Heretic

In the vial: What I like to call "the generic BPAL smell." Sweetly floral and slightly musky. This is a good thing.

On my wrist, wet: Pez. But in a really good way (this must be the plum). Quickly turns into a fizzing spicy, floral.

After 20 minutes: Musk and carnation. And it's that lovely, delicate musk that I love so much. Beautiful.

After an hour: So nice. Soft carnation and that gorgeous Arabian musk.This is Maiden's exotic, more experienced cousin. I don't get much plum from this at all, but that's OK. The feminine floral/musk combination is enough to warrant a bottle.

In the vial: Light and musky.

On my wrist, wet: Musky and softly floral. This is not a heavy, animalistic musk. Very light and feminine.

After 20 minutes: Well hello, Jasmine. What happened to all your companion notes? Jasmine behaves very badly on me. She is loud and boisterous and throws herself all over the room. All those delicate feminine notes packed up and went home.

After an hour: This is such a pretty scent. Alas, jasmine and I don't get along, much as I would like for us to. I may actually hold onto this imp to try with something else or put into a lotion.

In the bottle: Faint green and patchouli.

On my wrist, wet: Patchouli amps right away, but it's lovely and sweet with beeswax and oakmoss taking the hard, woody edge off.

After 20 minutes: Down and dirty patchouli indeed. This is such a warm, earthy scent. So simple, yet complex. There is the hint of pencil shavings, but it is tamed by oakmoss and the other green scents. A nice, strong throw but not overpowering.

After an hour: Luperci keeps getting better the longer I wear it. The components work together so well that they seem to melt into one soft, single earthy note. To me, this is the smell of the forest: woody and green, a little dark and ominous but comfortable at the same time. Of all the descriptions of the Lupercalia scents, Luperci was the one that originally jumped out at me. It smells exactly as I imagined it would. I'm glad I ordered two bottles.

In the vial: Boozy vanilla and something...odd.

On my wrist, wet: Caramel-coated balloon. Not getting the Snake Oil comparison at all.

After 20 minutes: Ugh. Almost all balloon smell. What is that? I'm not getting any vanillas or musk, just a rancid, sugary latex smell.

After an hour: I really wondered if I could wear this for an entire hour. Smut eventually evolved into Stank on me: the smell of an old pair of Chuck Taylors with some sort of candied fragrance sprayed into them to cover up the dirty foot smell, and a hint of ...burned rubber (?). Not exactly what I was after when I ordered two bottles based on the fabulous reviews. Hella throw, though. Sometimes I think my chemistry is simply toxic.

In the vial: Floral, not sharp, slightly sweet.

On my wrist, wet: Yes! This is one of Beth's earthy, dirty florals that I love so well. I smell rose and something green blossoming in there.

After 20 minutes: This is fine and wonderful. I can pick out rose and dirt, as in my beloved Zombi, plus soft, mossy and incense notes that round out the fragrance. I'm thinking there is a more complex floral note than just plain rose (lily, perhaps?), but Beth's roses and I are so in love, it's what I smell first and foremost.

After an hour: I have yet to smell the jasmine that everyone is talking about, and jasmine is anathema for me-- it amps like mad on my skin and then it stinks. Crossroads smells like roses, and lilies, and magnolias behaving nicely in mossy dirt with a bit of incense wafting around. Very much like a less dirty Zombi. Deeelightful and bottle-worthy.

In the vial: Vetiver.

On my wrist, wet: Vetiver and...vetiver (fortunately I like vetiver).

After 20 minutes: Vetiver and red patchouli. I'm a little put off by red patchouli because, to put it bluntly, it tends to stink on me. It works well in this blend, though. This is much warmer, softer, and more pleasant now than it was straight from the vial.

After an hour: I love vetiver, but I think I'm just going to have to accept the fact that red patchouli does not play well with my chemistry. Malediction was developing nicely into a dark, sultry blend and it suddenly turned to dark, sultry Vap-o-Rub that fell rather flat, just as Anne Bonny turned to dark, spicy Vap-o-Rub. Sorry, Malediction. I wanted to love you.

In the vial: Sharp, dark.

On my wrist, wet: A heavy, hard scent, with dark green and wood. I 'm fairly sure I can smell vetiver in here. Not unpleasant but something that slightly repels. My nose does not want to linger here.

After 20 minutes: What a transfiguration. Now I smell the soft notes of something newly green and soft. A powdery note rests beneath.

