Lucchesa

Slay may be a bit too much for me. In the bottle I can smell the cacao -- all the notes, really, and it's so beautiful in the bottle -- but when it hits my skin it is all oudh and red musk. There are two notes that amp in such a way as to make me self-conscious about wearing perfume: yep, oudh and red musk. Blood musk is usually good on me, though, and I was hoping blood-red vegetal musk might behave itself. No such luck. But the oudh is a bigger problem for me here. It's that skanky oudh. And it blocks out everything but the red musk for the first half hour or so. By an hour or so in, I was able to appreciate the other notes, the patch and tobacco, a hint of amber and bittersweet cacao. But the oudh was still note 1, and the red musk note 2. When I compare Slay worn to Slay in the bottle, I just don't think my skin chemistry is doing this blend any favors. If I were to wear this, I would have to apply it at least 30 minutes before leaving the house. And I'm still not sure I have the chutzpah to carry it off. I'm going to let it cellar for a while and try again, because I suspect aging is going to improve this one a lot.

Hoiru is really lovely, but it's rather faint on me from the get-go, as if the cashmere has laid a woolly blanket over all the notes and is muting them. I get no tea and no patchouli, just mellow leather, coconut and bourbon vanilla. It actually lasts a long time -- I put some on last night before bed and a trace was still hanging on in the morning -- but with volume tuned way down. I wish my skin let this one shine a little more.

I tested Grappling Octopus a couple of days ago, and Source of Sexual Knowledge is a very similar scent (I'll have to death match them one of these days). Both feature green tea and honey, and in both cases, the green tea sticks around a lot longer than it usually does on me. Here, it's the wasabi that seems to complement the green tea perfectly and pin it to my skin. I think it's a great hot-weather scent, bright and refreshing.

Odin is strangely foody on me -- the amaranth? I was hoping for woods and herbs, trending masculine, and instead I got something closer to bran muffins. I have no idea what my skin is doing to this one, but I don't think it's honoring Beth's original intentions. Sadly, not for me.

Silas Ruthyn is lovely, dark and deep, with smoky vetiver and smoky opium blending seamlessly. I only get the darker notes, not the citrus or tonka, though they may be contributing a rich sweetness. But unfortunately, my skin drinks it up in 45 minutes. After that it is a faint, lovely ghost of what might have been. If this is your note family, though, you should definitely try this -- it's beautiful, and you might get Mymymai's 16 hours instead of my one.

When I first applied Nanny Ashtoreth, I could barely smell it. Another of the Good Omens scent did this to me -- Buggre All This Bible barely bothered to show up on my skin -- so I was worried. But in a moment or two Nanny started to bloom, and I got leather and classy, woody men's cologne. No berries or florals (which is fine with me on both counts), no recognizable amber or honey; they all combined with the woods to create the impression of cologne. This trends to the masculine side of unisex, which is also fine. It stayed close to the skin and had average wear length. It's nice, but I have other leather-cologne blends that are stronger on me, so I won't need more than my decant.

I was generously sent a tester of Banshee Beat by a swap partner who adores this scent and was still kind enough to share it. I put on just a dab tonight after dinner, before watching a movie with my family. And I immediately understood what the fuss is all about. It went on gorgeous and has stayed that way for several hours now. Just the sweetest, chewiest, sexiest patchouli and the smoothest vanilla and a little bittersweet, earthy hemp and together they are flipping magical. I couldn't stop sniffing my wrist all through the movie. Maybe this one could be resurrected, too? Please???

If I had known vitis was a grape, I probably wouldn't have bothered with this one. Grape is almost always tragic on me. But Aveya's review was so compelling! Wet, Black Heart was a mess on my skin, sickly sweet dimetapp grape, backed by sickly sweet pom. But after about 15 minutes, it gets much more interesting. I begin to get plum instead of grape and pom, the sweetness backed off, and I could smell the carnation and a darker vanilla. I do enjoy a dark plum scent, and that's the territory this ended up in -- I can't say I ever made out any sweet pea at all. I just wish the grape didn't ruin the opening for me.

Green tea scents always seem to fade really quickly on me, but I tend to get great wear length from honey blends. Grappling Octopus lies somewhere in the middle. Wet, I get bright citrus and green tea, a fun, lightweight summer scent with just a hint of evergreen. The honey and hay emerge in drydown, and the citrus and tea fade a bit. On me, after about an hour it becomes primarily a honey blend -- warm honey and hay with hints of citrus and tea. I pretty much lose the cypress altogether. I'm not always in the mood for such a sunny, sweet, optimistic scent as this (and I live in gray Seattle), but it is a lovely summer number.

