midnight_aeval

The winner of my decant selections! At first I wasn't sure about it... had a generic sweetness, I wrote "pink lemon scent, but not pink lemonADE" if that makes sense After about 15 min it dried down to the most delicious smell of red Kool-Aid powder!! I love that smell!! So this one is a bottle purchase - extra points for Rosy Maple being a cute moth!

Thankfully the sweet pea doesn't turn this into sunblock, the rose sugar is not soapy, and lemon blossom does not smell like a public restroom on me like orange blossom. Hooray!

Oh wow no, VETIVER of DEATH! From the vial and on my skin I'm getting nothing but vetiver. After about 10 min I smell something that reminds me of lettuce, but NONE of the other notes. What gives??

In the vial, this is delicious. Could it be?? A coconut blend that may work?? Then when it hit my skin it turned to fizzy coconut. No fizz, get out of my coconut. Damn, probably not meant to be.

This one was super strange on my skin.. It was sour, bitter, and reminded me of something bad from my childhood. I couldn't pinpoint WHAT it reminded me of, maybe a medicine I had to take a lot... amoxicillin? Or just something my stepmom forced me into, like that stupid clear coat stop nail biting shit.

I think it was the green musk or armoise that made it 'off' because all the other notes are generally good on me. Sad!

I've had these imps, oh, since the scents came out, but knowing leather you can't test them all RIGHT away. They age/morph/change so much after the first couple months.

Last one! This one went on sour as sandalwood tends to do, but about 20 min into it a sweetness emerged. It's like the leather went away and was replaced with white sugar. Maybe that's just how the white leather morphs on my skin! Not my favorite of the three riders, but would be a good scent for someone that may not enjoy leather as much as I do

I've had these imps, oh, since the scents came out, but knowing leather you can't test them all RIGHT away. They age/morph/change so much after the first couple months.

Now this one is much more me. Spicey, warm, dark and smokey. Crowley type leather in here... I have a feeling my husband would love to wear this one too. Probably will be a bottle purchase!

I've had these imps, oh, since the scents came out, but knowing leather you can't test them all RIGHT away. They age/morph/change so much after the first couple months.

The Red Rider screams Hot Topic Belt Section to me it's extremely realistic NEW leather smell. I remember my high school days being spent at Hot Topic (back when it was sort of taboo to go there since only the Satanists did ) and waiting among the belts and other leather goods for my friend to choose that week's purchase. This leather note is NOT like the one in Spanked or Crowley. The Red Moss and Balsam give it an earthy feel.

Overall, it wouldn't be one I could wear (as I prefer the Spanked/Crowley variety) and my husband prefers the 'black' leather/worn leather scents (Western Diamondback/Dead Man's Hand).

I only got these 3:

This blend is super faint on me as well - I get the coconut bark/shell and the licorice mostly. It's just not wowing me.. But, in fairness, there hasn't really been a scent with coconut that I've been completely taken by... and Snake Charmer took a loooong time for me to warm up to, and even now I really don't wear it that often. I see how this scent would be popular, it does remind me of SC.

I let my husband smell it and asked what he thought (usually he says vanilla, rose, or coconut ) and he was like WHOA coffee, it's like the end of the aisle in the grocery store that has all the coffee beans! Ding ding, he got one right It's a pretty great, straight coffee scent. Not super sweet and dusty like Misk U, not bitter like Bah, but more like the Misk U v3 proto that was at a past Trunk Show minus the cinnamon toast note I like this one! (Me.. not a coffee drinker, but I could inhale the scent of a bag of coffee beans all day long)

And this one was my biggest disappointment of the 3 I ordered bottles of - It's like old, slightly chewed bazooka bubble gum! I will be retesting after my pregnancy because something is very off on my skin for this blend.

Not at all like Pumpkin Queen, which is what I was expecting. It seems possible that a different pumpkin note is being used as of late by the lab (Blue Pumpkin Floss from what I got to test at the trunk show was unlike the usual pumpkin blends). It's way less buttery, and more squashy The King Mandarin is sort of like crushed orange peel. Not super sweet/syrupy as the orange that comes out in Pumpkin Queen. Red ginger is giving the blend a bit of a spice kick, but not overwhelmingly so. Parts of this blend remind me of Bakeneko, but it's enough like it's own blend and I like it!

So there was a prototype from one of the trunk shows, PX79, that smells like it could be the base of this blend - but which note is it?? Gypsy is definitely sweeter than PX79, maybe that's the bourbon vanilla and tonka showing through. Either there is not a lot of cardamom here or I don't care for the smell of cardamom which I'm pretty sure is not true because I would inhale from the bottle in my baking cabinet if I could LOL PLUS it's in Spanked (uh-duh!) so I must like it.. As it dries the blend gets sweeter, but it's just not what I was "scentualizing" it to be. Not a cousin to Gothabilly like I was expecting, it's got a dusty sweet quality to it.

The throw is very, very lite for me. I practically slathered this morning to give it another go and I couldn't smell anything after a couple hours!

Going to try it after a month or so.. maybe it'll "deepen" up.

