Lycanthrope

Mod Note: This topic name will remain 'San Cristóbal de la Habana', despite the post-release provisional name change on BPAL.com to 'A Perfume That Tells a Story About My Daughter But Had a Name That Made Our Payment Processors All Feisty and Stuff So Now We Have To Change It and This is the New Name Yay'.

 

Wet, this is warm, white, sweet ginger lilies. I have some 10% diluted white ginger lily essential oil, and that is a glorious top note. I have come to realize that the current sea salt version that is being used in some of the more recent aquatic/oceanic scents, reads to me as 'warm tortilla chips and salt,' which may just be the unfortunate behavior of my skin. After the oil is on my skin the ginger lily note recedes and gives way to the more interesting warm saltiness. This is significantly less fruity than I expected it to be, as I'm looking for the mango and the guava, and mostly getting a gentle, spicy tropical 'pulpy' note, without the abject ferociousness of artificial mango/guava 'fragrance,' This is good, but I'm surprised that what I thought would be a fruit-heavy scent is more a close to the skin, spicy, warm tropical 'haze' or 'aura.' The white tobacco is not terribly potent but I've only had experience with the darker tobaccos, I'm terrible at identifying the white version (was it in... some Moth?).

All in all, definitely not fruity. A warm scent, close to the skin. Somewhat salty, tropical, with the sea salt note that sometimes does a little tortilla moment, but in the end lends a salt-kissed skin type of scent. Fruits in the background, present to give a bit more tropical feel. This is walking down a boulevard with all the commingled scents of a city, the ocean, the markets, all around.

 

Smells like wet grass in the bottle.

Oh, and then on, there's the dandelion sap, milky, blending with the grass to lend the immediacy of FIELD: VERSION SPRING, WET. Wow, this is like, catch a football, have terrible grass-stains, realistic. The florals are probably quietly present lending a hint of sweetness to the leafiness. This is not like, heady orchid floral, but just a subtle background mellow kiss of something light and pollen-y. The stone is not terribly potent, so not like mineral 'Black Opal' strength, but likely present lending a bit of stoic base to the overall scent.

This is like a more leaf/grass-forward 'Summoning Stone Play Structure.'

Excellent if you love grass and field and natural notes. So very green! I'd whip this one out in early summer to run around with.

 

I was (am?) a violinist, so this spoke to me.

I also love bubblegum scents, but have been hard pressed to find anything that surpasses Lilith's Bubblegum and Roses.

Immediately wet, this is a very similar scent in terms of the type of bubble gum - very pink, very fruity, very chewy. I'm not getting much other than the sweet fruit and even the powdery covering of the bubble gum (think... Bubble Tape... original. I can even taste it!) I'm searching for the rosin, but not really finding it... I'm sure it's probably there. I can detect something kind of sweet, syrupy, a little amber-y, tickling around at the edges.

It's remarkable how this reminds me of the smell of unchewed gum with the cornstarch powder sitting on top of it... surreal...

Even after a good ten to fifteen minutes I'm not getting a big change from the super realistic bubblegum scent. I think the rosin, sweet as it may be, complements the scent so well it's pretty seamless.

If you love Jailbait, Courtney, any of those types of scents, Pop!, Lil's BG and R... this is a very good cousin, pretty straightforward, but awesome.

Wet, this smells almost a little marzipan-y, but definitely nutty. Hazelnut, yes. Like when you're biting into a toasted one and that top crusty toasty aroma. On the skin, whoa, whoa, egads, that nuttiness gets a little cloying, but then it burns off that first topnote and settles towards a more gentle, warm hazelnut aroma. The tonka lends this a sweetness or sugariness which is excellent. Oh. Now the pine comes back a little bit... kind of like the sort in Golden Priapus, so this is not completely and utterly foody. Ah, there's the cocoa, thrumming in the background. This is pretty gourmand, except for the pine, which steers it away from being BPAL Nutella SN. (... yes please).

I like this, it's primarily forward as a chocolate hazelnut, sparkling with sugar but a little botanically unique with the pine.

Like, chocolate dipped hazelnut crusted pine trees.

Over time, the pine fades, and you're left with a pretty tasty desserty fragrance. Mmm. Nutella.

 

Wet from the bottle, this is not a very 'dirty' scent. I get a little bit of moisture, like a hint of aquatic, but mostly very green viney waxy leaves. On the skin immediately there's a pretty good stemmy / leafy scent kind of like broken dandelion tubes, but without as much milkiness. If there is dirt, it's very silty, more like a muddy type of scent, akin to the Season of the Inundation rather than, like, uh, Badger, or the Down the Rabbit Hole Atmosphere spray. On me, there's even a kind of... birchy, aspen-y type of note, but I'm very surprised by how very uniform the scent is. It reads definitely as 'canopy, green, thick.' I think probably there's a kiss of orchid but it's not very prominent.

