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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.

Sniffed wet: oakmoss-dominant dead leaves and lea-heh-heah-EATher. This is definitely a "wet" masculine fougere type.

 

Oddly, even though clove's usually the 900 pound gorilla in the blend, the leather completely smothers the clove at first. Clove's a fighter, though. Eventually I smell it around the edges - at this stage it's like a hit of spicy aftershave. The bourbon vanilla may as well not be there, unless it's just the glue softening the sharp edges of everything else.

 

Dry, I just get "clove-spiced fougere." This is too much of a dude fume for me, and the least dead-leafy of the five I tried. It's oakmoss all the way.

I don't specifically get "blackberries" at first sniff, but I do get an astringent-sweet dark berry note, crisp green leaves, and soft wet leaves. I think she may be using different DL formulas, because this one smells much more herbal and much less like the oakmoss base in DL Lavender and DL Cardamom. Here, it's the blackberries that sing.

 

DL and Blackberries is sweeter, fruitier, and more summery than DL Blackcurrant and Tobacco Tar, but not candy-girlish. There's still a wistful feel of early autumn and of gathering a ripe final harvest before the cold sets in. It does sweeten up as it wears, but it doesn't lose the realistic berry-ness.

 

I love this the most after several hours of wear; it's like a lingering berry lip stain of a scent.

[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.

Is it masculine? Is it feminine? Time for..... *drumroll* tiebreaker review!

 

However you interpret the "dead leaves" note, this blend is dominated by a sharp, chilly, medicinal lavender when wet. I can see where the previous reviewer got a cologne-y vibe from the mossy, musky base under the lavender. To me it's unisex, but there's nothing soft or feminine about it at this stage. I'd actually peg this as a lavender and oakmoss blend if I were sniffing blind.

 

It becomes softer and more soporific as it dries. Long-wearing, too: I put some on before bed to test its sleepability, and I woke up with my arm smelling fantastic for the rest of the day. I liked it better after 12 hours of wear, honestly... and NOW it's soft and more feminine-leaning.

 

Like many of the dead leaves-and blends, I get "expensive Anthropologie fall candle" instead of "perfume." I actually like this on my skin, but to me it begs to be poured into an oil warmer to scent my room. I also think it would be a great fall sleeping blend (if your bed partner approved).

 

Conclusion: may not be your cup of tea for perfume, but I may buy a bottle for scenting a sleep pillow or warming in a burner. And if this ever gets released as a Post candle, I'm scraping together the coin to buy one.

I don't get any marshmallow, except as a bit of sweetness toward the end of the drydown.

 

Unlike 99% of lilac and mist blends, this is neither soapy nor green. It's a balance between the dry white orris and the misty pale floral notes, with a touch of earthy moss. I agree with the comparison to Moonshine and Mist; it also feels very much in the Ars Moriendi line of ghostly, ethereal blends.

This is a dry, earthy, husky patchouli-and-woods blend, with ambrette lending a nutty warmth. This isn't the toothy, gnarly patch in Banshee Beat. It smells autumnal and polished. It has a very male feel to it, but it's nothing like a cologne; more like a carved and oiled wooden statutette of a forest god.

 

I normally pass on anything with orris, but this one is beautifully done.

Like zeezee, I picked this up and was immediately struck by its similarity to Silkybat - which I happen to still have a small amount of, lurking in my fridge. Sniffed side by side, they are kissin' cousins. Silkybat is rounder and more mellow, whereas Love Swing does have a woodsy sharpness on top that reminds me of The Antikythera Mechanism. It smells much more like either of these than it does like last year's Black Cardamom and Vanilla, which I also sniffed side-by-side with The Love Swing.

 

I love this. It loves me back.

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.

#54

 

Wet: Weathered woods and pungent vetiver.

 

Dried: Woods, softened vetiver, and something balsamic or benzoic in the back. Actually quite pleasant if you like vetiver. Gender-neutral, but would probably smell better on a guy.

157: A strong blast of a sweet spiced booze note, like buttered rum or hard cider, and tons of burnt-sugar fruitcake. The fruits are earthy complex ones, like dried plums and figs and mincemeat, dusted with cardamom and allspice. It feels very Victorian Christmas Dessert. In fact, it's like Christmas Pudding, Butter Rum Cookie, and Hard Cider Cake had a three-way love child.

 

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

On me this was lighter and greener than I thought it would be - I suspect it wants a bit of aging to soften the balsam to my personal tastes - but on my friend it was ALL peach and leather and oudh, which was her personal idea of a Really Good Party.

There's nothing dark in this scent. I get blond woods and golden resins and young fresh-cured leather, with peach keeping it juicy at the edges.

Works for any gender.

Emphasis on the cream and the musk (like a soft skin musk), not the rose. This smells like plush fur feels, all creamy to the nose. It is shockingly lovely and understated, and if rose in all forms did not abhor my skin, I would buy it.

Intensely fruity red musk with the resins thrumming beneath.

This is the peach note cosplaying Linsner's Dawn. Is it too overt? Does it show too much cleavage? Or are these exactly the stiletto heel thigh-high boots you were looking for? Only you can decide.

Like clove, white sandalwood will usually dominate the top, middle, and bottom notes on my skin. True to form, this dries down to 90% powdery vanilla / white sandalwood and 10% green musk. It's like a green-tinted Paladin, which is nicely ironic given this is the dragon and not the knight, but I already have Paladin.

