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- Today
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In the imp the florals feel a bit jumbled, bright and clean but hard to pull them apart. On my skin it is much more orderly, Snake Oil made squeaky clean and breezy. The linden blossom is first and foremost for me, followed by passionflower, and maybe just a tiny bit of waxy greenness of lily.
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Hungry Ghost Moon: Tomato Leaf and Red Pepper
roseus replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Duets & Menage A Trois
Beautiful fresh green yet earthy tomato leaf with just a hint of brightness from the pepper. Very pretty garden scent -
Yeah that's a funky little guy! The wet stage is very confusing to my nose. Juicy green notes trailed by tomato, with warm beeswax and sourdough clamouring for the spotlight. Settled on my skin it's like the memory of pizza in the air while a herbal green candle is burning.
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Blood Moon: Pomegranate and Animalic Musk
roseus replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Duets & Menage A Trois
Smooth sweet pomegranate, dark and inky with a warm and slightly spicy musk. It feels like a softer cousin of whatever makes up the fur in Bear Prince. -
this starts with carnation and cedar for me...spicy and woody. a hint of peony adds a soapiness, followed by some tonka. after a few minutes i get some smoky leather and vanilla. it's a spicy, smoky floral on me. it dries down to mostly carnation, vanilla and leather with some orris in the background. kind of dry/spicy/leathery overall. it's nice!
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One of the things my grandmother used to do was peel the end of apples where they're not edible or apples she intended to make into pies and then dry those peels to add to little crafts to spruce up the scent. The dried apple peel curls are a very mellow, almost apple blossom-like smell -- not nearly as strong as the juicy apple fruit scent underneath -- when they're done. And that's the apple peel in this blend. In fact, for a blend that only has one true flower in it -- the wild violet -- Many a Fair Toy, Many a Fine Flower has a distinctly floral blend going for it. The dry sweetness of the apple peel, the faintly astringent scent to the meadowsweet that is reminiscent of both wintergreen and almond blossoms, the (surprisingly) strong powdery spring scent of the wild violet all takes center stage, mostly upstaging the very gentle scent of hard fruit candies (giving the tiniest impression of pomegranate and raspberry). It's a sweet scent without reading as sugary on me, even though I tend to amp sweetness, and no one note overwhelms the other. As it drys down, it blends into this very balanced floral bouquet that gives the impression of winter blooms. I have no idea why my brain thinks that, but I'm picturing a small white winter flower specifically. Almond blossom, maybe, which never smells very almond-y to me. Or even apple blossoms, though those are flowers I associate more with April. Either way, I'm glad I have 3/4ths a bottle of Many a Fair Toy, Many a Fine Flower to play with. It's exactly the sort of floral I enjoy most.
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To disclaim, I have yet to dislike SO + fruit anything so I'm definitely biased. In this case, I think the 'candied' aspect of the pomegranate is making it lean into sugar plum territory. This is delicious, as I also love Sugar Plum Snake Oil and only have a half-bottle left from last year. If you're looking for the really rich pomegranate that you get with, say, Pomegranate Grove: Morocco then I wouldn't look here personally. This is a much lighter, hard candy or sugary fruit juice pomegranate, though it is still identifiable as its own fruit. I sniffed SPSO and SO&CP together, to compare, but it took them being next to each other to really feel the distinction. Personally, I love it and I'm glad I got a half-bottle of Snake Oil & Candied Pomegranate during decants. I don't think I'll upsize, but I'm glad I have 3ml to work through.
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Once again a scent with multiple notes I tend to really like, once again a miss for me. I guess I wanted this to be something in the vein of a black currant version of 'In Night When Colors All To Black Are Cast', the way that scent brings out the plum honey and then blends down into a lovely dark plumy resin blend. Instead, on sniffing I get a very sweet black currant and on skin it turns entirely sweet. Many blends do turn sweeter on me than they are in the bottle/others. In fact, from Yule I've already had that happen with Faithfully Yours, Charles Dickens and Snake OIl & Candied Pomegranate , but In Doubt & In Dread is the first time so far that the sweetness became the dominant feature. Once applied it smells like a syrupy myrrh, distilled down to its stickiest parts, without any of the black currant tartness or cistus ladanifer (rockrose) earthiness that might make it interesting. Like Assimbya, I already have enough myrrh-forward scents that this one fails to distinguish itself at all. For now, it's a pass.