After an hour: Death smells nothing like it did an hour ago. All the sharpness and heaviness is gone, and I'm left with a clean, soft, green scent with a bottom note that is musky, warm, and alive. This is gorgeous and I must have a bottle.

In the vial: Sweet, floral, vaguely fruity.

On my wrist, wet: Very sweet. Is that a nut of some sort in there? A bit of spice.

After 20 minutes: Hmmm. This has a killer throw. Unfortunately, it's throwing fig and nuts and cinnamon at me. Rather fruitcake-ish. This is very sweet and my sinuses are not enjoying it. I find I'm breathing through my mouth to avoid smelling this oil. Not a good sign.

After an hour: No. This just did not work on me at all. It turned to pure stank, but I can see how it would be stunning on the right person. Sacred Whore of Babylon is a rich and full-bodied (much like the lady herself), but unfortunately, it is comprised of notes that do not play well with my chemistry or my nose. Off to the swaps with ye.

In the vial: Powdery, floral.

On my wrist, wet: Powdery, musky floral, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Like so many other BPAL blends, this reminds me of something that I once loved and had forgotten about.

After 20 minutes: Wow. This is beautiful. A soft, powdery musk that I envision as a warm, deep golden red color. The throw is great and not at all overbearing. It has a very "come hither" feel.

After an hour: I'm really impressed with Scherezade. It keeps getting better and better as it dries down, and it was good to begin with. The powdery note has disappeared and I'm left with a rich, clean musk and a delicate spike of saffron. Another one for the 5 ml bottle list.

In the vial: Slightly fruity floral.

On my wrist, wet: A floral with a bit of spice. The floral note reminds me of roses with a bit of an edge. The spiciness keeps this from becoming too sweet.

After 20 minutes: The violet has really bloomed and although I detest foody/fruity smells, I'm becoming rather fond of BPALs plum notes like the one I believe is accompanying the violet here. The scent is just a touch sweet, right now, but I keep sniffing my wrist to catch the whisper of incense underneath all the dark, purply goodness on the surface.

After an hour: Once the sweetness dissipates, Morgause matures into a regal, subdued violet with a deep purple incense. This is a gorgeous, sophisticated fragrance. It is undeniably feminine, but it also conveys strength and experience. This is a scent for a woman who is in control of her destiny and is full of confidence without arrogance. It is noticeable without being gaudy, colorful without being garish. It's a scent to wear with a feminine power suit and it goes on my list of 5 ml bottles to order.

In the vial: Crisp, clean floral.

On my wrist: wet: Bright floral, slightly soapy, but not in a bad way. Vague scent of something grapefruity in there, too.

After 20 minutes: Nice top note of slightly spicy carnation. This is very light and innocent, but not over-the-top. The carnation keeps thing from being too delicate.

After an hour: The carnation has faded away, leaving a soft, powdery scent. Perhaps this is the tea. Not much of a throw, but it will be a nice summer fragrance. I'll hang onto this imp.

In the vial: Lemons.

On my wrist: wet: Lemon furniture polish.

After 20 minutes: Lemon wet-nap (see the pattern here?).

After an hour: And the winner is...wait for it...lemons! Thanks for playing. You win a free trip to the swap pile.

In the bottle: Almond.

On my wrist: wet: Sweeeet! Almond. Ugh.Cheap amaretto or a cherry cough drop.

After 20 minutes: Ah, that's better. That harsh sweetness is is gone. But wait...it's now toasted almond, vanilla, and cinnamon. Great, I smell like a coffee cake. I do not like smelling like food. No good can come of this.

After an hour: Eclipse never got past the "baked good" stage for me. Not at all what I was hoping for, but I'm sure someone else will like it. To the swap pile with you.

In the bottle: Whooo! Aqua! Like the color!

On my wrist: wet: Oh, is that what ozone is? Top note is a crisp, not sharp, white lily note. This is very clean and bright but I like it- it's not cloying like I find most white flowers to be.

After 20 minutes: Lilies: muted. I get the vaguest hint of wood under the floral. It's as if the lily note wants to be full and round, but the wood slightly... deflates... the top of the note's sphere. It's gibbous lily!

After an hour: This is almost completely the opposite of what I was expecting. I was expecting deep, murky, green, maybe a little dank. I get none of that. Dunwich is a strangely muted floral with a hint of miasma, but ultimately, it sits in the sun, albeit a watery one. Even though this isn't what I was expecting, I still like it very much and it will make a wonderful scent for spring.

