Little Bird

This.. isn't my favorite Thirteen. Actually, it might be my least favorite. This feels like someone took good chocolate, herbal lavender, bone dry parsley and a little sour lemon and rosemary, and whipped it up with some sticky, overly sugary goo, and then poisoned the whole thing and crammed it into your mouth. Sticky, poisonous herbs that someone tried to cover up with chocolate and sugar, and now it's stuck in your mouth with all of those dry herbs. It had a mid stage that reminded me of bitter, green dandelion and dandelion sap as well. Poisoned chocolate and lots of dried herbs. A little sour.

On me, this is sweet gummi peach rings with a tangy, slightly sour edge and an undertone of what smells like a clean, freshly laundered blanket. I get nothing like London Fog (no milk or vanilla syrup), but I get a lemony bergamot feel that makes me think of bpal's crisp white tea note. It's like eating peach gummi candy while rolled up in a clean blanket on the couch. It has that clean, generic, "spring fresh" scent that's clean and sweetly, tartly floral, present in so many laundry products. I haven't tried Dirty in a long time, but that's what this is reminding me of. Snuggly, clean laundry and sour peach gummi candy covered in sugar crystals.

I don't get any cookies from this. It starts off like the lab's melty snow note, cold and refreshing and slushy, and then dries down to a slightly soapy, clean scent with a tiny hint of peppermint.

Strangely, I don't get a burnt or bakery sugar from this at all (no creme brulee or baked goods). Burnt Sugar & Blackberry reminds me a lot of bpal's Sugar Moon series of scents. I wear this and I'm instantly transported to being 6-years-old and my mom picking me and my cousins up and setting us on the kitchen counter so that we could "make Kool-Aid." We would mix berry and cherry kool-aid and then sneak in extra sugar so that it was hyper-sweet and the sugar granules couldn't even dissolve and the sugar was still crunchy while you drank the mixture. Super sugary, very juicy, berry-cherrry Kool-Aid. This smells like that Kool-Aid tasted.

The cardamom here is spicy, bright & sweet and the sandalwood is powdery and softly woodsy. The overall impression is like rolling out holiday spice cookies on a floured wooden cutting board with sweet powdered sugar glaze at the ready. I was surprised at how complex and gourmand this actually is on me. The cardamom doesn't smell quite like itself and actually reminds me of last winter when I was obsessed with making lebkuchen spice cookies (which was a mix of cardamom, clove, allspice, cinnamon and ginger). I love cardamom and I smell the cardamom, but it almost feels like this is a more complex blend of spices.

I'm surprised at how much I love this one. I expected the "Scorched" part to equal some smokiness, but this isn't smoky or burnt at all. This definitely leans masculine (but I wear a lot of traditionally masculine scents and love them) and is all sorts of warm and snuggly, like a sexy lumberjack fantasy in a bottle. Scorched smells like soft, cuddly, brown leather, freshly cut oak, sweet tree sap, and earthy sweetness from the tobacco. Warmly woody. No green notes and no ash or smoke. In the drydown, the tobacco note does have a hint of astringency and a metallic, gold glint to it, but only a hint of something sharper. It feels comforting and casual.

Woods, mushrooms, moss and honey combine to make this swampy, off, slightly sour scent. Makes me think of mud, algae and rotting plant matter.

I'm getting mostly apple and ylang-ylang at first, which sort of translates to a mushy, overly sweet apple and perfumey smelling floral on a base of powdery sandalwood. Together, it smells very 'apple blossom air freshener' to me. No jasmine, tea or lilac. It dries down to this overly sweet, nondescript, perfumey/sharply musky, powdery thing. A scrubber for me.

Very dry and spicy at first. I would have guessed black pepper, clove and red ginger over dry woods. The tar, tobacco and vetiver give it a gritty, smoky, ashy edge that only gets stronger on me over time. I actually wish that the red musk and dragon's blood were stronger on me because I like the glowing, red quality of them and the red musk gives this scent its little bit of sweetness. As it dries down, I really don't care for this too much because it smells so much like a smoldering pile of ash on my skin and leans a little towards dirty ash tray scent.

First on, the amber and rose sandalwood meld together into this floofy, lightly sweet, powdery, pink cloud with a dry soapiness at its edges. I kept thinking that I smelled something dark, murky and a little gross, like seaweed (the mermaid in the name playing that trick on me, I think), but it was probably the patchouli creeping in around the other notes. As it dries down, all of the original notes and impressions disappear and I'm left with a dry headshop incense. It smells exactly like walking into an incense store in the mall with that dry, hazy, cheaper incense scent and something that reminds me of salty tortilla chips. It falls flat on my skin.

