distracts

Very faint in the bottle, just a tad of bourbon vanilla and frankincense. I like my scents strong so this isn't encouraging.

 

For the first fifteen minutes on me, it smells pretty much the same as in the bottle. Then BOOM! there is a sweet frankincense explosion, grounded by the warmth of the bourbon vanilla. And then it just surrounds me in a cloud of awesome. Well, awesome if you like frankincense.

Huh, I feel like I'm smelling a completely different scent than everyone else!

 

In the bottle, I smell sugar. A little bit of greens but mostly sugar.

 

On me, syrupy sugar and ozone. As it dries it gets more and more ozoney. I don't like sugar scents and I don't like ozone scents and this is like some horrible combination of the two.

Smells like a lot like "Stinky" to me. A bit like baby powder but way better - fresh and snuggly. This is both warmer and sweeter than Stinky and doesn't seem to have as much throw (though that is rather hard to determine from one's own application). This honey musk is the one that on me often goes sour, but in this it doesn't - it's sour when applied but that immediately fades. I love Stinky but have only ever managed my one bottle, but I will be ordering a second Capax Infiniti.

Smells mainly like eucalyptus to me, with a bit of lavender and peppermint. Great to use for massages when you are achey from a cold, as the eucalyptus really cuts through the sinuses. Which is a good thing. My husband and I have both been sick this week with something that involved achey joints, and we've used kind of an appalling amount of Con Cramp Relief.

Rosy flowers! I use this A LOT. I kind of adore rose.

Completely unsurprisingly, this smells like apples. Not BPAL's crisp, fresh apple note, but the warm snuggly one from The Hesperides. While The Hesperides wasn't for me, Apple Orchard is AMAZING as a room scent. There's a round, warm wood as well.

Huh, how have I not reviewed this? This is one of the few things I have a backup bottle of. Because I really love it. I have to stop myself from buying ALL the Tomoe Gozens I see because that would be really unnecessary. Yet it kind of feels necessary.

 

Anyway. Tomoe Gozen is all juicy red currant (fruity!) with honey. The pink pepper adds a little spice (a lot when it was fresh, but now that it has aged, the pink pepper has been tamed a bit) and the amber keeps it from being too heady. I'm not sure where the blackberries come in - they could be adding to the fruitiness but most other BPAL perfumes with blackberry come across as cat pee to me and I don't smell that in this one. New, this had quite a bit more tartness and spiciness, but aged it is a lot of warm fruity honey.

 

I get the comparisons to Hermia - that's another favorite of mine - but not to Lady Una, which was so cat pee it made me gag and imo is the second-worst BPAL I have ever tried.

The suggestions for similar things that I could find in the review thread were Yggdrasil, Arkham, and Schwarzer Mond. My other recommendation to get something similar would be to find a very woody scent and layer it with a bit of a sassafrasy scent. You may need to layer three, with sandalwood (easily findable in the general catalogue), pine (easily findable in the yule scents), and sassafras (can be found in both GCs and LEs, and I don't know which is best).

I wore The Phoenix in Spring to our Easter celebration. Phoenixes seem thematically appropriate for the original intent of the holiday, and it has dandelion in it, which is my bunny's favorite food. But really I just picked it because it smells so nice and springtimey.

I bought a bottle of this without having enter sniffed it before based on the reviews and the recommendations in the vanilla thread. Wow. In six years of bpaling, I never found the perfect vanilla, which is what I first came here for when my old beloved vanilla perfume ran out. This is very, very close to it, much closer than any other blend I've tried, and much, much closer than Dorian. I will most likely be purchasing a backup bottle, which is something which I almost never do and have never before done for a GC.

 

In the bottle and while wet, this smells very root-beery. It goes through a short bit where I can small the cedar, but not much and it quickly disappears, which is weird because usually I amp woods. That quickly settles down to a warm, friendly vanilla, with hints of the other notes rounding it out. On me it lasts a long time and has decent throw. Yay! I'd definitely recommend it if you like vanilla!

All I get from this is frankincense. Even my fiance was like, "whoa, you smell incensey!" Also, I am allergic to something in it - probably the lilac. I'm not too sad about it because it's way too incensey for me. I didn't get any of the other notes, and it was the same in the bottle as it was all the way through the drydown, pretty much.

Wine. This smells like wine. I don't know much about wine so I can't tell you what type but uh, dry? Dry wine. The farther from my wrists, the more it smells like vanilla instead of wine. It has HUGEMONGOUS throw.

 

Hmm. I keep retrying this because I'm not sure what to think of it, but if I retry it every week, it'll end up getting worn far more than some of my favorites. So take that as you will.

This is possibly the most amazing BPAL scent I've ever tried. It's immediately in my top ten, if not number one! I would bathe in this stuff if I had enough of it.

 

When I put it on not knowing the notes, I thought it was honey with some anise and an edge of mint. I thought, "wow, an anise scent I actually like!" Of course, it's apparently not anise at all! I think it's the cherry blossom that is tricking my nose into smelling that, or possibly the ho wood. Anyway, maybe because I don't know what most of the notes in this smell like, I can't pick them out, but it's an intensely gorgeous scent and I luuuuurves it. The mint is very faint and not overwhelming at all, which is how I like my mint.

 

It's a light kind of scent, but it lasts quite a while on me and has good throw, so that when I move I'm constantly going "wow, what's that amazing smell? Oh, it's ME!" But because it's so ethereal, I think it'd still be appropriate for work.

I don't get any leather or vanilla, just FLOWERS OMG FLOWERS and a hint of smoke. It doesn't smell bad, it smells rather nice, but at the same time, it's not something I'll ever wear, so it'll have to find a new home.

