Christine Daae

First of all, I love the painting that inspired this. Plus everything in this blend sounded so pretty, I couldn't wait to see (smell?) what they would be like together. The only things that were iffy were the red musk - can be overpowering, violet and opoponax (because I don't know what opoponax smells like...). In the bottle...oh my, this is a dead ringer for what Lucy Westenra smelled like when I first got her. Orange creamsicles and heady florals. The only notes they actually have in common are white musk and rose, but the mandarin probably smells like blood orange to my nose, and the opoponax and frankincense might have similar qualities...other than that, I don't know what makes this smell so much like my beloved Lucy, but I'm really okay with it! There is a sparkle to the white tea and mandarin at first, and the florals are so seamlessly blended and beautiful underneath, with the musks and opoponax giving this depth...it's simply beautiful. There's an almost edible quality to the lushness of the florals. Oddly, I don't get vanilla cream or vanilla flower as distinctive notes in this - there is a sweet, creamy quality to it but I usually amp vanilla and that is not an issue with this blend. In short, I am in love. <3 (And the fiance approves, yay!)

I find it interesting that lots of people were getting straight-up Dorian out of this, in the bottle I get straight-up lavendered Snake Oil. (Fresh Snake Oil has a decidedly sharp edge to it, to me, so that might be why I get that.) Once applied, this is a light, sweet lavender with hints of Snake Oil behind it. I definitely sense some red musk (again, Snake Oil). I think I smell a bit of the vanilla flower - giving this a bit of lightness and added sweetness. The fennel adds a bit of freshness to the blend. It is something entirely different than either of its two 'parents', or even its 'parents' blended together. She is her own person already, little Lilith Victoria, and has her own special scent to go with her. This gets better and better as you wear it, too. It mellows and blends beautifully, creating a beautiful, unique scent that is indescribable. It's sweet, powdery (in a good way) and comforting. This is very pretty to me, though I think it will get even better as it ages (quite like the real Lilith Victoria, I am sure!).

In the bottle, this is sweet-sour strawberry candy. I can almost taste this! But I'm not sure I want to smell like sour strawberry candy. When applied to my skin, the sweet/sour strawberry amps and then starts to fade a little. Now I can smell the rock candy and the spun blue sugar along with the strawberry goo. Oooooh, as this dries it gets even better. This is what I wanted Sugar Skull to be like on me, and Sugar Skull was more brown sugar and toffee-ish than just straight-up sugar. I do get a hint of that Sugar Skull-esque brown sugar, but it's underneath the lighter sugar notes. This is so fun - the fruitiness of the strawberry (and do I detect that the blue sugar is blue raspberry flavored?) comes back out in the drydown. This is truly the scent of gobs and gobs of Halloween candy! I wasn't sure how this would work out on me - I've recently been drifting away from the super-sweet, and I was afraid that it would turn to plastic or the lint note would amp on me. Not so! However, this is not just a screaming sugar high - this is a really wearable perfume. It's sweet, but the sour hint to the strawberry keeps it from being toothachingly sweet. It also helps that the throw is quite low on me - it keeps the perfume from becoming overpowering. It is bright, almost sparkly, and an incredibly happy scent.

This is a perfect perfume. If you love Alice, you must try this. If you liked Alice, you must try this. If you liked Alice, but thought there was too much carnation and not enough rose, this is precisely the perfume for you. (There will be a lot of comparisons to Alice in this review simply because Alice is one of my favorites, and Katrina is quite similar.) The notes are simple, and there is nothing lurking underneath them in this scent. The white rose is sweet and pure, the cream does not sour, the honey does not go 'off' (as it sometimes does on my skin). Where Alice is pink roses and red carnations, Katrina is white roses with cream-coloured centers. It is sweet, pure, and a little bit flirty from the honey. The throw begins moderately, which is nice, and it clings to my skin forever and ever. (I put some on last night and I can still smell a hint of honeyed rose this morning.) Thankfully, the fiance likes this one (the self-professed floral-hater). I may need to get another bottle before she goes away.

