lolcat

This smells great-- I adore lemon verbena, I like green tea. Green tea with lemon, so. It's a bitter lemon, with a lot of zest, but I like it, especially as a summer scent. A tiny bit like Gucci's Envy (which I heard doesn't exist any longer, alas). Shanghai works very nicely on me for about 90 minutes and then it's gone *POOF*! I like it fine but I don't love it enough to buy a big bottle. Because it smells so refreshing but doesn't have a lot of staying power, I think it would make a fantastic body spray.

Delirium appealed to me because it offered what I hoped was a more toned-down form of rose. I had tried Two, Five and Seven and found it overpoweringly sweet with not enough grass to mitigate all those petals. I’m always looking for lemony scents and I like apple. The simplicity of it all promised good results. In the bottle, this smells like lemony-rose to me. Worn, this just smells like subdued rose. I can’t pick out the apple at all, and the lemon doesn’t stand out, either, but I like the fact that I can smell the rose without drowning in sweetness. It's long-lasting, and doesn't transmogrify into anything weird. If you like rose but not too much rose, this is a nice way to wear it. I don't know why this is called Delirium because it seems very gentle-- modestly pretty. I don’t know if I’d get a big bottle, but I’ll definitely use up the sample.

So this is my second round of Black Phoenix samples. I was a bit underwhelmed by the first six I tried, but armed with my experience I felt I could make more intelligent choices about scents I might enjoy. MACHU PICCHU. . . I selected this one because of the amber. The stand-out scent from the last batch I ordered was Brisingamen, and apparently amber, a note with which I had been unfamiliar, gave it its character. I loved Brisngamen except that I found myself distracted by its resemblance to Youth Dew. I figured that amber blended with a completely different set of notes would result in olfactory magic. I instantly loved Machu Picchu. It goes on wet and fruity, even lemony, then emits a burst of green, and right now it just smells like Shower to Shower body powder. Don’t get me wrong, I always loved the smell of Shower to Shower. Machu Picchu does not last very long-- its entire evolution took place over about twenty minutes-- but I like it a lot. I’d like it more if it held together a bit longer.

It took me awhile to try this one because when I smelled it in the bottle I realised that it was definitely not a scent for cold weather. Once it warmed up, I dabbed some on. I was disappointed in Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat-- the last of the set of six samples I ordered about a month ago. Green is my favorite color and correspondingly, it would seem, I tend to gravitate towards green scents. Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat boasts of an abundance of green ingredients: melon, mint, green tea, lime and green grape among other things. The problem is that they don't blend well, at least to my nose. I found the tartness of the fruits clashing with the more astringent mint and tea elements. It sounded good on paper, but didn't work as a perfume. Oh, well! Onto the next batch of samples. . .

I don't care one way or the other about roses, but I love green scents and the idea of roses touched with grass sounded like a winner. I wish there were a lot more grass in Two, Five & Seven. It definitely delivers a wallop of roses but it's too sweet, too much of a good thing, I guess, for my tastes.

Salome interested me because it contains almond, which sounds luscious as a perfume ingredient. I didn’t smell any almonds in the bottle, but that may’ve been because all I could think of was Pheremone, a perfume I own but can only wear very rarely and sparingly. I think the egyptian musk must be the common denominator. When I applied it, it thankfully morphed from an iteration of Pheremone into this pretty, rather sumptuous fragrance with the texture of incense, very “Salome.” I credit the jasmine with rescuing the formula from leaning too heavily into musk. This lasted for about fifteen minutes, and then it soured into this smell reminiscent of cheap perfume languishing on my grandmother’s bathroom counter. Never got a whiff of almonds and while some people may not share my associations, I’m hardly in the mood for anything sexier than soap and water to wash this off!

From reading the description of Lolita-- orange blossoms, lemon verbena, honeysuckle, etc. I anticipated having found a signature scent. And in the bottle it smells promising, like candy. However as soon as it starts to dry, it undergoes a strange transformation. I get a lemon verbena supernova (good thing I love lemon verbena) and then afterwards this fruit punch bubble-gum smell that so many others have mentioned, but it doesn’t seem to have much throw. And there are bitter Humbert Humbert undertones where I think tart undertones would be more appropriate. Definitely a unique scent that I want to like, but so far it’s not doing much for me. I appreciate a perfume that replicates the scent of bubble-gum through florals. I wish the lemon verbena were balanced with the other ingredients in continuous harmony rather than eclipsing them briefly and then fading away completely. Lolita needs a little more *zing* to live up to its name.

