Little Bird

I do not like the frankincense note that bpal has been using in some of their newer releases. The frankincense here smells like the frankincense in Batty Cathedral, which smells more like pukey, fizzy champagne spilled on a very dusty floor than it does any of the frankincense notes that I'm more familiar with. Not even the sweet, creamy, slightly powdery marshmallow note can fix this blend for me (and it does have a strong marshmallow), and the edge of watery greens only makes it weirder to my nose. The weird fizz and dust scent really bothers me.

Crunchy, green bell pepper (which almost made me write this one off immediately) and actual black pepper that settles into a really beautiful forest fragrance. I'm very happy with how quick the bell pepper note disappears; it's gone within a couple minutes. It quickly settles into an impression of warm, earthy, rich patchouli and pine needles touched with sweet pine sap and warm, creamy woods. The sweetgrass has a gentle, incense smoke quality to it and makes me think of bundles of dried smudging sticks. And it's all wrapped up into an impression of a sophisticated, woodsy men's fragrance. A half hour in, I start to smell a hint of something that smells like sweat (a sourness in the pine, maybe?), but I still really like it. I have no idea why I full bottled this one because I tend to hate bpal's dead/green leaves note, but it's one of my favorites of the 2023 Halloween scents. I'm always looking for scents that smell like a sexy romance novel lumberjack or that remind me of where I grew up in the pine forests of the Ozarks, and this makes me think of both of those things.

I like Vintage Witch enough to keep my decant, but not to go for a full bottle. The white chocolate is my favorite thing about it, and smells sweet and lightly creamy/milky. I don't love the lemony, sharp green tea, however, and the toasty, warm amber turns a little more powdery than I would like in the drydown. It leans a little too powdery and a little too sharply lemony for me, though the white chocolate does soften and sweeten its edges enough that I wind up enjoying it. I have an epic hoard of the original Thirteen blend for when I want a white chocolate and citrusy tea blend, and I do prefer that one.

The first time that I wore this, it kept reminding me of citrusy gummi bears. I wish it had stayed the way that it was fresh out of the mailbox. Today, with some rest, Snow Moon '24 went on like limoncello shaved ice spilled over clean, damp laundry, and then it settled into a perfumey-musky, soapy, harsh floral. I don't get any of bpal's traditional, slushy snow note (which doesn't go soapy on me). The snowdrop is adding the soapy white floral tone and the crystalline musk a clean, perfumey, department store type of musk. After a half hour, the sweeter, juicier notes that I enjoyed have disappeared entirely and I'm just left with soapy, powdery floral and sharp musk, which started to give me a headache until I scrubbed it off around the 1 hour mark.

Smells very much like a dupe of Kilian's "Love, Don't Be Shy," but less complex. The orange blossom is like a sweet orange flavored syrup with hints of creamy, clean flower blossoms, made even sweeter with the extra sugar. The champagne is most noticeable in the bottle and lighter once applied. On my skin, the champagne sticks around in the background and adds a fuzzy, musty, soured undertone that I don't love. Super sweet orange blossom, breezy white floral perfume, and sour champagne. I don't smell any of the chocolate. I'm not really loving this year's box of chocolates and that makes me sad because I usually have a lot of loves in this collection.

Cat Stealing A Fish smells like a mashup of Bath and Body Works' Ocean and their OG Sea Island Cotton fragrances. Starts out all super salty, chilly aquatic, like a cold dip in the ocean, and then a powdery, warm interpretation of driftwood and ambergris begins to take over. It makes me think of white linen on a clothesline, whipping around in the breeze, while ocean waves crash nearby. The vetiver and lichen don't come out at all to my nose, and I've worn this several times now. Powdery, clean, salty aquatic. I wish it were less powdery on me, but it's still a pleasant aquatic that doesn't turn to outright soap.

I get zero rose, honey, plum, patchouli, or geranium. I slathered this on tonight and didn't enjoy it at all, and I normally love all of these listed notes. Amethysts is an impression of screechy, dry, sharp white floral and it strongly smells of perfumey / musky, white floral dryer sheets in its drydown. Something like a sharp tuberose and dry soap. It's intensely strong, but I unfortunately don't like the fragrance. I expected something more sensual and sweet, but it has no real complexity, sweetness, or earthiness to it.

