PrinceofcatS

Severely disappointed in this one. It is pure expensive French soap on my skin. I tried to wash it off, which never happens, and has never happened to me with a rose before; it's such a fluke for me that I hope the soapiness goes away with time. EDIT for advice to others: I am pretty sure the fizzy note others have noticed must be similar to their champagne note, and I think that's why this did this on me. If you've tried Bon Vivant and Thalia and they were soapy on you instead of champagney, then you should probably avoid this one.

Prominently brown leather (it's got less of an intense leather scent to it than the leathers in All That I Possess and The Manuscript, but it also feels more like new leather than soft used leather), with both the vanilla and the rose notes growing steadily from the moment this goes on. It's well-blended, but I'd still say the leather comes across the most strongly to me. The vanilla bourbon tar and tonka notes imitate worn old book parchment much better than a regular vanilla, and the actual book impression I get from this is spectacular. I don't get quite as prominent a rose as it seems other reviewers did, but I certainly get roses. (They seem to amp more from my throat than they do on my wrists, so I keep smelling a stronger rose note when I turn my head.) It's very beautiful. I got this because of the statements about how prominent the rose note is and because I love The Manuscript, and it's certainly like a variant on The Manuscript - not more feminine, exactly, because that scent really feels like an Edith Cushing character scent to me, but softer. This scent really evokes the library from Beauty and the Beast to me, which I was hoping it would do.

I wanted this from the moment i saw it when the Lupercalia update went up, but I had reservations about it all the same. I worried it would be too overpoweringly sweet (and I ordinarily adore honey as a note). There was initially some suspiciously baby powdery note lingering around, but this quickly becomes a very delicate magnolia that honestly smells more like a real flower than anything I've worn before. I agree with earlier reviewers that the honey and vanilla notes only seem to enhance the magnolia for me. I've never worn Antique Lace, but this does remind me of white lacy wedding gowns - warm from being worn recently. I can definitely detect vanilla or honey in the background when i sniff for them specifically, but it's really just lazily blooming white magnolias for me. This reminds me of the discontinued scent Eos (which was a skin note, jasmine, buttercup and honeysuckle) - it feels similarly sweet, light, springy florals + warm skin to me - but it's much prettier; that one definitely has a lingering baby products note to me. I really recommend this to anyone who was on the fence about it because, like me, they feared it would be too strongly sweet/have an edible honey or vanilla note, and I would also recommend this to anyone who is equally fearful about a powdery, "perfumey" white floral, because this is soft and realistic and sweet, not particularly perfumey to my nose.

I smell some kind of plant that smells like pee. :C But my friend insists I smell like roses and wet bark and that my being outrageously sick has made my sense of smell off, so I don't know.

I'm discovering that everything is much sweeter and amps the feminine notes on my throat than on my wrists. Huh. So, because it's a fougere which means Too Masc 4 Me generally, I never had any intention of purchasing Jareth. But I went to Gothic Renaissance in NYC today, and I really wanted to get something, just to have it to remember this trip to NYC by. Imagine the fortune of this store showing up just a couple days before me!! (I'm in rural Western New York, there's not a lot going on.) They didn't have any GC things I already had on my big bottle list, though I smelled Titania which was prettier than I thought it would be, and sadly none of the Lupercalias they had were the ones I wanted, and the only unimpables they had that I noticed were this and Fairy Bites (which I ordered recently). I've owned Dorian in the past in an imp, but as sweet as the sugary vanilla tea of it is, it's always seemed too masculine for me. I feel like maybe that's in part because when you expect a sugary sweet tea, you expect it to be sugary and sweet, not cologne-y. Somehow Jareth feels more solidly unisex than Dorian ever did, I don't know; maybe I'd like Dorian better now were I to try it again. In any case, this did remind me of Dorian right off the bat. If you've never tried that, picture an almost ambery warm scent with a sharp, almost citrus note and strong tonka (which is a lot like vanilla, but woodier). Fougeres generally also have lavender, but in Jareth this seems to blend with the lilac. This reminded me of the gorgeous golden chypre in Fairytales and Lies, which was one of my favorites of the Crimson Peak collection; chypres and fougeres both generally have citrus and oakmoss in them, so that could account for that. F&L also has lilac in it, so I think that's the other connection. The leather, white musk and oudh notes are so light in this one, they all sort of blend into a sort of "clean" white scent with tonka dominating the blend. I can't explain it, because I didn't get much on my wrists earlier, so I didn't really get the exact notes I was smelling, but from wearing this at the base of my ears today I kept getting hints of this. It's gleaming all right, strong-willed enough to not quite be sweet in spite of the vanillic tonka being the main note, but pretty and so, so enticing. I can definitely see why this would work fantastically on a man, who might, for all I know, amp the oakmoss, leather and oudh more than I do or something, but on me this is so well-blended it's almost more of a feeling than a specific series of notes. For lack of better description, it smells like lilac-colored smoke. I'm generally better at describing perfume than this, but this one eludes me. Now I wish I hadn't given my imp of Dorian to my little brother for Christmas!