Straight out of the decant, this is a sharp, sourish rose. :\ Rose can either be reaaally good on me, or reaaally bad. I hope this is good, I have such hopes for these notes to be pretty! On my skin, the sourness fades to a soapiness – it’s a clean, floral soap smell. It’s not offensively soapy – and I don’t mind a bit of soapiness, to be honest – but it’s still soapy. The vanilla musk starts to come out a little bit, and it takes the edge off of the soapiness so that this is just a gentle, powdery rose. I am glad that I got to try this, because it means I won’t be longing for it anymore – it’s pretty, but it’s not spectacular on me.

Out of the decant, this is a honeyed vanilla with tea, in the vein of aged Dorian – no, really, that’s what it mostly reminds me of. Mmmm. Wet on my skin, what must be the blackberry leaf makes itself a bit more present – along with the green tea – to add just a teensy bit of green/herbalness to this. I'm now getting shades of Bewitched, which I quite like. It is very pretty. In the throw, though, the greenish/blackberry note is not as pretty as it is up close. It isn’t gross, but it’s a bit more sour. I do get a bit of the spice, but not a lot (my fiancé smells more of the spice than I do). Well, I guess this one is going onto my bottle list! <3

…oh my God. This is just absolutely gorgeous, and I think I need 10983102832 bottles right now, which is next to impossible (or so I have heard). Right out of the imp, it’s tonka-vanilla goodness. On my skin, it blooms to this gorgeous, golden scent that just defies description. The apricot starts to come out a bit, with the oak and sandalwood just underneath the surface, grounding it. THIS IS BEAUTIFUL AND I KNEW I SHOULDN’T HAVE EVER TRIED IT BECAUSE NOW I NEED MOAR.

Peacocks is one of those ones that I sort of figured I would never get to try, but put it on my list anyway. Thanks to SPamber, though, I get to try a decant! Yay! In the decant, this is very green-smelling (almost aquatic) and fruity. It certainly evokes the painting – lovely hues of green, blue and purple. I think I am mostly getting the pear, plum, and possibly some of the bamboo. It’s very different than anything else I have. On my skin, this develops into a lovely fruity-sweet floral with just a hint of greenery/aquatic. It is very fruity, actually, mostly pear with a little plum. I do get the tiniest bit of jasmine, but then I’ve never been one to have a problem with jasmine – it seems to be well-behaved with my chemistry, and I quite like the scent of it. This is not too-sweet, it is just-the-right-amount sweet. The greenness, which I think is the bamboo note (along with maybe a little bit of moss), keeps it from becoming cloyingly fruity and floral. It's really, really pretty. The betrothed, of course, likes this one a lot. GAH. Ohhh, off to hunt for a bottle, I guess...

In the imp, this is seriously woody and patch-y. Hmm. I was kind of hoping for …all the other notes, haha. Wet on my skin it continues to be dry and very woody. I don’t really know what champaca flower or kush smell like, but I don’t get much amber, orris, or vanilla. I just get mostly sandalwood. This smells like the dirt note in Death Cap without the marshmallowy vanilla. Hmm. Well, I am very glad I got a chance to try this, but if I want something that smells an awful lot like this, I have Death Cap. There isn’t really anything about this blend that stands out to me as different, though I know it’s probably just my chemistry taking the sandalwood and running with it. Stupid chemistry.

Straight out of the imp, this is pine pitch/tar and tobacco. This is emphatically Not What I Want to Smell Like. However, I have read many glowing reviews of this and wish to give it a try anyway! Wet on my skin, it’s piney, patch-y, and tobacco-y. Which are pretty much the three notes I didn’t want to get much of in this blend. As this dries, this gets less heavily piney, and the resins, honey and vanilla start to come into play. However, this still isn’t really doing it for me. I am so glad I got to try a decant of this before I decided on a bottle! Eventually this dries down to a musky, vanilla’d honey with hints of resins and tobacco. It is quite pretty at this stage, but I can’t really get through the other stages to get to this.

