marared

"Floriental" is a good word for this one. I bought it to support the cause, because I'm not usually a fan of flowerbomb scents, but I've been surprised by stranger blends, so I gave it a try.

It is a BLAST of stanky jasmine right out of the bottle and a little terrifying, to be honest. But if you can survive the first minute of HOLY COW JASMINE, it suddenly morphs into something else entirely. The jasmine is still there, but it takes a backseat to honeyed carnation. Even the red musk, normally a note that I amp to high heaven, is way down there in the mix. The leather & sandalwood are a supporting base that keeps the flowers from running amok, and the final result is very classy, a very adult woman who's got her sh*t (and probably everyone else's) under control.

Queen of the Honeyed Heart is a sister scent that's pinker and sweeter, but that same Fabulous Woman In Control kind of floral.

When I first opened the box, I had just arrived home from work, so I dabbed a tiny bit from the cap on my hand without checking the notes, and bustled about my evening chores. It smelled gently masculine - wood-based cologne with a slight floral touch. It was the kind of masculine that's probably straight but not afraid to wear pink or a feather boa.

Sat down after ten minutes and dabbed a little more on the same spot, and suddenly it's not even the same scent. It's a lot of dry oakmoss, and less almond that THANKFULLY doesn't (or hasn't yet) turned into that cherry-adjacent gack that I hate. I can't smell the rosemary, and rosemary is usually kinda pungent - there's no herby tang to this at all. Nor can I smell the jasmine - A' Rovin has that immediately identifiable slighly indolic zing, but not here. It's just a slight breath of floral that gentles the oakmoss a bit.

I am gonna come back to this one in 6-8 months and see if the almond calms down, because it's a little too sharp right now.

2015 version.

It took FIVE YEARS for this scent to be wearable. FIVE. I bought this after testing a friend's bottle from ...2006? 2007? Whichever version she had, I was in love with it. When I got this, I said GACK because it was so strong and overwhelming, and put it away. I tested it a couple times a year after that, and around 2018 it started to get more tolerable. It's still not the same as the older version I tried, but I like it much more now. It's a cool, resinous apple and slightly buttery pumpkin. The spices and the wood have melded together to give a generally dry effect.

Super fruity blackberry musk. I like it, but I would like it more if there was more wood or resin pinning down the fruit. Might have to layer this with something patchouli or sandalwood heavy and see what happens.

Dark, musky lilac. This is a really good lilac, too - I grew up in western NY, where lilacs are A Thing, and most lilac perfumes don't smell right to me. The snow note runs almost parallel to the lilac and I don't notice it unless I inhale and think about it - it's much more prominent in the imp but gets absorbed into the floral on my skin.

It's really pretty, and it does not go powdery. I only got a decant, but it's on my shortlist for a bottle.

This scent reads as something very classical BPAL. The fruity red musk for sure, but something in the floral notes is also something that my nose specifically identifies as BPAL.

It tries very, very hard to go powdery. I almost thought this had rose in it. It's extremely pink and extremely feminine, but it is not at all what I would call girly - nor is it sultry. It's bright and confident. After about 10-15 minutes, it's still floral, but the benzoin and what I think is the blue yarrow and/or motherwort start to peek out. The honey is just a stream through the scent, I can smell it there but it doesn't try to dominate everything.

It does get pretty loud with body heat!

This was my first sufganiyot - I thought real hard about the raspberry one, but the lab's raspberry note does not generally work well on me, whereas the pomegranate does. This is absolutely delicious, desserty, tart and juicy red fruit. I smell more of the pastry in the bottle than I do on my skin, but it is definitely sugared fruit for baking rather than fresh cut.

Low throw - sticks close to the skin and fades pretty quickly, although a hint of it remains on the sleeves of my hoodie.