This is a remarkable atmosphere scent. On me, too, it's a very unique green, subtle but evocative aroma. I think I could get away with wearing this at work!

I use my scent locket, I happen to have a clocket from BPTP. I find that when I wear it against the skin, it warms and then I smell a little puff of fragrance. This is generally when I'm charting or doing office stuff. Then if I wear it over my clothing it tends to not emit as much fragrance - sometimes I slip it into my white coat, although with my absentmindedness that would be a recipe for disaster. It's worked out pretty well and worst comes to worst I just put it in my work bag and take it off completely.

 

They make variants of scent lockets and scent jewelry online if there aren't any current scent lockets available.

The oil smells cool, like a little wisp of the eucalyptus. On the skin, it's a very rich, resinous oil. Quite thick.

Reminds me very much of Oblivion, the chewy, costus/labdanum is strong, and one of my favorite essential oils. There's just a tiny little whisper of cold. I don't detect too much brightness from olibanum.

It's nice, and quite resinous - a little bit like a colder Jacob's Ladder from the Yules, but not nearly as complex. It's a chewy resin that does veer towards cold, but not minty by any means. Once it's drier, the dry aldehydic notes do arise, kind of like an aura of shine.

HAI I'M A BULL AND MADE OF ROSES AND YOU WILL SMELL LIKE ROSES (do you want to? no? MOO BAD!!!)

 

 

 

 

So much rose. It overpowers everything else, even the jasmine (which is probably there but I can't tell, it's all floral!) Please be aware my skin amps rose.

I am a Leo. I don't know all the rest of my zodiac spread because... reasons... like not remembering what time I was born... but I am a preemie so I was supposed to be a Virgo.

 

I've been doing all the Starstrucks - some good hits, some really weird ones, and then there's Taurus, which is like HAI I'M A BULL AND MADE OF ROSES AND YOU WILL SMELL LIKE ROSES (do you want to? no? MOO BAD). POW.

 

Leo starts on me pretty much like a reddish spicy cloud, a little similar to Three Cocks but definitely a bit peppery and also herbal. I think it's the chamomile adding that weird type of grassy floral thing it does. With my skin chemistry it quickly veers towards carnation, a lush, Clemence-like carnation, with a dry backdrop and mild heat likely from saffron. On my skin saffron is a little funky but then also does not persist - it tends to retreat and just blur the edges of scents a little. In this case, the carnation showcases almost like a carnation SN to me with just a bit more complexity.

 

I already got a few bottles since this is my birth sign. It's so very different from the past Leos! I think those had more walnut or something. Nuts. Hee.

 

This is a desert warmed carnation blossoming in a handful of sand.

I'm so confused.

 

On the skin, the salt note, I've determined, turns into a bit of corn-tortilla type situation. I've experienced this in a few other oceanic/ocean salt scents. It's different from the bladderwrack seaweedy salt, this is a warm, foody salt. I don't know if it's my chemistry or what. This is the same thing that happened to me with that Lilith scent I can't remember the name of for the life of me that featured a humpback whale or some type of marine whale-type crittermon. Also, tortillas. Happy tortillas, but same.

 

After it dries down, it smells like a foody type of spiced bread. What. But, it's like totally BREAD and not like CAKE. I wonder if this is the saffron and nutmeg and the salt note + Lycanthrope chemistry reading as such.

 

So, I'm not getting much ocean from this, and the sacred plants are very quiet - I think even the sage is processing to me as kitchen.

 

Don't get me wrong, it's super comforting, but this is not too aquatic to me.

Huh.

It's very cool and bright from the bottle.

On my skin it smells like Colorado.

There's a bit of a piney bite to it, and with drydown it really smells like when you're trimming the groundcover around your house you regret putting in because it's frickin' everywhere and on a mountain but you're enjoying that halo of intoxicating pine oil mist that you're kicking up. Drying down, definitely not a sweet or perfumey type of scent or 'interpretation' of juniper. There's a hint of a reminder of gin, but probably only because gin contains juniper berries, and not alcoholic.

Very light.

Ok, Mugwort. Let's do this.

Remember me from when I tried The Waters of The Well of Wisdom? That was mugwort, all the time, sharpened by aquatics and thyme and all the glorious muddy posterior? Hours of a slightly muddled, green-gray swirling aura of a mysterious slightly chewy, but stanky herbiness?

