ladymeag

This was far sweeter than I expected. I'm not sure where all of that sweetness comes from but it's a little overwhelming on me. In the bottle: I can definitely smell the rum and a sweeter booze-related scent, I'm guessing that's the chardonnay. Where's the leather and tobacco? On me: Wet, this is very heavy on the tonka and booze, with a light tobacco chaser. As it dries down the tonka continues to come forward and the tobacco makes a little more of an appearance. Some more leather and rich "smoky" rum would be nice but is no where to be found. On my spouse: This winds up almost smelling like a dessert - very, very sweet boozy vanilla. Almost food-y in sweetness and vanilla, has a "cupcakes for grown-ups" feel to it. Spouse says: Leather and bourbon and tobacco and fig (I'm supposing the fig comes from the sweet rum.)

I'm sorry you got the same lemon-scented bathroom cleaner smell I got out of Port-au-Prince. I had such hopes, too! If you're worried about too sweet, be careful with Perversion - it's very sweet for me even though I like it very much. Depraved (apricots and patchouli) wound up being super-sweet for me. Likewise, Bien Loin D'Ici (red musk, benzoin, caramel accord, golden honey, and spiced Moroccan unguents) can be very sweet, as one might imagine with caramel accord. Shub-Niggurath ( A blend of ritual herbs and dark resins, shot through with three gingers and aphrodisiacal spices) was too sweet for me but has a nice ginger bite. Vice (a deep chocolate scent, with black cherry and orange blossom) was my last hope, I thought, for a chocolate scent (turns out I prefer cocoa in non-food, dry blends like The Seekim) and my notes say cherry orange candy. Debauchery (civet and red Egyptian musk, thickened with opium) smelled like a really floral White Diamonds for me, which was really disappointing. You said you wanted to avoid smelling "too much like incense" (is there really such a thing? I'm doing it wrong then ) - you might want to be careful with Anne Bonney - it's a heavy incense scent to most folks (Indonesian red patchouli, red sandalwood, and frankincense) and Heretic (Nagdi frankincense, bois de cade, beeswax, Somalian myrrh, and Laotian oudh) which for me was kind of like a heavy incense (and sweet powder, thanks beeswax) Sin. It sounds like you amplify roses, which I also do - everything with rose in it becomes all roses all the time. I have to avoid rose blends, even though I love the scent of roses (and it's one of the few florals that doesn't immediately trigger a migraine.) So, Whip was all roses with no leather (and I other wise kind of amplify leather but I don't mind that so much.) Along the lines of Grave Pig and Death Cap, if you like the earthy smell (think dirt and mushrooms,) you might try Destroying Angel (papery white notes evoke the grace of this fungi, grounded by thin, crisp soil.) I'll second Sin (amber, sandalwood, black patchouli and cinnamon.) If you're looking for animalistic powerful (you mentioned "like a tiger") you might want to try Satyr - Sin's spicier, racier cousin. Sin does have sandalwood so it some have some incense smell. Bengal (skin musk with honey, peppers, clove, cinnamon bark and ginger) can be a little sweet but also has a powerful feel. Fenris Wolf is also a kind of powerful, animalistic blend - in fact, the scent description includes "the raw, untamable power of chaos" and lists rosewood, amber, red musk and a dribble of red sandalwood. You might also, if dragon's blood doesn't go sweet on you like it does for many people, look at the Ars Draconis line - Dragon's Musk, for instance, is Dragon’s blood and five deep musks. From the RPG line, there's Chaotic which lists, a whirling mélange of multicolored musks with wasabi, rooibos, heliotrope, and mastic. Like Black Rider, I'd suggest Red Rider (Red leather, red moss, and balsam) - for me, it's a little more seductive than Black Rider promised to be. Sorry for the novel-length post. I just, uh, may have gone on the same hunt.

I'm terrible with rose suggestions - rose is a death-note for me. Others here adore rose, though, so I'm sure you'll get some great suggestions. I do have other suggestions, though: SIN (amber, sandalwood, black patchouli and cinnamon) - this is remarkably sexy. AUREUS has no notes listed but is a slightly spicy, very bright sandalwood scent. ANNE BONNY (Indonesian red patchouli, red sandalwood, and frankincense) - for me, this was slightly salty sandalwood, for other folks this is a really sexy incense-y blend. RUMPELSTILZCHEN (Firewood and ash with an oddly otherworldly blend of patchouli, cardamom, nutmeg, black pepper, tonka, vetiver, and myrrh.) - smoky and spicy. Something that was not good for me but that you might like is Namaste (sandalwood, jasmine, rose, patchouli, cedarwood and lemongrass.) Another is Croquet (pink lime, pink grapefruit, white nectarine, wild rose, sage, woody patchouli, bergamot, and ornery hedgehog musk.) If you haven't tried BPAL before, don't write off certain scents just yet - things that work for my skin in other blends/brands don't work with BPAL and things that work with BPAL don't work with anything else. Give one or two a try before you say it's a no-go. Also, be prepared for BPAL's version of something you love to not work for you (I about milk and honey - all soap for me.) For your partner/roommate: If you're fine hunting down decants or bottles of old Limited Editions (LEs): October. For me, this smells like burning leaves in the best kind of woods (no pine.) Some of my favorite "woods" scents are Dee, Antikythera Mechanism, Dracul, and Captain Cully. Another smoky blend to try is Hellfire. What additional combinations would your partner/roommate be looking for?

