bheansidhe

This is beautifully reminiscent of the discontinued blend The Jester (Huckleberry and red currant with the incisive bite of neroli.). The vetiver isn't in the forefront; it's just present enough to keep the sharp-sweet currant and raspberry realistic and rooted on the vine, so that they don't spin off into Jolly Ranchers territory. The drydown is soft, fruity, and slightly herbal.

Black rose, dried apricot, and black fig. Because I ran a decant circle, I had the chance to sniff (most) of the perfumes and compare them with (most) of the matching hair glosses. (I don't wear most rose notes or hair gloss myself, so my reviews will be more nose-test and less wear-test.) Huit-the-hair-gloss opens with the black rose in front and a woodsy-green fig note behind. It smells like a rose-toned black Gothic funeral veil. It smells like the shadows in the beautiful but evil queen's formal robe. The secondary notes stay woodsy rather than fruity. Huit-the-perfume needed time to rest after the mailbox, or maybe after the stress of its creation. On first decant it was a black and severe rose with bitter, woodsy-green fig behind and no juice at all. After the dregs sat for a week in the bottle and breathed, the fruit came to the foreground and Huit overall became more rounded, balanced between sweet, but not too sweet, apricot in the front, and black-rose-green-figwood in the back. The rose component stays a flat ROSE throughout - kind of a matte rose scent? - but definitely black and straight rose with no fruit or tea. If you love the notes but the wearing experience isn't what you wanted, you should definitely try layering the two.

White rose, gilded carnation, brown oakmoss, and velvet oudh. This is gender neutral and divided into three equal parts woods, oakmoss, and rose, with carnation enhancing both the heaviness of the rose and the spiciness of the oudh, but never playing a major part. This doesn't read as specifically "masculine" to my nose, but it has a definite Renaissance gentleman's vibe; it's a rose scent that reminds you why men wore rosewater as cologne for much of history. It smells smooth and brown; I don't know that I would specifically pick "rose" out of the notes after a few minutes of wear, but my skin test was iffy so I have to go with sniffing. Looking forward to seeing some actual wear test reviews! (I didn't decant this perfume, so I can't compare the formulations.)

Thirding the idea of this being an Urban Outfitters prototype / unreleased cousin of Banshee Beat. The meat of it is that gnarly, gritty hippy patchouli, but where BB is softened by vanilla, this one is roughened at the edges - it's like comparing hot chocolate mix to pure, unsweetened Dutched cocoa. Speaking of cocoa, I can get a black cocoa husk or cocoa powder in there. I also get tiiiiny bit of vetiver pungency (but only when wet - it vanishes on drydown) and something like the "stone" or "concrete" accord - which, taken together, are giving me a "Streets of Detroit" vibe. Drydown is just that gritty patch and ethereal dry, blond wood notes (possibly cedar, possibly a light sandalwood). I finally get some vanilla in the finish - just enough to fuzz up the edges, though; it never emerges as a distinct note. So, somewhat-less-sweet patch-heavy Banshee Beat / Streets of Detroit, plus some other wood or resin binding it together. I definitely recommend seeking out a decant if that intrigues you! It smells like something that will age (or already has aged) very well.

Because I ran a decant circle, I had the chance to sniff (most) of the perfumes and compare them with (most) of the matching hair glosses. (I don't wear most rose notes or hair gloss myself, so my reviews will be more nose-test and less wear-test.) Huit-the-perfume needed time to rest after the mailbox, or maybe after the stress of its creation. On first decant it was a black and severe rose with bitter, woodsy-green fig behind and no juice at all. After the dregs sat for a week in the bottle and breathed, the fruit came to the foreground and Huit overall became more rounded, balanced between sweet, but not too sweet, apricot in the front, and black-rose-green-figwood in the back. The rose component stays a flat ROSE throughout - kind of a matte rose scent? - but I can see where it would lose dominance to the fruit notes after wear. With Huit-the-hair-gloss, the notes open in a different order and it's much more rose-forward from the start. It smells like rose-toned black Gothic funeral veil. The secondary notes stay woodsy rather than fruity. If you love the notes but the wearing experience isn't what you wanted, you should definitely try layering the two.

