GypsyRoseRed

ROMANTI.GOTH Dark vintage musk enrobed in a velvet black swirl of plum, precious resins, opium tar, sweet incense, and Nepalese amber. Given that the notes in this are some of my favorites, I expected to fall in love with Romanti.Goth. In the bottle, it's resiny and mostly incense, opium tar and some resins. I was hoping it would warm up and blossom on my skin, with the plum coming out to play and give it a little more dimension but it really didn't. What I got was powdery incense. Very pretty and all, but not quite what I expected though I have a feeling my wonky body chemistry screwed me. I'm looking forward to seeing how this ages, though. ETA: 30 minutes after I posted this review, it changed again! It suddenly became richer and deeper, a little smokier and sweeter. WIN!

To celebrate the CBLDF's event and celebrate our love of comics, we created an India Ink single note: a lot inky, a little papery, a little resinous, and strangely wearable. A rich, dark spill of wet ink on paper. Seriously. That's exactly what it smells like, and while I don't get any floral qualities from this in the least, I am picking up on something slightly peppery. It really just smells like ink!

MISS IDA Miss Ida Thompson keeps a first class house at No. 126 E. Twelfth street. This elegant parlor house is furnished in the most elaborate and magnificent style. The landlady and lively young ladies are a very pleasant set, full of fun, love, and fond of amusement. The carpets, mirrors, furniture, and paintings are of the latest and most costly designs. This is a truly splendid establishment of the very first class. French vanilla, white gardenia, Moroccan jasmine, and lemon verbena. I was SO sure this would not work for me at all, thanks to the lemon verbena. I should just ignore lemon verbena when it's listed as a note, and you should, too - or at the very least, give it a chance, regardless. Unless I was REALLY looking for it, I would never guess that there was anything citrus in this at all. Soft vanilla smooths out the creamy white gardenia and jasmine, and the end result is a scent that definitely smells.. well, womanly. It's floral without being gaudy or powdery (though I do get a slightly soapy twist from it right before it vanishes), and it's not overly sweet. Again, I wish this would stick around longer but I'm thinking that's a problem with my body chemistry right now and not the scent. I'd love to retest it and see how it morphs and changes over a period of longer than 10 minutes.

EXOTIC BAZAAR Nepalese amber, white sandalwood, black peppercorn, ambrette seed, neroli, coconut sugar, cardamom pods, ginger, fennel, bitter almond, liquorice root, henna, copaiba balsam, and spikenard. Once sprayed, this is slightly sweet, *warm* resin and sandalwood and a tiny bit spicy/peppery in the very best way. All of the notes are so perfectly blended into a warm, golden scent that definitely evokes the 'exotic' quality beautifully.

An exercise in self-love: sugared jasmine with vanilla and black orchid. Gotta be careful with jasmine - if it's combined with the right notes, it can be gorgeous, but too much of it can give me a headache. This scent is definitely jasmine and sugared cream, smooth and sweet without being sickly at all. So pretty! You don't need to wear a perfume if you use this one in your bath, because the scent is definitely present without being overwhelming.

Black tobacco and oudh with 5-year aged patchouli, bitter clove, warm leather, peru balsam, and rum accord. As soon as I saw the description for this and clove mentioned as a note, I was hoping for something similar to Thriambus. This is in a similar family, and yet totally different - and surprisingly, I'd pick this one over Thriambus every time. Rich, deep clove with dark patchouli, and warm soft leather. I was afraid it would be overly boozy because of the rum accord, but the overall effect is masculine, deep, and sexy.

Blue musk with white chrysanthemum, cascading wisteria, benzoin, vanilla orchid, ume blossom, and black plum. This smells like a sweeter, brighter sister to Blue Moon 2004. The blue musk, and the slightly crystalline quality of that fragrance, without being aquatic, or bright floral.

I'm not a huge fan of florals as a general rule, but The Flower Girl is darkly lovely, and something I could see myself wearing to an event or if I wanted to be perceived as sophisticated. There are armfuls of blooms, all vibrant and dominant (I could have sworn I smelled irises and roses in there) and dark, lush greenery.. and in the background, something insidious that stops it from being merely 'pretty' and gives it a 'perfume' blackened edge. This is not your typical floral! It's very grownup and distinctive with plenty of throw that lasts for hours.

So freaking lovely. I've told Beth that I think the Lilith scents are amongst her best work, and that's definitely the case yet again. This is definitely a mermaid, with the salt water, the faint scent of kelp, but it really just smells pretty, and sweet. Something faintly floral or sweet is there that takes this away from being your usual aquatic. Even if you don't love aquatic scents, try this one. <3

This is a bonfire with flaming tree branches and logs, releasing the scent of burning bark and leaves into the air along with the leaping, crackling flames.