 

Clean, slightly soapy, but mostly powdery. Oh well.

Juke Joint is the glitter turquoise vinyl upholstering the booths at your favorite bowling alley - the one that wasn't retro-new but really truly built in the 50s, but it was in that little town your grandmother lived in that you hated to go visit in the summer, because there was nothing to do but watch TV and bowl, and it was only years later when you were a grownup and the alley was long gone that you realized how amazingly cool it had been.

Speaking of your grandmother, the crelly base is the same turquoise as the vintage atomic-print formica on her kitchen counters, and the flat silver glitter in this polish is the same dull metal sheen as the counter's metal edge banding (that snagged sweater cuffs and caught toast crumbs until everyone gave up trying to clean the cracks out).

And floating in this turquoise crelly base with its flat silver sand-scatter are pinpoint aqua sparks: a bloom of insouciant aqua jellyfish: gorgeous and deadly in this Aegean-blue surf-tumble, so that you don't dare go in the water, but you look and look and look at it.

So if you want to paint your claws with vintage 50s glitter vinyl, your grandmother's formica, and luminous jellyfish, with a smooth and workable formula to boot, Juke Joint will make you a happy camper.

It's the smoky vanilla, musk, and tobacco that dominate at first - in fact, when applied wet, this is strongly akin to the tobacco-and-caramel combo in Tiresias the Androgyne. Laura could be a coconut-free sibling of Red Lantern. Lavender flickers intermittently in the background, like grain streaks popping up in an old reel-to-reel movie.

 

As it wears, carnation blooms over but does not obscure the gritty smoky vanilla/tobacco. If vetiver is your death note, have no fear: it's just a dark background supporting the other notes. Also, there's zero resemblance to TKO or any of the other lavender-based blends.

 

Overall impression: smoky, warm, musky, somehow gritty and feminine at the same time. The caramel impression never wavers. (I can't wear tobacco, so I'm just posting notes before I pass the bottle to its rightful owner ;-).

 

ETA: Oops, I lied? After two hours of yard work in the hot sun, I'm left with a soft carnation perfume that - as Herb Girl rightly notes- blooms on its inconspicuous vetiver stem. Very creamy and feminine at this point, with none of the gritty tobacco left over. YMMV.

Noooope nope nope nope nope.

 

Interesting to read the reviews above mine & see that nearly everyone got the slight, unsettling wrongness of it.

 

Wet: like breathing in a plastic bag of fake black licorice-flavored licorice whips. While standing in a stinky tobacco shop. That sells menthol cigarettes. With an open styrofoam cup of cheap wine fermenting on a shelf under the counter, because the alcoholic owner tipples between customers.

 

The person standing next to me at Will-Call said she was mostly getting the mint off my skin. I was mostly getting the licorice and nauseating white wine.

 

Like, an amazing trainwreck of wrongness on my skin. The Russian judge was laughing too hard to hold up a scorecard.

This has a solemn, still, cathedral-ish incense vibe.

 

The first wash of resins has a bitter tinge to the edges, which seems appropriate. But the bitterness softens into a dry, woodsy finish over the rich and nutty frankincense. The sandalwood lends a woody sweetness, but never tips over into powder territory.

 

This is gorgeous and subtle and has to be worn to be appreciated, as the notes list is deceptively simple. But if you miss out, there are many stellar incense blends in the Lab arsenal.

Wet: high, clear, winey apple juice, quickly deepened with the oudh. As it dries, it goes almost pure apple fruit single note on me - something rich, tart, and dark-skinned, like a Winesap or an Arkansas Black. I love apple blends and this one definitely earns a bottle spot.

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.

Christmas in the dungeon at Hogwarts!

 

Lots of beautiful fresh pine and juniper notes enclosed by a kind of gritty dark, wet stone. The berry lends a crisp tang as well.

Incense and headshop fans: why are you not stocking up on The Demon's School atmo? Does big bad vetiver scare you? It shouldn't. It forms a kind of pugnacious herbal bass note to the nag champa and dragon's blood resin on top - but this is all about the nag champa. It smells exactly, precisely, like you are burning nag champa incense, but without a hint of smoke in the air. If you live somewhere that doesn't allow you to burn incense, or if you have respiratory issues, this is the best thing you could possibly find.

Looks like the butterfly's scientific name is Megathymus yuccae and it's found "in deserts, foothills, and woodlands where yucca plants occur," so it's a [Yucca] [Giant-Skipper], not a [Yucca Giant]-[skipper]. I'm no lepidopterist, but I'd say Yucca GI-ant Skipper.

 

Then again, I suspect you wouldn't make an ass of yourself unless you happened to be chatting about perfume with a very judgmental lepidopterist.

 

100% agree with Silvertree on, well, all counts.

"A bright jewel-green smell" perfectly describes the opening notes - like a cloisonné box lined with white sandalwood. In fact, at first the white sandalwood dominates this blend, but it finally settles into something pale and low and graceful, like white lotus petals floating on still green water.

 

It smells like the white sandalwood note used in Claircognizance, but where Claircognizance goes flat white and powdery on me, Shining Beak is tempered by a kind of green melon watery-ness, which I think is the musk and lotus. Alas, the orris dries and flattens it out in the end, as it always does on me, but I may still keep the imp.

 

Completely not what what I was expecting. Very feminine and soft.