obsidienne

What the...?! I was so sure this would be worth an unsniffed order. I think my nose is not quite right in the... uh, nose, since I haven't read other reviews that give the impression I am having! Just received this in the mail today; new, Lab fresh. Possibly bottle-shocked, but I rolled it gently for quite a long time in my palm to ensure that it would be well mixed before I tried it... A while back, I ordered Siren, and it was horrid to my nose - it smelled like dusty mouldy old ginger & jasmine. This smells like a lot like that, minus the jasmine. Dusty, old, weird. Not like sexy Snake Oil with some hot spices thrown in. Like spicy dust! Please tell me this will age well. Please tell me this will age well. Please tell me this will age well. Please tell me this will age well. As it dries down more, it gets sassier, but only just. I almost feel like I smell dragon's blood... and I loathe, despise and hate dragon's blood. *is so confused* The cinnamon gets stronger and stronger, becoming sweet and reminding me of Red Hots candies (in a good way). It's tingling a bit, too. That's a lot of cinnamon! Okay, dry down is way better than fresh. Like night and day. But really tingly. I'd be worried about putting this in the usual places (behind ears, hollow of throw, a swipe on the breastbone) because it might make the skin red and angry. But in a scent locket, it would smell like that awful not-quite-right ginger. Argh! ... I think I should pass this on.

True story: I applied this to my wrists and then went and put one under my boyfriend's nose as he was washing up some dishes. He sniffs and then gets a happy look on his face and says, "Ohh, cinammon!" He adds, "Definitely inspires my passion." I then tell him, "It's called 'All Night Long'"; we laugh. All Night Long is cinnamony sexiness. I can't tell what is holding it down, perhaps a soft resin, as the cinnamon loses its initial overbearing strength and blends into something still cinnamony, but not so strong, perhaps balanced with ginger. But really, this is just fabulous cinnamon-spicy goodness. Kind of like those hot lips candies! I'd consider a bottle of this -- if I didn't already have so much perfume, that is!

A rockin' yet dark spicy leather with the amber and myrrh flirting around the smoky red musk. Wow. I didn't expect this to be so crazy & drop dead sexy! LOVE.

Very pretty! I love amber, so "three ambers" seemed worth the risk of ordering before the reviews came in. This turned out to be a bit different from my expectations. Instead of a warm & gloriously amberriffic oil, this seems like pale flashing lemony green amber - very bright & sunny, like pale golden sunlight flashing off dancing water (the citrusy verbena is almost a bit salty to my nose). The amber deepens a bit on drydown, but this does strike me as more of a citrus scent than most. That said, I like it, and I am the last person to wear citrus blends! It's a lot like Aizen-Myoo, but purer. This scent would be great for: waking up, staying alert, feeling fresh, longing for summer.

"Rose-infused dark amber, with sweet orange, honey, cardamom, patchouli, apricot, pink pepper, and red sandalwood?" This sounded like scent-MECCA to me! I was expecting a rich and glorious resin fest with this blend, and instead it is very watery and light! It's also incredibly balanced, so that although I get a very light sweet orange-apricot effect, with hints of pink pepper and honey and mayyybe the amber, everything else seems to be MIA or is merely contributing to the overall effect without being distinguishable from the rest. I live for rose&amber blends, so the missing rose element is bugging me more than I thought it would! I like it... it's beautiful... but I really did want something richer, darker and thicker smelling. I'm going to let this rest for 3-6 months and see where it goes. Edit: further drydown sees the appearance of the rose, but so subtly that anyone who felt trepidation about the rose note should not be too worried! It's quite delicate.

In the beginning, the rose-infused amber is a little bit upstaged by very strong sandalwood, which is almost thorny and catches a little at my nose. However, the throw, which is pretty decent, is a rather bright, tart rose, with the golden warmth that amber brings to the table and the sandalwood making me feel like I am walking through a giant rosebush garden. I love this blend, and almost ordered a bottle with my Anniversaries, but I'd like to see how this imp ages for a few more months before I decide if it's a "NEED IT NAOW" issue; if the sandalwood can smooth out and deepen and let the rose-amber shine out a bit more, I will be rushing to grab myself a bottle. Again, throw decent, but the lasting power is not particularly great and requires reapplication for me (my skin eats oil, though, so YMMV). Edit: A two year old bottle of this scent has sat in my perfume box for a long time without really being used -- you know how it is, always so many new scents, always new obsessions. Well, it has aged into a beautiful thing. The sandalwood is now utterly smooth and calm. In fact, when I wore this yesterday, I imagined that I had climbed into a sunlit attic. The attic is not particularly full of stuff, just a few trunks holding old keepsakes. The warm smell of sunshine and wood fill the air, and a vase of roses has for some reason been brought into this space. The smell is so evocative, smooth gold and a beautiful rose.

