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This is a GC that doesn't really need any more reviews, but I was wearing it today and I can't help but want to sing its praises! Katharina is stunning, how it's so simple yet so, so gorgeous. A very photorealistic orange blossom pairs beautifully with a very photorealistic apricot (I seriously feel like I'm putting my nose right up to the actual fruit), the slight sharpness and bitterness of each ingredient complements the other perfectly, and the apricot is almost juicy, but in a kind of dry way. Katharina is what it says in the tin, basically, but in the best possible way. It doesn't morph at all on me, and it wears pretty close to the skin. I have never noticed white musk in this; I really can't overemphasize how purely this smells of orange blossom & apricot to me, bright and clear, sharp but soft and lovely. It felt especially lovely to wear such a bright, clear scent in the middle of winter; it really buoyed me through the cold and the grey today.
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Cinnamon cologne. Sexy Santa?I don't get any coffee. But it is a lovely cinnamon! I finally bought myself a locket, so now I can wear cinnamon perfumes.
- Today
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The Donkey's Tail
ghoulnextdoor replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Gifts with Donation or Purchase
I don't want to write a review for this, I only want to tell you this smells like an extremely fuckin' haunted doll and also that I want twenty bottles of it. But that's not fair, and it is also a bit lazy. So: You dream of someone crying. soft and persistent as rain on wool. At the antique stall, "Mourning keepsake," the card said. "Unknown provenance." Her head, porcelain. Her dress, pewter silk and blush-faded ribbons, lavender stems worked through cotton. Someone loved her into being. Someone, heart-rent, hands shaking with grief. Heavier than she looked. Inside, something whispered and later, the seam gave way. Funeral roses. Brown now, petals ground to dust, packed tight into her body like prayers into a throat. Tell me— when you wake from the dream of her crying, what do you do with all this sadness this grief that isn't yours? -
Roses preserved in amber resin, petals crystallized to honeyed bronze. Estate sale jewelry boxes lined with yellowed velvet, gilt-edged brooches oxidized to a dusky patina. Caramelized corsage, barley sugar twists and horehound drops, unctuous burnt-sugar varnish. Your grandmother's nosegay pressed between the pages of a 1950s etiquette book, ribbons still faintly fragrant with Helene Curtis Spray and the face powder she wore to Wednesday night bridge club, way back when getting dressed up called for gloves and a little hat, even if you were only going three blocks over to Maureen's house for that undrinkable coffee everyone politely finished because that's just how you did.
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There's no cardamom listed in this scent, and there's no cardamom here, not really. But this is what cardamom might smell like, absent its bitter spice: green eucalyptus sharpness, citrus-wood undertones, cool and aquatic, faintly aromatic. Ghostly flowers float on inky waters, musk of a moon moth, sweet and clear as a bell. This is a being who exists on a frequency you'll never tune into. She operates in a reality parallel to yours. She has never been human. She will never be human. The concept of humanity might not register as something worth knowing. She also does not know what cardamom is. Who? She asks, eyes insectile and lunar. Glassy, unblinking, and strange.
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Following the international bestseller KRAMPUS'S FORBIDDEN GRIND... TRIPLE SHOT AT LOVE: GROUNDS FOR SUSPICION #1 in Rare Book Romance (CW: dangerous manuscripts, competitive bidding, caffeine as foreplay) When rival rare book dealers Sebastian and Margot both find themselves at Café Arcana hunting the same impossible alchemical manuscript rumored to transform gold into the perfect cup, they agree to a temporary truce. The barista, fair Ophelia, has been counting on exactly this. The moment they trust each other, they're hers. She serves them a dark demonic brew roasted at temperatures summoned from the ninth circle of hell, and they settle in among brittle manuscripts and ravaged bindings reeking of forbidden knowledge and dust older than empires. As ancient pages whisper their mysteries and Ophelia's brews grow dangerously, addictively potent, they realize she isn't just making coffee. She IS the manuscript. She's been waiting 300 years for the right combination: two rivals stupid enough to think they could possess her, arrogant enough to deserve what's coming, and desperate enough to stop competing and start copulating. I mean collaborating. "Finally, a love triangle where everyone WINS and also maybe loses their SOULS" (Occult Romance Weekly) "The chemistry is UNREAL and so is the coffee and I haven't slept in 48 hours" (#BookTok)
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Violet wallpaper in the hallway, plum velvet drapes in the parlor, lavender silk sheets on the bed. Lilac gloves laid out beside the mauve hatbox. An amethyst brooch pinned to her orchid-colored blouse. She arranges the iris-patterned teacups just so, checks her reflection in the mirror framed in wisteria wood. The aubergine carpet muffles her footsteps. In the kitchen, eggplant preserves gleam in glass jars on a pristine countertop Her tools rest in a mulberry-lined case: the No. 7 crochet hook polished to a shine, sharp as surgical steel but delicate as the hyacinth lace she crocheted last winter. She does beautiful work. Precise. You can barely see the hole hooked into the throat of the corpse on the floor. When she's finished, she washes up with thistle-scented soap, changes into her indigo dressing gown, and sits down to crochet something new. Maybe a shroud.
