bheansidhe

I used to grow nicotiana; the blooms have a syrup-sweet scent that I don't find here at all. As doomsday_disco noted, there seems to be a lot of gritty loam anchoring this blend at first, but I find the initial snootfull of dirt wears off. What I'm left with is a woodsy vanilla that's more like tonka bean (without the more cologne-like qualities of that note) over some kind of dry woody resin. It's not a foody or floral blend in the least. It smells like "tobacco flower" in that someone took twists of whole dried tobacco leaves and shaped them into a decorative paper flower (which would make an AWESOME fall table decoration, now that I think about it). It's autumnal, dry, sweet in a woody and resinous way, trailing vanilla bean and pipe smoke in its wake. When I adjust my expectations, I find this a really nice gender-neutral fall blend; it's warming and cozy and low-key.

This is a surprisingly mellow and wearable blend. The cocoa butter initially gives me the feel of being slathered in white chocolate, except that there are no sugary or foody notes here. The coconut and tiare rise up and twine with the cocoa butter to recreate that childhood tanning lotion smell, but it stays low. It doesn't hit me in the face. In fact, it smells like pleasantly sun-warmed skin that's baking by the pool in the late August sunshine. The skin vibe is enhanced by the pumpkin note, which is mellow and vegetal, definitely squash flesh as opposed to pie. If you want to wear a pumpkin note but always amp the cinnamon aspects of pumpkin pie spice, you will definitely want to try this for a completely different pumpkin ride.

I LOVE a big round amber perfume to roll around in -- but I wouldn't categorize this one as such. For me it's solidly in the floriental category, and the first act is all plum blossom. The plum blossom note initially gives me that sweet-seductive-but-bitter, "sexy assassin's perfume" edge that I caught in White Sandalwood & Black Poppy, so I'd call it an opium floral. The second act warms gradually on the skin, like plum blossom smoke rising from a golden amber lamp that's slowly being lit. The third and final act is recognizably an amber perfume, but a muted and mellow one, still twinned with the aerial note that cools it down. In this stage it settles low on my skin, a pleasant faint thrum. Balanced, gentle, equally good for date night or office wear.

Having just pulled a leaf from my living sweetgrass plant and crushed it in my fingers, I can verify that this blend smells EXACTLY like concentrated sweetgrass essence. This oil doesn't have the mellow hay-like quality of dried sweetgrass, or the pungency of the smoke; it is fresh, grassy, herbally sweet, almost mineralic, with a slightly bittered vanilla component. So if you have only experienced dried or burned sweetgrass and are looking for that note, you won't really find it here - but you'll find a true fresh sweetgrass. Applied, it stays true to the sweetgrass note. I don't have a scent reference in my head for dandelion; I don't associate the flowers with a smell, and I just have a generic green-sap impression of the leaves' scent. I think it contributes an herbal (not floral) soapy note. It's not overwhelmingly soapy, just a slight impression in the back of the blend that anchors the sweetgrass. The dominant impression is the fresh sappy greenness and the complex herbal sweetgrass juice. Very springlike, but also surprisingly autumnal, because the green juices have that bitter, earthy, grounding quality to them. (BTW, I grow my sweetgrass in a large pot in a sunny area with a damp soil mix and lots of mulch. I bought the plants here: https://www.prairienursery.com/vanilla-sweet-grass-hierochloe-odorata.html )

I really enjoy the darkly herbaceous, sap-sharp green notes that open the blend. Where "green" in a perfume most often means sweeter notes like grass or bamboo, this evokes tearing fresh leathery leaves in your hands, like ligustrum, laurel, or eucalyptus, and harvesting raw whipping cedar tips from young branches. The dark greens are wrapped in the sweeter resins and a note (the hyssop?) that's almost like a spicy dianthus or carnation, but not floral. It's a pungent raw herbal bundle to start, but softens to a light sandalwood and bay rum. I think this would pair really well with Aristotle beard oil and Socrates perfume oil.

I found this in a box of decants from 2017-2019 that I thought I'd lost forever. It's obviously aged and softened, but I wish I'd bought a bottle. I'm not normally a florals wearer, but this floats on the skin like a powder puff of purest vanilla sugar with just a murmur of jasmine and star anise enriching the edges. It's the vintage gilded and hand-painted ceramic jewelry box you found in a Parisian flea market, painted in lovely shades of amethyst and amber and gold over white bone china. The one you told yourself was too outrageously girly to buy and nothing like your normal taste - but you bought it anyway.

Sniffed wet, I get more an impression of fresh spring air than autumn harvest. On the skin this is realistic and specifically apple *peel* instead of flesh, juice, or flower. It has that slightly tart astringency of the first bite into a Rome or Black Arkansas. It's hard to find the brandy, except as a sweetness behind the peel. If you told me this was single-note Apple Peel, I'd applaud it. ETA: the brandy comes out more on drydown, but it's still more of a suggestion of the empty glass of Calvados, not a bartop.