I'm a female-type-person but I typically wear masculine scents and have a more typically "masculine" skin chemistry. Onward! Rogue is one of my favorite scents. The notes for it are: Soft, well-worn black leather, hemp, and rosin. No patchouli here. My personal wearing notes read: Slightly sweaty, salty leather. As it ages, more rosin! Almost incense-y. I have not skin-tested Druid because the fabric notes are all powdery death on me. If you're looking for patchouli and masculine, I might try: SIN - amber, sandalwood, black patchouli and cinnamon. This one is very spicy, though; my own wearing notes read: Definitely has sandalwood, cinnamon fades instead of amplifies. Patchouli definitely clearly present but not sharp or annoying. Definitely strong, sexy, masculine. If you're fine with hunting down last year's LEs: THE SEEKIM - Cacao absolute, hay, black pepper, patchouli, and incense ash. My own notes for this read: Definitely hay, a little incense-y, black pepper interesting and mellow, cacao definitely dry rather than sweet or foody, developed with a little bit more warmth, a little more earthy. Or just full-on discontinued: THE SMILING SPIDER - Bitter clove, black musk, mahogany wood, and patchouli. My own notes read: Smells like the early stages of smoking a clove. Better still, it dries down to smelling like the paper that comes in a box of cloves. I know a lot of folks like GOBLIN - Black coconut, gnarly patchouli, and sweet benzoin - but it smells like a patchouli-dirtied macaroon to me. A common masculine patchouli rec is RUMPELSTILZCHEN - Firewood and ash with an oddly otherworldly blend of patchouli, cardamom, nutmeg, black pepper, tonka, vetiver, and myrrh. Likewise UMBRA - East African black patchouli, cedarwood, vetiver and a dribble of cinnamon. For earthy - what kind are you looking for? I know GRAVE PIG is often suggested. I wear a lot of woods, so I can't really make a lot of good recommendations for earthy, as the scents that make that possible usually are terrible on me (mushrooms, dirt, dust, decay, etc.) The earthiest scent I wear is Mutter Museum - Ü (balsams, leathers, and raw vanilla) which smells a little like leather and that decaying leaves smell in late fall. (Sorry for all of the caps - it's hard to find the actual perfumes in my teal deer here. Edited for a missing 'and.')

I adore U Mutter Museum but don't get any vanilla from it at all - it's all decaying leaves and curio cabinets on me and my spouse.

I'm working through my backlog of reviews. I keep meaning to post them and then I don't. In the Bottle: Cologne-y books - really like a very well dressed gentleman's library. So much hope! On Me: Wet, I can smell the books and incense but as it dries down the parchment and candlewax come up to take this to dust and soap. I have noted issues with both wax and honey scents, so it's not a surprise, it's just a little sad. Without the candlewax? I think it might have been my sought-after book scent. Spouse smells: sweat and candied orange peel. I have no idea how but this was the description I got when I asked.

I had a similar hope and dashing as witchling - I was hoping for patchouli vanilla coconut in kind of a creamy way. In the bottle: OMG patchouli. However, that's true of most patchouli BPAL for me. On Me: Wet, it's definitely patchouli - very dirty. Coconut starts coming forward some but doesn't make it very far. The benzoin is completely missing but that happens with me. The patchouli/coconut combination doesn't quite work for me without what I'd hoped would be the balancing effect of the benzoin. Spouse says: Dirty macaroon with cocoa.

This was a mis-ship. An interesting mis-ship - I never would have tried it on my own. In the bottle: Cologne-y Antikythera Mechanism - I'm not smelling the mugwort at all and that's a scent I love and know well. On Me: Wet it initially holds as a sharper, dryer Antikythera Mechanism. I think the opium tar is lending a sweetness to this which drives the comparison in my brain. Dry, this smells like a really dry west-Texas cowboy cologne - I can smell the sand now. Can definitely smell the mugwort at this point, it adds a "dry weeds" type scent. This is nice but I find the opium tar doesn't play well with my skin and makes it far, far too sweet. My spouse said it smelled like: maple flavoring and Antikythera Mechanism (and I had not mentioned my own immediate jump to this comparison.) I gave a suspicious look and it was amended to: Antikythera Mechanism in an IHOP.