I swear this version of Hod has sweet pea in it (a la Aeval or Mouse's Long and Sad Tale). I also don't get much carnation unless it's what disguising itself as sweet pea. I haven't tried Hod in a while, but I remember it being spicy, bold carnation. This one is like some sort of baby sister to Hod.

I sniffed this one from the tester and it was !RED MUSK! but now as I test the bottle I got it's not.. It's not as intensely chocolate (or dark in color) as the released Boomslang. It's like this one is made with milk chocolate and the released version is dark chocolate - straight up cocoa!

I don't like this one as much as v3 - It has a floral quality to it in the background that makes it just smell 'off' on my skin. I can detect the similarities between the 2 versions (they aren't so different that they're in totally different scent categories), but I'm not a fan of this one Something in both of the versions reminds me of L'Estate, but whereas v3 was similar and better this one seems similar and not as good - for the record, I don't even own a bottle of L'Estate any more, it just wasn't my thing. There might be sandalwood in it because it's creating a dry/sour effect on my skin in the drydown stage.

I skin tested Morocco v2 after I made my purchase since it sold out before my number. This was all TKO to me. I sniffed what it smelled like on another BPALer and it was spicy, more like the released Morocco, but on me it was just TKO - how odd!

This was one of the last minute adds to my list because I didn't find the tester until it was almost too late! I sniffed the bottle and it was like grape juice. As I'm skin testing it the grape juice is still out in full force (I suppose it could be wine, but I don't detect a boozy note I get from most of the blends that contain wine - it feels more 'purple' than 'red' anyways). The drydown is less sweet, a bit sour, but still grape!

Prototype, unreleased, no scent description.

From the bottle this blend is lavender infused vanilla musk, on my skin it's much of the same and pretty strong too. The drydown reminds me of the drydown of Lilith Victoria + TKO, but where TKO is heavy on the herbal lavender, this blend is softer and sweeter - like TKO if it had more vanilla and less bite. I have this Lavender & Chamomile baby powder and the lavender in it is the same soft one that I get in Nightmarchers. I read the Hawaiian myth of the Nigthmarchers and it seems that you want to avoid looking into their eyes so you should lay on the ground and 'play dead' so as not to bring attention to yourself. I told the person I was reviewing this for that this is a scent you could go into a trance with and zone out everything around you - that might be the intent if you had Nightmarchers around!

From the bottle, this was like a shot of pineapple juice, straight up I take that part back because I mixed it up with AGLAV1 - this one was fruity, I had in my notes 'licorice' too (not the black kind.. like one of those novelty fruity ones). I was pleasantly surprised it wasn't like Tiki Queen or King - definitely not a love child of the 2 But alas, it was one of the scents that sold out before my number came around.

I had a special request to review this one for the person I'm sending it to, so here it goes!

From the bottle I do detect a light floral. Not Jasmine or Gardenia which usually cause me to gag upon initial sniff. It's one I can stomach enough to dab just a bit on my skin. My guess would be Hyacinth (not being a perfume-floral person, I only have the actual flower scent to go off of). Hyacinth reminds me a lot of Pikake too, so maybe it's that... My problem with florals is that I LOVE the smell of flowers, but in a perfume it just doesn't translate well enough to my nose or on my skin to want to wear it. This one is not your run-of-the-mill floral package, but more exotic/tropic. I suspect there could be something like a sweet sandalwood or amber that tempers the floral note just a bit. This wouldn't be a scent I'd get for myself, but it was overall a pleasant experience

I agree that this one is very similar to the released version. Definitely a well-worn and broken-in leather scent. I put it on my husband this morning and he said "Whoa, that's strong." (and it was seriously only a tiny, tiny bit!) So maybe an amped version of the released DMH?

From the bottle this blend was not like the recent incarnation of Strawberry Moon that was like fresh strawberries with that realistic green scent from the leaves on top. I would liken this one more to the original which I wasn't particularly a fan of because the Strawberry seemed artificial. This prototype reminded me of a strawberry scented children's hair detangler that I used to use when I was little. Not really like fresh strawberries, but more of like the smell you get in a pack of strawberry bubble gum.

This was the first blend at the trunk show that really popped out as "mmm - must have" from the bottle. Super classy, super sexy. Incredibly bright/golden which makes sense since Amaterasu is a sun goddess. I can't place my finger on what it is exactly, but on my skin I detect some amber. This amber is not like the one I got from Leo 2007, but more like the one in L'Estate. Maybe it's the Napalese or vanilla-infused amber (which, at times my nose tricks me and thinks Napalese Amber = leather, so maybe that's where the leather comes in on the first review). It just gets better on the dry down. I'm glad I sprung for a bottle!

ETA: This scent sticks around for a looong time. I squirt the remnants from a pipette into the crease of my arm and I could still smell it the next morning! It ended up as a vanilla musk scent and oh-so-good.

In the bottle this is like Big Red gum - oh no, keep it away!! (Cinnamon this heavy usually burns the crap out of my skin).

As I skin test it this morning it's like Big Red gum that's been trampled at the fairgrounds, and then somehow makes it's way to an ashen fire-pit. Doesn't smell like fire, but rather the remnants of it (and still hot cinnamon).