 

Thankfully that is NOT what Cancer 2016 does on my skin. It definitely starts off heavy on the mugwort, where I'm thinking 'oh, gods, what have I done.'

 

That does fade to a very nice, Faeu-Boulanger like misty violet. It's not really as swampy as that scent but the overall drydown is a light to medium strength pulpy wet violet. I think the sandalwood is a whisper, likely a backup supporter. Like an unobtrusive support column. The cucumber is not terribly green. It lends a bit of a fleshier wetness to the scent without resorting to Lightning or Tempest like wet/marine or ozone notes.

 

Confederate jasmine does not go exotic like the true Indian Jasmines - so it's not amping in that way at all. It's a very serene, smooth blend, on me once the mugwort burns off in like 15 minutes.

 

I like.

 

Got backups.

Hmm. This is challenging, because Purple Phoenix is a stunning violet-like floral. It's on me a little candy sweet and fruity, but with plums, and purple fruits, maybe blackberry? In the meantime it also has a very lilac-petally violet. I don't think the two come together easily.

 

However, I'd recommend:

 

For the lush purple florals:

Morgause (caveat: incensy. Definitely not fruity). This is the first one that jumped out in my mind. I love it. It's definitely got some jasmine-like notes, which may be ok since you like Nocturne (that reads to me more tuberose).

 

For Violet:

Sybaris (caveat: vanilla and clove is a bit spicier. Not fruity).

Nocturne (as you know! Tuberose is wonderful).

Mokey (more lilac, and osmanthus, but still wistful violet).

Bruised Violet Compound (more patchouli/earthy, opoponax is a chunk resin. Not as bright).

 

For the plummy fruit:

Try Bordello (caveat: sadly, not very violetty, but that same sweet fruit note).

 

Those are GC.

 

I think you may also like Melisande, the Puppet Mistress (sp, sorry, lol, it's from CD). Jasmine+violet+mimosa.

Faeu Boulanger, if re-released with the Wunderkammer, is an airy slightly misty violet.

Nothing But Death from a Halloweeny is chunkier, chewier dried fruits, + violet.

Well... I think we're falling into the categories of getting beautiful subtle notes, and then the opposite getting surprisingly potent, off, husky, strong aspects of the notes.

 

I'm with gentle-twig and Little Bird, in theory these notes should be gloriously beautiful on me, but when this touches my skin, it's like this interchange:

 

Skin: Oh hai, I iz wanting the rich sweet burnished perfume?

Oil: I am made of win please to apply

Skin: OK then

Oil: I am sekrit russian walrus and lounging on your skin all like barbed and with whiskers and much more potency than expected

Skin: Oh no I am betrayed! Darn you and your baleful espionage!

Oil/Walrus: *chortling like a walrus* *chortle* *jiggle* *chortle*

 

Immediately the top notes for me are truly skatole-ish, and not in a good way for me. Over time the scent does round out, and on me goes towards a dry more black patchouli. I suspect the culprits for me would be tobacco if it's a variable or different tobacco note, and oudh generally is good but maybe parts of it didn't play well together for my skin chemistry. This is definitely one to try a decant first. I think I may be able to deal with the drydown, but I'm kind of scared that others may smell the ferocious skatole-like opener and it may linger more or be more apparently freshly encountering someone. I'll let it age and see what happens.

This perfume is very much fresh, melty chocolate as a top note from the bottle. It's definitely not a very dark chocolate, but I'm getting the milk/white or cocoa butter vibe from the initial blast. This reminds me very much of the No One Heard Her But the Sparrows atmosphere spray and this shouldn't be a surprise as it contains similar notes of white chocolate, iris, and grey amber! I'm actually not getting too much peony, which is sad. This reads to me, as a slightly dusty, foody chocolate-floral blend, very much like the atmosphere spray. This is wonderful, as it's a very nice spray, and now I can smell like it!

Whoa. This is a little weird from the bottle, definitely spicy, and peppery. I definitely get a potent black pepper vibe, like black pepper essential oil. The chocolate is a dusky, dusty dark cocoa thing, definitely not sugary sweet! On my skin the pepper and cloves bloom immediately into a cloud of potent heat, with the cocoa riding along. After a few minutes, the immediate spiciness recedes, leaving a very sexy gourmand, cocoa-kissed incensy resin. I'm still getting a good deal of clove, kissed with depth with the amber and vanilla, which are not front and center. The cocoa always remains a slight foody twang on an otherwise beautifully sensual spice blend. Over a bit more time, this actually is veering towards Gelt (but like, sexier?)

