Elspethdixon

Testing the 2025 edition of Batty Lace: This is only the second lace scent I’ve tried, and I was expecting a version of the “cloud of french vanilla ice cream” that is the 2017 resurrected version of Antique Lace on me, but this is gentle and subdued. It reminds me of a softer and more feminine version of The Bow and Crown of Conquest (which also has vanilla and leather). The leather is a warm brown suede that stays firmly in the background and there’s a toasty brown sugar note that must be the caramel musk. That said, all the above is how it smells on my skin. On my hair, the soft brown sugar/suede is just a supporting player and the dominant note is a kind of dusty attic scent that must the “dried flowers and aged linens.”

In the imp/wet this is mostly pancakes (I swear they’re distinctly and specifically buckwheat pancakes) with an almost fruity absinthe note. Once on my skin, the fruitiness vanishes and it’s flapjacks surrounded by a cool haze of absinthe - the anise is light and cool rather than a strong licorice note (and without the “eau du nail salon” effect I got from Carnival Diabolique’s L’heur Vert), and there’s just enough mint for it to be cool and tingly in my nose but not enough mint for it to tingle/burn on my skin. No lemon at all, thankfully (lemon notes usually turn into lemon pledge floor cleaner on me). This is a light scent, but one with serious throw - at least six inches out from my wrist. It’s like being surrounded by a cool, fresh cloud. After about three-four hours it fades down to a powdery vanilla skin scent that’s not very pancake-like at all, but still pleasant. I added this decant to my order on a whim, but it may end up being my main favorite from this release. Cool, minty scents usually tingle/burn my skin, so a cool and minty scent I can wear this easily is a special treat.

Necrobumping this thread again to sing the praises of Black Clove and Marzipan hair gloss.

Brown Sugar and Oak is great on first application - it’s the same dry, clean oak note that I love so much in Antikythera Mechanism, lightly sweetened by what smells less like brown sugar and more like one of BPAL’s sugary musks. Sadly, it quickly goes fuzzy/almost soapy on the drydown and loses the oak note. I’m going to chalk this one up to a skin chemistry failure, because the oak is still detectable on my hair, where there’s no fuzzy soap in sight.

A dramatic metamorphosis from the world’s sexiest tobacco-leather bonbon to gentle fuzz. In the imp/Wet: Chocolate and leather Freshly applied, the tobacco instantly blooms when it hits my skin. Oh god this is so good. Soft, slightly powdery from the myrrh/amber, rich tobacco and dark chocolate that reminds me of dark chocolate tobacco and vetiver but with a soft, suede-like leather. Fifteen minutes in: It fades down to a soft skin scent very quickly for something that started out so richly sexy and masculine. One hour in: soft, almost fuzzy unisex tobacco/amber/myrrh scent. It’s a little more masculine and less fuzzy on my hair, where I can still get a hint of the leather - something about the OG Black Rider makes it go very gentle/soft, almost powdery on my skin (like LavenderCoffee, my skin apparently just makes it a fuzzy amber party), and it looks like it carries over to the chocolate version. The fuzzy tobacco/amber/myrrh skin scent sticks around for the entire day, and it’s inoffensive and pleasant in a gentle, unisex way, but it’s a disappointment compared to how great the wet stage is, before my skin chemistry kills it. I wish that initial dark chocolate/leather/tobacco vibe had stuck around.

The OG Red Rider smells like a saddle shop/tack room leather to me. In the imp/Wet: Bright and fruity sweet ruby chocolate. I am actually familiar with ruby chocolate (via the ruby chocolate dipped ice cream bars Magnum used to briefly make back in 2020) and this is definitely ruby chocolate rather than milk chocolate: it’s like a mixture of white chocolate and milk chocolate with a tart, fruity edge to it. Freshly applied: I don’t get the leather until it’s on my skin, and it’s a much softer leather than I remember from regular Red Rider - maybe the influence of the sugar-sweet ruby chocolate. This one is predominantly ruby chocolate/red musk/berries whereas Red Rider is predominantly moss/berries/leather. Fifteen minutes in: ruby fruit! One hour in: still a rich, fruity ruby chocolate, with several inches of throw.

Cascade of Tissues is like deep reddish pink pomegranate marshmallows, except more fruity than sweet, and the red musk is fuzzy rather than sexy. Picture a soft-focus photograph of a pile of marshmallows tinted a soft reddish-pink, next to an open bottle of Pom pomegranate juice.

2025 version: Cracking open the imp this is instantly recognizable as classic old school BPAL. Heady, rich, sexy. The caramel is rich and sweet, and the tobacco and coconut give it a dry, woody quality. After a few minutes on my skin the coconut starts to take on a sexy sunblock vibe. I love it. I want to buy three bottles and wear it all summer long. … and then barely an hour later it’s completely gone from my skin 😭 Maybe resting it for a few weeks will improve the longevity?