2020:

Evergreen, woods, and fur! Hardly any musk, but the vetiver is smoky/scorched rather than vegetal. I love vetiver and vetiver loves me, and it goes well with the woods. No civet stank that I can detect, even on a deep inhale. The evergreen aspect fades after about ten minutes and the scent is bone-dry, woody vetiver-rubbed fur.

I had to go dab Two Sheep and Two Goats to compare, and I would call them sister scents - TSTG is more cozy and just slightly sweeter, but if you like that one, give YC a try.

I got this because the notes are reminiscent of one of my favorite alcoholic drinks (Canton ginger, courvoisier, cointreau, candied ginger rim, lemon). It doesn't quite smell like the drink (in fact, the drink doesn't smell like much at all, but the ginger and then the alcohol sucker punches you after about three sips), but it's interesting!

In the bottle, I smell the gingerbread, and fizzy champagne that is very high-pitched and the scent hits way up in the top of my nose.

On my skin, there's no gingerbread - it's fizzy, doughy, lemon and sugar. Lemon cookies, but fresh from the champagne rather than gourmand or spiced from the ginger.

This is pretty much straight up bell pepper with a bit cucumber on me, but it's muted in a way that makes me assume it must be the impact of the cream. Salty cream. I smell no pumpkin or tomato, maybe a hint of the sage. And this is actually pretty good! I almost kinda want this in a hand lotion, or a shower gel.

I'm with the laundry reviews - this smells like really nice dryer sheets. Clean apple, not powdery, not juicy or even fruity, just fresh airy apple.  Not something I want to wear, but I am very seriously thinking about dabbing this on one of my wool dryer balls.

In the bottle and immediately on application, it smells a lot like Jack, but it very quickly goes buttery. Gourmand. Pastry. A few minutes later I start smelling the spices. I do not smell the Smut, and Smut is usually loud red musk on me. Let it sit for about 15 minutes and "buttered pastry with spices" is where it remains.

You know how sugar cookies often have a little lemon in them? This smells like lavender sugar cookies in the imp. On my skin, it gets brighter and the bergamot and tea both get stronger, but it still retains that slightly sweet cookie aspect to it.

I am in that small group of people that really enjoys vetiver, and I have always gotten along well with oakmoss and sandalwood of every variety, so I had high hopes for this scent and I was not at all disappointed.

This is not scorched, smoky vetiver - it's quite mild and smooth - but if you are not a fan, this probably won't change your mind. The sandalwood is the most prominent note, and it's very dry. I don't know if "sweet" is really the descriptive I want for the oakmoss, but it counters the dryness of the sandalwood with something that's almost powdery. If I spray it on my skin, it starts to develop a craft store soap whiff to it, but in my hair it stays dry and woody. And unlike the other hair glosses I've tried so far, the scent really lasts - I've had it in for several hours and I can still smell it clearly.

ETA six weeks later: This is a lot less "sweet" now, and the vetiver is a lot more noticeable on first spray. The rest still stands, though - it's not scorched or vegetal, and the sandalwood is still the most prominent once the scent settles.

This is absolutely beautiful in the bottle and on application: bright, fresh, juicy apple and honey that is not syrupy. I reeeeeally have to inhale to pick up any amber or vanilla husk. No cedar, no oud, not even saffron which is normally a pretty assertive note. Very low throw.

After a few minutes, the scent darkens up a bit. The vanilla starts showing up, and I think that must be the oud, because it's still not amber or cedar - but there's also no trace of indoles. Hooray!

And then after about twenty minutes? It's gone. My skin ate it all, only the barest hint remains. It's a really gorgeous scent, with very little staying power.

Mine is also 24 hours out of the mailbox. I don't like uber-sugary scents (at least not to wear), and this was exactly what I hoped for: the sweetness tamped down by the dryness of the leaves (although there is nothing definitively *leafy* here) and the warm nuttiness of the pistachio. And I can actually smell that it's PISTACHIO, too! I am pretty sure that this is going right into my fall/winter rotation.

It's moderately strong when my nose is close to my wrist, but it doesn't have a lot of throw.