HALLOWEEN: NEW ORLEANS The distinctive scent of the Mississippi at night mingling with sweet olive and Spanish moss. This is simply beautiful, botanical and fragrant and to my nose it's a sweet Spanish moss. It's somehow very definitely a FALL scent, and couldn't be confused with any other season. Unique, lovely and has decent staying power.

This scent is GENIUS, and although I wasn't sure I was going to even try it, I'm so glad I did. Because this is unexpectedly one of my favorite BPAL scents ever. Maybe I've just worn too many vanilla based scents because now smelling like a cupcake is kinda 'meh'. I need something more special, more unique, something that makes you do a double take or feel like you *have* to keep huffing. This scent is it. It started out in the bottle as a very rich lemon cheesecake with the tiniest hint of thyme, but it lightened up as it dried down into a creamy cheesecake with light lemon - very reminiscent of lemon meringue, but no, it's definitely cheesecake, right down to the graham cracker crumbs. My skin has been eating up oil recently and most scents have vanished within an hour or two, but this one stuck around all day. It was so beautiful, not too heavy but strong enough to be clearly detectable. Not so sweet as to be sickly. Just gorgeousness.

Wet, this was a very understated, low key vanilla with a bit of fruity sweetness to it. After about 10 minutes, it seemed more golden (maybe the amber and saffron coming out) and I could only detect the smallest amount of freesia in the background, which I really liked because it stopped Serotine Bat from being just a simple vanilla. This is so much prettier than I expected, and I really love it. It wears close to the skin, but it hung on and was detectable for 6 hours after application.

On initial application, Mopsfledermaus is in your face clove, cardamom and ginger, which surprised me. I think I expected something softer and was a little worried, but after wearing it for 10 minutes or so, the most dominant notes really mellowed out and it dried down into a very warm, fuzzy brown scent.

It's too bad that you're not including LE's - Black Temple Burlesque Troupe and Gelt 2012 are amazing chocolate scents.

It's my policy to always buy every Beaver Moon and Beaver Moon resurrection, so I was thrilled to get this one even though I didn't read the description so I had no clue about the apples. As a general rule, BPAL apple scents dry down with a decidedly sour edge on me (stupid body chemistry), but the cinnamon saves the day here making this a surprisingly realistic apple cheesecake fragrance. Juicy and delicious.

I wore this to meet with a person I was VERY nervous about meeting, and although it didn't seem to help me to feel any less jittery or any more charming, it did seem to have quite an effect on how this person perceived *me*. In fact.. the end result makes me wish I could wear Charisma all the time.

I much prefer it to Tobacco Vanille, I agree.

I've tried quite a few of the Tom Ford scents, although my favorites so far are White Suede and Musk Pure. My recommendations aren't the same, by any stretch, but if you like Amber Absolute you might want to try Sri Lanka and Mr. Jacquel. For Noir de Noir, maybe The Orchard? It's the only one as far as I know that would even be similar, but it's not as dark. For Oud Wood, I think the most similar is going to be The Magician from Gaiman's Cards from a Vampire Tarot - the listed notes are Burmese rosewood, olibanum, benzoin, turmeric, currant leaf, and oude. I'll take a look at the others later, when I'm not wrestling an aggravated toddler.

Other reviewers have summed it up perfectly - light, sweet, creamy rose and very, very reminiscent of the Victorian Rose Milk v1 prototype. So pretty! It's the epitome of purity and innocence, and I'd love to have more of it.

You can't judge this scent by the first hour of wear, that's for sure. I put this on my left wrist and almost immediately got a slightly bitter aquatic floral scent with a distinct, powerful ozone quality to it. So nasty, and so not my type of scent. I kept sniffing it and it stayed pretty true until close to an hour in when it morphed to a ridiculously awesome, smokey, heady and exotic, slightly sweet incense. Seriously sexy. How the hell did it do that?

I get zero smoke from this, but lots of thick honey and cream. Very pretty!

I'm wearing Pink Moon 2012, because I smell like Easter should - clouds of pink spun sugar with ribbons of white chocolate.

Ha! I just had the opposite experience to the reviewer above - I usually hate white chocolate, and yet it's what sets this scent apart from other Pink Moons and pretty much all other pink scents for me. Somehow, the white chocolate smells more 'white' than 'chocolate' and just gives a fluffy, light, creamy quality to the scent that manages to perfectly balance out the sweetness of the phlox, carnation and other pink florals and smoothing out the candy quality so I smell pretty, pink, edible sugar cloud instead of like a sugar crack house. I've been a fan of most of the Pink Moons since Lunacies first started, but this one is one of my absolute favorites.

This is full of winning notes for me, so I shouldn't have been surprised by how gorgeous it turned out to be. It's a soft, rich coconut incense and sexy as hell. ETA: Except my husband says it smells "like the Eighties". What the hell?