Crossposted to London, against which I tried this one. I want to decide which of my ~spiced roses~ I want to buy a 5 ml of, since I love them all but the end result is so similar it seems foolish to put them all on the Big Bottle list. Today I tried Maiden versus London, since they seem the most similar to me. Wet, I was baffled that I had ever thought they were the same. The rose in London is that perfumey, aquatic tea rose note - which I adore - but is so light and gentle and watery, with barely a hint of any of those spices that I think are intended to make it "dark". Maiden, on the other hand, is all heady, intensely sweet rose, dark, almost edible, with the tea note distinct from the aquatic feel I get from tea rose. The carnation is where I think the spiciness and some of the sweetness comes from in Maiden? My imp of Maiden is rather old at this point, though. I don't know what London's intensity is like aged. When they dry down I realize why I thought they were similar: they really are! The spiciness and sweetness in Maiden calms down a bit and the tea note comes out more, which does, to my nose, mimic the aquatic tea rose note in London. London is sweet, dewy, perfect rose; it's more "perfumey" than Maiden, largely because Maiden's crisp white tea and heady carnation notes make it intensely sweet. As they wear on further, the differences become more pronounced - Maiden is darker and sweeter, London lighter though not less rich and rosy; "perfumey" is the only word I can think of, not artificial but smelling like something meant to be elegantly scented with rose. I had thought for the longest time I preferred London, but in some ways I liked Maiden's rose note more, it's more the carnation I take issue with. I don't know. I need to try them both against Lucy's Kiss. I should add that I have an aged (~6 years?) bottle of Alice which I definitely noticed had gotten a headier and darker rose-and-carnation vibe since I first used to wear it. Maiden is very similar in that regard, so I suspect she's lighter and less rampantly maroon-rose-in-full-indecent-bloom when she's young and fresh.

Comparing this to Maiden, so I'm probably going to post this review to both threads. I want to decide which of my ~spiced roses~ I want to buy a 5 ml of, since I love them all but the end result is so similar it seems foolish to put them all on the Big Bottle list. Today I tried Maiden versus London, since they seem the most similar to me. Wet, I was baffled that I had ever thought they were the same. The rose in London is that perfumey, aquatic tea rose note - which I adore - but is so light and gentle and watery, with barely a hint of any of those spices that I think are intended to make it "dark". Maiden, on the other hand, is all heady, intensely sweet rose, dark, almost edible, with the tea note distinct from the aquatic feel I get from tea rose. The carnation is where I think the spiciness and some of the sweetness comes from in Maiden? My imp of Maiden is rather old at this point, though. I don't know what London's intensity is like aged. When they dry down I realize why I thought they were similar: they really are! The spiciness and sweetness in Maiden calms down a bit and the tea note comes out more, which does, to my nose, mimic the aquatic tea rose note in London. London is sweet, dewy, perfect rose; it's more "perfumey" than Maiden, largely because Maiden's crisp white tea and heady carnation notes make it intensely sweet. As they wear on further, the differences become more pronounced - Maiden is darker and sweeter, London lighter though not less rich and rosy; "perfumey" is the only word I can think of, not artificial but smelling like something meant to be elegantly scented with rose. I had thought for the longest time I preferred London, but in some ways I liked Maiden's rose note more, it's more the carnation I take issue with. I don't know. I need to try them both against Lucy's Kiss.

