noumenon

If there's one thing I don't need help doing, it's sleeping, so I'm a little scared I'm not going to wake up tomorrow now that I have this on me.

In the bottle, it's a sweet, almost edible aroma. I thought of sugarcane. And it lingers in the air even after I put the cap back on.

Wet on my skin, it's a warm, herbal scent with a slight tang in the background. It reminds me very strongly of an herbal inhaler a friend of mine used to use, so perhaps there's a touch of eucalyptus in this?

As it dries, the sugar smell comes back - like smelling sugar, not tasting it. And what seemed like herbs before now smells like gentle lilac*. A lot of the Lab's flower scents are the wet, fresh, still-on-the-stem kinds of smells...this is more like dried lilac petals.

I don't want to be dramatic, but I do think this has a psychosomatic effect....when I hold my wrist up to my nose, my head completely empties when I breathe the scent in...and I've felt a little light-headed since I first sniffed the bottle. Not in a sick way...like I'm drifting off to sleep with my eyes open kind of way.

Even if I'm just imagining things, I defintely don't plan on operating heavy machinery with this on.

*ETA: Since I bear the awesome responsibility of posting the first review, I've been making myself nuts trying to decide whether it's lilac or lavender. I honestly haven't smelled either in a long time, but it could definitely be lavender. That would make more sense for a sleep blend, wouldn't it?

My friend Dawna just sent me an imp of Obatala, and all I can think of is Rupert Holmes' Escape (The Pina Colada Song).

 

If you like pina coladas

And getting caught in the rain

If you're not into yoga

If you have half a brain

Then get an imp of Obatala!

And take a long, loving sniff

Because it smells like coconut milk

And you'll fall in love at first whiff.

 

Man, I suck at this. Indicolite makes it look so easy.

 

ETA: I'm really hoping Samhain 06 smells like "Black No. 1" by Type O Negative.

Ratkirani, calla lily, moonflower, honeysuckle, night-blooming jasmine, French lavender, verbena, grey amber and nighttime air.

 

After all these reviews above, I was expecting liquid diamonds, gardens at night, calla lillies and white flowers bursting from the bottle.

 

When my bottle arrived from the Lab, I was shocked to get old parchment instead. Don't get me wrong, it smells great and I soaked myself in it today (I'm a librarian, so I consider this my signature scent!). But it's a very strong and austere scent of old books or canvas. It's not unpleasant at all, but there isn't even the suggestion of flowers.

 

After a while, the parchment smell morphs into a strong soapy smell, very similar to what scents from the Diabolus line turn into on me. A lot of people use soap as a negative description, but I like smelling shower-fresh 8 hours after leaving my house.

 

It has great throw, and it's very long-lasting, but I wish I could smell what everyone else here is smelling!

Hanging Gardens is spectacular! I'm crazy about the Lab's floral and fruity scents, and this is the best of both worlds. When I put it on, all the fruits come out at once, giving off a strong, juicy scent. After a while, the delicious fruits were still there, but I also started to pick up the flowers, which smelled exotic and Persian to me. It's got a lot of throw and sticks around for hours.

Baneberry would make an excellent poisonous plant - it smells so sweet and juicy and candy-like that anyone would want to eat it! As it warms, it becomes a bit more grown up and a little less sweet, but the juicy raspberry scent continues. Great throw, and it has good staying power!

Empyreal Myst smells crisp and sweet in the bottle, and on my skin it is the perfect light, feminine fragrance - sweetness, freshness and personality. Unfortunately, my skin devoured it! I put it on, realized it was undetectable, put it on again five minutes later, and barely smelled it until it vanished 45 minutes later. It's so sad...my skin keeps eating the Lab's best fragrances!

I'll still be getting it in a bottle and wearing it to bed - something this soft and delightful is perfect for sleeping, and I'll have faded away before it does!

Wet - What? This smells EXACTLY like a Strawberry Shortcake doll. I mean the faux strawberry scent, the plastic the doll is made of, the fibers that make up her hair, the starch on her outfit, the twist ties that held her securely in the box. The whole thing. Weird!

 

But dry and warm, it's more like rosewater, the scent of fresh garden rose, and the green scent of the stem and petals, too. Very Clean and fun to wear. For a scent that has about 7 rose notes in it, the Rose isn't overwhelming!

I'm not sure how many of you are lucky enough to live in an ecosystem where honeysuckle grows wild in every playground and backyard in town, but if you are, Asphodel will smell awfully familiar. On my skin, it's the scent of unripened honeysuckle nectar, from a pale blossom with too much green on the long trumpeted base of the flower, but you pluck it anyway, and try to siphen off nectar from inside the blossom, and the green, medicinal taste chiding your tongue for being so impatient....is Asphodel. I wasn't expecting it, because in the bottle it smells just like green apples.

 

It's the gorgeous green scent of an unripe flower. It's absolutely marvelous, and makes me feel like I'm a kid again.

 

In Margaret Atwood's new book, the Penelopiad, Penelope and the other denizens of Hades eat the Asphodel that grows in the Underworld. This perfume is exactly what I imagine them tasting.

This is what moonbeams must smell like. Unicorn is a cool, white, regal and gorgeous floral with that extra thing everyone here has been trying to describe - a bright, effervescent something that lifts the scent off my skin. It's extraordinary!