Florence came for free with a set of samples I ordered. I could smell the berries in the bottle and I'm not a "berries" lover even in the best of circumstances, but I figured I'd give it a try. I wish I'd tried it at home instead of right before heading out to meet friends because the only thing I could smell after fifteen minutes was a harsh, bitter musk smell, to the exclusion of all else. It just kept getting stronger and stronger! Nothing "velvety" or "gilded" about this awful aroma. I don't even know if I'd call it pine because I actually like the smell of pine. Ugh, this was terrible on me! Can't wait to get rid of this one.

Intrigued by the idea of amber, a scent with which I'm not especially familiar, I bought a sample of Brisingamen. It smells wonderful in the bottle and even better on. After about fifteen minutes I thought to myself: "hmm, this reminds me of Youth Dew." After and hour, all I could think was *YOUTH DEW*. And I must have over-applied it because I felt like I was lost in a cloud of Youth Dew the whole day-- Brisingamen has a lot of throw and lasts a long time on me. Since I don't know what myrtle or apple blossoms are supposed to smell like (isn't that sad?) I couldn't say what was more pronounced. The carnations didn't stand out. I've read quite a few reviews of this scent, and I'm surprised that I haven't come across any that mention Brisingamen's similarity to Youth Dew. Apparently, Estee Lauder has changed the formula since the last time I smelled it, so maybe the new version smells nothing like its former incarnation, and therefore nothing like Brisingamen. In its defense, Brisingamen smells like a more floral, more complex version of Youth Dew. The thing is, Brisingamen is a glorious scent. It's very strident and feminine-- I could wear this with a power suit or at an event where I was in charge and / or needed to impress people. I'm not so sure I'd wear it on a date, probably because I don't relate to it very well. Which leads back to the fact that I associate this one so strongly with Youth Dew, which I love to smell on other people-- who are usually women over the age of 50. I will probably try this one again with a more sparing application.

Like so many others, I received this free with an order of samples. What a lovely gesture, to give away an oil intended to bring prosperity to its recipient. Good practice. I never would have selected this on my own, and even though I like it, it's not "me." In fact I decided to try this out at home tonight in case it disagreed with me. In the bottle, like black cherry soda, scrumptious. A tad medicinal. I put it on and smelled the tobacco. I smell not just a hint, but a lot of tobacco. Somehow, it doesn't overpower or come across as too masculine. I smell almonds and fruit, maybe vanilla. I also think leather. If there are flowers in this, I'm not experienced enough to define which ones. A curious quality of Horn of Plenty is that it's almost hollow. Its heart notes are elusive; the powdery tobacco envelops something I can't quite determine, but tobacco isn't its heart note. This scent creates a definite image: lying on a leather sofa in a warm, mahogany-lined study redolent of expensive cigars, a snifter of aged brandy in hand. Rich and deep brown. Well done! We'll see whether it brings any money luck-- I could certainly use some!

In the bottle this smells like cakes. When I put it on, a hundred carnations leapt forward. I got a trace of white gumdrops, and then Alice settled into a very innocent, prim but slightly quirky scent. Alice is a very appropriate name for this creation in that regard. I adore and tend to gravitate towards girly perfumes, but this is one scent I would find more suitable for an actual young girl. Although very lovely, it has absolutely no sex appeal. I stumbled upon Black Phoenix Labs after seeking out a bottle of Vasilissa based on a review here that described it as smelling like Tinkerbell perfume from the Seventies. Alice is actually closer to the mark (Vasilissa is too musky), but now that I’m wearing Alice, I realize the folly of attempting to reincarnate this pleasant memory.

