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- Yesterday
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I know there's no apple in this, but wet, I'm getting green apple, nice shampoo vibes. On drydown, I can picture a bright room with suds and fluffy towels. This one is a pretty, very light scent.
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I'm getting wildflower vibes from the honey, which is a musky one, and overall this is a sweet, sultry romp. Just what I was hoping for!
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Heck yeah. I love the range of ingredients in this Luper release. Tomato stems/leaves are one of my favourite scents, and reeled back to classy with the cocoa is just chef kiss. If you are huffing at your fingers after pruning tomatoes like I do, I wholely recommend this one. Sappy greens paired with lots of dry cocoa.
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I've been craving blueberries lately and this one hit the spot. Lots of blueberry jam, spices and rich chocolate are the main notes I'm noticing. Edit: It seems like it fades pretty quickly to mostly milk chocolate.
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Love!! This is a super joyful sour burst of the tropical fruit backed by clean sweet honey. Great for spring.
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This one smells vaguely unisex leaning slightly cologne to me. It's nice, not sweet at all. I know cloudberries by the local name bakeapples and they're very tart orange berries. I don't smell them super strongly, I'm mostly getting the ambergris and musk.
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An instant love. Delicate, honeyed florals with the pretty moonflower from Zorya P. The resins give it complexity and depth.
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Greetings! Happy to inform you that Flower Moon Lunacy has taken flight, and it's dragging our 4/20 launch along behind it like a kite tail. For the sake of convenience (mine and yours) here's the whole kit and caboodle swirled together in one ungodly link: https://blackphoenixalchemylab.com/product-tag/april-2026-lunacy/ For those in the Twin Cities, please note that the 4/20 blends can be sampled and sold in person on the high holy day itself at Clown Glass on Lyndale, from 12-6pm. That's right, we've been invited as a guest in their 4/20 festivities which will continue all the way until later that evening, but due to a previous engagement I'll be bugging out right at 6. All these new enticements will also be at our next Odd Mart Lunacy popup on May 2nd, 12-3pm.
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This scent is lovely. It brings to mind passing by a Bath and Body Works in a mall, but in a not-obnoxious way. The melon definitely amps on me, but all the other elements lend themselves to a pleasantly fruity and bubbly scent.
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I was going to write a more eloquent review, but it's best summed up as: Very nutmeg, such cardamom, wow.
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I would call this a sister scent to The Woman Behind It from this Halloween's Yellow Wallpaper collection; though they share few notes in common, their sensibilities are very much akin, which feels appropriate to their respective source materials (my review of Woman Behind It is here). While Woman Behind It reminded me of dried flowers on a vanity, this reminds me more of dried flowers within the pages of a diary, smeared with ink from being enfolded there while the writing was still wet. Violet is the most prominent note here to me (and I'd say for me it seems like the flower rather than the leaves); violet is pretty low on my list of florals, and in this blend it does indeed have the prim, candied sweetness which often turns me off it as a note; this is complicated and made more interesting by the dark sharpness of the ink note, which is distinct without being overpowering. (This is a combination which also occurs effectively in the recent Black Butterfly Moon, but there are many other notes which distract from the violet-ink pairing.) This has more substance than The Woman Behind It; still a ghost, but one who might have the capacity to rattle at the windowpanes. Like that other scent, it's not for me, but I appreciate it as an effective evocation of this moment in the novel, and will for now keep my decant.
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Cool, removed, pale, contained; I definitely agree with @wilhelmscream's identification of this as ghostly and something that might belong in the Evening with the Spirits Collection. There's a sweet, powdery, iris-rose-vanilla combination (iris definitely getting first billing in that list!) which reminds me of dry, crumbling flowers on an antique vanity, but which is slashed through with a sharply herbal lavender. The ambergris didn't come through when I first received my decant but now, after a few months of rest, it gives a slightly salty undertone, just to the left of living flesh. Very much Victorian femininity, and its sharpness fits that sensibility too, a pointed, cutting word alongside the almost cloying sweetness of that particular performance of social gender. I appreciate and admire this, but I rarely find myself wanting to wear it; my taste inclines towards fresher flowers than this, and a more exuberant and overflowing idea of femininity. But I'll keep my decant around, at least for now, for those moments when I want to sit with this sensibility.