Amber, cream accord, white honey, apple blossom, skin musk, caramel, and teak. Agrat-bat-Mahlat is, right out of the bottle, honeyed apple blossom. Which pretty much just smells like floral apples to me (this is a good thing, I love apple). It is, unfortunately, the honey that sometimes goes horribly horribly wrong on me. However, let’s try it anyway! On my skin, the apple blossom blooms beautifully (yay alliteration!) and then almost immediately backs off, letting the skin musk, honey and caramel show up. Ooooh, this is pretty. So what I am getting from this scent is a little bit of apple blossom, with lots of the ambery, honeyed, caramal-creamy goodness. My fiancé? Says “pipe tobacco.” PIPE TOBACCO? :\ I am starting to realize that we have very different ideas of what smells good on me, haha. I really like this one, and I guess if I concentrate hard enough I can see what he means, but I’ll probably end up wearing this when he’s not around. This one reminds me a lot of a more warm, golden-musky Eve.

So, I'm generally someone who really doesn't care for traditional perfume, they tend to smell alcohol-y, which overpowers any of the other niceness underneath. But...yesterday I was in Sephora and happened to dab on a little bit of L de Lolita Lempicka and omg I am in love with it. On Sephora's website the notes are listed as: Bitter Orange, Cinnamon, Immortal, Vanilla, Precious Woods, Solar Notes, Musk. It's weird, I was expecting something more salty/aquatic from the bottle, and I think I got mostly the woods, vanilla and musk. Anyone have any idea if there's a BPAL that smells similar? *hopeful*

In the imp and wet, it smells "green" with a hint of spice on the edges - just at the end of the sniff, in the back of the throat. It smells clean, and very definitely green. That must be the wasabi. As this dries, it becomes sweeter (the honey, I imagine). Then again it could be my skin chemistry turning everything to sweetness. It's got an aaaalmost soapy edge, but it doesn't quite go in that direction. This does have a bit of a tea note, though not as much as I was expecting. I was expecting more of a wasabi-spiced tea than a tea-laced wasabi, but this is still quite lovely. I agree with whoever commented that it's like White Rabbit...except it's like a spicy, honeyed version of White Rabbit that I can wear! (The linens never agreed with me.) I like it. The fiance likes it. Yay!

White sandalwood, pikaki, 'umi'umi-o-dole, and plumeria. Got this in hopes that it would be a scent that screamed Hawaii at me. I do miss Hawaii, even after only going there once. I'd hoped that the floral notes + the grounding notes would = Hawaii smell. Sadly, this is not to be. Something goes sharp/astringent on me, and I'm not sure what. Oh, well. Maybe if I give it a few days to rest...

In the bottle - sweet leather! Wet, on my skin: y helo thar, leather! My skin seems to be doing this a lot lately - amping one note so much that it drowns out the others. Hopefully this won't just stay all leather, all the time. As it dries I do get the hints of wood, but it's still mostly leather. I get a hint of sweetness from the honey, but just a little bit, and I don't get any berries or florals. Or amber, for that matter. (I was hoping for something more honey/floral/berry, with leather and wood as undertones, I think.) I think I'll have to park her in a drawer to see if the leather/wood mellows at all with age, but as of right now Nanny is most assuredly Not My Thing. (It's too bad, because I love the idea of this scent, and the character! My first Good Omens scent, too...)

This is very, very cologney in the imp, which I assume are the metallic notes, though I could be wrong - I'm not terribly familiar with any of the other notes, either. Wet on my skin it is still a bit cologney, but with a sweetness that rounds it out - has my love affair with Hellfire started a trend? I think maybe - this is probably more "masculine" than something I would normally think of as "me," but at the same time it's quite compelling. And on the other hand, it's not terribly masculine on me...the ozoney/metallic notes burn off quickly so I'm left with just a hint of cologney sharpness that brightens up the soft warm musk and the tobacco flower. The only basalm I'm familiar with is the scent of...some shampoo that I can't remember the name of, and it does have a hint of that, to me. I will definitely have to try this on the fiance tonight, as it will probably be even better on him. Rawr.