I was hoping for something kind of like Rogue without the leather - as much as I love leather, it's not always needed. However... In the bottle: You know when you get a magazine full of perfume samples? Yeah, like that - but a men's magazine full of cologne samples. On Me: Yep. Like a magazine full of cologne samples. It has a woodsy back and kind of reminds me of Georgio Armani Code, strangely enough. I couldn't handle the smell for a number of reasons and had to wash it off before dry-down completed. (When I did dishes later, I noticed that my hands smelled like Kirkland Signature Laundry Detergent - I think it was a mix of my citrus Dr. Bronners and the leftover perfume - weird!) I think I'll stick with Rogue.

I ordered a bottle unsniffed because it seemed no one was doing decants for this one! In the bottle: Red ginger - I can see why it's called that. A little of the cayenne comes up to say hello, as well. On Me: Wet, it's ginger and pepper first, a little sweet somehow. Shortly after that, something (I'm guessing in the red or bloody range, since those usually don't work for me) comes forward and starts to add in a pink urinal cake smell - a little sweet, a little well, pink. Definitely heavy on ginger - if it was a little less sweet and missing the pink smell, I'd be all over this - as it stood, I couldn't take more than about an hour of wear and I had to remove it.

Initially, I tried this at a BPAL in-store retailer and it did not smell good - creamy, even. I think the bottle must have been mis-labeled because I got a lab-fresh imp more than a year later to test it again (I just can't give up on the leather!) and this is amazing. In the bottle: Woodsy leather. I smell cedar, pine, and leather - leather that's a little soft but similar to the leather in Red Rider or Captain Cully. On Me: Wet, the first sniff is woody and nutty, then incense starts coming up. The woods are what I'd call "soft" but they aren't powdery at all. Every time my hand waves past me as I'm doing something, I smell something that simply smells manly. Mid-dry-down, the woods go sharp and then die back. The throw, though, even during this phase is almost all incense and tonka and leather but when you get closer, it's sharp-woodsy. At full dry-down it's smoky, warm, vanilla, woodsy, incensey, and fantastic. I'm not getting leather here but my skin has a habit of swallowing the best leather scents. There's something similar here to October 2007 and I can't place it. On my spouse: Wet, almost all sharp woods, which die back nearly immediately and leather comes forward to dominate the scent. Dries down to sweet, incensey, manly leather. Smells a little on my spouse like Iago does on me.

To my nose this one is very sweet - obviously YMMV - it's nearly all black vanilla and tobacco on me, with only a light backing of teakwood. The oak is completely lost. I'm glad someone had aquatic recommendations - they nearly all smell terrible and sharp to me (and then they trigger a migraine. )

I love it when my brain keeps tapping me on the shoulder, as if to say, "Hey, we know something more about that. Keep looking." Some suggestions, based on the combined effect on my brain of the two posts: Diabolus - DRACUL - Black musk, tobacco, fir, balsam of peru, cumin, bitter clove, crushed mint, and orange blossom llyria - IAGO - sinuous black musk, wet leather and vetiver. Marchen - THE BLACK RIDER - Black leather, oppoponax, tobacco, and black amber. RPG - Classes: ROGUE - Soft, well-worn black leather, hemp, and rosin. (this has a sweet-salty effect on me and it's a little like an aquatic. Well, as close as I get anyway.) Sin and Salvation - THE GREAT SWORD OF WAR - Mandarin, tonka, saffron, black tea, cocoa, tobacco leaf, sanguine red musk and five classical herbs of conflict. The Last Unicorn - CAPTAIN CULLY - A cocky light musk with leather, tonka, a dusting of dry woods, and a splash of porter (probably the sweetest of the batch here.) If you don't mind boozy: Neil Gaiman, American Gods - MAD SWEENEY - Barrel-aged whiskey and oak. Hopefully some of those are helpful at all.

I have no idea - I'm not a big fan of the sweet vanillas and love the vanilla in Sonnet d'Automne as well (and the "black vanilla" in Antikythera Mechanism) - if you find it, share the love? I have similar issues with Snake Oil and O .

*poof* - If you're looking for this, please email me.

I'm no help with the aquatic, they're rubbish on me. Can you give us more on the woody scent - what kind of woody? dry? wet? cologne-ish? sweet?

I'm terrible with florals but the only thing I could remember sniffing/trying that had a scent that I would imagine this smells like is Aizen-Myoo, though it has a citrus component that's rather pronounced. Perhaps you could find something heavy on the patchouli, oakmoss, and vanilla to layer together with it?