Look, I was very curious about the combination of notes, but I really hate rose perfumed anything. Nevertheless, I skin tested! >LOOK You are standing in a formal Victorian garden. To your east is a green lawn. To your west is a brick wall. In front of you is a greenhouse. >LOOK AT GREENHOUSE You see an ornate wrought-iron and glass greenhouse. The glass is misted. There are blooming plants inside. >ENTER GREENHOUSE You enter the greenhouse. Oops! The door swings shut behind you, locking you in. I'm sure there's nothing to worry about, though. Doesn't it smell pretty? >LOOK The greenhouse is full of pink and red roses in full bloom. They smell heady and lush. On the floor is a plate of shortbread cookies. They look mouth-watering. >GET COOKIES You head toward the cookies. You're having a hard time seeing them for some reason. What you thought was mist is actually steam. It's getting thicker by the minute. >LOOK INSIDE GREENHOUSE Behind you is a locked door. The eastern wall is covered in climbing roses. The western wall is thickly planted with shrub roses. The north wall has a potting bench, a sink, and a camp stove. There's something boiling on the stove. >LOOK AT STOVE You see a lit stove, a metal pot, and huge clouds of steam. Something is boiling vigorously on the stove. It smells like rose syrup. >TURN OFF STOVE I don't recognize that command. >LOOK AT POTTING BENCH You see a few empty plant pots and a huge knob of butter. Hm, that sounds dirty. >GET BUTTER You get the butter. Whoops! It slips out of your hand and lands in the boiling rose syrup, you butterfingers. >LOOK You can't see anything. You are surrounded by thick white clouds rose-and-butter scented steam. It's very pretty, but it's getting hard to breathe. >HELP I don't recognize that command. >GET COOKIES There were cookies in here somewhere, weren't there? Unfortunately, you can't find them in all of that rose and butter scented steam. >BREATHE STEAM You breathe deeply, filling your lungs. It's rich and heady, but too much for your system. You pass out. >LOOK You see darkness behind your eyelids. It's rose-scented. >LOOK AGAIN You open your eyes. You are sitting at a kitchen table. In front of you is a plate of shortbread cookies and a vase of lush red roses. Would you like to eat the cookies, smell the roses, or flee in terror? >FLEE Wisely, you decide to leave the delicious cookies and beautiful roses for a more appreciative audience.

DAWN: PRIESTESS Damascus rose, jasmine, myrrh, opoponax, white sage, and patchouli. Priestess is weighty, complex, and a morpher. I dislike myrrh and rose on my skin as a rule, but I love actual white sage and I liked the concept of the scent. Once on, I liked the feel of the blend, even though individual notes behaved oddly on me. Sniffed from the wand, the initial top blast is rose; if you figured the blackest burgundy of rose notes, you'd be right. It smells nothing like the rose in Maiden. I waved it back and forth for several seconds and each waft smelled different, spicier, with fruity resins (in the same way that wet tobacco is fruity, and not as in actual fruit). The rose binds everything together, but after the first whiff this isn't a "rose" scent; it's resins and darkness wreathed in the smoky medicinal tang of white sage. I didn't get jasmine at all except as a sharpness behind the rose. On my skin, this sank down amazingly low and took on a smoky, smouldering quality. This isn't cheap headshop stank; it smells like anointing oils and high-quality ritual incense. I can smell the white sage, which I love, but isn't everyone's cup of tea; it's nothing like cooking sage and more like sharp conifer sap. Smells like magic herbs burning on a dry fire. After a while this went unpleasantly close to body odor on me, which is the fault of myrrh, and then to dead, dusty roses. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