Starts off with a weird white chocolate cream and sharp cinnamon (my nose sniffs out the cinnamony tones in everything, maybe because I often have an allergic reaction to it and my body is just screaming at me to please stop putting it on my skin), but that phase is short lived and then it dries down to something very similar to Haus of Gloi's Ghost Puffs. It smells like gooey marshmallows and a hint of buttery popcorn. Creamy, warm, and sweet. Lasted about 4 hours for me before fading into oblivion.

I was hoping for jammy, sweet black currant and juicy pomegranate, but this has a very dry, tart, slightly sour interpretation of those notes. There's also an undertone that smells exactly like chalk dust. After a while, a clean, perfumey, white musky smell joins the mix and enhances that bone dry quality. I find this to be more musky and less creamy and sweet when compared to the ruby chocolate in Millennial Pink. Tart, sour, dried fruit, chalk dust, and an impression of sharp, dry white musk with a barely there hint of chocolate. Lasts about 3 hours.

This definitely isn't as dark, powerful, or smoky as I thought it would be. In fact, it's oddly soft and clean, like baby powder and non-sweet cream with a little swish of incense cone ash mixed in. It takes about a half hour to shift at all, and then it's still powder soft and clean, but I can start to pick up the impression of singed fabric (which is still more clean and starched than it is smoky) and dried herbs, which smell of oregano and salt. It has almost no throw; I have to have my nose nearly touching my skin to smell this one at all, and it doesn't last more than 2 hours total.

2024 version. Lyonesse has changed so much since it was first released. I used to really like the fragrance, but the sweet, creamy vanilla and subtle, golden amber are nonexistent now. It's a clean, plasticy scent to me now, a barely there sense of clean, powdery musk and an undertone of super plasticy vanilla that I don't find pleasant at all. It starts off subtle and then disappears very quickly. It's an extremely pale shadow of what it once was.

2024 imp. No ginger or patchouli at all, but the orange blossom is more sugared and sweet than it was back in the day. There's a department store perfume quality to it, like golden jasmine and golden musk, but it's mostly a super sweet orange blossom that smells like sugared orange syrup with creamy petals along the edges. Very sweet, but also has a clean, perfumey-musky side to it.

2024 imp. Tlazolteotl is very smoky and has a pitch black feel to it. I don't think that I would pick out the cocoa or maize at all if I didn't know that they were supposed to be in here. It smells like black musk, the rich and slightly earthy copal resin from El Dorado, and clean laundry have been set on fire and are giving off billowing clouds of harsh, gritty, black smoke. I love what is underneath the smoke, but the smoke itself is way too strong and suffocating to me.

I wish that I could find a scent that smells like real marigolds because I love their spicy, herbal, green smell. This doesn't smell like true marigold, though it is floral. The overall scent is a dry, perfumey floral in a room full of smoky copal incense. I get an undertone of slightly overripe fruitiness (mango at first and then purple grapes?). I love oakmoss, but I don't pick up on it here either, just a dry quality to the floral, I think. An old offering of dried flowers, incense smoke, and fruit. I like this, but I wish it were stronger on my skin. I can barely smell it at the one hour mark, and La Ofrenda doesn't have much throw on me, no matter how much I slather.

Bayou is one of my all time favorite bpal fragrances and Eldena Ruin is like the softer, more feminine version of Bayou. It's like they're in the same family, but Eldena Ruin fronts as a proper Southern belle with more floral and an elegant, powdery undertone, while secretly being a swamp witch in her heart. I swear I can smell a blue-green water and Spanish moss in this that I also get from Bayou, though the mossiness here is turned down. Eldena Ruin has a swampy, warm, humid quality to it, like Southern greenery and heady blossoms covered in a sheen of moisture, the heavy heat causing them to give off huge wafts of romantic floral and what smells like a mossy greenery and smooth, slightly darker ivy note to me. I get blue-green water, smooth greenery, a delicately sweet and humidly floral olive blossom, and powdery amber. Or perhaps that's the olive blossom giving off that soft, powdery quality, because it doesn't really smell like fossilized amber to me. I usually get a smoky quality and hint of evergreen from that type of amber, and this isn't smoky or pine-y at all. I don't know. I do know that I love this and I've been wearing it a lot. It smells like my dreams of moving permanently to Florida.