All Activity
This stream auto-updates
- Past hour
- Today
-
The opening of this one is YUMMY. An immediate crush of juicy, jammy berries, strawberries both tangy and sweet, with the blackcurrant bringing a fair bit of tartness. The lime is accenting and accentuating the berries' tartness beautifully, adding an extra citric zing, like lime zest grated over a bowl of crushed berries and blackcurrant sap. Strawberry Moon is having this very fascinating, slightly unsettling effect on me, where I keep getting the faintest whiff of incense, as if I'm catching incense on a breeze in the distance, but every time I go to sniff my skin directly, the incense disappears and all I get is berry. It's beguiling. As it dries down, I get more of the honey, and the blend gets jammier without losing tartness...at first. About 2 hours in, it loses much of its intensity and complexity, and the strawberry goes from juicy and photorealistic to a fainter, sort of artificial-smelling/candy red fruit scent on a backdrop of faint musky honey. Sadly, this goes from "WOW" to "meh" for me. I'll keep my decant because the opening is GREAT, but unless it ages differently within the next month, I don't think a bottle purchase is in my future. (I don't get any moss at all, but I have never once smelled BPAL's moss accord on me. At this point I'm convinced my skin has some sort of moss-resistant properties. Go figure.)
-
Spring Wildflower Honey, Grass, and New Mown Hay Atmosphere Spray
Biocarbons replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Atmosphere
Lightly sweet, fresh grass and hay. Slightly perfumey, but definitely less perfumey than the BPAL grass note has been in the past. If you enjoy the grass note, try this. -
I did one spray of this and went nose blind for a while. This is STRONG. Very intense, a little goes a long way. Floral champaca and sandalwood intense. Incense dominant. The cream element doesn't stand out to me.
-
The oud is very green with a vetiver quality. The honey used is closer to BPALS black honey which is grapey smelling to me. Strong incense on dry down. I like how this settles into a slightly smoky, woody musky scent.
-
Those strawberry lychee hard candies with a swirl of cream and a spritz of citrusy sandalwood. I get more cream and sandalwood as this sits on my skin. See also, strawberry taffy.
-
Wet I get a burst of juicy pomegranate and wildflower honey, over wooly cedar and leather. A hint of incense. Comforting. Getting fruity wafts from this one. This settles into dry pomegranate, incense , wool, and leather. Warm, dry, comforting.
-
Airy white musk and soapy florals. Very clean and dry. Settles into expensive shampoo.
-
wet, I mostly get beeswax, copal, and balsam. As it sits on my skin, the lemony Frankincense and wax peak the recede. This settles into mostly dry beeswax and balsam again.
-
Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind, child of Zeus, who twists lures, I beg you do not break with hard pains, O lady, my heart Translation by Anne Carson The tenth muse: purple fig, sun-warmed thyme, rose resin, orris, olive oil, and myrrh.
-
Welcome my sweet daughter, my favorite, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Maatkare, Hatshepsut. Thou art the Pharaoh, taking possession of the Two Lands. Maatkare, the Good Goddess, Divine Daughter of Amun, sixth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, androgynous queen regnant who wore the uraeus-crowned Khat, traditional false beard, and the shendyt and bore the double crown as Mother and Father of Egypt. She sent five ships to the Land of Punt and brought back thirty-one living myrrh trees, their roots balled in soil, to be planted at the terraced temple of Deir el-Bahari, the Djeser-Djeseru. Her scent is imperial and vibrant, seizing back her power from those who would erase her: myrrh trees crossing the Red Sea in the hold of a ship, the dark smoke of kyphi drifting through limestone colonnades, ground frankincense and kohl, warm sand and blue lotus incense, cedarwood from Byblos, the dry resinous breath of obelisk granite in the sun, and a base of black amber and sacred anointing oil.
-
Master of stained glass and illustration, his pen moved through Poe, Perrault, and Goethe like a needle threading silk through shadow. Sparkling shards of aldehyde-glowing mandarin, red musk, plum, bergamot, iron, smoky labdanum, and ink.
-
That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal; as time will shew. The Enchantress of Numbers, the First Programmer: bergamot and black tea, polished mahogany and silver filigree, and an electric clap of bottled lightning.
-
The day we have long awaited is here: our migration of the entire BPAL library over to a more user-friendly platform that is both easier to navigate and easier for us to maintain. It may be days or even weeks before the "new" site (same URL!) has all the features we're trying to implement. ✤ BPAL's "General Catalog" has been renamed! It is now the Eternal Collection. And to celebrate this occasion, we've added some fragrances to it! Would you like us to tell you what they are, or hunt for them yourself? 🙃 ✤ Logins from the old site don't work anymore; you will have to make a new account. ✤ We will be re-issuing all store credits & gift cards. These will be sent to the email address that it was issued to on the old site. Please give us a bit of a grace period before contacting customer service, there are a lot to get through & we have to process them all individually. We'll keep editing this post to add more bullet points as updates and important clarifications arise. In the meantime please pardon our dust!
-
I agree with, well, all of these reviews. The facets of fur and yeast are drenched in a honeyed toffee and something inexplicably rosey. It kind of reminds me of Marthe Bibescu but where that one was crisp, brittle toffee this is the confection whilst it's cooking: sticky sweet and melted. Wet, it's a bit much for me with the brown buttery-toffee-honey throwing like crazy, but as it dries it gets a lot more wearable and complex. Still retains solid throw! A lot more complex than expected from two notes, I suspect 'ethereal lure' might be it's own thing.