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A lime on an ice floe, wearing sunglasses. Pale juice, cold-zapped. Sun on snow, blinding white. The lime casts no shadow but casts a circle in salt. The lime is simultaneously freezing and thawing, bright. Sharp. Frozen, broken things having a good time at the end of the world.
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SPECIMEN CLASSIFICATION: CRYSTALLUS SINGULARIS Observed December 21st, 1927, Miskatonic Valley Professor Elias Wentworth, Department of Crystallography Upon first observation, the specimen presented geometries of such singular and cyclopean complexity as to defy conventional Euclidean classification. The primary hexagonal structure, while superficially conforming to known ice crystal morphology, revealed upon closer examination a fractal recursion of nameless intricacy, each branching arm subdividing into ever-smaller iterations of impossible precision. The coloration proved equally anomalous: not the expected translucent white, but rather a frosted sage of spectral luminescence, shot through with veins of glacial verdure and gelid chlorophyll that seemed to shift and multiply when viewed through the kaleidoscopic lens. The effect was not unlike peering into dimensions of space hitherto unknown to mortal science—angles that should not exist, proportions that violated natural law, yet arranged with such terrible beauty as to inspire equal measures of awe and incomprehension. Most disturbing: the specimen exhibits a menacing quality I cannot adequately describe. Fresh. Chilly. Herbal citrus notes emanating from its crystalline surface. Further study req— [ARCHIVAL NOTE: The above entry represents Professor Wentworth's final coherent observation. He was discovered three hours later in his laboratory, having etched hexagonal patterns into the laboratory walls, floors, and his own flesh. He remains under care at Arkham Sanitarium, where he continues to mutter about "the geometry" and refuses to look at snow. The specimen in question melted without incident. —Dr. H. Armitage, University Librarian, 1928]
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You're having a peaceful morning, enjoying your elevenses, minding your own business, and living quietly as one does when you glance out the window and there's your weirdo neighbor again. Full setup this time: gimbal rig, ring light positioned to catch the morning sun, lavalier mic clipped to their embroidered waistcoat. They've arranged a tableau on their hobbit-hole's front step - bowl of heritage grain toasted oats, bunches of fresh carrot greens still dirt-speckled, pot of fresh, lemony verbena tea steaming invitingly. "Good morning, Shire fam! Welcome back to my channel. Today we're doing my cozy morning routine - very clean hobbit aesthetic, very second-breakfast-core." Take after take, adjusting the angle, moving the honey pot three centimeters left. "This heritage oat situation has been such a game-changer for my wellness journey, link to the mill in my description, don't gatekeep!" The whole scene smells genuinely wholesome despite the production: toasty grains, fresh-pulled vegetables, proper tea poured with care. They grew those carrots themselves. The oats are from their own stores. They might be ridiculously mugging for the camera, but you can't fake roots that deep. You smile ruefully and help yourself to another slice of seed cake. Maybe a barley scone too. It's a long time til afternoon tea!
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A memory you can't explain the significance of, where nothing happened but everything felt inevitable and true. Late afternoon, winter, pulled over on some rural highway to watch the sunset. Purple streaking through grey, the sky bruised and soft, every shade of twilight from plum to dove, from amethyst to ash. A cardboard cup from a small-town artsy café, steamed milk infused with flowers, vanilla syrup frothed and foaming. A scarf that smells faintly of perfume, worn three days ago when the trip began. The woods beyond the guardrail are bare, sanded smooth by wind and cold, no angles or edges. Breathing winter air through cabled wool stitches, once dense and taut, now relaxed and shaped to our skin. For reasons you'll never articulate, this moment brands itself into your soul as important. Years later, you'll catch this scent and be back on that shoulder, cup warming your hands, light failing, everything soft and rounded and impossibly tender. Impossible that it ever happened at all.
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"3 AM/awakened by a sweet summer rain/ Distant howling /of a passing /southbound coal train." Jim White's low, laconic narration, Aimee Mann's sweet echoing lullaby. "Was I dreaming, or was there someone just lying here/ Beside me in this bed?" Lavender's herbal whisper, threaded with cool grassy thistle. Clean linen, powdery soap, freshly laundered pillowcases, cotton worn thin and shaped to a body that doesn't feel like yours anymore, it hasn't in a while. Hiss and hum, signal loss between stations, the fuzzy half-awake feeling where you can't tell what's real and what's dreamed. Every certainty you built your life on dissolves into white noise and snow. The quiet crisis of middle age, waking in the dark and realizing all your convictions were just incomplete pictures, inadequate attempts to understand. Everything you think you know is just static on the radio.
