midnightmuse

In the bottle: Astringent, slightly bitter, almost unpleasant. Citrus and sharp lavender are all I can smell. Wet: Almost all citrus, with some hints of herbs. I can't smell the lavender or the jasmine. I got a flash of "Greece" from my memory banks, so something must indeed be Mediterranean about it. I have the sense of springtime, cool and sunny, a breezy tree full of moving leaves and bright yellow lemons...like the one outside the Loukoulos Tavern in Crete. Dry: The lavender appears, and the orange blossom strengthens, and finally I get a very faint drift of warm jasmine. The herbal edge to this scent might be rosemary. This is smooth, bright, and calm, with a perfect balance between warm and cool... it makes me think, somehow, of the peace of being well-rested and not in pain. I had slight nausea when trying it on, and after application, it went away! How pleasant. The drier it gets, the more the warm, herbal, slightly salty note comes out. It makes me *long* to travel to Greece again. If I ever had a Mediterranean villa, or a cottage on a beach anywhere for that matter, I'd want it to smell like this... gauzy white clean curtains in the sun, blowing in an open window, above an herb garden with little fruit trees.

This is more "perfume-y" than I usually like for myself, but it's so warm and pretty. Sweet, but not too sweet. Absolutely filled with tender young sunlight, buttercup-yellow, birdsong-joyous, divine goddess light pouring into the open hearts of flowers. It's well-named indeed, and reminds me of the painting The Gates of Dawn by Herbert Draper: http://www.midnight-muse.com/1hdgate.htm

Delicate and ethereal, with a certain delicious element in it... but... there's also a weird "fruit punch" smell that I just can't ignore and get past. This is another, like Ouija and Seance, that I expected to love and instead regretfully put into the swap pile.

This oil is my BPAL first love. Incantation is vivid, smooth, deep, rich, dark, and bright. Without gender, without season, yet full of nature. Though it doesn't smell like a forest, it inspires similar feelings and sensations in me. It makes my mind keep turning and searching for something, some beautiful mystery just beyond my sight.

Black orchid, apple blossom, meadowsweet, rue, Irish moss, hawthorn and red clover -- my stars, what a poetic combination of elements. This is a meadow of warm, delicious femininity... blooming, smiling, rosy-fleshed, full-breasted, wild and womanly. It had become a glimmering girl/With apple blossom in her hair... (W.B. Yeats) Phantom Queen fades quickly on my skin (possibly I need to slather), but in accord with the quoted poem, seems more successful in my hair. Two gentlemen I asked about it on the night I tried it took deep sniffs and seemed quite favorably impressed. It's a late spring and summer scent to me: the curve of the year from Beltane to Lughnasadh.

Nocnitsa is everything I wanted Black Forest to be, and more. Black Forest, unfortunately, turns powdery-sweet on my skin within minutes. Nocnitsa changes a lot too, but beautifully. At first, there's the sharp, intense, slightly bitter smell of evergreens (which I love), but it's mingled with a mysterious non-floral sweetness, which I imagine is the berry note others have mentioned. As the initial impact of cold resinous green fades slowly, Nocnitsa softens and becomes quiet, earthy, rich, evocative. This is a dark fir wood at the foot of a somber mountain: a wood where a witch works by night, gathering herbs and roots and berry-laden twigs, digging with her strong hands, cutting with dim flashes of her crescent knife. Like Tintagel and Black Forest, it makes me think of winter and Yule, but it's not so holiday-specific that it limits itself; I can see wearing it maybe late November through mid-March. Although maybe I'll dig it out on a hot moist July night, and see what happens...

In the bottle, nothing but fresh herbal lemon. On my skin initially, nothing but lemon. But after half an hour, I was astonished to find it changed almost entirely to very dry, warm, lovely woods, with only a slight tang of the lemon verbena remaining; just right. It strikes me as a mellow sunny daytime fragrance, not at all shadowy or ominous. In fact, it smells just a bit like a freshly sharpened pencil, calling to mind the old-fashioned bolted-to-the-wall pencil sharpeners of my elementary school. This is one that's always better in reality than in my memory, which is a pleasant thing.

In the bottle – oh dear! ::dismay:: Sharp, pungent, but it reminds me of nail polish remover. With a hint of juniper? But I learned already never to judge a scent solely out of the bottle, so I'm not worried. On my skin: it's deepening and changing to something complex and interesting... About 2 minutes in, I really do get a mental flash of being in a towering evergreen forest, at twilight. I love how BPAL fragrances can do that to you...! After 5 minutes: Ah! Now I smell real, fresh-cut greenery at some splendid old-fashioned Christmas celebration, like the one in Bergman's film Fanny and Alexander. But it's not just the pine -- no. There's something mysterious beneath it, something darksome, something pagan... like the ancient Yule traditions underlying Christmas. Every time I sniff, there's a different shade of something unusual coming to the surface, and wonderful promises lurking underneath. After 20 minutes: Nooo, the green is gone! It turned quite spicy for a bit, almost like a men's cologne with cinnamon, then it softened down and sweetened a lot, becoming almost powdery. It's fading strength-wise rather quickly, too. But it was lovely while it lasted. I wonder if this would stay dark and green and mysterious as a room scent? I will try it.

The initial in-the-bottle notes were sweet lily with somehow a hint of fruit, which disappointed me because I like leafy/woodsy notes. But eventually those leaf notes came out when I wore it, oh yes they did. After the dry-down, I smelled crumbling underfoot last-year's leaves, and dried grass in slanting afternoon sun, and just a (pleasant) touch of dirt. And faint flowers too. Fascinating. I'm in love with my wrist right now. On repeated sniffs, the light has darkened and there is a witching wind with a taste of rain in the air. This is now the autumn scent for me. Definitely. On a night shortly after the Equinox, it was windy here with spatters of rain, very gloomy and ghoul-haunted-woodland-of-Weir. Alone at the late hour, I felt the season beckoning -- opened the window and put my head out into the rushing darkness, breathing deeply. The air was pure autumn: wild and soft, smoky-sweet and damp-dead-leafy. I whispered in surprise, "It smells exactly like 'Ulalume' out here!" Since then, I've been twice as impressed by this fragrance.

In the imp at first sniff, it's fruit-candy-sweet, and grapey like grape bubble gum. Ick. But then almost the MOMENT I apply it to my skin, it changes dramatically: oh, roses! Fresh, dewy, living roses...beautiful. And there's just a floating hint of tart-sweet pomegranate. It's the perfect proportion of floral to fruit as far as I'm concerned, since I don't much like fruits as a dominant note. Succulent. I love it; and I didn't think I would. Drying down, it's lost the dewiness (as if to warming sunlight) and has become a faint, warm, soft rose with just a whisper of pomegranate. It's clinging more to my clothes than it did to my skin. It fades very fast on me, but I enjoy the re-application so much that I don't even mind. I love following its progression of "Too sweet -- hold on -- it's changing -- there! Roses!" I rarely think of rose as a melancholy scent, but this is just a touch melancholy somehow; melancholy without being nocturnal, a soft afternoon melancholy. It reminds me of the concluding lines from a poem I wrote, told from the perspective of Demeter after Persephone returns to the upper world but seems to be inexplicably pining for Hades: She had crowned herself with darkest roses, my only child, my daughter; her white feet were hidden in a cleft of the earth.