I'm trying to decide which ~gently spiced Gothic Heroine rose~ blend I want to buy a bottle of: Lucy's Kiss, London, or Maiden - or if I should try more rose blends out and see if any of them tops these. I will say, if you have London or Maiden, you might not particularly need Lucy's Kiss too. This feels like a different rose from either of them - London's definitely the lab's watery, pink tea rose, for one thing - but that might be the gentle spices making it feel almost dry and prim. This also reminds me a bit of the lab's white rose note, which is less sweet and less watery, not super bold, even a little tart. Initially I wasn't able to detect white rose very well in the scents that had it (like The Waltz), but it's both subtle and strong on me now, and I'm starting to find that I prefer it. Like those blends, when I first started comparing these scents, I got less rose out of Lucy's Kiss than the other two. But the more I wear it, the stronger and purer the rose comes out to me. I picture this scent as an elegant but simple vase of white roses surrounded by crisp autumn leaves. It doesn't evoke wantonness or corruption to me, but it's not a fresh, lively rose, either. It works perfectly for a radiant and beautiful woman adored by all who know her who is wan and fading now, the metaphorical petals falling. It lacks the sweetness of the other two, but is still more rose than spice. I'm torn because the white rose is probably my favorite of the lab's roses but I also, as a result, already have more of them, so I guess I need to test this against The Reaper and the Flowers or something. This is really lovely, though. My one caveat is that I have two imps of this: one is a decant from an unknown year I got from the sales board here and the other could be as old as ten years, and the other one is mostly soap on me.

Thank you! I have this already, actually, and I don't think they're very similar, but it is really beautiful. Egle (Märchen): Ocean water, hyacinth petals, star jasmine, and fir. Ends as a beautiful hyacinth/honeysuckle on me. Titania (Ilyria): white grape, white peach, iced pear, musk rose, sweet pea, moonflower and snapdragon. My notes call it a "juicy floral." TAL's White Light: I get jasmine, gardenia, and tuberose; no official notes listed. Can't help you with the frankincense part, unfortunately. I have Egle too! It's also beautiful, but also not similar to Christine on me. I'm sorry! I will look into Titania, though; I've been thinking about trying that one.

I got a decant of the 2009 Dark Delicacies Duets of Horror scent "Christine", and i love it, but it's basically impossible to find, as you can imagine! Even other LE scents that might be easier to find than this would be welcome recommendations. The note list is, "A bouquet of Swedish blossoms -- linnea borealis, hoya, and Phyteuma nigra -- with frankincense and pale vanilla orchid"; but like a lot of other reviews, I mainly get honeysuckle, orchid and frankincense. It's a very soft, green-white floral. Any suggestions?? There aren't a whole lot of GC honeysuckle blends, so maybe someone's heard of something else?

This is all a humid, generic floral. I get "sweet decay and spice" out of this, but no flowers I recognize as jasmine or honeysuckle (both of which I love). I got a few hints of honeysuckle like it was struggling to come through the other notes but it vanished. I'm not really enjoying this at all.

I wonder if they changed this or something. This used to be one of my favorites - musky pear with a light floral, almost a little masculine for me - but I got a more recent imp of it and it's all the listed notes, but... a little soapy. :/ I mean, there's so many other beautiful scents from BPAL that just one not working out anymore isn't the end of the world, but still.

Yvaine is lovely - I've heard Misericordia from the VILF line is similar to that one but I haven't tried it personally. I ordered The Bride last night; all the reviews of it are really promising. @ziggystardust13, have you seen that one?

The Snow Maiden is a discontinued Yule that starts out icy and is almost all osmanthus on me when it dries down - if I get the other notes, they're just amplifying the osmanthus. I think it's very chilly, like icy-covered flowers. I was a little disappointed in it because I wanted more daffodil actually! If you're looking up other scents like Belle Vinu (which I didn't like personally but I wish you luck with it) you might look into trying that - I got mine on the forum here very recently. I didn't get any osmanthus out of Kali, that one was all soft watery lotus and maybe some other aquatic-y flowers over honey and some chocolate on me.

The best tea rose and lily notes have an almost watery quality to them, and that's how this one is! The lily and rose are so light and sweet in this, and the vanilla musk is absolutely the best - gentle and charming, grounding without being heavy or dark (or edible). When I discovered BPAL Alice was the scent I wore the most of, and I have to admit it reminds me of being a teenager, so I tend not to wear it anymore. But this! This is my grown-up Alice. The foody and creamy sweetness is replaced by the soft vanilla musk, and the florals have transformed too. All that said, this doesn't feel like an ~adult~ perfume in the sense that it feels heavy. It isn't powdery on me, it's very sweet and almost aquatic and the musk is light. This captures the feeling of grace and purity so well! This captures Victoria's persona and the way she makes other people feel about her, rather than her personality (inoffensively shallow, average young woman!). I wear this to work every day now, or I feel slightly grumpy, like my vibe is off. It makes me feel how I want to be perceived (pretty, but not in a sex-object way - I work with a lot of crude men :/) and feel like Cinderella singing 'Sing, Sweet Nightingale' while doing manual labor.

