BPAL Madness!: clover - Viewing Profile - BPAL Madness!

This is the Love Poem I was most looking forward to, and it does not disappoint. Sniffing from the bottle I get pure grapefruit and jasmine. I know there are a lot of jasmine haters out there, but I have to say I don't get it. To me it's just the prettiest floral scent in all of perfumery. And there's a lot of it in The Presence of Love. Jasmine & piquant pink grapefruit. After a while, the citrus fades, and I start to get a whiff of rose. After a while I start to sniff some musk, but it's not the white musk I'm generally familiar with (from say, Fae or Zephyr) - it's more like the musk in scents like 51. This is a *very* traditional floral perfume, perfect for the traditional romantic poem it is supposed to represent. Luckily I'm a fan of traditional floral perfumes, so I like this very much.

Sniffing from the bottle: it's hard for any note to stand up to lavender, and when I sniff this from the bottle, that's pretty much all I smell. On first application, it's pure lavender, as well - though a very wearable lavender, not medicinal at all. Slowly I start to sense a gentle sweetness start to glow through, and I assume it's the balsam of peru. Which, to be honest, I knew was sweet, but I didn't really think was going to be this sweet. Of course, the description says "sweet violet" as well, so although I'm not really getting Violet out of the scent, perhaps that's lending to the sweetness. It's interesting...after half an hour or so when I put my nose to my wrist I still smell strong lavender, but the scent cloud floating around me is almost like purple candy. Paperwhite is not one of my favorite florals, and so I'm very pleased that it doesn't seem to make much of an appearance on me.

I think this is a very adult, smoothing, elegant scent, but not particularly mournful. And now that I'm concluding the review, I'm just noticing that I'm starting to get whiffs of violet. It's an elegant purple, this scent. Maybe not for everyday, but really lovely.

So often I start reviews with "this is not how I was expecting this to smell", but in the case of The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, it smells *exactly* as I was expecting (and hoping for) it to smell like. Sniffing from the bottle the first thing that hits me is green grass - the scent of standing in a field. It must be the clover, it smells exactly like standing in a clover field. I almost feel like my allergies are going to start acting up. I always think of heather as smelling ever-so-slightly-like-curry on me, in a floral way. And I like it, but only in very small doses or it can be overwhelming. This is staying pretty true on me - after a bit I can start to sense a very light rose if I think about it hard enough, but not enough rose for the scent to go soapy. Overwhelmingly it's the scent of nature and spring - green and pastoral with just a hint of floral to balance it out. Just perfect.

Join us, won't you?

Well, I haven't used this in a love ritual....but I have worn it as a perfume, and thus this review is based on that.

Sniffing from bottle: Cherry? Almond? Sometimes I can't tell the difference.

Upon appliation: Although there's a part of me that knows that it's probably almond - the impression I'm getting is definitely cherry. Cherries and freshly, freshly squeezed oranges. In fact - if I were doing a blind sniff test - I would've thought that this was Decadence. It's sweetly fruity, but not in a tropical way. Actually, it's like cherry, oranges and sugar cane. Very nice.

After a few minutes: There's a slight dustiness in the dry down. Could be my skin, things tend to turn dusty on me. Also could be some mysterious, magickal herbs that I wouldn't recognize the scent of if my life depended on it.

Conclusion: I definitely smell lickable! Very sweet and pleasant. At this point it seems pretty obvious that if I want to wear this as a perfume that frequent re-application will be necessary...but the lovely scent wafting off of me could make that well worth it!