I am a huge fan of the Lab's snow note + anything atmos, so I tend to blind buy at least one of those per release. With the birch and willow, I was expecting something on the sharp herbal end of the scale, but The Snow-Covered Plains is lighter and sweeter than I anticipated. Wet, I get an initial combo of spicy snow and a cool wintergreen on the spearmint-y end of the scale (not camphorous). The middle is filled out by a surprisingly round, juicy note, and the finish is wrapped in dry greenery. Specifically, I get dried ivy leaves and bits of a mossy fougere from the green component. It's not *floral* per se, but you are definitely viewing those snow-covered plains from inside a high-end florist's shop. Because it's winter, it's filled with a wintertime selection of curly willow branches and ivy wreaths. Because the snow note always reads to me as "spicy," it's like the ghosts of cinnamon brooms are still lurking in the storeroom, even though there's none in the actual shop. I feel like this analogy ran away from me, so I'll end by saying that if you normally shy away from cold atmospheric scents, this is a warm and comfortable *painting* of snow-covered plains, and not actual freezing-your-eyelashes-off trudging-through-snow covered plains. Gentle coolness, slushy snow, spicy greenery.

My nose reads this as gin-soaked Bliss from the bottle. Gin always smells fruity-sharp to me, instead of boozy like the Lab's rum note, so it's red fruit and milk chocolate forward at first. Then black leather unrolls in the background, making the chocolate deeper and the gin sharper, occasionally peeking out on its own. Certainly an unusual combination - unique in the BPAL lineup as far as I can remember. If you're a Bliss or 13 fan, this might be a winner. I'm neither, so it's off to swaps.

The scent of mad piety, blood and martyrdom, soul-crushing guilt, and frenzied devotion: frankincense and myrrh disoriented by labdanum, unsteady yuzu, shredded ginger, black cypress, and Aleppo Pine wood thickened with dragon's blood resin. Sniffed: wow, that's a brisk snap of the fingers under your nose. Peppery ginger, bright yuzu, and fiery red resins. This smells . . . martial and reverberant. I don't get any soul-crushing guilt, but there is indeed a frenzied energy to the blend. Wet: I. Love. This. It's perfectly seasonal, too - the yuzu and pine with church incense notes make it smell like a room full of evergreen boughs and brightly burning red Christmas candles, turned up to 11. The dragon's blood is fruity and round; it's almost got a bayberry quality. How on earth does something smell like candle flame? I hope this dries down well, because it wasn't even on my list and now it's shot up to purchase status. Worn: it gets drier and woodsier as it ages, fading to the ghost of burned incense. Really, really good incense. I'm not normally into the incense-heavy blends, but this is a winner.

This is the sweetest and lightest of the dead leaves this year, and is surprisingly lovely. It's like the perfect kid's version of Dead Leaves. This is not a soapy floral violet. This smells like Choward's old-fashioned violet pastille candies, which to me smell like happy road trip memories. After the violet wears off, you're left with a light, simple sugared dried ivy note. I'm still working my way through the Dead Leaves and Blackberries from last year, so I don't need this one, but if you enjoyed that one, DL VC & SC has a similar vibe.

This is an opulent, bitter purple-black blast of the back room at a Goth dance bar. It comes off my skin primarily as incense and dark plum, and less as dead leaves and clove, with a background vibe that reminds me of the commercial Opium perfume. It squirms around a bit to become spicy plum, then plummy oudh, then clove-tinged incense, but never strays far from its basic spike-heeled leather boots and purple velvet dance moves.

It's been so long since I've had candy corn (squished or otherwise) that I don't remember what it smells like. When I was a kid I would smoosh them on my canines like vampire fangs, then spit them out when they started to dissolve. Wet, this smells more buttery and sugary than dead-leavey. I agree there's some wax in there. It morphs dramatically on my skin to somewhat bitter, earthy dead leaves and caramel, with maybe some dry pumpkin spice blend in the background. Edit: dries down to a light, pleasant dead leaves and buttery caramel with low throw.

Golden juicy lychee and peach - the classic "Dragoncon peach" note - over dark wet musks, sharpened by bergamot. On me, this wears like filthy dirty sex with a spray of peach juice.