I like violet, but find it can dominate a scent in a way I don't like. This is not a fresh, candy violet, though. This is dark and deep violet, purple to the point of almost black, with similarly dark fruits, almost hidden by very dry black incense. This really evokes Arthurian legend and sorcery for me, though it's the wrong sister for that feel. I work really early in the morning and try my frimps at work sometimes. This is the first time I've ever worn something that felt literally wrong in the environment. I shouldn't be here, in retail, in plain clothes, I should be someplace very dark, a large castle, in velvets. It was powerful and weird. I can't see myself wearing this scent a whole lot just because when or where would i? But I'm so glad I've finally been able to try it. I really like this and the way it makes me feel.

I've had this bottle for about 5 years. I got an imp of this when I was young and discovering BPAL for the first time and it immediately became a bottle purchase. Because there had been no notes listed I remember being anxious about how it would work on me, but I really had to have it for the subject matter. It really does smell like being outside - not grass, precisely, but wet dew on green things - and is a beautiful, light, misty floral with some clout to it. I think I agree with the reviewer who suggested jasmine, but on me I think it's predominantly lily. I don't find it commercial, though; to me this is the epitome of BPAL's ability to take typical subjects and make them magical. I think this has herbs in it only such that they take the edge off. I believe this one of those scents that gets less fresh with age, but I still think it evokes misty floral meadows, they're just darker now.

This is for my mom, I'm looking for some imps from the GC to maybe scoop up as gifts for her in her next order, so, these are her favorite BPAL scents (limited edition and GC): 1. Drink Me (her all time favorite and she's used up half the bottle) 2. Aunt Caroline's Joy Mojo 3. Mr. Nancy 4. Père Noël 5. Miskatonic University I don't hate food scents but I don't share her preference for candy and sweets scents so I haven't paid the most attention to them - the kinds of sweet scents I like, like Alice, have notes she won't touch.

This really doesn't evoke dusk for me; it evokes snowfall at night, the way it's sort of grey in the dark. It opens with a dominant but soft opium note, then Lily of the Valley, ever fresh and almost-wet, comes to the fore. When plum and carnation show up, initially they're a sweet syrupy note, but they fall away to form part of the base. Later on the muguet isn't so wet for me and the carnation has widely dropped away, but the snow note, swirled with opium, and the lily of the valley (with that sweet base) are the strongest element of the scent. I've never worn an "ozone-y" scent from BPAL before, particularly not in a snow note - I've only tried that really piney snow and the really sweet powdery one - but now I recognize it as clearly an ozone smell. This is alarmingly pretty, very unusual. I think of the Snow Falling Faintly scents I've tried (all but Noon), this is my favorite. Midnight was sadly rather soapy, Dawn sadly powdery, but this one strikes a balance between all the notes. It's not predominantly dark or heavy, not predominantly sweet, nor floral, nor fruity. Just soft grey snowfall in a black night, the resins and opium lending to the darkness and the lily-of-the-valley therefore the contrasting bright snow amidst all of it.

I've never worn Snow White or Pink Snowballs, but I do have this year's Yule The Snow at Dawn, which has the same "sweet" snow note in it. My mother gave me a rose head the day this arrived and I wore it and it's the exact same sweet rose smell as the actual fresh rose. The white amber and the snow note don't stand out particularly much as separate scents to me - they just seem to deepen the rose note here. Whereas I found Rose Red all dew, overwhelming the delicate rose, this is a chilly fresh rose that I can actually detect as rose-dominant. The Snow at Dawn leans really sweet, almost too sweet, but this one is absolutely perfect. The amber really grounds it, and the rose itself leans tart and fresh.

I love hyacinth, and since this is about a story the hyacinths are telling Gerda in The Snow Queen, I expected hyacinth to become the dominant note of this. But this is almost entirely "snow-dusted honeysuckle" for me! Just predominantly an incredibly sweet honeysuckle with the same dusting of the very sweet snow note that's in The Snow at Dawn and Fresh and Blooming as a Rose (sweet, but not cold). I can tell there are other scents - I've heard irl asphodel smells like daffodil, so I do get a bit of that and the watery smell of hyacinth - but they're so far behind it that it doesn't come off very strongly. I think I might be getting honey now in the drydown, but I don't get anything recognizeable as vetiver, and I still get honeysuckle. I'm quite sad as earlier reviews made it sound like hyacinth came out quite forcefully and on me it absolutely does not. Of course, "snow-dusted honeysuckle" isn't at all a bad scent to wear, but how I am sad, for hyacinth is my favorite flower smell.