I'm obsessed with clove and therefore I am obsessed with this perfume. I would guess that I own well over 100 clove dominant perfume oils and essential oils at this point because I buy anything that mentions clove. I tend to hate cinnamon, but clove is my spicy best friend. I've never actually smelled clove cigarettes, so I don't know how accurate this is to that reality. On me, this smells like someone saturated a marshmallow in sweet clove oil and then blackened it over a fire. It doesn't smell like campfire or ash or intense smokiness, but it has a light whiff of charred sugar smoke to that lovely, spicy, sweet clove. It's a simple, strong, lightly sweetened and delicately smoky clove and I love it.

There's a good amount of cocoa absolute in the bottom of my bottle and this scent really shines if I shake it up a little before applying. I love cocoa absolute because it smells like a shimmery chocolate syrup with glossy, woody undertones. It starts off quite strong and then just lends a gentle sweetness to the other notes. Haul smells like a lot of things that I love - cedar chests, dried patchouli leaves, and sweet tobacco leaves. It's dark, woody and earthy, but also very soft and warm as a fragrance. It's rare that I enjoy dry, woody scents, but I love the earthy patchouli and the sweetness of the cocoa and tobacco, and cedar is my favorite wood scent. Lovely and calming. Edit to add: I forgot to mention that I've had a couple people ask me how this compares to bpal's #occupywallstreet blend and, even though they share a similar notes list, they are nothing alike. I didn't care for #occupywallstreet because it went sour, bitter and sharply dry on me. Haul on the Bowline is what I wished #occupywallstreet was. This is sweeter, smoother, and has no sour or sharp tones. It's a very full, snuggly, sweet earthiness.

I'm starting to love florals as I get older, but I seem to either want them to be gourmand or super sexy. This one is super sexy with a thick, honeyed sweetness, so I love it to bits. The jasmine, honey and hay sugar wind up smelling a lot like honeysuckle on a humid Southern night, the red musk isn't super strong and doesn't have the wine-like fruitiness that I often associate with red musk, but it is very sexy and there's a definite muskiness here, and the carnation adds a beautiful, dry spiciness. It has a lot of beautiful depth to it that makes you want to keep smelling it and get in closer to it. If you told me that A'Rovin was a fancy vintage perfume, I would not argue. I'm so glad that I believed the well deserved hype and ordered a bottle of this beauty.

The oak has a dark, hard wood scent and the brandy and spiced rum smell like caramelized booze (butterscotch-ish) and cinnamon on me. The iron is a sharp, metallic cologne edge in the drydown. I love these idealized pirate scents, but Leave Her Johnny is my favorite for a sweetened, woody, masculine leaning pirate scent. This one is a little too spicy for me and much simpler.

I love this so deeply, especially after letting it age for a few months. It starts off like a sweetened bay rum cologne (all clove spicy and men's cologne-like) with dry wood and a tiny hint of caramelized rum sweetness. Over the hours, the sweet, warm and earthy patchouli, the creamy coconut, woody-sweet fig and an edge of salt start to come through, though, and then it's even more wonderful. I'm not sure where I get that saltiness from, but it's like dry, salt-crusted wood with spicy bay rum cologne, lots of wonderful sweet notes, and warm, cozy earthiness. I love sweetened patchouli scents and this is so unique and unusual in the best ways.

I love red musk, heavy oriental fragrances, and wine-like scents, so I had high hopes for this. It was kind of the big letdown of my Lupers orders, though. It honestly gives me a headache whenever I've tried to wear it and it's like everything that could go wrong on my skin does. It's very strong, heavy, bold and long lasting, and kind of too in-your-face for me. It's a big red rose with edges of soap and perfumey muskiness and the tobacco comes in like someone dumped an ash tray on the rose. The berries are dry and artificial, but also boozy, so they waffle between plasticy craft store froot smell and smelling like someone spilled a glass of wine on me that's gone sour and stale and a little pukey smelling. Then there's an earthiness like dead leaves and a haze of sharp smoke. And it's all of those things at once and kind of overwhelms me. I'm going to keep aging this, but it's definitely not my favorite thing right now. I mainly got this because people kept comparing it to Insects on different sites, but I don't think that this smells anything like Insects (which is a huge love for me).

Honey and citrus, unfortunately, almost always reminds me of cough drops and then all I can think while smelling this is that I smell like cough medicine. The honey is thickly sweet and the orange is fresh and sharp, but to me, I just smell like medicine.