When I first heard that Marianne was going to be discontinued, I rushed to order 2 bottles because I was going through a seriously mental red musk phase and I had been very curious about her. When I finally got Marianne, however, I found it a weak-smelling, slightly watery red musk with a bit of floral & perhaps a hint of fruit. I was, to say the least, disappointed. It was like a watercolour painting. Fast forward to however long it has been since I got it (a few months). Marianne has matured into a stunning blend. Everything in it now comes together to create a vibrant & sensual floral red musk, with a hint of those black currants giving it a fruity sparkle... but it's also very well blended, so that nothing really stands out too strongly (although red musk is always very "HAI I R TEH RED MUSKS" to my nose, I find that it's often a great note that "brings things together" to create harmony and smoothness within a scent). That watercolour is now more like an jewel-toned oil painting. It has depth, strength and richness, a bit of sweet from the orchid and lotus, and a bit of spiciness from the patchouli that makes me think of this as another relative of the recent LE, Mircalla. Purples, reds and blacks. Yum. Like many others have mentioned, Marianne reminds me of a lighthearted Mme. Moriarty, but this is a lot more wearable (don't get me wrong, I LOVE Mme. Moriarty, it's just that she's so overwhelming at times!). So.... wow. Go glad I put this at the back of the box for a bit. This is fantastic.

*steals for herself* Great list!

Just thinking... if you can, perhaps try Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills - this isn't a snow scent, per se, but it's crystalline and chilly and beautiful and sweet... and it makes me think of snow. I get more than my fill of snow here in Canada, and I have yet to smell a blend that really smells LIKE snow. I'm still hoping, especially with this years releases!

This ends an amazingly pure sweet tea rose on me (I imagine a yellow tea rose here), with some warmth and light butteriness from the pumpkin, and a hint of spicy wood from the sandalwood and rosewood. AMAZING. If you are a rose-nutter (I am!), please consider this gorgeous blend!

This starts off very almondy but ends a simple, golden honeyed pumpkin. The other two notes meld into it but don't actually register to me at all! The honey almost seems... white. This is very pure and light and... well, like I said, just golden. Almost like vanilla, but not quite. I can't believe this, but I want a bottle!

Spicy pumpkin latte with dark cocoa. There's cinnamon here! Yum! I can't detect the hazelnut or vanilla (yet)... BPAL chocolate often goes plasticky on me, but this is pure, gorgeously dusty cocoa, no plastic in sight. Perfection. The coffee note is subtle and not at all stale or bad. I wibble about a bottle of this because I am not sure if I will reach for it very often, but... it's so warming and comforting. A little goes a long way, amazing lasting power! I can only dream of how amazing this will be when aged!

OH MY GOD. This smells like... tropical CHRISTMAS! This is all spicy shimmering greens and purples and reds... the green elements, the cinnamon and the orchid with the palm are unutterably gorgeous. I'm sorry I wish I could review this more coherently for others to get a better idea of whether they want to try it... I'm here to say, "Just try it."

This scent is so pink! It starts off floral and quite musky, with little shimmering spots (amber?). Then it dries down to a sort of pretty, girlish pink scent, pink musk over the white amber and light sandalwood (very very light, both of them). I'm not registering the myrrh and the jasmine is very subtle to me. This is really nice but needs further testing, perhaps on a day where I am not wearing Mme. Moriarty, which is a tough act to follow.

This is all wax, smoke, perhaps some very light musk (probably skin musk), and something with a very light lemony overtone to lighten it. Warm and glowing, but a very close to the skin scent. This doesn't smell as much like beeswax to me as it seems to smell to others, though, which is a point against it. The only point. I like this a lot, although it's so low profile that I can't see myself remembering to grab it often. That said, I'd love to have a bottle just to have one. That sort of thing. Edit: Now that it's been on a while it's getting a lot sweeter, which means beeswax, baby! I think I might have to order a bigger version of this.....

Phantasm reminds me a lot of Namaste, minus cedar and patchouli (I could never smell the rose). It's lighter, sweet, greener, fresher, but definitely related. Not a lot to say here -- a lovely light blend that would be absolutely perfect for spring and summer. The jasmine & lemongrass amp on me, with the green tea wafting overtop. Lovely.