This is quite pretty! It's a sweet, bright/clean floral, with hints of moonflower and linden blossom (to my nose, anyway - it smells a lot like The Unicorn). It's very pretty and light, and does indeed smell, er, ethereal! I quite like this!

I'm gonna piggyback onto this thread, I hope you don't mind, tzippora! I am looking for something a little different than she is, but I am trying to decide among the Tiki blends as well, so I figured I would piggyback instead of creating a new topic. I want to know - is there a Tiki blend that smells the way it does when you walk out of the airport and into the open air in Hawaii? It's such a strong, happy scent memory for me. I wouldn't know what sorts of notes would go in to such a scent, but has anyone sniffed any of the Tiki blends and thought "ooh, smells like Hawaii"? I am looking to buy Tiki Queen for my Mum for mother's day (she loves Hawaii and would get a kick out of the name, and of course she'll let me try it ), so that's already on the list - and Opuhi is probably another one I want, mmm vanilla! Any thoughts?

In the imp, something about this makes something catch in the back of my throat. Smoky...something. (After looking at other reviews - honey! That's what it smells like!) Huh. On my skin, this morphs into something sweet-smoky-musky. While none of the notes are anything that I would think that I would like, I actually...kinda do like this. Weird. Looking at the notes I would have thought this would be waaaaay too masculine for me, especially since leather and tobacco have never worked on me, ever. This blend is incredibly evocative - it does smell like a men's occult club - leather chairs, smoke, musk, a faint whiff of cologne. And yet the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts, and it turns into something incredibly warm and comforting on me. I am perplexed. This is not something I expected to like at all. It's very much a comfort scent, but I never knew either of my grandfathers, and so this doesn't remind me of them. It does remind me of something, perhaps someplace, in the way of being very comforting and cozy - masculine, but not overpoweringly so. There are no words for how this makes me feel - it smells a lot like a very old, cozy bookshop or library with lots of leather-bound books and leather chairs. Gah I wish I could put my finger on what this reminds me of! While I really like this on myself (*boggles*), I need to try this on my fiance when I get home. I expect I will like it even better on him. This would probably also layer really well with a lot of things. A leather and tobacco blend that I like. Who would have thought?? Edit about a half hour later: Yeah, there's definitely honey in this. It dries down to practically a honey SN, with the teeniest bit of tobacco/smoke. Yummy.

In the imp, yeah, that's pretty green all right. Sort of a dark, slithery green. Wet on my skin, this is making me feel like I need to sneeze. Underneath the sneezy-ness, I get a dark, earthy-floral green smell, with tinges of smoke and spice. It's quite nice, if not really my 'thing' in perfume. Hmm, as this warms up I do see where other people were getting fruit (apples? peaches?). There's a floral component to this, but it's not very strong on me (which is saying something, as my skin looooves florals). Ahh, okay - as this dries the floral amps up and it's definitely some sort of white floral, because all of a sudden it takes over the blend. It's not the Gardenia of Doom (which would take over the blend as soon as it hit my skin), so I'm thinking it's either a different kind of gardenia or a different white floral. Magnolia, maybe? Actually, I think I'm leaning toward tuberose. In any case, that's where the fruity-syrupy-sweetness is probably coming from (on me). This is actually quite pretty, especially in that it's not just White Floral Perfume #230483 on me (otherwise known as Rhapsody on Gardenia 230483). It wears nice and close to the body, it's softly spicy and smoky, with just enough earthy-greenness to keep this sweet floral from floating away.

In the imp and wet on my skin: bubblegum! As this dries, it stays pretty true to that bubblegum-esque lotus scent - lotus nearly always turns straight to bubblegum on me. I don't get much amber, I don't get any myrrh, and I don't get any sandalwood yet. This is pretty much straight up lotus on me forever and ever. There's considerable throw, which is kind of too bad because I'm not terribly fond of this one.