The Phoenix, Having Burst Her Shell has been on my wishlist for a long time and I'm finally getting a chance to try it. The only problematic note here for me is white musk, and it seems to be very subdued in this blend. I'm getting primarily amber, bittersweet citrus and patchouli. It's not a big hippie patch; more of a structural patchouli, a scaffold for the amber and oranges. (This not a sweet, juicy blend if that's what you look for in citrus.) I'm not really getting any tobacco to speak of, but it might be contributing to the overall dry warmth of this blend. Very lovely.

Immersed in his (eternal) life’s work, holding on to his memories, suffused with a love of life and literature, Kit’s scent is soft and dry as bone: Mysore sandalwood, a tattered and patched 16th century waistcoat, inkstained, still scented with the marjoram and benzoin dry perfumes of his youth. My imp of Kit 2014, generously decanted for me by another forumite, is quite stratified, with brown stuff at the bottom. I turned it upside down for a minute then rolled it gently until the brown globs got smaller and smaller and the overall color more uniform. Then I put it on my wrist. In the opening, there's something about the sandalwood and benzoin combination that almost reads as marzipan to my nose. Looking at the above reviews, I see it compared to Al Azif, and that is exactly my impression as well, though Kit is more complex on my skin. The nuttiness burns off within about half an hour, and the drydown has a warmth and sweetness but also the tiniest hint of something bittersweet -- the marjoram? -- that makes it infinitely more interesting to me. Kit has a little throw (which is a lot for me) and good staying power but still feels airy -- not in the sense of faint, but in the sense of not feeling grounded; it evokes air and fire, not earth or water. The life of the mind. Beautiful.

I put on Molly without remembering what was in her, and my initial impression was that it smelled like lemon and cocoa. Like I wanted Delight and Consternation to smell, actually. I was pretty sure there wasn't any kind of chocolate note involved, just a dark rich sweetness, beautifully balanced by the zingy citrus. I caved and looked at the notes, and of course the lemon was lime, and I guess tobacco and saffron and honey and amber were reading as dark chocolate to me. I have no idea what nagarmotha smells like, so I can't comment there. The oud is not indolic, and the lily of the valley is not flowery; it all blends into this gorgeous mix. AND I was smelling it without lifting my wrist to my nose! I so rarely get throw unless it's stinky oud, or red musk in black latex thigh-high boots stomping all over everything or champaca doing its bizarre amping thing. Excellent wear length too. There may be a bit of a lime cologne feel, like in John Watson or Whitechapel, but not enough to make this feel masculine; I think anyone could wear it. It works really well on me and is like nothing else I own. Immediate bottle purchase.

I was pretty sure Ginny wasn't going to work on me. Tobacco flower almost never does; it's way too sharp, even if the word isn't right there in the description. I applied, thought, "Yep, sharp tobacco flower, damn," and put Molly on my other wrist, And by the time I resniffed Ginny -- so, maybe, 20 seconds later -- the sharp edge was dissipating in a soft haze of cognac and smoke. This is a tobacco flower I can wear, with pleasure. And it's not so boozy and smoky that you can't wear it to work because you smell like you slept in your clothes after hitting the bars the night before. No, everything is gentle and well-blended; the white cognac is less heavy than regular cognac, and the amber classes it up. Average wear length on me, and no throw, which is also average on me. Lovely!

More love here for The Storyteller. I tested it side by side with Hearth 2017, and on my skin Storyteller won hands down. They both are smoky, but the Storyteller's smoke is wilder and sweeter. And if the word "smoke" makes you think "vetiver" and head for the hills, don't. This isn't vetiver, it's the aroma of a roaring fire that's blazed down enough in places to roast marshmallows over the glowing embers. I didn't get overt beeswax or leather at first; both began to emerge with drydown. This is super lovely and evocative, and I agree that it's going to be perfection come autumn.

2017 Hearth. There's a BPAL tobacco note that I've been thinking doesn't work on me. It's the one here, and it's in Snaky Hair'd Moirai as well. It's overpoweringly sharp when it hits my skin. But I'm starting to think that it simply needs more time to age. I recently retried Snaky, which was considerably improved from initial testing, and on retesting Hearth, I get that initial bit of harshness from the tobacco, but within a few minutes it has mellowed into something warm and comforting. Now it's letting the leather and woods come through. (I'm not getting the much in the way of cherry). Hearth doesn't have a lot of staying power on me, but that may improve with age as well. I think this one isn't going to come into its true beauty for a year or two yet.

All these lovely notes, and what do I get from Midnight Kiss? Grape juice. No cocoa, no red musk, almost no sandalwood or patch, just Manishevitz. Thanks, skin chemistry.

Independent reminds me of a lemon-lime drink powder we had as kids. Also of citronella candles. Not something I want to wear as a scent. Oh well, I'm glad I got to try it.

