marared
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Everything posted by marared
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I am having a hard time picking out any of the actual notes except the hazelnut, but boy, this is delicious. Warm, friendly, fuzzy but not TOO fuzzy, with a little cool and bright zing from the mandarin cutting through it all. After several minutes, the "peppery" part of the musk shows up and the hazelnut and mandarin recede a bit, but it's still so so good. It's fairly strong on my wrist, but not a huge amount of throw.
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I did not parse when I first ordered it that this was blended with Snow White. I hate Snow White on my skin. It is one of the (relatively few, thankfully) scents that goes stale/sour and requires multiple scrubs to get off. So I tried TKSnow with an awful lot of trepidation, and surprisingly, it does not behave as badly as SW does on its own. There is is a period of about ten minutes where I can smell the SW and the ick is lurking, but it gets subsumed by a cool dark vanilla. Regular TKO cycles between marshmallow and lavender on me, but this one stays mostly low-key sweet.
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Fruity and cheerful! It reminds me very much of Invisible Gingerbread Man without the gingerbread and I am assuming it must be the same lemon note. BPAL's blackberry can be really loud, but here it's pretty well tamed under the lemon, and I can't even pick out the blackcurrant. It's a delightful lemon soda, something I will enjoy wearing in the spring or even just as a pick-me-up.
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Kind of a cranberry Crayola crayon, at first sniff. It's cooler than I expected - skin musk is usually very warm, but the cranberries are cold. It's a bit of okay, nothing exciting, will need to stash it for a while and see if it improves with time as musk often does.
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This one is a bit odd and I've had a hard time putting my finger on it, even after letting it sit for a few weeks. It is definitely cool blue and airy, but I don't really get the ozone or the opoponax. Vanilla is there, yes - this particular vanilla reminds me a bit of Ghosts of Aldershot without the mint. I think "medicinal" is the right description here, but I've never gotten that from benzoin, so maybe it's the tobacco giving that particular impression on my skin? After about 10-15 minutes or so, there's the tobacco - it gets darker and more masculine, but there's still that creepy blue zing underneath.
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2022 version: The pomegranate incense is what makes this for me. It's not very strong, but it's there, and it really elevates the blend. The pumpkin and leather are the strongest right off the bat, and the patchouli is an undercurrent, not too loud. After 20-30 minutes, it's mostly patchouli and leather, with a bit of butteriness from the pumpkin and the incense.
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If you like the original Oblivion, you definitely want this. Apples really elevate this into something beautiful. It's almost like a high end craft cider - smooth, not too sweet, no effervesence, just really good apples. I've been waiting it out to see if the apple turns funky at all, and thankfully so far it does not. The apple has receded after a few minutes and the wood and spices peek out. The whole scent fades quite a bit 10-15 minutes in, but it's still lovely even close to the skin. I gotta run back to the Lab and order a couple more.
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Green Cardamom, Irish Fern, and Hinoki
marared replied to Silvertree's topic in Duets & Menage A Trois
I like this one a lot. In the bottle, it's very green and almost swampy with the fern (in a fresh sort of way). On my skin, it's heavy on the cardamom to start, but the wood comes out and the two are in pretty equal balance after half an hour or so, but the fern disappears almost entirely after a few minutes. Medium to low throw - it is not nearly as pungent as Green Cardamom, Oakmoss, and Patchouli, that's for sure (which I also like, but boy you can smell me comin' from across the room). -
Frottle! I normally have trouble with fig, as it turns kinda chewy and nasty on my skin, but it behaves nicely here (after 15 years of aging!) I mostly get olive oil and a somewhat smoky amber, with a hint of honey and a hint of pastry. The fruit has mostly vanished from the scent, so I layered it with Pomegranate Sufganiyot for some extra yum.
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This is my favorite of the Liliths this year. It's a bright, happy, and fresh floral, definitely golden as the description says. There was a camphoric aspect to the lavender and chamomile that seems to have settled down in the few days since I got the box. The lavender is there, but the chamomile is definitely the stronger note. The cream, amber, and pear blossoms wash through the whole scent and give it warmth. It's really lovely.
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The first time I tried this, I couldn't smell the blackberries at all. I smell them now in the bottle, loud and fruity as they are in the summer BPALs. On my skin, the blackberry vanishes right away and leaves a vaguely nail polish funk that I think is the cade plus the ylang ylang. I am not familiar with cade, but is described as being phenolic. It's not as frightening as oud can sometimes be, but you do have to ride it out for a little while. The patchouli is in there , the vanilla and labdanum not so much. I think this is a blend that will really benefit from aging, give everything a chance to settle and meld for 6-12 months.
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I often amp rose blends, and unfortunately this is one of them. It's a pretty rose - a touch of floral powderiness, but otherwise smells quite natural - it's just so LOUD on my skin that I have a hard time picking out anything else in the blend. If I really inhale and think about it, the pepperberry is there lending a slightly fruity tang way down underneath it all, and there's a tiny bit of labdanum bringing up the back end, but no vanilla, no patchouli, just ROSE.