Grandma's handing out fake coin candies but watch out! She's dangerous (and in lingerie).

I like this! I'll have to give it a few wears, but I do have my single bottle now lol. #blindbottlelifeyolo

Hrm. Interesting.

 

My favorite honeysuckle blend of all time is Liaidan and Curithir, probably because of its salty-aquatic ocean honeysuckle. I've really enjoyed BPAL's honeysuckle, and have been really disappointed when I've tried to pick up fragrance oils to try to en masse honeysuckle all the things. This is most definitely a sweet, yellow honeysuckle, for sure, when smelled from the bottle. On the skin, whoa baby, golden, singing, bees up in your grill honeysuckle.

 

I remember Asphodel itself from the GC when it existed and for some reason that always read to me as 'wisteria,' although not quite. Hyacinth has also been a tulip-y, watery scent, although I can't really place what that smells like by itself. So, basically this is to my nose a very slightly snow-touched (extremely light!) wet lighter floral that is mostly honeysuckle. I think there's a little hint of sweet smoke but I'm not really getting too much vetiver, even with drydown. I think my skin takes the sweet honeysuckle note and runs with it. I think the honey is contributing to the sweetness but it's by no means really that apparent, not to me at least. My skin also tends to take honey and change it into a potentially sweet hot mess, and that's not happening (yet).

 

As a guy, I don't really know if this is something I can get away with wearing a lot of, but it'll be a nice honeysuckle alternative as I nurse my last drops of Liaidan.

I'm a sucker for aquatics. I, however, have had terrible fortune with Carrot Seed blends. I don't know what it is (possibly a run-in with the carrot seed CO2 extract when I was a younger wolf).

This is immediately salty-aquatic like Pool of Tears aquatic, with a swiftly apparent sweetness. I think possibly that's the blue musk with the top notes of laudanum (cistus). There is frankincense here and it's probably adding to the first sparkle. It's combining well with the wry twist of salty aquatic and giving it a bit of a complementary high smoke, incense note. I'm probably getting champaca, as an equally higher toned white-yellow floral note, as parts of me are going Khajuraho? What? And that's likely the influence of that note. I love Khajuraho, for its sultry-sweet over the top exotic note.

I'm not getting too much carrot seed directly, although I'm sure with all these high notes, it's layering and helping to ground something here. The labdanum / cistus is also providing some depth and grounding.

This scent is a very nice aquatic, slightly different from aquatics I have. It reads more light and top-note-ish, and I think because of less purely rich grounding notes, it burns off on me pretty fast. But, it seems light, inoffensive, very beautiful. I think extremely wearable for work.

Rich, rich, loamy in the bottle. Definitely can get a bit of drier rose in the background, but this is a gritty, husky rose. These are dried, crushed rose petals.

I feel like I've sunk my face into a pot of soil. Over a few moments, what's a bit odd is that the scent starts migrating towards... spicy? While the rose doesn't amp, I'm getting an odd, but very fitting and pleasant swirling smoke. It's not vetiver, but, it's quite... oh! Yeah, that's a nice, beautiful smoky cedarwood. Not cedar or pencil shavings, but like the good essential oil of cedarwood. Deeply rich, very grounding, quite rooty. I have a bottle of Himalayan Cedarwood (Deodara) and this is immediately pushing buttons for it. I may be nose hallucinating, but it lends this blend a very true woodsy depth that is frankly amazing. Is there a bit of a white patchouli in here as well?

The rose plays quietly in the background, and on me never really has a diva moment (this is a good thing). I would classify this as environmental, still wearable but probably special circumstance. Over time the loam and soil note fades and this is a rose-kissed light golden woods blend. Starts heavy, ends on a nice thrummy middle note.

This is very nice. Each year with the Yules I generally find one or two blends that I stock up mightily upon, and this is one of the two (the other being Unmanageable Snowdrift).

 

Wet, this definitely has a strong aquatic tone, and a similar 'icy' note as Moon of Ice, Cold Moon, in that it has a quasi-eucalyptoid topnote. On the skin, I do get a little bit of a green-tinged subtle jasmine, but what I'm reading is a kiss of blue lotus absolute (?!) as the main floral component. The jasmine does not arise to the surface like a diva, but the kind of lightly sweet but extremely hypnotic florals must be a more subtle, smoky blend. Agree that violet leaf is always a gritty green, slightly resinous type of scent as opposed to my favorite floral, violet (the voluptuous heady purple type), and it's really not terribly potent in this blend either.