This turns into anise-cherry cough syrup on me. I have an older imp and a newer, and the newer is a little less cough syrupy... but neither work for me. How anise, cherry blossom & sandalwood = cherries is beyond me!

I'm starting to think that I have an allergy to certain blends with sandalwood in them -- Morocco, Inez, Anne Bonny, and now Veil have given me the sniffles of doom. Not all sandalwood blends seem to do this to me (so far? I wasn't paying attention until recently). *is baffled*

The fizziest blend I have ever smelled is Independent, a fizzy lemon cola sort of experience. It was an unreleased "frimp with purchase" LE. You may be able to find it on the forums.

Oh vetiver... why do you smell so bad to my nose? So sharp and burnt and prickly? I think I'd have liked this were it not for the vetiver. I sense patchouli and bright orange and a hint of sparkle from the ylang ylang, but vetiver has a nasty habit of bitch-slapping all the other notes in most blends -- it must just be my nose. It starts off harsh and mellows a bit over time, but the vetiver still takes control and it never gets comfortable. That said, I wonder how this would age... then again, patchouli and vetiver are likely to amp, whereas citrus and florals are not. Bleh.

Take Vixen (which, don't get me wrong, I like) and replace the patchouli with vanilla, jasmine and apricot.... & we get this: a smell like jasmine-dirt and musty old socks. With some ginger and more musty notes. Maybe there's some vanilla in there, but if it is, it's contributing to a very Bad Experience. Wait, Euphrosyne smelled pretty nasty to me. Perhaps vanilla and jasmine are not meant to come together in my nostrils.

Sweet, creamily soft and warm jasmine with a waft of cool purple lavender over top. I suspect the honeysuckle is what is tempering this jasmine and giving it such a delicate feeling. I'm in love with this.

Okay, I have two imps of this: one quite aged about a year, and one about six months. In both, I could almost swear that there is skin musk in this blend, with some honey and a touch of spice... but really, all I get is sweet honeyed skin musk with barely-there hints of patchouli and clove. Fig is MIA. The older imp smells far muskier than the newer, which may have a hint of ylang ylang. I expected a lot more spice out of this.

The notes list really kills me: I expected to freaking love this blend and want it to have my babies; instead my nose rebels and receives a... a diaperish vanilla for all of its sniffing efforts. Weird. I don't know why, but while wet I get very little other than an extremely musky & sickly vanilla bean with hints of "grey" amber and lavender and carnation and rose, all jumbling around down there a bit, too. I wanted more rose, but it's being bitch-slapped by all of this musky unpleasantness. Crazy musks, crazy sweet vanilla. It starts to calm down and get much more pleasant as it dries, becoming a soft light vanilla musk, very relaxed and pretty. I don't know what else to say -- it goes from an overwhelming scent to something really quite.... nice! That was fast. Not the most long lasting blend on my skin. Edit: I think my bottle was shocked, because this smells really good now. Very sweet musky vanilla, with some lovely carnation. Amber and leaves still MIA to my nose. I also disappointingly get no rose and if there is lavender there, it's just giving it a slightly slushy feel, but it's not very noticeable as lavender, per se. This reminds me a LOT of Antique Lace, although less sweet (AL smells insanely sweet to me, it would be hard to smell that sweet!). I like this, it's very warm and yet sparkling, somehow... but I won't keep my backup, as I know I won't reach for this often enough to ever get to it. Edit 2: This now reminds of a much lighter (or less musky), floral Dorian.

I expected to love this, but alas -- while wet, I get the medicinal cola of doom that others found. Crazy boozy spicy resinous cola! However! It happens to stop being cola after a long drydown, and it smells really good on my boyfriend. Once it dried on him, it smelled like the darkest, smoothest sexiest resin I could have imagined. On me, it's intense and packed full of a variety of scents: Dense amber, dark hot patchouli, rich musk, something a teeny bit earthy and dirty, a little bit of sticky sweet, and something a little bright and sharp and metallic, like a blade caught by the light in the dark. And while I love all of that, it's not good on me. It was smooth on my boyfriend, and it's too jumbled on me for me to sink into it. My boyfriend doesn't like these types of scents at all! How unfair of him to deny me the pleasure of smelling him with this on. It doesn't work on me, and it works on him, but he won't wear it. Drrr! That means only one thing.