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This is a nice, uncomplicated scent. Very definitely wildflower honey - it's got that rich tang to it that isn't in clover, orange blossom, etc. The labdanum does its usual fizzy soda thing, and the vanilla is not particularly noticeable. It's thick and sweet, but not overpoweringly so.
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I was really interested in this and it's not at ALL what I expected. I was hoping for a nice zingy citrus whoosh with the musk, but it's a harsh orange blossom on my skin. I let it sit for a while, hoping that more subtleties would develop, but alas, this is going straight to the NOPE pile.
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This is, basically, strawberry scented incense. There's no floral aspect that I can detect at all, the patchouli is there but very gentle, the labdanum is not fizzy, and the strawberry is more jammy than fresh, but it doesn't smell artificial and it's not too sweet. I kinda like it.
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Strawberry has never been one of my favorite BPALs - every one I've ever tried has not worked real well, but they've also been super sweet, either in a desserty or a plasticky way. This is a lot more of a *fresh* sweet. The strawberries are loud on immediate applications, but it turns green very quickly, with the vanilla sugar faint in the background. If this came in a shower gel I would buy multiple bottles. I might wear this more often than I initially thought when I first got it, too.
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(Since I am apparently the first reviewer, I'm not sure if we're lumping all four variants under a CTV title, or if we're going to split the topics for each base, so I went with the latter.) VIII Easily, it's Boomslang without the cocoa note. In the bottle, the oil is very gourmand - I initially thought it was hazelnut, but that's obviously not an option, as the Lab excluded major allergens like nuts. It's sweet, but a dry sweet, and when it's wet on my skin, it briefly takes on a woody note. I thought about it for a while, and when I hit on the Boomslang comparison, I realized that what I'm smelling is *rice*. It's Snake Oil and rice pudding! And it's actually pretty yummy too, so far. I'm gonna stash this for a while and see how I like it in a month or two.
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It's fudgy in the bottle, but the coffee appears immediately on my skin. It takes a little while for the amber to peep out, and the cardamom mostly just holds the scent together rather than being a noticeable ingredient, but this is mostly cocoa-tinged coffee on me - and I am totally okay with this. It's a somewhat dry scent, and it lasts several hours, but it doesn't have a lot of throw. I particularly like dabbing it in my hair and getting a nice whiff when I take it down after work.
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Frottled in an order. Bright, fresh, agree that that's probably rose geranium, might be bergamot too. Not sure what the underlying sweet note is but probably floral. I might dab this on my wool dryer balls, but I don't think I'll wear it for myself.
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Starts out as loud powdery orange blossom, but morphs pretty drastically over the course of 10-15 minutes through the amber and into a very frankincense-forward with the orange blossom entwined underneath. Surprisingly, it doesn't end up as powdery as I expected. It's also not nearly as loud as it was at first. Basically, don't let the opening salvo scare you off - let it sit on your skin for a while and see if it's more to your liking.
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Green Cardamom, Oakmoss, and Patchouli
marared replied to Seajewel's topic in Duets & Menage A Trois
This immediately reminds me of Stung By The Cock Tree In Hell, so I assume it must be the same patchouli. It is loud, fuzzy, and unrepentantly masculine - a very Billy Butcher blend! Oakmoss really takes the spotlight here, and the cardamom keeps it dry. I kind of wish it had a more sparkle - a ginger, citrus, or labdanum might be good layering options. I dabbed a little Hanksite Phoenix on it to see how that worked, and now I have Billy Butcher who bothered to put on some deodorant this morning. I don't think I could wear this on its own, but there is definite layering potential. -
Yesterday when I took it out of the box, it was patchouli. Today, it's sandalwood, oakmoss, and just a ping of vetiver. No vanilla or leather, or at least it's not noticeable. It is a much, much drier scent than I expected - I thought it would be fruitier, and I do kinda wish there was just a little more plum/berry to it, but that's why we layer! (I've got a bottle of Elderberry Flower & Sandhill Plum, that might go well with this...)
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I'm normally not a fan of sweeter scents, but I wanted to give this a shot. I agree with an earlier comment that this would be great for canoodling - the marshmallow is lovely and soft, and the plum gives it a nice dark feel - it's more almost more purple-musk than purple-fruit to me. It avoids being ghastly sweet AND the plum does not turn the whole thing into craft store ambience, which is a win.
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Tobacco honey. Wow. This was totally not what I was expecting. Fresh out of the bottle, it's nauseatingly gasoline-sweet. I suppose it should have occurred to me that honey comes from the flowers, not from the dried leaves, because what I think I was hoping for was that rich, smoky, cured tobacco + honey. I'm not even sure I can leave this on long enough for the drydown, let alone stash it for aging.
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This is super rich and chocolatey in the bottle and freshly applied, with the whiskey a zingy undercurrent, but the long-term drydown is much different. It's still rich but much less sweet. It reminds me a little of TokyoMilk's Bittersweet, which has totally different secondary notes, but also turns into a dry, non-gourmand cocoa scent. It has a bit of throw at first, sticks close to the skin once it dries, and lasts several hours.