 

ETA: I wore it to work today and where did it go? It just vanished into thin air before I'd even arrived at the office. Today was one of the hottest days of the year, so I can at least hold out hope that it has more staying power when it's not as brutally hot as it was today. But it's a tragedy that this is so shortlived.

Wet, Et Lux Fuit smells like honey and spices. As it dries, the spices mellow out but the honey and amber throw themselves clear across the room. About four hours later, the throw stays closer to home, but it was still on my skin when I woke up the next day.

 

It is the warmest, late-afternoon sunshine scent I could imagine. I tend to slather, but with this scent that might be too much of a good thing - the sweetness made me a little woozy the first time I schmeared it on. I put it on my pulse points instead this morning, and it's making itself known quite well.

This is one of the first scents that I've tried, and definitely the first with violet as the dominant note. Unfortunately violet is overused in commercial products, so when I put this on, I got an unpleasant scent association with that scratchy, green Lava soap, drying down to smell like Phisoderm or Pert shampoo.

 

So it didn't work for me, but a reviewer on another thread introduced the idea that scents in each catalog category have a common theme running through them. For Diabolus, I imagine the theme must be scents that compel rather than attract, dominate rather than seduce, and offer no soothing to the one who has been trapped in the wearer's clutches. So these contain scents that people recognize, but without characteristic sweetness. They're familiar, but harsh. People who love violets might really find Marie fascinating.

On me, it's all myrrh. The jasmine only lends the fragrance its astringency, but the scent isn't strong enough to cancel out the myrrh. If there was rose in here originally, the myrrh must have killed and eaten it before I opened the imp.

I have to join other reviewers who say this is the perfect Christmas scent. I've never smelled alder, so the green smell hits me as true, natural pine. But there's something softer and sweeter about this scent, and I bet that's the difference between alder and pine. As it dries it gets sweeter and sweeter, until I'm fully imagining myself walking through one of those seasonal Christmas stores at the mall. It's the smell of candy canes and everygreens. I envy the people who can pick up the rose note in here...with it, I might think of this as a more feminine scent...but this strikes me as a playful, masculine scent instead.

Oooh! I hope you get an answer from someone who knows...When I had bpal scents mailed to me recently, I stopped my mail and picked it up at the Post Office because I was terrified they'd just bake in my mailbox all day before I could get home. I guess that's an over-reaction, but darnit, these things are liquid gold!

Peony Moon is such a delightful scent! When I put it on, it's a blast of pure peony. Then as it warms the peonies begin to smell as if they've been coated in sugar and dropped into a clear pool of water. It's a beautiful acquatic floral...the best I've tried so far.

 

Not much staying power, though...even freshly applied, the throw isn't intense, and it always fades on me after about 4 hours or so. I can tell I'm going to tear through this bottle, because I always want to smell like Peony Moon!

Ra turned out to be such a delightful surprise! When I applied it, I picked up strong golden notes of cedar and orange - two beautiful scents I think of more as room smells than perfume. I sniffed and sniffed, loving it so much I began to think about putting it in an aromatherapy diffuser, or maybe even decadently dabbling it onto some wood and throwing it into the first fire I set in my fireplace this fall.

 

But then I sniffed and sniffed some more, and realized I couldn't tear my nose away from my wrist because it was so delicious. It's an unexpectedly magnificent perfume that finishes as sweet caramel or honey when it dries.

 

It is pure warmth, brimming with golden scents.

Dove's Heart is...magnificent. Others have picked up violets or jasmine when they first put it on, but I smelled strong, sweet gardenias. Maybe, if there really is any Voodoo in this potion, the first scent we get from it will be the one we need to chase our sadness away. After an hour, the gardenias withdraw, and warm, rich vanilla overtakes me. Like Heartbreak itself, the scent is both sweet and achingly sad.

 

I happen to have the kind of broken heart this perfume is made to treat, though after all this time my heart is more of a dessicated, moldering thing. Dove's Heart is more than a scent; it's an empathic and soothing presense. After a few hours, it fades, and takes a little bit of my sadness with it.

You guys have inspired me to shoot for a 10ml of Dublin now, before they go poof.

 

I love all your recommendations - And I can't wait for Phantom Islands (or Mag Mell), either!!!

This thread has been so helpful to me while I figured out how to use Paypal (for those of us who have always gotten by with a credit card, it's like a crack dealer asking a junkie to pay him in dubloons).

 

I wanted to share a discovery I just made while trying to verify my account with PayPal so I could make non-CC payments. As part of the verification process, PayPal deposits two "mystery amounts" into your account, to be sure it's really yours to draw off of. But my bank automatically condensed PayPal's two "mystery amounts" into one line on my online account statement.

 

So if you only see one deposit from PayPal, call your bank and ask them what the two separate amounts were.

 

And now...I am VERIFIED and ready for Carnavale Diabolique! Wooot!

I'm a newbie trying to catch up to all the experts on this forum, so I've been reading the catalog and the reviews obsessively for the past two weeks. But now I'm nearly blind from all this small print, and I need your help!

 

I'm counting on all of you to give me the guided tour of the Knowne and Unknowne Worlds...what are your favorite Wanderlust scents?