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A lost Wes Anderson screenplay wherein Little Red carries the remnants of her Halloween candy to grandmother's house for Christmas. The contents: six tangerine-orange circus peanuts (slightly stale), twelve lemon sherbets wrapped in yellow cellophane, three jammy strawberry boiled sweets the color of fresh arterial blood, and one spiced pumpkin confection shaped like a small gourd. She encounters the wolf at precisely 2:47 PM, seventeen meters past the old balsam grove where the snow is deepest and wettest and most tactically advantageous. Act I: The Decoy. The basket drops in slow motion. Candy scatters across white snow in a perfect radius—citrus orange, sherbet yellow, strawberry red, pumpkin amber. The wolf's pupils dilate, furry nostrils flare. He has, Red notes with satisfaction, a documented weakness for sugar. This was always part of the plan. Chapter Two: Infrastructure and Positioning. While he inhales the scent of lemon sherbet (his favorite), Red moves through the balsam with the efficiency of someone who attended Camp Hemlock, Summer 2019, Wilderness Survival Track. Her supplies: three beeswax candles (ivory, hand-dipped), one ball of cranberry garland (crimson, 6.5 meters), hearthwood kindling, and a small tin of smoked myrrh resin she's been saving for exactly this scenario. The tripwire is string between two symmetrical trees. The kindling arranges itself into a small, controlled pyre. Part III: The Immolation. The wolf collects circus peanuts in his mouth like a child. He doesn't notice the garland at ankle height, stretched taut and gleaming. The fall is spectacular—all four legs, perfect cartoon arc. He lands directly in Red's carefully constructed fire pit, which ignites on impact. The smoked myrrh makes it ceremonial. The beeswax makes it beautiful. The spiced pumpkin treat, crushed beneath him, makes it smell like Halloween and Christmas happened simultaneously in the same terrible instant. Grandmother receives her Christmas candles at 4:32 PM. Most of them, anyway. Red keeps one as a souvenir, amber-drizzled and slightly singed.
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Thomas Dambo's wooden trolls spend their days in the elements, rain-soaked, moss-creeping up their knuckles, lichen settling into the grain. By nightfall, they're sodden all the way through, rotting slowly like any forgotten sculpture left to the weather. But they have a place to go when darkness falls, a sanctuary no one else knows about. Inside, the air is warm and impossibly dry. Cured wood, glossily lacquered, polished and gleaming. Spices whisk and whirl—cardamom and allspice, toasted and bronzed and blistered. A warmth that draws the damp, straight through to heartwood. They settle in, creaking and groaning, and feel a glow kindling in their hollow chests, the feeling inside when you're finally, finally home.
- Yesterday
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2025 Version: This is one that is difficult to parse based on the description. There’s a lot of overlaps between “cologne” and “herbs,” and possibly even “ashes” and “cake” ! I will say that there is a gourmand aspect to this iteration, albeit subtle. The opening is buttery with a bit of herbs and possibly moss? But quickly a luminous citrus enters the scene. I imagine this is part of the cologne accord, but it brings to mind a barely sweet panettone (or another austere Italian dessert) with candied citrus peel. The scent straddles the divide between herbal citrus cake gourmand and classic fougère for a while, before the cologne finally wins out. Now it is in line with some other masculine BPALs of the more fae sort. If I had to take a stab at some of the components in this cologne it would be: bergamot (and possibly petitgrain), lavender, tonka, oakmoss, possibly musk. I totally get the Dorian comparisons and I also see a resemblance to Jareth. There is a kind of gold fougere glow to Dumb Cake that both of those scents also have. Ironically, I find Dumb Cake to be much less sugary and therefore more wearable than Dorian, whose cotton candy halo always feels like it belongs to someone else on me. Instead of sugar, this Dumb Cake is dusted with… flour? It may be the ash accord (if not I don’t know where the ash is here) but it isn’t smoky at all, and it reminds me a lot of the flour accord in Marlou’s Doliphor. I eyed this back when it first appeared in 2014 and didn’t get a bottle, so I’m glad I could snag one this year! It’s everything I was hoping it would be: a little dapper, a little spooky, a little cold, but a little cozy too. For the moment it’s quite soft, but surprisingly persistent. Very very happy with this blind buy.
