Lucchesa

Sometimes BPAL oudhs are marvelous on me. Sometimes they go all poopy on my skin. This one is in the latter camp, and the beautiful amber can't save it, not even a couple hours into drydown. I may need to avoid black oudh in the future.

2018 version I can absolutely appreciate the beauty of June 23, 1868. It is a bouquet of beautiful, heady-but-not-cloying white florals, most of which I'm unfamiliar with, but it smells the way I imagine moonflower would. Lovely and ethereal. Unfortunately, I was hoping for those sepia tones of tonka, tobacco and bourbon vanilla to come dirty things up, and while I may get a touch of vanilla, I really get no tobacco at all. So it's a gorgeous floral, but I almost never wear a pure floral; it's just not me. This would be a fantastic scent for a bride in traditional long white dress and veil. If the lab ever made the reverse scent, tonka-tobacco-bourbon vanilla with a hint of moonflower, I'd be quite excited. I'm delighted I got to try this one, and if white florals ring your bells, don't miss this.

I got to try a decant of the original Saw-Scaled Viper via a swap with a marvelous forumite, and after applying I had to check the site to make sure it was indeed a Snake Oil blend. Unusually, it took a long time for the SO to assert itself; instead, this was like Chimera (which I love) with vanilla. I didn't get nearly as much ginger as I did cinnamon and cassia. While most of the Snake Oil blends I have tried sooner or later turn into Snake Oil, this one never did; the warm sweet spices remained its primary identity. What I did get and appreciate, though, was Snake Oil throw. This is lovely on me and may well warrant a bottle purchase.

Like a Girl is mostly sweet bourbon vanilla and skin musk on me, and it's lovely. I get a little sandalwood but nothing that I recognize as frankincense. This is a skin scent on me (I rarely get much throw from anything), much more vanilla than boozy, absolutely work appropriate. I think it would also be quite a nice scent for a preteen girl, but it's not obnoxiously girly, just pretty in an unobtrusive way.

The Carousel is the kind of scent I used to avoid because of too much going on. But after loving OLLA Eve, I thought I would give this one a whirl, and I'm super glad I did. This actually reminds me somewhat of Eve, both in terms of the ambitious scope and complexity of the scent and in the fact that both have an undercurrent of a rose that works on me. I do not smell a lot of cinnamon here, and I swapped with dementia_divine for this decant, so it's there, it's just my nose or my chemistry that is masking it. Instead, the first notes I get are ozone with a kind of green meadow scent. The ozone doesn't stick around on me at all, and I start to get sweet incense, green honey amber, earth and moss, the aforementioned rose... And surprisingly for such a jumble of notes, it works. It dries down to a skin scent but lasts a good while, and on me I would say it leans to the feminine side of unisex.

My decant of The Mahogany Tree is also old now, but I do get a hint of redcurrant and wine along with the mahogany and amber. The amber-dominated drydown smells really classically BPAL to me, lovely and warm. I'm not getting the snow note, which is fine with me. This wears close to the skin on me, but so do most things.

On me, An Excerpt is all about the vetiver. The forest notes form a backdrop to the smoky charge of vetiver, with soft myrrh playing around the edges, and everything softens together as it dries down. Definitely on the more manly end of unisex, and a great forcefield scent on days when you need a little extra personal power. Once it's dry, there's not a lot of throw on me (which is typical of my skin), but very good wear length. If smoky forest is your jam, this is hard to beat.

Having enjoyed My Baby and a Baby Goat tremendously, I decided I should test the other goat's milk scent in my stash, Nonae Caprotina. It is definitely the same goat's milk note, earthy, a little more pungent than cow's milk. Here it's sweetened by the similarly earthy fig instead of honey, and it's a marvelous combination. The myrrh is very soft and light on me. It doesn't have quite the throw and wear length of My Baby, but it is lovely as a very natural-seeming skin scent.