In the imp: tropical tobacco! :\ Wet on my skin: like chewing a cigarette! (Tobacco does not agree with my skin chemsitry.) As this dries, this definitley conjures up images of...well, places I've never been but have seen in movies and read about, and this is how I would expect Havana to smell if I went there. It's certainly evocative, and actually quite lovely. This makes me think of how Havana would have been like back in the 50's, some sultry raven-haired woman dancing with an American man... This perfume does not suit me very well, but it's really quite sultry. Which might be why it doesn't suit me. Ah, well.

I am very conflicted about this blend. I got this due to all the...er, glowing reviews, and I have tried it a total of four times now, but I'm still not sure if I love it enough to keep it. This is mainly due to my skin chemistry being totally bonkers with this one for some reason. TEST #1, The day I got it in the mail. In the bottle this smells a lot like how Love's Philosophy smells in the bottle - a buttercream frosting type smell. This, I think to myself, is promising. As soon as I apply it to my skin, I get this weird, bitter, almost salty note (celery salt?) over what must be the teak. No sweetness, no cream, no glowing anything. "What gives?" I ask my skin. Despite my questions, my skin still resolutely smells like celery salt. I decide to try it again, thinking maybe it needs to rest. TEST #2, A few days later. Gingerly, I apply the teeniest bit to my skin, wishing and hoping and praying that the celery salt won't be back. I sniff tentatively, and...it's nice! It's not mind-blowingly gorgeous like the reviews say, but it's nice. And as it wears, it gets prettier - that warm, glowing feeling underlaid with the wood, it's very, very pretty. I think, "well, maybe I will keep this, after all it's not every day you get a perfume called 'glowing vulva.'" TEST #3, Right after a shower last Sunday. Dabbing a bit on after my shower, thinking this will be a nice comforting/sexy scent to wear to bed...poof, CELERY SALT again. Whaa? Bitter, salty, woody. I got to the fiance and have him sniff me, and he wrinkles his nose. :\ Maybe that one time with the pretty creaminess was a fluke, then? TEST #4, Last night. I try it on again - I am nothing if not stubborn when it comes to liking something for the name. And this time it's gorgeous! Maybe it's just the comparison to the icky celery salt speaking, but it's utterly lovely. I go to the fiance again and ask him to sniff, and he says, "oooh, that's nice." When I tell him it's the same perfume as Sunday, he can't believe it. So to sum it up, if this would always behave with my skin chemistry, I would love it and keep it and hug it, because it's lovely and the name makes me giggle. As it is, I'm not sure how I feel about keeping a bottle of perfume that sometimes works on me and sometimes doesn't. At least I know if I decide not to hang onto it, there are plenty of other people that love it!

In the imp, this is spicy roses in the vein of Lucy's Kiss - the pretty, clean, vaguely soapy rose with the hint of spices underneath. On my skin, this is a very faint spicy rose. This is so pretty, I just wish it were stronger. I don't get a "harlot" vibe from this at all, just a sweet, clean rose and some equally-clean spice. So simple, but so very pretty. I actually adore this, and the only issue I have with it is that it's so faint, but then - I like it for that, too. It's not overpowering, it's sort of subdued and quietly beautiful. This is something I would put on after a nice long shower or bath before bed, to smell slightly sweet and slightly spicy, but not overpowering. So many bottles I want, so little time. And by time, I mean money. Definitely a keeper, this one.

In the imp, this smells exactly like bubblegum. Nom nom nom, sugar. Wet on my skin, yup, this still smells like bubblegum. Which is exactly why I got it (as well as for the name, heh). It smells like how the full-sugar bubblegum tastes when it's still full of sugary goodness and hasn't turned into a small, chewy piece of cement yet. That is, this smells goooood. This takes on a nice, spicy vibe as it dries. Cinnamon + bubblegum = a very happy Miss Daae. Mmm, and now it's got that hint of bubblegum, plus cinnamon, plus whatever the "womanly perfume" notes are...oh, this is just so very yummy. The only issue I have with this is that there's very little throw and it evaporates fairly quickly. Which just means a) scent locket or slather and reapply! After a while, I do get the fruity-candy lollipop scent, too. Mmm. I will need a whole bottle of this at some point. Preferably at some point very soon...!