I absolutely love cedar - They Lie Thus Chambered and Cold to the Moon was a big bottle buy last year - so I was pleased to try this one despite its lengthy list of bad-for-me notes. Sniffed, this reads like one of the more elegant and cerebral Shunga blends. It smells like it should be named The Pale Naked Moon Maiden Scorning The Embraces of the Pepper Demon Askishikawa As They Struggle By Moonlight In a Black Cedar Grove. Like, there is just SO MUCH going on here: big perfumey blasts of white and blue and black musk, the light floral notes, the dark wet tobacco and the dry cracks of pepper. The honeyed orange blossom plays tug-of-war with the black pepper-tobacco, yanking the blend from masculine to feminine and back. Mostly, though, it's blue musk and cedar. "Perfume pencil" kind of nails it. I do love pencil perfumes, but Chambered already fulfills that need, so I don't need a bottle. I'm glad I got to keep an imp, though.

This starts as a blast of big, chewy, in-your-face caramel and sweet pipe tobacco with some spiced cocoa steaming in the background. It softens almost immediately to a dry, sweet burnt sugar-and-caramel dusted with cocoa, plus the mellow blonde tobacco that I associate with the Ares blends (closer the Bulgarian than the French, which smells like ashtray to me). After a while I start to get a black sweetened demitasse coffee note in the background, but at no point does this read as a coffee blend. The caramel-and-tobacco combination reminds me a tiny bit of Red Lantern, but the cocoa and milk chocolate notes stay in the forefront. I also get an on-again, off-again hint of spicy Mexican chocolate. Unlike 99% of the Lab's chocolates, it never goes plastic on me. So if you have that specific problem with blends like Bliss, it might be worth trying Badgered. Mellow, sweet, dry, and only slightly foody.

Full disclosure: I love the actual mint plant, but I dislike* mint flavor or scent mixed with anything else** (the sole exception being Andes chocolate mint wafers). Further disclosure: 99.99% of any "honey" or "beeswax" or "candle" note goes horrifically bad on me, so this skin test is legit Taking One For the Team. Sniffed, this is a 50/50 blend of cool vanilla mint and the same juicy, golden-sweet peach note from some of my favorite past Dragoncon blends. I don't get the minty blast I remember from Lick It; this seems like the softer vanilla mint note of Snowblind. It takes about 20 minutes for the marshmallow to develop. The notes stay pretty true during drydown: candied honey, warm peach, and a touch of after-dinner mint. It has a pretty low throw, and the peach reads almost like a warm skin musk, so this would be a good "up close and personal" kind of scent. It's sweet but not in-your-face foody; you'll smell like hard honey candies, not a walking dessert case. *Mint in coffee is an abomination. **I know mint plus fruit is a thing, but it makes as much sense to my nose as mint plus steak.

A raucous, fiery glitter, all pumpkin orange with glints of vine-green. Swatched at Will Call. Definitely a fiery glitterbomb. Gold, bright orange, and red-orange glitters, accented with tiny pinpoint black and green glitters. I seem to remember a bit of a holo flare; little red holo and gold flecks, maybe? Halloween on a nail! Much brighter and more orange than the photo on the site (on my monitor, anyway). One coat was good but semi-sheer coverage, and two was solid glitter. I'm sure you could do some great layering with it, too.

The combination of the sweet Snake Oil resins and the salty nutty prank base make me think of caramel corn, which makes me think of this blend as a mashup between Snake Oil and Midway. It's been years since I smelled Midway, so I may be off base here, but there's still a jolly dark carnival vibe to the blend. I don't get any aquatics; I do get salt, but it's what I think of as the "dry salt" base of Jolly Roger (and Gingerbread Jolly Roger, one of my favorite blends!). Within the hour, though, this settles down to a lighter, nuttier, but still recognizable Snake Oil, except that Snake in a Can smells gold where straight Snake Oil smells mahogany, if that makes sense.

I love the cucumber and blue musk notes for when I want something springlike or feminine, and the bitter blackcurrant-and-tobacco tar Dead Leaves weenie was a surprise hit, so I took a chance with it. This one wants the heat of your bathwater to bloom, I think. It smells like I'm floating in the inky blue-black waters of a Roman bath in an underground hall. The almond blossom lends a touch of warmth, but it's primarily blue musk balancing the sweet mimosa and the astringent, bitter-juice blackcurrant. Think "sullen, deadly sea siren taking her beauty bath." I may sell a decant out of my bottle because I don't see myself reaching for it often enough to use it all up before the shelf life expires, but it's actually really gorgeous and unlike all of my other bath oils, which lean toward resins and warm notes.