I was really hoping for less foody pumpkin and more "fresh" pumpkin smell with some spices and some sharper, less sweet vanillas. That's, uh, pretty clearly not what happened here. In the bottle: Gooey caramel pecan pastry. I have no idea where the pecan is coming from or where the pumpkin went but there you have it. On Me: Caramel spice sweet vanilla. Smells like a Yankee Candle caramel - overly sweet. In all of the other Pumpkin Patch scents I could clearly smell the pumpkin but in this one, the vanilla and sweetness really took over and all I got was caramel-sweet vanilla.

As I mentioned in my other Pumpkin Patch reviews, I think these were all too sweet for me. They definitely all carry a pumpkin pie scent as the base, rather than simply spiced pumpkin. In the bottle: Caramel pumpkin coffee. I definitely agree with the Pumpkin Latte comparisons. On Me: Wet, pumpkin spice coffee with a little bit of teakwood peaking in. Picks up cypress as it dries. However, this dries down to pumpkin pie in a sweaty barn on me. Most unpleasant, unfortunately. I think the "dirtiness" of the patchouli is making this smell like a dirty barn - and I've cleaned a few too many of those.

I don't know what I expect out of the pumpkin patch - it seems that it's all sweeter than I was hoping. I think I was hoping for more fresh pumpkin scent and less pumpkin-pie scent. In the bottle: Leather pumpkin caramel pie. On Me: Wet: The sweet pumpkin caramel scent stays but the hay note comes forward a little more. The hay note makes pumpkin smell a little nutty, which is awesome. Leather is missing on me when this is wet but picks back up as it dries. Very, very sweet. Like someone rubbed a pumpkin pie on a saddle in a fall barn.

I wanted to love this so much - some of my favorite blends contain tonka and I was hoping that the single note would be everything I love about all of those scents. In the bottle: To me, this smelled like rum-raisin ice cream. Super sweet, very rummy. But rummy's good, so I'll carry on. My spouse was not so sure - he said it smelled like a stale almond pastry. On Me: As soon as I put it on, I kept having a scent memory dredged up but it took me a while to place it - do you remember The Body Shop's single-note oils that you could mix with carrier lotions and sprays? This one smells a lot like the vanilla one to me, which wasn't a good thing. There was a lot of plastic scent here as well. The rum is nice and sharp as it dries, which is definitely nice but I really wish it were less sweet. No clove or almond to be found.

Okay, I think it's highly unlikely that anyone's looking for a BPAL-a-like of an old-fashioned men's scent that was common in barbershops in the 40s, 50s, and 60s but here it is anyway: The Great Sword of War smells exactly like Clubman by Pinaud. If you want to (or want your dude to) smell like Don Draper would have smelled walking out of the barbershop with a fresh shave? This is it.

I'm kind of surprised at all of the reviews here because I seem to be smelling something completely different. The end effect for me is the very old-school, classic men's scent Clubman by Pinaud. Think barbershops and men in sharp suits. In the bottle: Musk and tonka heavy. Wet: my first thought was: Pinaud hair tonic! Sweet mandarin tobacco; fresh cut pine boughs and pipe smoke. The tonka kind of comes forward as it dries. Dry: This definitely smells like classic men's aftershave/hair tonic like my father used to use - Clubman by Pinaud. I can pick out the tea, mandarin, tonka, and musk with an herbal background. Very masculine!

Here's how I decide: Get a limited, you can always trade it for a GC bottle you know you'll love here on the forum if it doesn't work out. Or imps of things you want to try. I never try GC in bottle form, always imps because it's easier on the budget and lets me buy bottles of things that won't be around long or I know I love. So, by that run in your situation, I'd buy Witch Dance, with the intention of trading it for a GC bottle I know I love if it didn't work out and probably squeezing pennies here and there to buy an imp of Rogue to try to come along for the ride.

Some other suggestions, then, based on what it smells like for you: PERVERSION - Smoky rum, black tobacco, steamy leather, crystalline chardonnay, base of tonka. (Be warned, this loses the leather for a lot of folks. On me, it's soft leather.) THE RED RIDER - Red leather, red moss, and balsam. On me this is mostly a musk-and-leather scent (don't ask me how, I dunno) but on my spouse it's all sweet, warm, soft leather. ROGUE - Soft, well-worn black leather, hemp, and rosin. As this ages, it's picking up a dry woodsy incense smell. This one smells a little sweet on me. I like to layer Rogue with Antikythera Mechanism (Teakwood, oak, black vanilla, and tobacco) - it's amazing together and Antikythera Mechanism is a little sweet on its own.