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My partner and I ordered a half-bottle decant, mostly for their sake. I dislike most single note scents as perfumes so I knew if it favored one note it wouldn't be for me. I was hoping for a pine sap/amber resin duet, perhaps with a smoky edge that didn't amp to burnt embers on my skin. I do like pines -- like in Frau Holle -- and ambers -- like this year's Red Amber & Pomegranate Atmo -- but this tips too strongly one direction for me. After letting it rest a week, we cracked it open to sniff and it smells like pine sap. Pines are common here and anyone who has smelled actual pine sap is unlikely to forget it quickly. This smells like pine sap. Once applied, the warmth of the amber comes out a little bit. This scent is really well described, as I'd definitely consider it "amber ashes" with the emphasis on the cold embers of a dying fire when the smoke's already been blown away. In that sense it reminds me of 2024's Melancholy Fire. Mind you, I don't get any cinnamon from Melancholy Fire, so for me if you replaced the 'chilled bergamot' of MF and put 'pine sap' there it would be a good match for MF. Like a punch-in-the-face pine/melancholy fire mash-up. My partner is in love. They adore the idea of smelling like a tree. I'm very happy for them and it means I get all of Faithfully Yours, Charles Dickens. Win-win.
- Yesterday
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I... smell like a bowl of oatmeal? With honey and condensed milk. I'm not sure what I was expecting given the listed notes, but I think I was hoping the carrot leaf, vetiver, and lemon verbena would balance out the more straightforwardly gourmand notes to make something more on the side of woody and herbaceous. Sadly on my skin this was not to be. I remembered liking the milk note in Equivalent No. 314, so I had no misgivings about milk, but it didn't occur to me that that was kind of a weird milk note, whereas condensed milk was likely to be extremely sweet (and it was). I never got any tea either, which is quite sad, as tea is one of my favorite BPAL notes. I got a tiny amount of a lovely lemon while applying, but it evaporated pretty quickly, almost on drydown. The first thing I noticed was sweet toasted oats, and that is exactly what stuck around for the next ~4-6 hours until the fragrance faded. I imagine that if gourmands were my thing, I'd find One Has to Be Careful to be warm, cozy, and comforting. If I were to smell this fragrance in, say, a scented candle or from standing in the kitchen while someone was making sweetened oatmeal, I'd find it warm, cozy, and comforting. I, personally, have no desire to *be* a bowl of oatmeal. This was just never on my list of aspirations in life. I think I'll hang onto this one in hopes that allowing it to rest brings out some of the other notes I was hoping for; if not, into the sales/swap pile it goes.
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This fits the poem perfectly. It smells so warm and golden and glowing, but grounded by gentle earthy notes. It's one of my favourite bpals ever.
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Thick, perfumey beeswax in the imp. A fig encased in wax. On my skin it is less fruity, the beeswax a bit mellower. I get some thick, chewy myrrh and a wisp of smoke.
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My nose is confused by this in the imp. Getting a sort of high-pitched fruitiness, but I get that from certain coconut notes sometimes. On my skin it is a creamy, fresh pumpkin scent. The pumpkin is very fresh and vegetal. I get an underlying creaminess but struggle to pull the specifics of cocoa butter and coconut.
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Mabel is predominantly about the black lipstick on me, backed by the cherry slush. The black lipstick note is the same one from Black Lipstick that is a highly realistic lipstick accord with a waxy creaminess and definite make-up smell to it. The frozen cherry slush features a bright maraschino-like cherry instead of a black one, but it's not sweet like a cherry slushie would be. I decided to grab a decant of this to try at least one of the Transanta scents from this Yule collection. Although I really appreciate the realism of Beth's lipstick accord, it's not something I could see myself wearing as a scent of the day, and there's not enough cherry here to make this more of a cherry slush scent than a make-up one on my skin. But if you do like to wear Black Lipstick and wish it were tinged with cherry, well, here's your scent!
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My first thought was of Ikea, too, actually -- specifically, of the lingonberry juice they have in their restaurant. Julween reminded me of that lingonberry juice and popcorn garlands -- but the latter is due to the buttery porridge note that I mistook for popcorn before I refreshed myself on the scent notes. I only get hints of the other notes, which are most noticeable in the background during the wet phase of the scent. Eventually, the buttery porridge note overtakes the lingonberry, but the lingonberry never disappears. I'm not sure I need a bottle of this one, but I'm totally keeping the decant around for when I go to Ikea to drink lingonberry juice and eat veggie meatballs.
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This smells delicious! It smells like a more heavily spiced oatmeal raisin cookie (but it's not a cinnabomb!) slathered in buttercream, or a buttercream-slathered spice cake that was made with treacle. It doesn't have a ton of throw (I do have to get close to my skin to smell it), but it does have decent longevity. I almost blind bottled this one, but I was iffy on the treacle and decided to go the decant route instead. But I really do enjoy this, so I'm going to have to give it a full-day slather to determine if the decant will be enough, or if I'll need more. Honestly, I'm tempted to get it just so that I can say that I'm wearing Indigestion by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.