When I first tested Circe, it reminded me strongly of The First Veil (densely ruffled peppered ambergris, sandalwood smoke, and charred silk), even though they don't seem to have any notes in common. I tested them side by side, and sure enough, the shared notes of peppery spices and the occlusive (but not offensive!) charred / scorched organics made them sniffing siblings. First Veil is MUCH drier and more of a metallic tan smell, where Circe is MUCH sweeter and reads like shot-gold red satin, but they both have an intense scorched organics-spiced honey effect. (The "char" isn't a smoke note - it's more like charcoal.) The rest of Circe is dominated by fig, pungent sappy green herbals, and honeyed wine. Whatever "swine musk" is, it reads like a super-amped skin musk note, not a barnyard. I'm getting camphorous whiffs of Mediterranean herb from the marjoram and bay laurel, plus the sweet dark labdanum. Overall, it's well blended, but WAY too strong for me. Commanding female sorceress: yes. It stays spicy and honeyed through the drydown.

Given the huge number of BPALs deliberately crafted to evoke the before, during, or after stages of coitus (plus the ones that accidentally conjure it *cough*DiscardedWeapons*cough*), I don't know why the name made me so nervous. But I was ... trepidatious ... to just open the bottle and get a raw facefull, as it were. Just exactly what kind of fucking were we talking about, here? How LONG had the fucking gone on? Were leather restraints involved? Had there been a pizza break at midnight, yes or no, and if yes, was Beth going to sneak in a complicated reference to Day-Old Ham...? Reader: I need not have worried. The answer to my questions, in order, were: 1. FEMME and FANCY FUCKING, INDEED 2. IT WAS A COITUS OROBUROS 3. NO 4. NO, THANK GOD, NO, THIS IS PORK-FREE PORKING 5. IBID The first impression is white musk and/or light skin musk, heavily juiced with soft tropical fruits and florals. I think I smell papaya, hibiscus, one of the softer tropical bark notes like coconut husk, and maybe orris or iris root. Nothing is individuated or obtrusive - I don't smell any one distinct note, just a soft sweet mélange. There's a U-turn into lotus root territory, anchored by a very tiny hint of bitter greenery in the back - tea leaf? Violet leaf? - and then it turns pale and powdery, like clean cotton sheets. So, depending on the stage of wear, this evokes either moist, heavy breathing and really juicy foreplay, or lying about in your juice-besmirched bedding and recovering your energy for a new wave of femme fucking. Very much in the vein of a lesbian Shunga, or one of the softer blends like Penetralia or Rose Milk Tea (while not smelling like either of those). Then - it just collapses into a heap. It's DONE FOR. It's gone, but it left its perfumed panties stuffed under your pillow. Hope this helps!

This smells like the amped-up magical powerhouse cousin of Recovery Room and Blackout Blinds. I love it for work when the ambient noise of 2025 is jangling my nerves too much for me to really buckle down and hit my effective zone. The scent is herbal, zippy, citrusy, and gently sunny. I think it would be an amazing therapy adjunct.

I absolutely adore this for the hour or so that it twines around my wrist before slithering away into the grass.

I sniffed this at the DragonCon booth and my first thought was, "Wait, I thought I really disliked Fae Forest, but now it smells fresh and amazing!" Then I realized I had previously reviewed the ATMO, but my hand was holding the newly released HAIR GLOSS. I don't wear hair glosses except as a body spray, but this smelled intoxicatingly good. The last three RPG hair glosses (Fae Forest, Elven Glam, and Celestial Aura) have been solid rock stars. I look forward to reading some more hands-on reviews.

The sugared patchouli, caramel, and tobacco flower aspects create a Snake Oil-Lite variant on my skin. I can't wear Snake Oil at all, so it's pleasant to vibe along with the OG while that stage lasts. Overall, the blend opens and ends with a poof of soft orange blossom that's girlish but not cloying.

Sniffed: musty roasted nuttiness, hearth smoke, soft leather book bindings, and parchment paper notes. Applied: all of the above, plus pale, austere beeswax. There's a light sweetness that's distinctly beeswax and not a honey note. Wear: very true to the notes. The gourmand and hearth/library aspects are so interwoven that it's hard to call the blend desserty or pictorial or both. However you characterize it, it never loses the smokiness, but the gusts of sweetness vary from sweet wax to sweet wood resins to sugared, nutty biscotti. It stays low on the skin, but smoulders a long time. The final effect of the smoke reads like hearth tobacco and teakwood incense.

Lots of dried mango and spicy clove to start -- at this stage it reminds me of Vero Mango lollipops or mango chamoyada candy sticks. The rest of the blend is quite subtle, with a touch of floaty resins, but no big stompy notes. Fades to a gentle glow of mango and a dark resiny note.