I didn't buy this when I was buying Crimson Peak scents because only one of the reviews I read sounded appealing, and I thought it was a fluke of that person's skin chemistry! But, no! I bought a decant of this, and I didn't even want to, because I have All That I Possess and I was like, do I really need a second leather scent, really? I'll never wear it! But a decant seemed like just the right amount. Oh, I am KICKING myself because I have no idea if I'll be able to afford another large purchase from the lab and I was waiting for the Lupercalia update before I made any plans and I'm planning a trip out to visit a friend of mine, etc etc etc... but I have to get a bottle of this, it's imperative. This is exactly what I think Edith's signature scent should have been like - maybe a bit creamier, maybe a bit sweeter, but this is it. Wet in the bottle it's an incredible, effervescent wet green scent, beautiful as can be, which makes no sense, right? I put it on and the green scent becomes freaking INK. This sweet, chilly, green scent that is completely recognizeable as ink. I could not believe it; it functions exactly as a pretty floral would on me but it's not a floral at all. It lingered, this strong, black-and-swirls-of-blue chilly ink note, for half and hour to an hour before it consented to let some other notes come forth, while maintaining its dominion over them all. First an almost creamy parchment smell came out - not quite vanillin, but definitely yellow paper - and then, proportionate to the parchment as the binding would be to a big thick stack of paper, a hint of sweet, powdery leather comes out. This is the same leather note as was in All That I Possess, but it's fainter here, adding nuance and soft loveliness to the dry crisp paper and that wet, sweet ink. (I haven't tried any of the leather blends in the GC so I can't tell you if it's the same as anything there - but it's not a hard and masculine leather that reminds me of a Western, as I've tried in department store perfume blends. It's like a soft, worn leather that reminds me of very well-used clothing - in this case, a lady's gloves, or, you know, the binding of her personal novel.) I really want to reiterate that this is mostly ink, and that the ink is like a beautiful wet flower note (my favorite kind of floral), but is, I remember from my days of trying to write with a fountain pen, most definitely ink through and through, and that it's goooorgeous. This has immediately become one of my favorite scents of the Crimson Peak collection. It's not the tragic, dusty black flowers of Lucille or the bright ballroom amber of Fairytales, but it's also something I picture myself wearing more than I wear either of those. And it's the only one I got as a decant! I'm gnashing my teeth. I must have it before it goes or I will never forgive myself.

I forgot to review this back when I got it. The second review up there comparing it to the tea note in Dorian decided me on this one, and I was anxious about it being bitter and poisonous, but no, it's glorious. If you like tea scents (which I do - every tea scent I've tried from the Lab has been really lovely on, whether it was green, white or black) or if you like kind of food or drink scents that don't smell like "foodie" scents, ie, thick and edible with sugar or vanilla. This is a naturally sweet but unsweetened, very strong tea - I was agreeing with the black tea comments from earlier but I wore Maiden the other day (which is white tea, rose and carnation) and that one stood out as the same note - with a hint of berries, only bitter in that no sugar has been added. I think it may also be a rosehip tea, as others have mentioned, given the ways in which Maiden reminded me of it - but I don't think Maiden and this scent are similar enough to compromise Firethorn Berry's singularity. It's not a scent with a lot of nuance or development, but it's unique, very beautiful, and extraordinarily worthwhile to anyone who likes tea scents or who really liked Crimson Peak.

This is so many roses! I had heard that Rose Red and Two, Five and Seven were very similar, and assumed that the latter would be as rose-less and all-green-sap on me as the former - is that not so then? I actually own The Waltz, but I don't find the rose a very strong note in it, so I didn't mention it. I don't think rose amps on my skin, but amber definitely does, so that scent is mostly amber and whatever the champagne musk note is on me.

I got Rose Red from the 2015 Yule update with super, super high hopes, but unfortunately, I get very nearly no rose out of it at all; it's predominantly green sap on me. :c I'm now looking for a new rose scent to hitch my hopes and dreams to. I'd really like one that's close to a soliflore, but it's not important that it is one; I thought rose + dew and sap sounded dreamier than just rose, for instance (but dew + sap alone, less so). But I'd also love to know about any lovely oils where rose is one of the main notes. Rose is a background player in so many blends it's hard to go through the rose product tag and find them, and I'm sure it's been in a lot of LE scents that I could probably still track down eventually. I'm especially craving a heady red rose, but I love all rose notes just as much. My rosiest scents are A Young Woman Appealing to a Witch, Alice and Maiden, and I have Fresh and Blooming as a Rose ordered, but I cannot, personally, have too many roses so tell me your favorites!