A pain-tinged, pleasure-soaked blend of leather, oakmoss, orange blossom, amber, and rose with a breath of virginal French florals and a hint of austere monastic penitential incense.

In the vial: A sweet, slightly spicy floral.

On my wrist, wet: Whoa-- there's some sort of resin in there, too. And that's no uppity floral, either. There's something dark that's going to emerge, I think.

After 20 minutes: Getting a vaguely after-shavish scent, maybe a trace of leather. Truth be told, the scent's almost gone.

After an hour: Well, the scent came back, but as serious aftershave. This one started out with lots of promise, but it's leaning towards the "Get It Off Me" category. I'll give this one to someone I don't have to be around.

ETA: Catalog description

In the vial: Sharp and a little dirty (filthy lucre?)

On my wrist, wet: Hello patchouli! With the heliotrope hot on its heels, bringing some clean sweetness to the mix. A bit like pencil shavings, but that scent is usually fleeting on me.

After 20 minutes: Wow, this is nice! (Looks up "copal") No wonder it smells like amber! A nicely balanced blend of amber and patchouli, sweet and earthy without being overbearing.

After an hour: Well, this is a nice surprise! Greed is not at all what I expected. It's a very agreeable patchouli equally balanced with a powdery amber note (I'm assuming this is the copal). I get the vaguest of associations with old paper money, but no metallic tang at all. This is easily an everyday, outdoor scent and it's the kind of patchouli blend I wanted Anne Bonny to be. I'll consider a bottle of this after I finish my imp.

In the bottle: Frankincense with a sharp green note. This must be the cypress.

On my wrist, wet: Much the same, with the sharpness softening a little and the frankincense developing nicely. Oooh! Here comes some moss.

After 20 minutes: What an odd blend. I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't anything this soft (and yet there is just a hint of a sharp edge). It's also lighter than I expected it to be, yet it's still a weighty fragrance.The cypress has stepped back to let the frankincense and oak moss blossom. I like this very much.

After an hour: Danse Macabre is ultimately a soft green floral on me. The frankincense is tempered and sweetened, and the sharp note that was so prevalent in the wet stage has completely disappeared. This is a unique fragrance and it sits well on me. I accidentally ordered a 5 ml bottle of this (I meant to order Dance of Death), but it's actually turned out to be a fortuitous mistake. I'll wear this one often.

In the vial: Wow. It smells like dirt.

On my wrist, wet: It really does smell like fresh, moist, overturned earth with the faintest faded rose poking through. I live across the street from a cemetery where I walk my dog in the evenings. I know this smell very well.

After 20 minutes: Roses in the ground. Amazing. These are not fussy, pruned, prize roses from a lady's garden, these are melancholy, discarded blooms left to die on a grave. And for all that morose imagery, it's a beautiful, full smell that is blooming delightfully on my wrist.

After an hour: What an utterly beautiful bit of alchemy Zombi is. Fresh earth and faded roses at twilight. Simply gorgeous. I just ordered a 5 ml of it.

This was a frimp from the Lab (thank-you!) that arrived broken, so by default, I'll review it first before I dispose of its poor little carcass.

In the Vial: Yellow and crisp! I assume this is the ginger.

On my wrist, wet: Lemons. Things tend to turn lemony on me. Smells a bit like a wet-nap with a deeper resonance. This is awfully bright and shiny for me.

After 20 minutes: There's some fig, now, coming through. The lemony smell has faded somewhat, but this is still way too sweet for me. We'll see what it does in a little bit.

After an hour: Not much has changed. This smells rather like a fig-scented candle or room spray to me, but in all fairness I detest food and fruit scents in personal fragrance, so The Apothecary is pretty much doomed by its ingredients alone. It could smell like the most delightful edible in the world, I still wouldn't want to wear it. This is probably a great fragrance on someone who appreciates fig, or even as a room scent in an oil burner. Not quite in the "Get It Off Me" category, but definitely not my thing.

Not intended to be a hi-jack, but does the metal of the locket affect the components of the oil at all? Any chemical reaction that might turn your favorite scent into a nose-wrinkler? I'm really intrigued by scent lockets: I just discovered that I have one: my sister gave it to me years ago with no explanation and I just now realized why there are little holes in it. Talk about duh!