I put this on by accident about ten minutes ago because I grabbed the wrong bottle with the Menage artwork (look, there's not a lot of light in my apartment first thing in the morning and the corner was dark!), and figured what the heck, I'll review it as long as it's on. And then when I sat down to do the review... the scent was almost completely gone. I reapplied a little more heavily, went to make breakfast, and when I sat back down, it's still extremely low throw and fading fast. It's warm, creamy, not milky, I think the honey dust helps give it that "toasty" impression. Very mild scent, very pretty, but not something you want to wear if you want everyone passing within a couple of feet of you to notice, and on me it's just about gone after ten minutes.

Nope. Nope nope nope. The concept was almost exactly on the nose for me: it smells like I ate too much funnel cake at a cheap parking lot carnival and then I got on a pirate ship ride or something else that sends everything sloshing and I can taste it threatening to come back up. I had to scrub it off. I'm going to forget about it for 3-4 years to see if Snake Oil does its thing.

I smell the honeysuckle in the bottle - and almost mistook it for magnolia - but on my skin it's a lightly floral peach, and the peach is juicy, smells very much like actual fruit rather than syrup. The amber is barely there, and the lemon blossom doesn't come out until the honeysuckle fades a bit after a few minutes. It's soft, pretty, feminine, totally summery.

I love this. It's one of the most interesting blends I've ever smelled from the Lab.

Right off the bat, this is very strong, very sharp leafy black pepper on a bed of hay. There is no "tomato" note to it at all, it is strictly that intense green scent on your hands after you've brushed up against a tomato plant. It is extremely peppery. EXTREMELY. The hay sits way down at the bottom of the scent for quite a while. The leafiness starts to fade after about 10-15 minutes, and after a good while longer, the pepperiness finally recedes a little as well, and then the hay comes out - which is startlingly sweet, almost like amber but without being rich or powdery.

It's pretty strong but it doesn't have a lot of throw, and the strength is purely in the pepper; once that fades after about 20-30 minutes, it's a much gentler scent.

Chocolate soap, yep. Well, more like chocolate cleaning fluid rather than *soap* - it's not powdery, but it's high-pitched and unnatural and it smells like a very strange cookie. The amber is barely even noticeable and I typically amp amber a lot.

I tried this after two weeks to see if it was just travel shock, and it has not improved for me. I can't even let it sit on my skin more than ten minutes.

2008 Mead Moon is one of my top tier favorites and I'm running low on my last bottle, so I was looking forward to trying the new one. It is noticeably different, but not in a bad way at all.

2008 is fizzy and bright like soda, and the spices are more prominent - it has a fairly sharp zing to it, and I would have *sworn* it had labdanum, but it doesn't.

2020 is much sweeter, more syrupy, and much heavier on the fruit, but in a good way! It's not overpowering or too jammy. The fruits all blend well, it doesn't announce itself as distinctively berry OR citrus. It smells like a sangria mix without the wine. The spices are still there but they're much further down in the blend. This is delicious, I love it. I bought two, might have to get another couple before they come down...

In the imp, it's loud red musk. Directly applied, it's loud skin musk with the grapey red musk underneath it. After it dries, it's just powdery red musk, which dominates every other note in the blend, even amber.

In the bottle: rich foodie vanilla caramel.

Freshly applied, it smells like smoked caramel, almost chocolatey but not quite - loud, lots of throw.

After a few minutes, it dries down a lot more like the bottle - dark syrupy vanilla. If I put my nose against my skin, inhale deeply, and think about it, I can detect the chili - this note is why I bought it, and I wish it was stronger, because it would give the blend more personality. It might strengthen with some age; we'll see.

Startlingly invigorating like getting hit in the face with a musk-soaked lime. Loud, sharp, heavy throw. Smells more like lime zest than lime fruit, but either way it's eye-watering to the point that I can't wait for the drydown, even after a few months in the closet. Maybe in six more months...