I was curious about Kaidan because of the rosehips. The only other rosehip blend I've tried was Allegory of Chastity, which was not a standout on me. Kaidan is not my usual sort of scent, but it's very pretty. It starts out delicate spring blossom on me, with just a hint of plum. As it dries down, I get sandalwood incense along with the blossoms, the plum becomes a bit more pronounced, and there is a tangy note that must be the rosehip. It's definitely more interesting in this phase, and I agree with achildoftime that it has more gravitas than Kitsune-Tsuki -- Kaidan works better on me than that blend.

Wet, Alone was cinnamon and patchouli (had to look at the notes to see that this was actually supposed to be cardamom. Hmm.) I didn't get to drydown because within moments my skin had started to burn and itch. Just FYI, the only other BPALs I have reacted to have been Inferno, Alice's Evidence, Baron Samedi, Nostrum Remedium and Greed. Not a lot of consistency there.

My skin chemistry mucked this one up. I had forgotten what was in it except for coffee, and when I smelled the imp, it was all luscious black musk with a little bit of sweet coffee. Mmm. On my skin it has terrific throw and wear length and smells exactly like strong, musky root beer. I have no idea why coffee would go to root beer on me. It's not unpleasant, and if I didn't have a couple of sarsaparilla scents I like, I would be keeping it, but it isn't what I was hoping for!

The Forest of the Empress goes on in a clarion blast of all the evergreens. I won't pretend to be able to differentiate silver fir from Douglas fir, or actually fir, spruce, cedar and cypress from pine, hemlock and redwoods, but this is very Christmas tree farm in summer, and I love it. While it does feel warm, not snowy, it is also lush, not dry, like a forest in the Pacific Northwest. The initial rush of needly greenery softens on my skin and within an hour has morphed into a much softer and sweeter evergreen scent, with the moss and oak apparent. This is not unlike the drydown of Theoi Nomioi on me. Lovely!

The Emperor's Throne is lovely but really quiet on me. The cedar and ambergris are the most prominent notes when wet. Usually tobacco leaf can be kind of screechy on me; here it's subdued, but so are the cedar and ambergris. In drydown they all meld together with the benzoin, and it really smells good if I put my nose right up to my wrist, but I feel like my skin is muting this. I'm going to age the imp a couple of months but if it doesn't develop any more oomph on me, I will let someone else try it.

You know how sometimes the moment you first sniff a new scent, you feel an instant emotional connection with it and pray it won't fall to pieces when you put it on your skin? And then when you do, it's even better than it was in the imp or bottle and you're flying high on a new love? That's me with the Emperor's Beard. And I'm not even particularly fond of facial hair (fucking hipsters). Resniffing the decant, I'm not even sure what grabbed me. It's sharp tobacco, almost camphorous patch, sharp pine needle. But these are notes that tend to soften beautifully on my skin, and within minutes the tobacco becomes the most gorgeous sweet tobacco, and the patch and the pine just spread out a musky blanket beneath the tobacco tree and lounge. I'm not able to pick out the bergamot or sandalwood, but who cares, this is gorgeous on me. It would smell magnificent on a guy too, if I had one who would be willing to try it. Bottle.

I hope Lights of Men's Lives is anywhere near as good on you as it is on me. You did see that Liliths dropped, right?? Decant circles can't be far behind.

This was a gift from an incredibly generous forumite, and I wish it worked on me better. It struck me as a bright, summery scent and I tested it again yesterday. It goes on with a potent dose of lemon balm, reminiscent of a citronella candle; this phase might be good aromatherapy for concentration. After an hour or so, the lemon shifts into the background on me, and it morphs into an orange blossom-dominated scent, which goes somewhat soapy on me, as orange blossom sometimes does. This lasts a really long time. The faint bit of clove I'm getting is more like clove bud than the actual spice. Decent throw and good wear length, but an orange blossom that doesn't agree with my chemistry.