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After 18 years of bpal (and having tested probably more than 1800+ scents), I think I found my signature scent. A scent that's a culmination of my identity: my mother's favourite note of patchouli, my father's favourite note of lilac, and my favourite notes of slightly sweet powdery woody earthiness. Even the theme is on point for me: gender non-conforming, kinda queer, neurodivergent, etc. Whatever weird note it started off with when freshly applied, dissipates within just a few minutes on me, and I'm left with this beautiful cozy aura surrounding me that lingers lightly all day. I've only had this for about 10 days, but it's already pushed my top all-time favourite scents out of the lead. A blind-bottle purchase that certainly paid off, and I'm planning for multiple backups before it comes down.
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I got a sample of the perfume oil and then decided to try a bottle of the beard oil. The scent is just delightfully versatile (truly enhancing whatever you wear, whoever you are) and so is the beard oil formulation - perfect for multiple uses. I like it better in my hair than the hair gloss, it works tremendously well as a body oil you can layer with other perfume oils, and the dropper makes it super easy to add to the bath. If you already enjoy the hair gloss and bath oil formulas, you should know this one is different, but I want to reassure folks who don't have a beard that you can still get a lot of mileage out of a beard oil!
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This is my new favorite lavender room/linen spray! That perfect cotton fabric note matches the lavender in intensity on first spray and this scent is so soothing and wholesome. Adding to this feeling are the flour and sugar notes, which appropriately read less fresh-baked cookies and more deconstructed cookie ingredients, powdery and very lightly sweet. There are some other subtle notes that for my nose remain "kitchen mysteries," as I can't quite pick them out and name them. They add some interesting subtle spicy and herbal notes to the overall impression but stay in the background. I will be spritzing this around whenever I need some anti-anxiety influences or just want to feel wholesome and cared for.
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This is the perfect hair gloss to match with all of your slushy snow scents. The pomegranate is bright and tart, the slush is chilly and icy. My nose is picking up some kind of fresh evergreen note in the background as well. This reminds me of Fresh Green Holly HG but colder and with a stronger red fruit note. While this is a gorgeous Solstice/Christmas/Yule scent, I'll be wearing it all winter and wishing it was colder where I live.
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Sniffing right out of the bottle, the cardamom and amber give a tingly sweet spice and resin combo. Wet on skin, the sweet roasted chestnut shows up immediately and I'm already in love with this scent. It only gets richer, warmer and sweeter as it dries and the caramel shows up. This combo is just so lovely and cozy! This is the perfect perfume for staying in when it's extra chilly outside and you'd just rather cuddle on the couch in your flannel pjs with your cats and drink some spiced hot beverage.
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Minty lemon peel with dried apple Poo-pourri in the bottle, which I am certain was not the intended vibe at all. On skin, I don't hate it, though! Very "cold" smelling without being too sharp or astringent. Dries down to a lovely, ephemeral sweetness and lasts for about 4 hours. Pleasant, and will be enjoyed for as long as it lasts.
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Must like champagne notes. If I look for it, I can find the lavender in this, but mostly it's a fizzy champagne with musk. Edit: I can smell a bit of the Snow White that another user referred to, but shockingly, it doesn't go as strongly playdough.
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Evokes an 18th century gentleman's daughter taking a turn around a spring garden on a sunny day. The chlorophyllic greenness generally associated with these flowers is tempered by the sweetness of the amber and a very delicate, airy softness. I almost feel as though I can smell an actual breeze when wearing this! With very low sillage, this is for you and you alone. Lasts about 6 hours before fading away. This is a beautiful blend of happiness and softness in a bottle. I agree with others who said it's work (and small space) safe. Perfect for those days when you want to feel pretty.
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My skin plays with these scents quite a bit differently. No leather (thank goodness, because I usually emote "new car smell" with leather notes). The macadamia overwhelmed right out of the bottle, but that toned down in seconds. Now it's like someone spilled a bit of macademia oil on a batch of old parchment, while burning a beeswax candle a safe distance away from that stack of flammable paper, and in the breakroom down the hall, someone is biting into a fresh-out-of-the-oven crusty roll. Will have to see if this continues to develop because I can't eat bread anymore, and resent being reminded. And drool isn't a cute look on anyone.
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Hungry Ghost Moon: Hazelnut Spread and Mini Marshmallows
quantquill replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Duets & Menage A Trois
Y'all. ❤️ Y'all, this is so good. The very first blast is Nutella. Within a few seconds, it settles into an absolutely amazing blended dark chocolate hazelnut hint of cherry marshmallows. I swear there's also some amber, keeping this from full-on gourmand. I can't believe I was so nervous to try this one because I tend to amp nuts, but this is just the perfect balance.