Weirdly, until totally dry, The Unheavenly City smells a lot like Estee Lauder Pleasures on me... It was totally tripping me out because I wore Pleasures exclusively for a long time, and I was like, "I don't even have a bottle of this at my new house! HOW DID IT GET ON ME?" But if I huffed my wrist I could smell the sexy red musk, which is definitely not in Pleasures... and once it dried completely, it smelled totally different.

I loooooove fruity and sandalwoody scents in the summer. The heat makes them glorious in a way they aren't in the winter, when they seem to just hang on my wrists instead of expanding to fill the air around me. Also, the blast of sweetness is nice when you're sweating.

 

One of my favorite summer BPAL moments (that happens almost every day) is when I get in the car in the morning and the airconditioner blows my freshly-applied perfume from my wrists right at me, and I spend my entire car ride in nose heaven.

Wet on me this is keenly reminiscent of Estee Lauder Pleasures, one of my longtime favorites. Except it's like Pleasures' muskier (sexier!) grown-up sister. As it dries, the red musk deepens the scent, and it becomes even more divine. It's sweet, but, like most red musk blends I've tried, not TOO sweet, which is good. Completely dry, it gains a slightly marshmallowy aspect. I agree with LittleGreyKitten, who said that it's like MB: BiggerCritters in that it's a "floralbutnot." Though this doesn't smell like MB:BC, I would definitely place it in the same foody/floral/sexy category.

 

As well, it is the only perfume that my fiance has loved on me so much he can't stop commenting on how AMAAAAAAAZING I smell. So I'll definitely be needing a backup bottle (or ten... if I can find them).

 

In coincidental "this is like MB:BC" territory, the only perfume that inspired that reaction in my ex-boyfriend was Monsterbait: BiggerCritters.

 

Foody/florals: A hit with the men?

This is lovely - it's very much a more honeyed version of Stinky. I <3 it lots. Unfortunately, I break out in little red welts where I've worn it, so it probably has stealth citrus in it.

This definitely smells like the strawberry sauce that comes with funnel cake. It smells SUPER DELICIOUS, but is too sweet for me to imagine ever wearing.

Originally smelled to me, without looking at the notes, like woods and chamomile. Looking at the notes, I guess it must the frankincense and carnation that are making me think it smells like wood. Something has a slight sour bite at the beginning - the carnation or heliotrope, I think. It reminds me of a scent I got a LOT of in Copper Phoenix, except it's (thankfully) extraordinarily faint here. That disappears as it dries and a more floral note comes out, and starts to battle with the woody scent for dominance.

It's definitely a resiny, herbal scent, as others have said. It smells more masculine or unisex than feminine. It doesn't feel at all "white" to me, as other reviewers have mentioned. It's warm and maybe powdery, but not powdery in a bad way. It smells like what I always THINK amber will smell like, before I actually get a hold of amber blends. It's very different from most other scents I own, but I don't think it will be a bottle purchase, though I'll be open to more imps. I see this as a scent I'll wear more when I'm into the concept than just because I want to smell like it.

To me this smells like a musky floral, which I guess must be the combination of the teak and star jasmine. It's very nice but not a keeper for me because it has NO throw whatsoever - I can't smell it an inch away from my wrist, only if I get my nose right up in it, and my hair ate it so I can't smell it there at all (and I really do like to smell my perfume wafting about when I toss my hair!). So basically my verdict is that it's a nice smell... but I can't smell it without lots of effort.

On me, this starts with SANDALWOOD!!! HELLO SANDALWOOD! When I sniff up close, it smells a little warmer. As it dries, the sandalwood fades away (sandalwood FADING on me? what madness!), leaving a gorgeous, warm, snuggly honey/amber/musk scent that I just want to eat. The honey is not the honey that smells like froot loops on me, for which I am grateful, or the honey that smells like cat pee. The flowers are still there, adding a bit more depth to the scent without being sharply floral. I can definitely pick out the lily - I don't know what the others smell like so I can't say if I'm getting them.

It's a beautiful scent that doesn't immediately jump out to me as being a foody, a floral, or an incensey scent. It's somewhere in the middle of those.

I'm allergic to anything with citrus in it. This includes the obvious things, like lemon, grapefruit, mandarin, bergamot, petitgrain, neroli, but also things like amber and verbena. While I dislike lemon and petitgrain, I LOVE other citrus notes, so this is very sad. But my wrists break out in itchy red bumps, and then any other perfume I put there just irritates it MORE, so I have to stay away altogether. And often, citrus notes aren't well-marked in the blends, so there's a lot I have to stay away from. It's very sad, especially since this didn't happen until about two years ago.

 

And for those of you who were discussing this - skin allergies and food allergies can be completely different.

 

For my own reference, a partial list of the things I have had allergic reactions to:

 

CRAZY reactions:

Hua Mulan (painful red itchiness EVERYWHERE IT TOUCHED)

Alice (painful red itchiness EVERYWHERE IT TOUCHED)

Ville-Marie (painful red itchiness EVERYWHERE IT TOUCHED)

 

Little reactions:

Diabolical Offspring (widespread little red bumps, itchiness)

The Hesperides (maybe tiny bumps? maybe not?)

 

Hopefully I'll be keeping it up to try to figure out if I'm allergic to anything OTHER than citrus.

Wet this smells a like green herbs, honey, and dirty mint, but it dries down to... Stinky. Honey and baby powder and milk. With a little bit of green. My boyfriend too thought it smelled like Stinky so it wasn't just me. Stinky is one of my faves, so I might be tracking down a bottle of this to get a variation on it.

This one is coconut and sugar on me - it smells like a marshmallow. In a good way. It was oddly sharp in the decant and while wet, but soon mellowed into scrumptious marshmallow.