-
Ooh, I love this. I'm a vanilla and sandalwood fiend, so of course I had high hopes for this one, and they were rewarded. I'm not sure I can describe this very well. It's vanilla and sandalwood, but not too sweet, and rounded out and deepened a bit by what I guess must be the chrysanthemum. I don't get lemon per se, but there is a little brightness it seems to be adding. Overall, it's soft and a little like a luxurious lotion, in the best way. I think it could be worn in any season and on almost any occasion.
-
Man Making Love to the Maid of a Samurai Household
Beatrice33 replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Lupercalia
On my skin, the combination of notes reads as lemongrass, which is a note I love in food but personally don't enjoy smelling like. I did try this right out of the mailbox, being the impatient sort, so I will try it again in a few days to see if anything changes. -
It's fascinating how differently fragrances work on different people. On me, I don't smell any of the patchouli or lavender, just a bright, Granny Smith apple grounded and softened by vanilla. It's absolutely lovely.
-
On me, I get mostly something like brown sugar--maybe the bourbon cream is reading that way? Unfortunately, that note is taking over the sweet cream and cardamom, which is what I was hoping to get more of. I admit to testing it right out of the mailbox, however, and I will test it again in a few days to see if anything has changed.
-
i am testing on skin, as i mostly tend to use these as skin moisturizers. it opens with sandalwood and wisteria. i smell the blooms and the branches they grow on. the oakmoss adds the greenery-all parts of the wisteria are present here. the wisteria is a bit indolic and it is very well balanced with the other notes. it's very pretty and spring-y. after awhile the sandalwood sort of takes over and the wisteria fades to the background. at this point i get a hint of the creamy note, but not a whole lot. overall this is like a wisteria-sandalwood incense. it is very pretty, i just wish the wisteria lasted longer on me.
- Yesterday
-
This smells like a milk chocolate cocoa. It's not as strong as any of my other lotions -- sometimes I can smell the base of the lotion more when applying it and it takes a bit for the milk chocolate scent to waft up at me. But there's no funky dairy froth, which was why I opted for a sample pot, and it pairs well with my chocolate scents (and I don't have any other lotion that does!), so I'll probably end up with a bottle before it goes away, since I've already used up most of my sample pot in the two days I was applying it to my hands last week.
-
Strawberry Moon: Kyphi and Sweet Cream
doomsday_disco replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Duets & Menage A Trois
This is mostly about the sweet cream on me, which smells good in the throw, but a little too buttery up close after it has been on the skin for a few hours. I get a hint of the kyphi's incense in the background, but it's not a main player on my skin. Layered with its moon, it gave the emphasis in Strawberry Moon 2026 a boost before it doused it in buttery cream. This wasn't a win for me, but it was fun to try it. -
This smells absolutely delicious. It does smell like a super sugary, rich, fudgy brownie, or at least its batter. It doesn't last long in wet or dry hair, and I could only smell it when holding my hair up to my nose, so it doesn't have good throw, either. Since it doesn't stick around for very long and I already have too many chocolate-y hair glosses, I don't feel the need to grab a bottle. But I'll be keeping my decant to pair with my brownie scents.
-
Dildo, Boxes with Lubricants, and a Plum Blossom Twig Hair Gloss
doomsday_disco replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Hair
This is a citrusy floral hair gloss, with the grapefruit, plum blossom, and honeysuckle honey being the standout notes to me. The grapefruit is the strongest note at first, but the floral notes are noticeable when freshly applied, and they seem stronger at the end of the day, when the grapefruit has calmed down (but is still present and has decent longevity for citrus). The honeysuckle honey has a quality to it that makes me think of honeysuckle nectar. I can smell the scent whenever I hold my hair up to my nose, but there is no throw when I walk around. And I think the white tea is there to support the grapefruit. But I don't get any of the amber cream or apricot, and that's fine with me. I don't feel the need to upgrade this one to a bottle, as fruity floral scents generally aren't what I gravitate towards, and I'm more likely to reach for a straight-up citrus hair gloss for my citrus fix... but I think I'll keep the decant. -
I haven't tried all of my hair gloss decants from the Lupercalia update yet, but I can already tell that this one is my favorite. This smells like the same poppy from Sugar, Poppy Tar, and Red Currant, which I adore. The black honey adds some sweetness, but it plays a supporting role and doesn't declare dominion over all like Nocturne Alchemy's black honey note does. While I have trouble smelling some hair glosses in wet hair, I could smell this one in both wet and dry and did not have to apply a ton of it to smell it, but even though it is strong, it's not so strong that it engulfs you in the scent, and I didn't get hit with a cloud of it in the shower before washing it out, either. This is opium poppy perfection and I absolutely need a bottle.
-
I swear there's an unlisted honey note in here, similar to the one in Bard. I'm normally not a huge fan of florals, and therefore don't go very hard on lupers. I got a decant of this mostly because of The Gay, but I actually ended up really liking this one. On me, at least, the amber, green notes, and myrrh (and what I'm perceiving as honey) very much hold their own with the florals. It's a nice mix of sweet and bitter, grounded and dreamy, masculine and feminine. Very fitting for Apollo, IMO. It's mostly linear on me. Low sillage, but fairly persistent. Definitely one of the more pleasant surprises I've had in awhile.