 

Over time, the aquatic note burns down and this turns into a very pleasant, close-to-the-skin subtle incense, without too much in terms of jasmine petal. You can still tell that it's a light floral incense, hugging close to the skin. I may be biased by the description but this is a blue smoke. I think a little bit of japanese koh incense, a single spiral of blue-tinted smoke risking from a charcoal burner.

Whoa. I mean, I should have known, my archnemesis mugwort would be here, all twirling her mustache like 'yeah, I have a mustache, what of it?' while looking down over the top of her wire rim glasses. Her nineteen-point-three cats are milling about, all enjoying the musty stagnancy that is mugwort on Lycanthrope's skin. So, as most of the mugwort blends, please take with a grain of salt - it's like rose, amps to crazy high heaven on me, while browsing for Braun beard razors through amazon.com.

 

I really wanted to find some of the other notes in this blend, so I let the oil sit on my skin for a good thirty minutes. There's so much promise in the note list. I love tuberose, and bourbon vanilla usually drives scents into enough of a sweet-foody category that I'll love it regardless of whatever else is in the blend. I actually don't get very much smokiness, contrary to what you'd think from the tobacco and opium notes. What's even weirder is that I don't get any fruit/plum notes, which usually also at least give notes a brisk fruity kick.

 

I have a feeling that Paysage is remarkably well blended but deceptively smooth given the many 'spiky' or potentially potent notes. Over a bit of time, even through the muddy butt that is mugwort on my skin, and bear with me, it's like the quietest components of each of the notes whispers. Like a purple sigh of plum rind. The quiet waxiness of tuberose. Vanilla dust. Even the smoke notes are like extinguished incense. After thirty minutes, it's like the resonance of a fragrance remains in the air.

 

It's actually pretty beautiful but I can't do the mugwort, and what does dry down is sumptuous rich, like the kind of sumptuousity that I don't really reach for. Like a velvet pillow embroidered with a cat and a Braun logo (free with purchase of beard trimmer, special discount for mustachio'd supervillainesses).

This is pretty similar to one of the Frankenstein releases a few years back, The Country of Eternal Light, with a few differences.

 

Whereas the Country of Eternal Light was still a sweet, bracing, bright mint with the sweetness of peppermint and a similar drydown, it had a little bit of rockiness and 'lichen,' lending a tiny gray-green twinge. I love it, of course, and have stockpiled so much of that, but I had to go ahead and get more of Unmanageable Snowdrift.

 

It has a similar sweet, very bright mint (mostly peppermint, but probably some spearmint too). It dries down as Little Bird mentions into something like Lick It with much less vanilla or sugar. It's still herbal sweet, not sugary or foodie sweet, which is fine by me!

For some reason, when I spray this, I get an awesome, blood-red painted rich music box, like made of mahogany, that has dried rose petals in it. The initial blast has a bit more of the fruit, but this mellows out into an extremely sexy, woodsy, voluptuous rose. It's super sexy. The red patchouli drips with a beautiful huskiness, and the rose petals don't overpower. It's still quite floral, though, so take that into account!

I really like this one!

From the sprayer and spritzer it's a very buttery chocolate. I get actually a bit more milk chocolate, but not sure if it's because of the slight smoky sandalwood. I get a chocolatey violet, like a fine French confection. Sprayed in the air it definitely is a blast of foody, buttery vanilla-chocolate, with a dusty but violet/orris powderiness. I think there's definitely a bit of grounding from the sandalwood but by no means is it a very powerful woodsiness. The amber probably makes this glitter a bit, but I recall the grey amber being uber-smooth, and not terribly sweet. This reads as a slightly floral gourmand, in the violet-chocolate family. I kind of love it.

Backups, plox.

I always tend to be a bit spastic with violet scents. My favorites would be orris-y/violet-y blends like The Darkling Thrush, and Sybaris, scents that really bring out the powdery, sweet and candy-like aspects of the flower. There are a few violet blends that seem to be a more forceful, less floral type of violet. Brusque Violet comes to mind, since the resinous opoponax turns it from being sweet and delicate into a much deeper, darker thing, but then turns woefully on my skin into a sourness that I can't get away with. Certain times resinous violet works such as in Nothing But Death, but I think that was tempered with some more sweet fruits.

 

This plum I get is definitely dark, dry, like a prune, and the benzoin resin must be driving this into the more sharp and dirty category. I can tell there is amber but it's not glittering like in some amber blends. Overall on my skin this does have a faint top violet note, but reads more as a deep slightly sour resin. The plum again gives it a rindy quality I just can't quite sit with.

 

I don't think this is one of my violet successes, but that's ok! So much more to try