I tried Phantom with Wanton on the other wrist, to try to get a handle on attar of rose. It is not, I think, a rose that works well on me. Here I get old lady rose and powdery myrrh. On the plus side, the ylang ylang isn't taking over; on the minus side, neither is the black musk. It's much better in drydown when all the notes come into balance, but it is still not a rose I'm excited about wearing.

I'm beginning to understand that attar of rose is not one of the rose notes that works on me. I get a lot of throw at first, which is all rose and, presumably, palmarosa, which is supposed to be rose-like. I'm getting no patch at all and just a little sandalwood. It's not terrible, it just bends in the direction of old lady rose on my skin. Not for me.

I wear a lot of unisex scents, but Spider reminds me strongly of an aftershave my dad wore in the 70s, which settles this one squarely in masculine territory for me. I'm getting mainly lime and bergamot; the ginger is not at all doing the weird foodie thing it sometimes does on my skin, but is sharp and clean. I'm not getting much in the way of either vetiver or nutmeg. Fresh, citrusy cologne -- I could imagine wearing this one if it didn't remind me so much of my dad.

I was frimped a sniffie of this with just enough to skin test. It was very promising in the vial, plum and oudh and dark musk; the vetiver and patch are of the smooth varieties, not the gritty, smoky, or hippie kinds. But it just wasn't spectacular on my skin, which damped down all the loveliness. I ended up with subdued plum and a kind of generic melange of the darker notes as a faint skin scent. It didn't disappear entirely; it was just set at a very low volume on me. Maybe if I had enough to slather, the scent might have ripened better on me. I'm really glad I got to try it!

I absolutely love the goat's milk note, and My Baby and a Baby Goat is full of win for me. I get good throw from this when wet, which is rare for my skin, and excellent wear length. On me, this is mostly honeyed goat's milk with a sweet musk in the background. It is a pure comfort scent, a guaranteed smile scent. Thank you, o generous-frimping swap partner!!!

I was given a nicely aged decant of Loved to Death by an incredibly generous swap partner. Given the notes, it should have a slam dunk on me. Instead, it was interesting. I tested blind, and i would have said vanilla, honey, cacao and maybe sassafras -- I think the latter two notes were how I was reading the smoked aspect of the vanilla, and I think that's what some reviews are calling anise. It reminded me a little of the Scroll. Maybe it's Ceylon cinnamon. The clove never was clear on me, and it definitely read more like honey than beeswax. Good wear length. I'm delighted I got to try it and my budget is glad it was idiosyncratic on my skin.

The generous boyfriend of a generous swapper let me have a tester of Lordy, which I've been eyeing for a while but the reviews are all over the place. (Thank you!!!) Wet, I got an aquatic cologne that made me wonder if the 1950s FBI agent was wearing Aqua Velva. I'm not sure I've ever even smelled Aqua Velva, but that was what my brain served up. There's something about an Aqua Velva man. 90 minutes later Lordy has developed into a skin scent on me, a light cologne with hints of leather and coffee and probably paper too. It's very nice, smooth and unisex. At first I didn't think I needed a bottle, but it's rather appealing in this phase. I'll try it a couple more times and see if it continues to grow on me.

Imp of indeterminate age. I don't love the wet phase of Anne Bonny on my skin. It's sharp, dry frankincense, sharp dry patchouli, sandalwood threatening to turn into pencil shavings. Not a scrubber, but not making my heart sing. Then it dries and the magic happens. It's still dry but no longer sharp and has become something beautiful, more than the sum of its wet parts. Roseus captured it perfectly: sun-baked. I think I'm going to want to smell like this in the dead of winter, dry and warm and fierce. Applied before leaving the house, Anne Bonny will be perfect by the time I get to work.

My grandmother had these hard pink soaps in her pink and burgundy tiled bathroom that were shaped like Mackintosh roses. You weren't actually supposed to use them; she had normal soap too. Harlot on me smells exactly like those soap roses. Old-fashioned rose soap with the tiniest edge of cinnamon. Not terribly long-lasting on my skin.