ladymeag

How sweet is it? The notes on their website for the Winchester oil are: worn brown leather, sweet tobacco leaf, incense, amber, labdanum and smoldering woods. To match that, I'd try Captain Cully (light musk with leather, tonka, a dusting of dry woods, and a splash of porter) Hoggle (Fermented pumpkin, brown leather, dust, tobacco leaf, and dark woods.) Iago (black musk, wet leather and vetiver.) Hellfire (pipe tobacco, hot leather, ambergris, dark musk and the lingering incense smoke) Of those, I'd say Captain Cully is the sweetest. (My recommendations are almost always missing scents that contain florals because florals simply don't work for me. Hopefully someone else can come in and fill in the blanks.)

Snake Oil doesn't work for me, either - it's way too sweet. I tend to wear masculine scents, so my recommendations tend to fall in that area. My skin chemistry is a little weird, so I think I get incense where other folks don't but anyhow, some general catalog recommendations: Dracul - Black musk, tobacco, fir, balsam of peru, cumin, bitter clove, crushed mint, and orange blossom - this was, for me, what I wanted Cathedral to be. I don't get mint or orange. If you're okay with leather scents (they're vegan if they don't contain honey/beeswax,) Iago - sinuous black musk, wet leather and vetiver - or Rogue (from RPG) - black leather, hemp, and rosin. Iago for me is more leathery, Rogue is more incensey. If you're okay with a little boozy, Hellfire - pipe tobacco, hot leather, ambergris, dark musk and the lingering incense smoke from their Black Mass. If you're okay with spicy, Sin - amber, sandalwood, black patchouli and cinnamon - and it's spicier cousin, Satyr. Both of these are remarkably sexy. If you want to hunt down old LEs: The Seekim - this one has some nice patchouli and hay notes with incense ash. October (2007 or 2010) - this one is leaves and smoke, mostly.

BPAL uses several different scents for leather and "worn" leather tends to smell a little less new-car-smell-ish. More like "expensive new purse." IIRC (because I don't have my notes handy) from protos, Jareth had more of that "new leather" smell and Hoggle had more worn leather smell. Hope that's helpful!

It's a friendly dance-fight, zmulls! Dracul is great - to me it smells like I was hoping Midnight Mass would smell, like an old Catholic Church with oak pews and the lingering aroma of incense from a High Mass (I grew up Latin-rite. ) I don't know that I'd particularly class it as "elegant," though. I think a lot of the elegant scents, especially of a darker tone, are going to edge more toward the androgynous or feminine. There is something particularly captivating, though, about a rugged scent on someone elegantly dressed.

Satyr - It's spicy and sexy and amazing - I was originally going to give it a pass because it smelled a bit like Sin to me but there's more to it than that. My collection grows increasingly masculine and this is more than fine with me.

Hi there! To get here, you likely clicked a link my wishlist or swap thread, thanks for being so thoughtful as to look around for information about things like this! While I greatly appreciate freebies and extras in swap and sales packages, I needed to make a note regarding allergies and such. We have a few food-related allergies in the house that are, honestly, difficult to avoid. The big one is soy - which rules out a lot of strange stuff. I have a (seizure-related) sensitivity to artificial sweeteners and a sulfa-related allergy to sodium saccharine. Household allergies to: beets, tomatoes, eggplant, strawberries, bananas. I do enjoy tea, coffee, spices and the like provided they are soy and artificial sweetener free (you'd be surprised at what isn't!) Here are some odd ones that I never knew I'd need to call out Latex allergy - so no cute Band-Aids or other skin-touching-sticky things, please Polyester allergy Many candles are soy-wax based these days, if you aren't sure please hang onto it for your next package There is also a household sensitivity (asthma-related) to most synthetic fragrance. I usually just avoid non-BPAL scents because so many of them also use synthetic carriers or soy-based products, which we can't have in the house. Other than BPAL, our house is mostly unscented - we don't use scented bath, beauty, laundry or household products. No incense, please, asthmatic child in the home (and we run HePA filters with UV-C sanitizing lights all the time, so the incense would be gone pretty quickly if we did try.) I have a post up in the likes/dislikes thread that is linked in my wishlist for BPAL-related death-notes and other assorted scent-based information. This is linked in my wishlist. Of course, if you include things that I can't have, I'll just pass them on to someone at the office (or in the case of scents and such, offer them up for swapping, frimp them to my next swapper) but I thought I'd try and make sure that everything you pay to ship is loved where it arrives. Thanks so much for being so generous, everyone!

There's been a few more since then - I would add Fetish.Goth to the sharp/fresh category, and Captain Cully should be in there too - maybe in soft/suede or perhaps old/worn. But these are just my impressions - when you read reviews for all these blends, you'll see that the leather notes give very different results from person to person. I would recommend Western Diamondback or Dee if you haven't tried those already, or try layering your favourite leathery BPAL with a little Snake Oil Snake Oil just disappears on me. It's a sad, sad state of affairs with my skin chemistry. I'll give Dee a try, for sure. I avoid trying discontinued and not-currently-available LEs because I don't want to find my holy grail in something that I can't get. I've been buying BPAL since very late 2003 or very early 2004 (I can't remember which) and I've learned to stay clear of needing something I can't get. Thanks for the notes on, er, notes of leather. Captain Cully to me smells like soft leather - the kind you find in high quality belts and purses. DeSade wasn't so much plasticky on me as it was just... not leather. Musky and dusty and, yeah, not leather. Mine (waiting to be handed off in a swap later this week ) changed some as it aged (six years) and did lose some of the sharper note. I know that if I had hunted down DeSade instead of ordered it from the Lab as a GC, I would have been really disappointed.

Did anyone else have trouble with DeSade but otherwise adore leather scents? DeSade smelled incredibly strange on me (and I bought it way back when going "Yes! All leather!") and never aged out of smelling terrible on me. I'm always sad that BPAL's rose note is horrible on me, I want Whip to work so badly. What I really, really want is a black vanilla, leather, musk (maybe with amber as long as it's not "golden" or "light") scent.

Based on the notes listed for Axe Dark Temptation - I'd be inclined to locate some of The Seekim or maybe OccupyWallStreet, if he's okay with a heavy patchouli note. I don't know that you can mimic Axe Kilo easily but I'd suggest starting with either Tombstone or The Antikythera Mechanism, since those seem like likely choices for someone who would like that scent.