t_for_tau

Wow, it's been a while since I've had to immediately scrub a scent off, but this one had to go. Inexplicably this is STRONG mint - and not like the fresh herb but rather definite chewing gum. Chewing gum and leather, to be fair; if you want to smell like the leather jacket belonging to an inveterate gum chewer then this is for you!

Seriously, though, I feel like some people will genuinely love this, but since mint literally makes me nauseous it was immediately scoured off. I can confirm that it's persistent... I have absolutely no idea where the mint is coming from because none of the notes suggest it. I was hoping for tobacco and gunpowder and tomato leaf and I'm particularly sad that I'm not getting any castoreum in particular since it's one of my favourite notes and so rare in bpal. 

I tried this again to see how it had aged, and I have to wonder if I somehow ended up with the wrong decant, because it smells of...powder and rose. I got nothing. O___o

This *should* work wonders on me, from the notes, yet it smells like generic pumpkin spice?? Alas.

I used to like red musk, and then every scent I tried with it was suddenly super fruity evil. I thought it was my skin chemistry, until I went back and tried some of the blends I'd originally liked, and they were still warm and slightly woody deliciousness! I don't know if Beth started using a new synthetic red musk, but I'd love to find more of those old school red musks. Are there any newer blends that people recommend where the musk is that lovely warm dry woody-incensey version, not crazed cherries?

Terribly hard to narrow down to five, but let's go with, in no particular order:

Pinched With Four Aces

Orpheus (the DC'd Salon, not the unicorn)

Oak King v4

The Bride

Unicorn & Ram

...man I wish I had more GC favourites. (In the GC, Golden Priapus and The Old Goblin lead the field.)

"Everything about this sounds perfect except for the lily!" *opens imp* "...ohno." >.< Yep, high-pitched soapy lily D: None of the lovely brownness I'd been hoping for, just screechy whiteness, including when it hits my skin.

As it starts to dry down it softens and gets powdery; it smells very much "commercial ladies' perfume" with a strong soapiness behind. Unless this seriously pulls it out, it's getting scrubbed off... Not getting anything like my beloved Unicorn & Ram, which is up there with my Holy Grail scents. No leather, no guaic wood, *definitely* no tonka. Just sharpness and soap and that spray-alcohol smell; if this had been my first experience of bpal some 12 years ago, I wouldn't have stuck around! What a disappointment - all the more so cos as it wears on I get faint hints of a fuzzy tonka-wood behind all the screeching horror.

I've found a big difference in the older and newer blends with black tea in - the latter seem to have a strong anise/licorice smell. Has anyone else noticed this, and if so has anyone identified when it changed, so I can avoid the ones with that smell?

Initially, tonka, green and...licorice? anise? A very faint hint of that, anyway, or maybe of the recent black tea note that seems to smell like that. As it settles I can smell the sharp sappy dandelion coming out, a faint soapiness moving forward. The tonka seems more powdery than its usual creaminess, which I assume is the brick dust; it reminds me of the porcelain in Pediophobia.

Russetfox, I hear you - my wife has a peanut allergy, and though no bpal has ever set it off, sometimes the smell of a nutty note will make her feel sick & freaked out by association. :s

The whole "unlisted notes" thing makes me really anxious from time, largely because of that - but also recently I saw that the Yule mashed potato scent is garlicky. I'm allergic to garlic, but it's not something I'd ever expected to find in a perfume, even bpal!

Oh, this is so beautiful! Definitely smells like the moors - I love the peat note (I love the smell of peat in anything, including real life) and the heather, with the rich sweetness of musk behind. The closest comparison I have for this is Hallow-een 1915. I need a bottle.

...This needs to be a perfume. How is this not a perfume? This is the *perfect* Dead Leaves scent. The leaves are fresh, greenish and airy with white musk - giving them, despite the greenness, a curious desolate wintery smell - with just a soft warm rounding of vanilla behind them. This smells like a February moorland in the UK: wide spaces full not of snow but a deep wet frosty chill, damp soil and frozen grass, but just a faint hint of warmth to come in the sun.

