BPAL Madness!: valentina - Viewing Profile - BPAL Madness!

What? I'm first? *Looks around nervously*

I hope this scent doesn't get lost in the Halloweenie frenzy, for it, like the last days of summer, deserves love and attention. I am so not a fan of florals and I consider rose to be a problem note almost all the time, but this scent was too intriguing to pass up. I've found that a "dirty rose" scent can work on me from time to time, and this seemed close enough, although I suspected that this might be more of a dusty rose scent.

In the bottle, my nose smelled all rose and very little in the way of resins. The initial drydown reminds me a bit of what you might get if you blended rose and Anne Bonny -- the sandalwood and frankincese are dry and sharp. After 20 minutes or so, the resins lose some of the edge and it indeed smells like a dusty rose. The scent is lovely, austere and has a rather solitary feel about it, not unlike a lone rose on a rosebush that refuses to stop blooming. This it is not a head-shoppy sweet rose incense scent (and no offense to headshoppy scents, 'cause I love them.) Instead, it is a muted, cool, dusty rose that has an elegance and dignity all its own. It also has wonderful lasting power and good sillage. People who love rose should try this scent and people who are afraid of rose should fear not. Go pay some attention to this fragrance, it deserves it!

This is one of those "how did she do it??" scents, for smelling November virtually paints a picture in my mind. In the bottle and upon initial application, I thought November smelled very much of pine, and reminded me a lot of other forest-in-the-snowstorm scents. Then, after 5 minutes, the fragrance of leaves arrived, and I was astonished! November smells exactly like wet leaves and snow-laden trees after the first snowfall, before the leaves and the plant life have utterly frozen and died away for the winter. On my skin, there's also a heavy element of ozone in this scent, evoking for me a late autumn storm, when rainfall turns into heavy, wet snow. Finally, I get whiff of wet earth underneath the leaves and the the snow.

November is unisex-to-masculine without being dark and heavy, and I think this scent will please greatly anyone who loves fragrances that smell just like the outdoors. I think it is an utterly precise and lovely olfactory evocation of walking through a park after the first snowstorm in November.