This is incredible. Basically a sweet honeyed clove single note (reminiscent of the clove note in Aerodynamic Junk). I wish I’d ordered three bottles.

I saw vanillekipferl in the scent description for this one and had to try it, because vanillekipferl was a specialty of my FIL’s to make for special occasions (we had a tray of them at our wedding), and is also nickname for our fluffy siamese cat (because he looks like a vanillekipferl that’s been in the oven too long and burned dark brown on the crescent points). In the imp/wet: Vanilla pine, not pine dominant or cookie dominant but a pine-flavored cookie. I was worried the pine needles would drown out everything else but they’re more like an astringent hint inside the cookies rather than floor-cleaner Pine-Sol. I get more of a light/not particularly buttery shortbread then vanillekipferl specifically, but my measure of comparison is a very specific German recipe from my wife’s family that uses ground almond flour and powdered sugar for a crumbly vanilla-almond cookie, and according to google the original Austrian version uses walnut or hazelnut, which might be the difference. Freshly applied: pretty much the same as it is wet. On the skin it has a sheer quality to it, not overtly foodie/heavily gourmand, but soft and light. Only a few inches of throw. The pine is definitely pine rather than fir or some other conifer, and needles rather than resin. On my hair it’s stronger, and very much a pine shortbread scent - this is basically Haus of Gloi’s Spruce tip Shortbread but with pine. Drydown: After an hour it’s still detectable but very light, about two-three inches of throw. Thanks to putting it on my hair/having long hair it’s like a little halo of sheer, light pine shortbread around me, sweet but not heavy.

I blind bottled this based on the description because I suspected it would be the recently d/c-ed Mouse Circus + lavender, and I was not disappointed. It is indeed Mouse Circus’s buttery kettle corn and soft vanilla-woods, combined with a sharp French lavender. Mouse Circus is a scent I associate with one of my cats (because he, too, has a “cotton-candy pink mouse nose”), and lavender was my other, sadly late cat’s favorite scent (the Fluffle loved lavender because I wore it to bed - even straight up lavender essential oil which you’d think would be too strong was apparently delightful to him and he’d come over to sniff it). So the moment I saw the description I immediately thought “this is the scent of both my babies cuddling together!” And it is. The first few moments are a slightly weird blast of herbal aromatherapy lavender and buttery popcorn, but then it calms down into a soft, sweet, slightly gourmand lavender that’s just as cuddly and soothing as I thought it would be.

As LavenderCoffee says upthread, Arachne of Lydia is almost a single note clove and is great, if relatively short-lived. The Leaf Spirits, from the ‘24 Weenies, is a dry, masculine clove + dead leaves accord that has amazing staying power (it lasts all day long until bedtime).

Testing the 2024 Weenies edition, which is distinctly different from the hair gloss version from 2017. This truly is a pumpkin latte, not a pumpkin spice latte. Think coffee plus Pumpkin Sugar rather than coffee + Pumpkin Spice Everything. The coffee note is strong in the wet stage, but the drydown is primarily a soft, vegetal pumpkin that’s sweet enough that it has an almost peach-y quality to it. It reminds me of the sweet pumpkin-peach notes in Jack. There’s just enough coffee and smoked vanilla to keep it cozy and snuggly feeling and to avoid being too sweet, but it doesn’t scream “Starbucks drink!” at you. The 2017 Weenies HG is both dryer and warmer, with a warm, buttery pumpkin instead of a sweet, vegetal one, and slightly stronger spice notes (although the pumpkin spice is still very much in the background compared to the coffee and pumpkin - it isn’t a fall spice scent, but a warm, cozy fall scent that just hints at spice).

The listed notes don’t mention dead leaves accord, but either it’s an unlisted note or the listed notes are the dead leaf accord (plus clove), because in the wet stage this is aaalllll dead leaves. Once on my skin, the clove note takes over. I was expecting a much smokier charred-wood/bonfire scent, but Leaf Spirits is instead a strong masculine clove scent (it reminds me a little bit of Aerodynamic Junk minus the leather and plus dead leaves) with an undertone of dry wood and peppery dead leaf accord. Tom Ford could bottle and sell this in a black square bottle and call it like “Autumn Woods” or something. That’s how manly a clove scent this is. It’s also got some serious staying power. These Leaf Spirits have stamina and stay around for hours and hours - a manly clove skin scent was still clinging to my skin at bedtime.

I expected a rich, sweet scent due to the molasses, but the dried apple and alcoholic sour mash combine to create a sharp hard cider scent instead. I like it. I have enough apple scents that I don’t think I’ll need a bottle, but I’m definitely keeping my decant.