Holy petigrain - this is NOT the note I expected to jump out of this! In the bottle it smells unpleasantly like an artificial sweet orange scent. When it hits my skin it blossoms into something far more floral than I'd expect petigrain to be but with that neroli-sh edge - just not dirtied up by the woody resiny bits of petigrain the way I'd prefer. I'm wondering if there *is* some orange fruit in here (a petigrain accord, maybe, rather than the oil itself?) because with the vanilla behind it it's *very, very* sweet - or maybe it's the specific snow note in the "wintry musk". I'm used to petigrain being more of a dirty, woody, almost indolic vesion of neroli, but this is high-pitched floral.

No sign of the frank, sandalwood, coriander. As it dries I can detect the thyme contributing to that high-pitched feel and the musk giving it a powderiness (it's definitely a powdery light modern musk rather than an old-school animalic one - alas). Honestly it smells like something a young girl would wear from the Body Shop or somewhere; not at all what I was suspecting. The further it dries the more it fills out into a commercial-type perfume with one-dimensional musk, floral, citrus and vanilla, with a hint of dryer sheet scent (from the "winter", I'm guessing). I'd swear there's an aldehyde in here, maybe C10 or something else fruity.

It does fill out a little further and become a little more interesting, but still very much in a commercial perfume style. On a very close sniff there's a wintery-ozoney-herbiness contrasting with the musk/vanilla/fruit/floral; by this point a slightly more sophisticated woman could wear it. If that aspect came out a bit more it might start to veer slightly unisex, but as it is it's very feminine, with a soft powdery edge.

The sandalwood might be contributing to that powder, but it never shows up as a note, and neither does the frank; anyone expecting incense from this would be disappointed. I don't know where the "velvet-brown" is - unless it's a velvet pink-brown hatpin cushion sitting on the dressing table of a late Victorian lady getting lightly sifted with face powder. Not what I hoped for.

Sexy apple! I'm another person who's not a fruit scents fan, but this is stunning. There's definitely a musk in here (golden, perhaps, given the description?) which when wet makes it a very realistic apple note with a sweet rich musky honey. Drying down it goes through some faintly shampoo-ish posh-salon-y phases, but it always returns to the good stuff. After several hours' wear it was mostly a rich musk with lingering sweetness. Lovely stuff!

I'm not a fan of foodie-bakery scents generally, and thus far I've been unable to find a lab apple scent that works on me, yet: THIS. IS. AMAZING. Seriously. I tried my wife's decant, and it's just *gorgeous*. Wet it smells exactly like caramel apple cookies fresh from the oven - you can really smell the melty tart-sweet cooked green apple - and on my skin it turns to gently spiced apple crumble. Which isn't a kind of scent I thought I'd ever want to wear, but I want to just douse myself in this. It really smells of autumn to me, as I'm used to making crumbles when the apples ripen here. The only downside is it makes me hungry! Need a bottle of this between my wife (on whom it stays true to the wet scent) and I.

You might want to ask for recommendations in the TAL subforum, too!

In the imp: heavy green aquatic cologne.

Wet: a bloom (or boom?) of sweet white floral, initially prettily behind the green but then gradually growing stronger and soapier by the second, to the point where if it wasn't for a couple of other reviews I'd wonder if I had the right blend! Where's my wood, my sap, my sawdust?! A very faint vanillin sweetness that could be tonka comes through after a while, but otherwise it's just floral perfumed soap - hugely disappointing for this green-and-woods lover.

OH MY. All the unicorns I've tried so far have been hits, and this is no exception. In the bottle it's very coniferous, a blast of almost sour pine with a only a hint of the oak lurking underneath. On the skin, though, it warms and just blossoms: the creaminess of the oak comes out, the sour-sharpness of the pine turns sappy, and the amber starts to glow and sweeten.

On me it's a cousin to Golden Priapus, with nods to Hexennacht and Stranger In Camp (the latter has the same pine, I think). On me it's very outdoorsy, those sappy broken branches with warm golden amber and oak; on my wife it's sweeter, more golden, with the amber dominating. Like Unicorn And Ram this has a wintery feel on me, between the pine and the amber all thick and golden like a low winter sun. As it dries down it's getting a very slight and not unpleasant hint of powder (which amber's prone to doing on me).