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I really adore this; it's my favorite cardamom BPAL scent so far, and, though I've been being indecisive about it for the past few months, I will likely end up getting a bottle, maybe when I finish my imp and start to miss it. I definitely get a lot of cardamom from this one, and it feels like cardamom in all its facets; dry, powdery, just a touch earthy, and then into the almost floral sheer, airy quality which makes one remember why it goes so spectacularly with rose in desserts and teas (I'd love a rose and cardamom bpal...). The white amber and orris are very present but not obtrusive, smoothing this out and bring a liquid elegance which keeps this firmly in the realm of perfume rather than the impression that I've just spilled a bunch of cardamom on my skin while baking. On me the vanilla is pretty subtle, but it's a nice floral breath underneath, and I imagine it would show up more in an aged bottle. I get pretty good throw and great longevity from this, and it feels complete in itself to me; I don't seem myself particularly wanting to layer it (even with rose). I have a decant of Dahlia hair gloss, though I haven't tried it in perfume oil form yet, and I prefer Aasimar and get the cardamom more clearly from it; Dahlia for me is significantly smokier, and the amber is heavier and takes up more attention. I like Dahlia too and want to spend more time with it, but I'm glad I went for an imp of Aasimar first rather than blind bottling Dahlia as I was tempted to from reviews.
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I've tested this both with a small amount directly on skin and in the bath. I'd say it is pretty similar in both but in hot water the throw feels slightly different. The coconut is on the sweeter, fruitier side of coconut though not sweet enough to veer into sunscreen territory. White tea often feels very bright and citrusy to me and cannot often steal the show. Here it is still adding brightness, but softer and more vegetal than I usually encounter. Overall a fairly subdued and relaxing scent, not likely to overwhelm with a full body application I think.
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Okay, this one fascinates me but also makes something in my mind cross and tangle up a little bit, I can't make sense of it! The combination of the realistic dirt note with the clean coldness of the musk and metal (which I'd agree doesn't feel blackened to me, it's gleaming bright steel) has a severe kind of beauty to it, but it's also sparks strangely in my brain. The musk, which I'd agree with @leptonpyr is the same one from The Erl-King's Pale Daughter (though fortunately for me that musk likes my skin more than it does hers!) has a sweetness to it and softens the atmospheric qualities enough to make this surprisingly easy to wear for a dirt perfume; I wouldn't be concerned about wearing this in mixed company, though I would be curious what impressions others picked up of it. Reflecting on it, I feel like many of The Erl King collection scents (especially those concerned with the titular figure himself) are walking this line between atmospheric and wearability, conveying hints of the menace of the story while also making perfumes that people will feel comfortable wearing. In Doubt and In Dread was one that I felt too much sacrificed the menace for wearability, particularly given the point in the story in represents, while His Grasp Is So Cold leaned further in the atmospheric direction. His Crown and His Shroud stands right in the middle, and it almost feels like a trompe-l'oiel - if you don't know the origin it could pass as unthreatening but slightly odd; a clean, musky perfume with a dirt note that would probably be confusing if you didn't know the notes list. With the knowledge of the inspiration, the elements rearrange themselves and you can imagine the ice and earth and steel, the tensile energy between them as the Erl King draws his strength from both; the whole is much more chilling. I like this. I don't know how much I'm going to wear it, but it feels like a special thing to me, and I'm glad to have my decant and for the ways it makes me think.
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This is a very well-blended scent, and with the vast array of notes I have some difficulty picking them out and distinguishing them; it also shifted quite a bit over the course of wear for me. It starts as a floaty, indistinct floral + musk; I would agree that iris is probably the central note at this point, as confidently as I can get it, and a vanilla-adjacent sweetness which I think is the heliotrope (or maybe benzoin?). Color palette matching to the artwork, very silver-gray-blue, delicate and pretty; it's very lovely at this stage, but wasn't winning my heart. However, after a few hours of wear it develops a different depth and complexity, with the dry, resinous facets of the scent coming forward as well as a different floral note with which I am less familiar and which I have to assume is tobacco flower. After ~6 hours the throw was low, but I quite distinctly got the honeyed beeswax and it was beautiful; I kept wanting to smell it again right before I had to wash it off in the shower! My first couple tests of this I wrote it off as a simply pretty and nothing else, but I'm glad I gave it another try with more attention to how it developed over time; this one really rewards that attention, and like @amoray says I suspect this might benefit from aging. I'm considering a bottle of this one, though I'm not sure and it may depend on how many of my Lupercalia decants get upgraded; I didn't think I needed another delicate iris scent after Gloomily and Equivalent No. 314, but the dry down stage of this is different and special, and if what I'm identifying there is indeed tobacco flower then it's the best showcase for it I've experienced from bpal thus far. If these floral notes appeal to you I'd recommend trying it.
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Starts off almost pure lemon, bright and lightly sweet with a slight fuzziness from the sandalwood underneath. As it settles on my skin I get more grapefruit and a touch of bitter, heady neroli. The amber gives a round, wholesome sweetness and really grounds the brightness of the citrus. A really pretty happy, glowing scent.
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I don't have the time or energy for a super detailed review right not, but I felt obligated to hop on and express how good this is before it goes down. In the bottle it's all marzipan and hazelnut, but once it's on skin it's got so much lovely depth. The marzipan and hazelnut are there, yes, topped with just a touch of cherry, but the patchouli, smoke, and wood ground the gourmand elements and add a masculine edge that make me genuinely feel I can pull it off as a guy despite the intense sweetness. I love this so much. If you're on the fence, I fully endorse pulling that wooden, questionably shaped trigger.
- Last week
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This is exactly coffee and pancakes with syrup, and somehow so addictively wearable that I keep coming back to this one over and over. I'm so glad I picked this up, because I didn't know I needed to smell like this.
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Such a beautiful blend! I can see how some might detect mint, but I think it's closer to rose or hibiscus. The patchouli comes out for me right away, though I do amp it somewhat. It find it a less haughty, not-so in-your face version of Crypt Queen, and very well balanced among the notes.
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Absolutely agree with Roseus. Classic S.W with a really good throw. That sweet floral snow lingers well! Buttery lotion without being greasy. Can not get enough of this one!
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Well this is a beauty! I expected a punchy almost bitter passion fruit, maybe even sinthetic. But what i got was a true passion fruit, sweet but not sugary. (More like an over ripe fruit) With a soft creamy custardy layer. I worried about the 'burned sugar' and if it would come across like caramel or brown sugar. It did not! It's nessled in the background. Peeking round the corner of the passion fruit. This truely is a zingy, bright, creamy fruity treat! Quite a nice throw and wear time too! I'd back up bottle this.
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Strawberry Moon: Kyphi and Sweet Cream
Nagi Mahe replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Duets & Menage A Trois
Ok, in the bottle... heavy cream begging to go sour. Not getting any of my beloved Kyphi, just a very faint golden smell. On the skin, oh no... sour cream. It's making me wrinkle my nose. I still don't get any straight up kyphi. Just a light golden sweet smell, trying to fight its way through. Dry down, still sour. There is still a vague golden incense trying, but failing. If you do well with the Labs cream note, you'll love this. And i do occasionally get a thread of incense, but i'm not loving this one. -
Oh hello bright pink juicy bubble gum. Second out of the gate... ruby red mushrooms! And then comes the musk. I don't get any distinct plum or strawberry, i think this is hidden in the background of the bubble gum! So is the candy floss and marshmallow! I do get a hit of fruity brandy! This has masses of throw and super long lasting. There is a morphing background to this. But the bubble gum stays strong. Anyone a fan of jail bait etc... may well love this.
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S.O lotion, ok don't kill me lol.. but i find this misses the mark. The scent is so light that unless my nose is directly on my arm, i can barely smell anything. I was expecting a punch of S.O. How ever this makes a good base for layering. The lotion itself, thick and creamy. Soaks in well.
