then there's some chocolate syrup and banana. Not a lot of banana but it's there. There may be some papaya or something and there's definitely tobacco.

 

Is that rum? Probably not because otherwise it would be taking over. But it may be sweet coconut. I don't get a whole lot of fruit but it's there lending a sugary feel.

 

I don't get curry, just a ton of rich chocolate syrup. Medium to light throw.

[hawkbae]

When I first open the bottle, the curry note is strong. Once it's on, though, it dries down quickly to something different. It smells like coffee ice cream with a whiff of fruit and curry spices, and the slightest hint of smoke. It's softer than I expected when I smelled it from the bottle, but not at all in a bad way. It just feels like sitting in a Caribbean restaurant, eating a vanilla ice cream as all the smells are around you. As someone homesick for southern Florida, it's perfect.

[Teamama]

Sweet & complicated. I agree that it's related to Sugar Skull.

 

Predominantly a sweet sugared fruit & curried vanilla on me. Don’t knock it till you try it. Smoke & coffee stay very far in the background on my skin. I get curry with just a smidge of goat--I know this curry, it has golden raisins in it.

 

I keep wearing my decant, & thinking about getting a bottle, but it's so close to Sugar Skull that I can't quite justify it. We'll see what happens when the decant is all used up.