I think of chaparral as a place, not a plant. Scrublands, high desert, the kind of landscape you would expect a classic Western to be set in. And it is exactly what Doc Constantine makes me think of. A leather-clad gunslinger riding up on his horse through a landscape of sagebrush and manzanita, pulling up to a campfire. Masculine and outdoorsy, or in other words, unisex, it's kind of like Coyote with more smoke and cedar. It doesn't have great staying power on me, about two and a half hours, but I like it a lot.

So, shortly after I applied Hans Trapp, my husband walked into the room and asked what that musty smell was. Not really an auspicious beginning, though apparently it does have some throw . *I* like this one, though, and so does my friend Lenore, who saw me smelling my wrist as we were walking around the lake a couple hours later and asked to sniff it. It's a lot of leather and some dusty woods. I have Doc Constantine on the other wrist which adds smoke and cedar; Hans Trapp is more leather and I'm thinking the dusty note may be hay. Or matted hair, who knows? Much nicer than either the description or my husband's reaction. It goes strong for about two and a half hours on me then fades away quickly after that.

I wanted Young Pine Saplings to work so badly that I almost blind-bottled this from a forum sales page. I was giving a Hokusai talk, and I was showing a slide from Young Pine Saplings, and the notes sounded gorgeous. Fortunately I was generously frimped a half decant instead. And just as in that very old joke, it Worked. So. Badly. Every once in a while (Phantom Cow, I'm looking at you), a cream note goes horribly wrong on my skin, and this was one of those times. Sweet, spicy curdled milk. But I was able to pass it on to a swap partner for whom YPS is a major comfort scent. Sigh.

Umm, yes! I am a total sucker for anything candle-themed. It is perhaps my very favorite BPAL subcategory. So I group Thousands of Lights together with The Lights of Men's Lives, Flickering Lantern, Chanukkiyah, Hanerot Halalu and The Writing on the Slate, each beautiful, each unique but sharing that ability to, as JTobias says, create amazing ambiance and conjure up the beautiful glow of candles. Champaca can be a deal-breaker for me. It stays in line here, does not go weird and amp on me. I love bergamot but do not get recognizable amounts of it here either. In fact, it is hard for me to differentiate most of the notes in this blend because the evocative effects of the whole are so potent. There are the nutty, earthy tones of ambrette and saffron, a sweet vanilla beeswax, the incense that sends everything soaring. It's simply gorgeous, and I can't believe I neglected to review it earlier.

Someone has a very reasonably priced bottle of Old Man Ackerman's Instructional Toys on their sales page right now, so I am testing my imp to see if I need more. This is a very bright scent. Clean and bright. Citrus, sharp white musk, and ozone? I'm not getting any dust; a couple of hours in the citrus has faded but it's still clean and bright, verging on soapy. It's a higher-pitched scent than usually works on me; I love the concept but wouldn't wear this one.

The Scroll is absolutely gorgeous wet, with lots of throw: honey with myrrh and just the faintest edge of what must be Ceylon cinnamon but doesn't read anything like Big Red gum on my skin. This cinnamon is deeper and more subtle. As it dries down it gets warmer and spicier and foodier, and the throw mellows down considerably. I kind of lose the myrrh, or rather, the myrrh melds with the honey to create a kind of dirty, sexy honey. It's not the pale, crisp honey of something like Against Idleness and Mischief; it's much lower pitched and sexier. Just three notes, but The Scroll still manages to feel complex and nuanced. Lovely!!!

Spanked Revisited is my sex goddess comfort scent. Cardamom is my favorite spice note, and it's beautiful here, blending with the leather. At first, that's it, cardamom and leather, and frankly, that's enough, I would love it at that. But then the husky bourbon comes in, just sweetening things up in a very sexy way, plus a hint of patch as kind of a backbone. So it's warm and snuggly and makes me feel at ease in my own skin, and from that ease comes sensual confidence. The throw is very low on me, so this isn't a Snake Oil that announces your goddesshood to the rest of the world, but it means that I can wear this absolutely anywhere and channel my inner Astarte without overpowering anyone else in the room. It doesn't last as long as I like, but now that I have a bottle and not just half a stingily hoarded decant, I can douse myself and reapply at will. I absolutely love this one.

Ooh, Advice of the Dead is pretty, an autumnal floral. Marigolds smell weird, chrysanthemums can too, but this does not. It's definitely more classic floral than I expected, with less of that marigold funkiness. On my skin the earth note tends to morph into high-end perfume, so while I smell the rich dirt for a little while, in drydown this becomes a resiny, earthy floral perfume. I'm personally not able to differentiate the myrrh. This doesn't have great wear length on me, but that may improve with a little age.