She herself had cheeks like blood and milk and grew every day more and more beautiful: creamy skin musk and blushing pink musk with soft sandalwood, white amber, dutiful myrrh, and star jasmine. I had never heard of Black Phoenix until I started searching for a perfume that smelled like vintage Tinkerbell from childhood, a scent I remember with great fondness. Something light and sweet. When I tracked down the website and saw the ingredients, including jasmine, pink musk and sandalwood, I was further encouraged, so I bought a whole bottle without realizing that I could’ve just purchased a sample. Vasilissa came with two samples-- Leanan Sidhe, which smelled sweet with bitter green undertones; and Phoenix Steamworks, which smelled sweet with spicy orange undertones. Vasilissa, fittingly, smells sweet with pink undertones. In the bottle it smells to me like musk-soaked strawberries. Interestingly enough, unlike the other two perfumes, which changed once they hit my skin and aged, Vasilissa doesn’t undergo much transformation. If anything, the various components separated out into a slightly more complex fragrance once I put it on, but its theme, if you will, is simple-- musky strawberries, candy dropped in the dirt, a sweetness with a slightly earthy undertone. I believe the latter is due to the myrrh. This smells alright, but didn’t meet my high expectations. I’m not into the musky part in addition to which it doesn’t last on me. After three hours it’s just faded away into a generic sweet scent. Pleasant enough, certainly, and closer to my personality than the samples, but I’ll keep looking for something that enchants me.

Phoenix Steamworks is the second Black Phoenix scent I've tried. It came as a bonus sample along with a bottle of Vasilissa I had ordered blindly, based on its description as sweet and feminine. I assume that Phoenix Steamworks was thrown in with my order because it bears some relation to Vasilissa, which I haven't tried yet. It smelled spicy-sweet to me in the bottle and Leanan Sidhe, my other sample, smelled sweet when I put it on, so this may be the common denominator. Phoenix Steamworks is a chameleon. The sage came out in the bottle and for the first half hour it was on. I worried that I'd made a mistake and applied what seemed at first to be an obviously masculine scent-- too sweet to land squarely in the he-man category, but not feminine enough for me. In fact, I tried to imagine what kind of woman would wear such a scent, in which a voluptuous feminine sweetness arm wrestled with a heavy, masculine woodsiness. There was something in the bouquet that I liked very much but couldn't identify and would like to have as more of a top note in another perfume. I'm not sure who could carry this scent off, but darker complected, "exotic" strong women came to mind. Although at this stage I thought it would be better suited to an open-minded man. Then, after about an hour, the cologne quality dissipated and I was left with a scent like incense and syrup that made me think of the color orange (so much so that it influenced my wardrobe choice). It seemed decidedly feminine, down to earth. Great silage-- I put it on eleven hours ago and I can still smell a faint sweet trace of it. I've never smelled anything like this before. It's quite lovely, although hardly appropriate for a spring day like today. I will try this one again in the autumn.

Leanan Sidhe came as a bonus imp along with a bottle of Vasilissa I had ordered (not realising that one could sample an imp without blindly having to purchase an entire bottle). I'm assuming that the folks at the Lab put some thought into which imps they select to accompany certain purchases. Vasilissa is reputed to be sweet and feminine (haven't tried it yet), and Leanan Sidhe seemed to reside in this same category. In the vial, this comes across as fabric softener. Not ever having experienced a Black Phoenix scent, I wondered how this company could generate a cult following with fragrances that mimic cheap household products. But I was at home, so I shrugged and dabbed some on my wrists. Leanan Sidhe metamorphosed fairly rapidly into a sweet, sugary fragrance. Sweet, sweet, sweet. I suppose those were the flowers coming out, but since I couldn't identify any one flower, I can't say that the sweetness struck me as inherently "floral." Or as "soapy," for that matter. Just sugary. Later I started thinking that this scent reminded me of Eau de Noho, a Bond #9 perfume that I like a lot, except I'd say that Noho has a little more personality. After about an hour, other notes came out-- a touch of bitterness which I attributed to the herbal elements and something that created the mental image of "moss on wet stones," which is nice. My favorite phase of this perfume was the last, which is when it revealed its irish spirit: bittersweet and a little wistful. I have an inexperienced nose and couldn't detect the strong "watery" notes that some reviewers reported-- possibly because I have no context for that note-- but at the very end, I did catch traces of the sea, which called to mind James Joyce's description in Ulysses: "Thalassa, our grey sweet mother." It would be interesting to wear this out in public and see what kind of response I get. It didn't bowl me over enough to invest in a bottle-- I generally gravitate towards perfumes that are quirkier and more playful. But it's nice and might grow on me.