ETA: The information about about the scent staying in the "wet" stage is also good to know. I tend to be turned off by scent until I've worn it for about half an hour, so I'll pay closer attention to what I like in the wet stage.

In the bottle: Glorious frankincense.

On my wrist, wet: Frankincense tempered with something sweet and soft, not quite floral but almost. I'm in love already.

After 20 minutes: A little softer than when wet, but other than that, much the same with an added subtle smoky element that comes and goes. I swear there's a tiny bit of rose in there, as well.

After an hour: I don't know what else to add. This is a gorgeous scent that I will wear frequently. Fortunately, I don't get the Christmas association at all. Midnight Mass is unique and very much the kind of fragrance I appreciate the moment I smell it. Amen.

In the Vial: Frankincense and violet poking through.

On my wrist, wet: Sharp and warm. The cinnamon adds spice to the mix without smelling like cinnamon, per se, which I appreciate because cinnamon amps on me and I don't care for the smell. The violet and frankincense are playing a lovely duet.

After 20 minutes: Well, this is nice, and the cinnamon is behaving. We'll see how that note develops. The frankincense and violet are blended perfectly. Doesn't seem to have much of a throw at all, which is not necessarily a bad thing. This is turning out to be much better than I anticipated.

After an hour: I like this a lot. I like violet and I like frankincense. I detest cinnamon. Faustus is the perfect blend of these, with the cinnamon lurking very low in the background. It is definitely a masculine scent, but one I feel comfortable wearing. I'll try this a couple more times before I deem it bottle-worthy, but I certainly seem to be leaning in that direction.

In the vial: I know this smell-- definitely a man's scent, like an aftershave I remember someone using when I was a child.

On my wrist, wet: Wow- a really strong and masculine floral. The lavender is sharp and blends nicely with the subdued sweetness of the lime. It definitely has the crisp element of "gentleman" all over it, but I need to get over the weird association with aftershave.

After 20 minutes: Nice little bit of musk going on, softening the whole blend. This is so classy. Aw, surely the man who wears this is not a villain? I wouldn't be able to stop sniffing him, even if he were.

After an hour: The man who wears Villain is in control. You call him "Sir." He has suits tailor-made. He carries a linen hankie. I really love this scent, I don't know if I could actually get away with wearing it, though. I can usually pull off a masculine scent better than a feminine one, but I think Villain is just too masculine even for me. However, as I don't have a man to put it on, I may have to try this one out a couple times and see how it feels. A real winner.

In the Vial: A little bitter and green, with some earthiness coming from below.

On my wrist, wet: The bitterness fades a bit almost immediately, but man, does this have a hella throw. It's very heady, warm, and spicy.

After 20 minutes: Still quite spicy. I can't identify any individual notes at all, just this very brown spice, which can be nice in a cup of tea, but I'm not sure I want to wear it. Hmm. We'll see what happens.

After an hour: My head is about to explode. I can't wait to go scrub my wrist. I'm disappointed that the components of Anne Bonny, all of which I like immensely, went so horribly, horribly wrong on me. I smell like I've rolled in a vat of my late grandmother's "Youth Dew", even though I only put a tiny drop of Anne Bonny on my wrist. I'd love to smell this on someone it works for-- I bet it's very alluring. But it's not for me. This imp goes straight to the "Get it off me" pile.

In the Vial: Sweet and a bit powdery with a little something dark lurking beneath the surface.

On my wrist, wet: This smells surprisingly like Dior's original Poison on me, not what I would consider a masculine scent, and one that never quite agreed with me because it always turned sickeningly sweet and strong. The spicy note and the powdery musk in Othello is coming out a little more than in the vial. Nice.

After 20 minutes: Oh my. This is absolutely divine. This is what rose should smell like. The sweetness has dissipated leaving a musky, spicy background on which sits this gorgeous and somewhat melancholy deep red rose. I think this is a very sexy gender neutral scent, and I envision the man who can pull this off as being incredibly masculine and strong without being brash and brawny. Hot damn, bring him!

After an hour: Othello has faded down to a very intimate scent without a lot of throw. After the initial drydown on my wrist, I put a little behind my ears. If I can figure out a way to nuzzle my own neck, by golly, I'll do it! This is a big bottle purchase for me. Perfect!

ETA: I need to put some of this on Clive Owen and see how it wears. Yes, I think he'd do just fine in Othello.