[No additional description given.] Of the five DL blends I tried, this one one smells the most dead-leafy when wet, with a strong, bracingly bitter edge. The leaf-ness of the dark tobacco marries really well with the leaf-ness of the DL note. The blackcurrant is tart and astringent and *just* fruity enough to keep the blend balanced and wearable. This is outdoorsy and cold and wild, not tame and pipe-shop. It takes a softer, more dried-fruit aspect as it wears. I didn't expect to like this one as much as I do. ETA: bought a bottle! That's how much I liked it.

I love Perversion and Wild Men, so maybe we have some skin similarities? Doc Constantine (Sheer musk, cedar smoke, fir needle, chaparral, black amber and leather.) The Black Rider (Black leather, oppoponax, tobacco, and BLACK amber.) Sarah, The Mother Bear (tonka bean, soft brown leather, myrrh, white sage, gurjum balsam, Ceylon cinnamon bark, red sandalwood, sweet tobacco, and a touch of gunsmoke.) Crowley (Infernal musk, red patchouli, lilac cologne, mahogany, lemon rind, oakmoss, leather, and vanilla husk. ) Bread-and-Butterfly (Its wings are thin slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.') Kali (This perfume is a blend of the sacred blooms of cassia, hibiscus, musk rose, Himalayan wild tulip, lotus and osmanthus swirled with offertory dark chocolate, red wine, tobacco, balsam and honey.) Intrigue (Black palm with cocoa, fig, and shadowy wooded notes.) Ranger (buckskin accord with Terebinth pine, Russian birch, black ironwood, elder bark, hay, armoise, juniper, patchouli, galangal root, Spanish moss, and cabreuva.) Golden Priapus (vanilla and amber with juniper, rosewood and white pine.) LE: Phoenix and Dragon, Lupercalia 2016 (Incense-blackened oudh and bourbon vanilla with tobacco absolute and 9-year aged patchouli.) Dead Leaves and Tobacco (2015) Pan Twardowski and the Devil (2015) (Brown leather, bay leaf, tobacco leaf, lavender, and oudh.)

I love this, actually. Spanish Moss was a favorite note on my skin, while Oakmoss went sour and too masculine. Tomb Moss reads a lot like Spanish Moss with added notes of dry salt, fresh moist dirt, and what I think may (logically) be concrete. Despite the mossiness and saltiness, it's not an "aquatic" on me. It's lighter and sweeter and drier than I picture tomb moss to be. In fact, if you had told me this was really the "dead leaves" note, I'd buy it. This is more like what I expect from a dead leaf accord. Contemplating a bottle! I bet it would layer well.

LURID BONBON Dark chocolate dotted by cacao nibs, laced with black currant, Bulgarian lavender, white musk, and thick resins. Terry Pratchett invented a color called octarine, described as "alive and glowing and vibrant, and incidentally a kind of greenish purple." So, if this analogy helps at all, Lurid Bonbon smells like octarine dark chocolate to my nose. Chocolate itself is warm and fuzzy and matte, while lavender and currant and white musk are sharp and scintillating, so you would logically expect this combination to fight itself, but it doesn't at all. The resins marry the two poles beautifully. The chocolate component is dark, and has the same feel as the chocolate in Chocolate Stout Cupcake, but where that was a brutal chemistry mishap, Lurid Bonbon was a bottle purchase after I skin-tested at Will Call. This reads as a musk/resin perfume with a chocolate haze, rather than a foody-forward chocolate blend, though YMMV. Very sexy and adult, with tons of throw. One of the very few chocolate BPALs that succeeds against my weird chemistry.

Sniffed at Will Call! You know the old Warner Bros cartoons, where a character puts a seashell to their ear to hear the ocean and instead a giant wave sploooshes out and fish jump out their other ear? A Sea Ghost was like cracking the bottle to sniff and being plunged into a technicolor (well, mostly blues and greys) oil painting of a shipwreck - all salty spray and groaning dark timbers and rattling chains and wailing gales and noctilucent waves. I wanted to go back and smell it again, but there was only one bottle in stock and it sold lickety-split.