Wearing Snake Smut again today, I'm really wondering why I didn't put at least one backup bottle of this in my last Lab order. The vanillic qualities in this remind me of LUSH's American Cream and Butterball scents - that buttery, deep, slinky vanilla (or like the vanilla in Snake Oil is turned way up and more buttery, gourmand and white chocolatey), the hint of cardamom is a mellow, exotic, smooth, cool spiciness, and everything else is just dark, sensual, and so incredibly smooth on my skin. When I first got this, I could pick out the leather as a strong, separate thing, but now the dark musks, leather, and earthy patchouli just meld into a darkly sweet, incredibly sexy thing of its own. In the drydown, the deep earthiness of the patchouli is more noticeable in the background. Dark vanilla heaven with hints of cardamom and earthiness. Oof. It's amazing.

I potentially love all of these notes, but they are like versions of the notes that I don't care for (I want more vanilla cream, wish the honeysuckle smelled honeyed and sweet, wish the gardenia was the big, creamy, waxy, sweet variety, wish the cherry and plum blossom were the sort that had tart nuances of the actual fruit in them). Unfortunately, none of the florals in this lean sweet on me and I like sweet florals, not soapy, sharp, perfumey varieties. Cherry Blossom Vulva kind of melds together into one big floral perfume where I can't pick out any individual notes and it's almost scratchy smelling on my skin. Slightly soapy. I wish it had a lot more cream and sweetness to it.

I was worried that the white tea would be too dominant because it often is too astringent for me and tends to have a sharp, lemony scent to it. The white tea is nice here, though, wafting in and out of the creamy, chilled, beautiful rice milk in this clean, refreshing way. I expected the coconut husk to be more dark and woody, but I get a hint of sweet, white coconut flesh in this. The whole scent overall has this white, sheer, creamy, lightly sweet vibe that sits close on my skin in a delicate, pretty veil.

In the bottle and on my skin at first, this has a scent that reminds me of brown bread crusts where the bread smells more dry and toasted. As it settles, it reminds me of the Italian anise cake that I make that's creamy cake with a delicate anise flavor (black licorice, in a way, but more of a soft, creamy, herbal, natural black licorce and not like getting smacked in the face with Twizzlers). When I first got this, the amaretto and spices were too much for me, sharp and reminiscent of mulling spices, but those aspects have toned way down now and it's brown bread crusts, creamy Italian anise cake, and a teeny hint of sharp amaretto. It's funny how spicy this was when I first got it and how soft it is now with almost no discernible spice.

The white amber is quite powdery, the lotus gives off the sweet, pink bubblegum scent that it always has on my skin, and the vanilla cream makes the scent creamy, but not overly sweet for me. I think I wanted more gourmand vanilla & marshmallow, but this is still pretty and a keeper for me. There's something chilled about this scent that makes me think of standing out in a meadow on a brisk spring morning. It has a clean feel, but isn't soapy, and the powder and sweetness are like a woolly sweater in the cold. It reminds me of scents like The Girl and Pediophobia.

Mostly cucumber, I suppose, but it takes on a quality that reminds me of Bath & Body Works' Cucumber Melon in that it's oddly sweet and powdery. I love the smell of slicing fresh cucumbers, but this is more artificial and not as wet or green as an actual cucumber. In the drydown, it smells a lot like clean plastic and baby powder on my skin with the suggestion of cucumbers. I don't get any tomato.

This leans clean on me, but never turns outright soapy. I love dandelions and let them grow freely in my yard from early to mid-summer. My father was a stickler for removing weeds and having a perfect lawn and gardens, but I loved dandelions as a child (I think all children do) and still love them in my 30s. I try to have a mix of babied native plants and flowers and let 'weeds' and wildflowers join the mix as well. This reminds me of the aesthetic of my yard. Sunny and cheerful, with the herbal-ish bite of dandelion greens, mixed with fresh, dewy roses that are a little scrappy and holding their own. A mix of greens, 'weeds,' and hardy flowers.

Another wonderful duet and one that I will be reaching for a lot once the weather cools off again. It's a little powdery and warm, has a bit of that dark cola scent to it (that I usually get from sweet myrrh), and it's a lot of toasty, warm amber. The yeasty, toasty and slightly spicy aspects of the amber come out more in the drydown, mixing with the sugar. It reminds me of those cake-like donuts with a little spice in them that are rolled in a layer of crunchy sugar. After a half hour of wear, I smell very much like a donut shop full of warm, sugary baked goods. I own a ton of amber scents, but this still manages to be very unique, even though it's so simple. Fall donuts vibes.