Casablanca

Goats' milk, honey, and musk. Now and then I pick up a suggestion of red currant, similar to the way it plays a small role in Alisz. It only came out in that blend for me over time, so I might find more of it in Harlequin Milk later. I have a feeling I'll find some orange later. But mostly this is goats' milk, honey, and musk, and I like it a lot.

Orange-toned, slightly powdery mimosa and star jasmine. The herbs and Snek don't really play here for me, and my skin eats the blend before long.

This Snek reminds of several other BPAL blends, almost like a Lab Rat mini-edition. Like a Lab Rat made from a small, sexy section of the shelves. But mostly I do get something like a wildflower Womb Furie with orange blossom and cinnamon. Lighter and less deep. The orange blossom is potent on me; the cinnamon is lightest, but still quite present. I like it. My immediate urge is to add dark vanilla and make a body gloss out of it, because that worked well with Saw-Scaled Viper, and this also reminds me somewhat of that.

Deep green swamp and glimpses of sap. I think of algae. Snek slithers under, but I barely catch it. The swamp encloses it.

Mild lemon and dry, woody vetiver on a Snek background. Spring in dry woods.

Well-oiled, new-ish black leather and something sweet. Almost a little sugary... But mostly oiled black leather.

Super-slushy sweet vanilla mint. And, yeah. More of that. After a while, a hint of Snek woods. But mostly the slush.

Well-misted lavender and oakmoss on a soft earthy background like slightly damp, decomposing leaves on the forest floor. The soft forest-floor earthiness has a patchouli hint and reminds me a lot of Earth Mother (patchouli, clary sage, dark mosses and lichens, wild grasses, warm acorns, dammar, burgundy pitch, pine needles, mandrake root, hay absolute, sweet vetiver). The white oudh is probably contributing, but it doesn't stand out for me. The oakmoss in this smells up front and detailed -- as if I can see its pale, spidery outline against the bark when I inhale -- but it's limned in lavender. This is really lovely at first. As it starts to dry, though, it turns a bit cologne-like, and also powdery in a white-musk way. I still find the lovely lavender-oakmoss in it, but there's too much of the cologne and powder for this to work on me.

I love the bat and butterfly blends... This one is as desert-like as described in other reviews. It goes on like desert scrub, dusty clove, and a breath of small, dry flowers. Over time I find something that reminds me of an actual spiny arm of an aloe broken open, as we used to do to rub on sunburns. An opened succulent smell, blending with the rest of the desert.

Bright gingery white tea with vanilla-amber, bergamot, and ... something of a more full-bodied orange than just bergamot. Mandarin? In drydown, I begin to find a light smoky incense in it, and then a bourbon hint that's subtle enough to be interesting instead of whoa corn booze. I didn't pick up a decant of this when it was out; I'd had trouble wearing Lab ginger. One of the only alcohol-based perfumes I've loved was heavily gingered, so that was sad. But lately I'm finding some Lab ginger blends I can wear, and this is another like that. It's quite good on me, actually, though not long lived. Pallid Bat reminds me of both Season of Ghosts (with its orange/bergamot, ginger, and frankincense) and Kumiho.

Orange liqueur aflame with red ginger and a hot little whiff of cinnamon. On my skin, Emergy shifts into orange lollipop liqueur aflame with red ginger and a little cinnamon. Neroli and orange blossom often turn to orange lollipop candy on me, so maybe there's some of that hiding here. Perhaps the sugared part is also bringing this toward liqueur for me. This isn't boozy, but it smells to me like the syrupy, fruity part of an orange liqueur. Pimento pops in, being its slightly sweet and strange self. In drydown, I also start to get cracked peppercorn. Strong red ginger, with hints of peppercorn and cinnamon or cassia. This is not a good combo for me, but I'm glad to try it.

This is a smooth vanilla cream steeped with lush fig and honey, and poured into hot black tea. This is the luxury black tea beverage you order after dinner in lieu of a fancy late-night coffee. Hints of drying grasses blend well. Fig-infused vanilla cream dominates the first phase. The honey is a mild touch; the tea and dried grasses add maturity. Once this dries, the fig vanilla cream has calmed. It lingers, but I find more honey, black tea leaves, and dried grasses around it. This smells to me like the honey from the Honey Pot blends I've tried: light and mellow, rather than heavy and sugar-crunchy. Hints of almond peek out of the honey. The blend goes softer on my skin. Lovely and complex.

Fresh! First on, I get loads of cool, fresh blue juniper, tinged purple with a little lavender. This cool and ginny juniper is just owning me. I'm kind of juniper's bitch right now. In early drydown, I amp hops -- as my skin seems to do -- and then I have a deeply herbal juniper. Blue musk comes out of hiding. The resulting cool, shimmering combination of notes reminds me of watching the blue-aqua light-shadows on the sides of a pool. That's actually where this blend stays on me: blue-aqua pool shadows.

[No additional description provided.] Mellow honey and minty-green, licorice-sweet absinthe. This one smells mostly like minty-green honey for the first bit of time on my skin. The minty vibe soon settles and I get a honeyed, sweet green licorice blend. Honey and Absinthe makes me think of a gourmet jelly bean that's black with green spots. Or maybe one that's green with black spots. If you see such a jelly bean, and you're playing Bean Boozled, you should just walk away. As a perfume, though, it's much less hazardous and, for some, will even be nice to wear. 🙂

In the bottle, I get mostly an oudh, one of an unpleasantly indolic nature in the neighborhood of Bestla and Nevertheless, She Persisted. I feared I was about to get burned by an undisclosed-note-in-a-blind-bottle again, and procrastinated this blend's testing. When I apply Earth Pig, finally, I get a fair amount of this body-earthy oudh, but also a serene and pleasant orange, tangerine, and plum blossom mix. The oudh is thankfully not quite as fecal as it smelled in the bottle, though it has a somehow bodily nature. In early drydown, the oudh calms considerably and then the blend becomes cheerful with orange, tangerine, mandarin, plum flower, peony, and something that smells like golden frankincense. From that point on, the blend is very wearable and a relief.