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Ceaselessly By My Side the Demon Stirs
Marina Napoli replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Limited Editions
If you are like me and you love Black Moths, I recommend grabbing this if you can because the vetiver is very similar, if not identical. Where Black Moths is mature, sophisticated, gothic, this is cozy, snuggly, and comforting. I can't pick out specific notes outside of the vetiver, but it overall gives the impression of spiced tea being drunk underneath a big wool blanket. Which is weird, because there isn't a wool note in this, but I definitely get something that can only be described as fuzzy. 10/10, super happy I picked this one up! -
Initially a lot of cinnamon, sugar cookie, and a waxy note I can't place. Could be pumpkin doing something weird or maybe whatever is making up the ribbon candy? The waxy note fades back pretty quickly and this settles out to a very cinnamon-ed pumpkin cookie scent. I do detect a hint of the anise others are picking up, normally a dealbreaker for me but is blending in and playing nicely here.
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Rugged, dry and green. Getting lots of myrrh and a dry not-at-all-sweet amber topped with herbaceous green notes. A really nice woodsy scent that also feels cleaned up. Well-groomed lumberjack.
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i received a frimp of this...full disclosure i am not an apple/fruity person and generally avoid such scents but i try all frimps. it opens with a crisp apple, reminds me of lots of shampoos i have tried back in the day. i guess the apple + sweetness from honey gives it this feeling. it is by no means bad at all, but i don't like smelling like fruit (mostly) or shampoo, so this is not for me. i think apple lovers would like it though...apple can go screechy on me, and this does not thankfully.
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I was initially a little put off by how strong the leather note was on me when first applied, but this blend has really grown on me. There's a lot of leather at first, yes, but it settles down before too long into something really beautifully complex. The leather is the predominant note throughout, but underneath there's something like burnt caramel, something golden that's both honey- and hay-like. There's just a trace of something pine-like and resinous, and even more faintly there's something soft and a little powdery coming from the amber. I kept trying to pick out the myrrh but couldn't pinpoint it; there's too much going on in this blend that's smoky and dark. After a few hours of wear, it reminded me a bit of woodsmoke, but with a thrum of something more complex underneath, resins, just a touch of burnt sweetness that feels very surprising each time I notice it. If The Fall of Anarchy were a person, it would be someone who puts on a big show of bravado as a kind of smoke-and-mirrors act to distract from the depth of their inner life, who makes it easy to overlook their intricate complexities if you aren't paying close enough attention. I think this is due to come down this month, so I know I don't have a ton of time to decide, but I'm sort of tempted by a bottle: I would LOVE to see how this ages, something tells me it will only get more beautiful and its nuances more pronounced.
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2025 Bats of LA version. Lemony white tea with ginger and bergamot. I don't get much bourbon or any incense, unfortunately. It's nice but kind of simple. Medium wear length. I'm happy I got to try it, but I'll pass it on.
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Brick Snek definitely has neroli, because I amp neroli and this is basically a neroli fest on me. It eventually settles into a softer orange blossom and brick melange. I get hardly any snake oil at all from this. Skin chemistry fail.
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I have the original release of the perfume oil and blind bottled the hair gloss to pair with it, and to have a pumpkin-y hair gloss without a ton of spice. Alas, this hair gloss doesn't smell like my bottle of The Witches from 2015. Like amoray and alterosen, this is mostly about the honey in my hair. I'm not sure if this is one of those situations where it just smells different in hair gloss form, or if it is a batch variation with this year's perfume (due to all of the variabilities that can happen with components). I'm starting to think it is the latter based off of the few reviews of the 2025 version that have been posted thus far, and it's kind of bumming me out since I planned to buy the 2025 release of the perfume oil before the Weenies go down. I guess I'll sit on my hands and hope for more reviews. But the original version of The Witches has lots of vanilla, cream, lightly spiced pumpkin, and a much more subtle honey note. So I'm surprised that this is as honey-forward as it is!
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Ugh, the Lab is killing me with all of these wonderful lotions. Together We Shall Rejoice is a lovely apple orchard scent. It's nothing like Apple Orchard atmo, or Bits of Birnam Wood, two apple scents that are also very orchard-y. No, this one is more green to me, with lots of fresh apple blossom, crisp green apples, and green trees. You could pair this with any apple scent, but I'd be more likely to pair it with a green apple perfume or one that features apple blossom. I agree with LavenderCoffee that this would be perfect to wear in the spring or fall. Regarding the texture (I'm copying this from my initial lotion review): This is a thick lotion. It's not as thick as Epically Epic's whipped body butters (which they no longer make ), Blood Moon Botanica's body butters, or Strawberry Boo's frosting-like body butters, nor is it thin and liquidy like Paintbox Soapworks' lotions or Moonalisa's potion lotions or avocado butters. I haven't had one in a while, but I would say the thickness is probably most comparable to Haus of Gloi's pumpkin butters, but this might even be thicker than that, and it is somewhat stickier. I like that this is on the thicker side, because I live in the desert and have very dry skin. I find that this doesn't take long to sink in (but again -- I have very dry skin, so you may not have the same experience). I'm going to have to update my decant to a bottle before this goes away.