This really does smell like wool! - not, on me, soft cashmere, but proper thick lanolin-bearing WOOL. I smell like a yarn store! - at least when it's wet. As it begins to dry down the other notes start peeking out, reminding me of various things: working outside a thick wool jumper under a sheepskin-lined leather jacket, then coming in to a cosy Christmastime house decorated with branches, with a hint of spices in the air. It's just lovely!

The leather isn't a harsh acidic leather; it's soft and warm, like harness leather warm from the horse (unicorn?) but clean. Different aspects fade in and out at different times, and as it settles it becomes more elegant - apparently it's now a refined gentleman wearing the woolly jumper. The "woolly musk" smells like the "baby goat musk" in My Baby And A Baby Goat, giving it that same warm snuggly feel, but more masculine and outdoorsy; the cardamom is the one in Spanked. A real winner.

Ppl have already suggested my first thoughts - White Light & Anthelion - but I'd also suggest Wolf's Heart, which among other things

"Grants courage under extreme conditions, helps overcome fear of death".

Not the cheeriest of topics, but I spend a lot of time in hospital as either an out or in-patient, in consultants' offices etc. Though obviously I keep them at a low level cos of other patients, when I'm not no-scent for surgery I like to wear something that I can sniff the hospital smell a bit, especially as that smell really doesn't help w my medical-related PTSD (&, tmi, fear-sweat smells gross >.<).

My go-to scent for this is Pinched as it's a deeply comforting scent to me, but especially since I've had to sell some decants (to pay for medical stuff...) I'm getting a bit anxious about running low. I wondered if other ppl have scents or TALs they prefer for hospital visits?

Oh my. This is just excellent on both my wife and I, in slightly different ways! It starts out with a smoky-treacle scent that almost reminds me of Bonfire Night, with a hint of faintly sour spice like cumin, but then it just absolutely blossoms. The tobacco comes forward, and it reminds me of a sandalwood snuff or one of the more floral English tobaccos, dry and perfumed, followed by the sweetness of the vanilla and rum and grounded by the rich woods. There's just a hint of booze, but it's not piratical rum at all; it's something far classier.

On my wife it came across as smokey-sweet-woody overlaid on a very classic women's perfume: a sophisticated lady in a cocktail dress who whispers in your ear that she's not wearing knickers. On me the polished wood was deeper and further forward, giving it a more cologne-like feel; not a crisp businessman's cologne but something far richer, classier and very slightly louche. A pre-war gentleman in immaculate evening wear at his club in the evening, all panelled walls and brandy and expensive tobacco in the air - but with his top button undone and a predatory glint in his eye. This definitely demands to be worn somewhere fancy!

Just beautiful. Bpal's ice & snow notes are normally ozoney death on me, but here there's nary a hint of dryer sheets, just a cold clarity overlying the pine, and something a bit warmer, creamier and woodier (the cones?) that reminds me of some of the oak/bark/etc notes. I've been trying to find a pine or fir bpal that works on me since 2006, and I've FINALLY found a winner. Perfect.

From imp to drydown, screaming sharp indolic jasmine backed up by rose and gardenia with a weird waft of dryer sheets. Not a hint of vetiver, leather or cinnamon. This isn't a rugged romantic highwayman; this is an old lady with too many cats on laundry day, and she's giving me a blinding headache. Off to swaps.

The magnolia in The Bride has caused me to fall in love with it - a complete surprise as the closest to a floral scent I've ever liked before. Yet in every other blend it seems to be combined with major death notes for me. Woe!

This was probably the strangest reaction I have ever had to a perfume.

I got it because I love Catullus 50, even though the only note in it that reliably works on me is the olive leaf. In the imp, it was a STRONG lemon verbena smell - a herbaceous lemon, rather than a cleaning fluid or candy one. I dabbed it on, and for a moment it smelled more like lemon balm, a warm summery lemon with a garden edge.

And then I turned deathly white and bolted for the bathroom, violently nauseated. I have no explanation, other than that it triggered some *really* horrible deep memory. I have PTSD so this shit happens sometimes, but I had no idea that a pleasant herbal lemon scent could make me feel like I was coming down with the most violent food poisoning of my life. O.O Left me very shaken and I scrubbed it off with hibiscrub to get rid of any lingering aroma.

So this could be really good on the right person, who wants a slightly sweet, fuzzy-herbal lemon scent for summer - but that person is very definitely not me. D: