Lucchesa

I'm always excited when I find a red musk blend I can wear. I got a bit of hazelnut wet only, with patchouli, vanilla, and red musk. The oudh and leather never really emerge on me, unless it's the red leather that's essentially identical to red musk on me, but Spider Witch dries down into quite a nice red musk-vanilla-patch blend that is mostly but not entirely about the red musk.

Honey! Honey and saffron. Honey and saffron and tonka, but this is predominantly a honey blend on me. And I love honey blends, so this is marvelous. I would love to get a bit more tobacco, but Pussy is soft, sexy and satisfying as is.

I put on Judith Victorious this morning without checking the notes, and I would never have come up with most of them. All I sussed out was the mandarin. There is definitely something warm and golden about this scent, which I would have pegged as amber of some kind. I assumed there was caramel in here somewhere. I wouldn't have guessed the warm nuttiness was chestnut flower, but it's gorgeous, and I am on board with chestnut anything. After consulting the notes, I was thinking I didn't have much experience of golden musk, but a quick search of my database shows me it's in my beloved Elf. I'm not getting much lily, if any. So -- a warm, glowing, caramelly scent with a hint of citrus and musk. It's gorgeous. Once upon a time, I was writing a dissertation on Old Testament heroines in Renaissance art, so trying this was a no-brainer, but I really like it. If I ever see a bottle for sale, it's mine.

I really wanted to love this because I love the painting, but this is the minty snow note that doesn't work on my skin (which I would have known from reading the reviews, but oh well, I wanted to try it). After a couple of hours, it's slightly minty dirt with some soft resins, but not worth getting through the wet stage for. Death of the Grave Digger is going to have to find a new home.

This is Your Wilderness (decant from the original release) is a real morpher on me, and fricking beautiful. It starts out sharp evergreens, so much evergreen, pine and cypress. Golden Priapus is a favorite GC of mine; I love the pine note. But there is nothing soft about it here. In your face pine, no honey, no patch, no tobacco. In a couple of hours (this is a long lasting scent) the balance is shifting, and the patchouli comes to the forefront. It's a dry patchouli tempered by a dry and not particularly sweet honey. The tobacco must be perfectly melded with the patch; I can't make it out. You're still in the woods, but in a clearing, so the evergreens have receded. (I love kakiphony's evocation of the hip aging hippies wearing this.) There's an elegant austerity to this scent, which is a quality it shares with the only OLLA I'm lucky enough to have a bottle of, In Templum Dei. It's strong and forthright, not lush and beguiling. It would be an excellent confidence-boosting scent.

The Worst Pillow is all coffee on me at first. As it dries down, it gets sweeter -- the caramel comes out, and the creamy vanilla. This isn't particularly good coffee. It's weak, pale brown coffee, and your choice was either dry non-dairy creamer or a little vial of vanilla-flavored creamer, so you chose the latter. This coffee would not taste great. But even crappy coffee can smell marvelous, and so does this. Good wear length on me though the strength of the coffee note faded in and out.

Another marvelous BPAL chocolate blend! You can see the cocoa globules in the imp, but this is not as dark and dry a chocolate as some I've tried. I'd call it maybe a 55% dark chocolate, not a 70 or 50%. Sweet, warm and comforting, with the almost nutty golden tonka and caramel becoming more prominent as the chocolate wanes a bit. I got good wear length from this, but my imp has had a year or so to age. Delicious!

I was lucky enough to try a decant of this, but given that everyone reports cocoa absolute stuck to the bottom of their bottles, it might be missing some of that note, no matter how stellar my decanter was. But this isn't about the cocoa anyway; #occupywallstreet is big, bad (filthy friggin') patchouli. If there's tobacco, it melds seamlessly with the patch; if there's bourbon vanilla, it cannot shout loudly enough to be heard above the patch. It seems similar to me to the patchouli in Depraved, which I recently bought a bottle of; otherwise I would be going in search of a bottle of this, and I may anyhow -- it's pretty great. To think, a little over a year ago, I was totally patchouli-avoidant. Ha! Good throw and wear length.

My decanter frimped me an empty of Courtesan with Secret Lover with just enough oil for a skin test. I was happy to try it; I didn't get a decant of it because of the jasmine, but it seems that here at least jasmine honey is a note I can wear. This is a classic Shunga. Green tea, pale musk, fruit blossom, citrus, check. I love this class of scents. Bright, cheerfully sexy or maybe sexily cheerful, perfect for a sunny spring day. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with tea blends, my skin eats this one up within 90 minutes. It's lovely while it lasts -- not even the jasmine can ruin it.

I'm a total sucker for vanilla fig milk. Orchid and ylang ylang were big question marks, but I put it on my wishlist anyway and was generously frimped a decant. So lucky! Love and Sleep is a soft fruity floral, lush and lovely. Wet it was a little too sweet for me, and fig milk is not as earthy as the regular fig note I adore, but the drydown is just so beguiling. This definitely shares a family resemblance with Poor Monkey, though Love and Sleep is sweeter, more innocent. Definitely a Luper in the sweet creamy floral mode.

In the imp, I got amber, myrrh, and cinnamon, and I was quite excited for Maidens in Repose. But on my skin it goes through a soapy phase that lasts about half an hour. The pale incense, maybe? I can still smell the cinnamon, but it's overwhelmed, and the star anise is not apparent to my nose. It finally settles into an enjoyable cinnamon-amber-incense scent, but there's still a hint of soapiness. I'm so glad I got to try it, but this one is just not working with my skin chemistry.

My favorite summer gelato combination is dark dark chocolate and tart lemon sorbet, so I was looking forward to this one a lot. But it just isn't working on me. I rolled the decant, which has the requisite brown globules, but I'm not getting chocolate as strongly as I would like. Vanilla custard with a little bourbon sauce served at a table with a single rose in a vase, yes. Oudh, not really. Lemon, nowhere to be found. I just can't make it out at all. It's quite a pleasant scent, just not what I was hoping for.

I knew I would love A Wild and Naughty Girl, and I was right. Bittersweet chocolate at first, spiked with a little clove and tobacco, grounded by patchouli. As it dries down, the tobacco comes to the fore, and the chocolate, patch and clove play backup. Gorgeous, comforting, sexy; it makes me want to run wild half-naked through the pouring rain or make other equally poor choices. I wish I'd gotten a bottle when I had the chance.

The Scapegoat is primarily a leather blend on me, too. It's really good -- soft cozy brown leather with balsam and resins in support, perfectly gender neutral. If I didn't have a bottle of Prosperous Flowers of the Elegant Twelve Seasons, which shares the leather and labdanum notes, I'd be queuing up for a bottle of Scapegoat. Right now it doesn't last on me as long as Prosperous Flowers, but I suspect age will improve that. I seem to be anosmic to the pepper note, so you may get a more peppery bite. Another win for the Fool!

Love this! At first it is all green grass, Abby scrabbling furiously in the middle of the lawn, grass flying everywhere until she flops over and rolls with abandon, a very bright, outdoorsy, spring-summer scent, and quite marvelous. The grass smell lasts about 45 minutes on me and then gives way to the musky cardamom. I swapped away my Bub decant but I recall it being quite foody; this is significantly less so to me. I wish it had a longer wear time; age might help with that.

I tried this yesterday, and it may not have stood a chance against Fate's Jester, which was on the other wrist and was fantastic on me. But Jongleur felt like a scent that will need a little more aging to develop properly. I got a dry frank and the star anise clearly, the clove and cinnamon faintly, and the other notes didn't really show up on my skin at all. I think they will, in a month or a year -- it didn't feel like a skin chemistry thing so much as a not-quite-ripe sort of thing. I'm keeping my decant to try again in a few months because I want that hippie street fair experience CSC is describing.

Ooh, I am loving Fate’s Jester so much! I feel like it could be a Mad Tea Party scent: it has the same sunshiny mood-lifting quality as Alice. Tangy realistic red currant with sugared lemon and just a hint of patchouli as backdrop. It has great throw on me, which is rare, and better than average wear length. After about three hours the patch becomes more prominent. A joyful scent, and definitely a bottle purchase.

Alice was the first BPAL I fell head over heels in love with, so I'm always up for a milk and honey combo. Wet, Narr is super sweet and ultra foodie, but as it dries the fig and ambrette seed contribute an earthy nuttiness that takes the edge off the sugar overload, although the buttercream lasts and lasts. I'm not always in the mood for something this sweet, but Narr is really really good on me.

I have not been having good luck with currant scents recently either, but my decanter threw in an empty of Hojojutsu with just enough oil to skin test, and I'm so glad. Wet it's a lot of juicy, sweet-tart red currant, but the creamy rice milk keeps it chill. (I really love the non-dairy blends - rice milk, almond milk, fig milk, I'm all in.) Instead of a blast of almond that fades right away, the almond blossom note is more subtle and lasting, a creamy almondy floral, and there is just a hint of white tea leaf as well. This is a skin scent on me but has really good wear length for a Shunga. Perfect for this time of year!

Wet, dark sharp pine and dry frankincense. I really wanted to try this because I love chestnut, but I'm wondering if black chestnut refers to the tree and not to the nut. At any rate, I didn't get any earthy nutty roasted chestnut, certainly no marrons glaces, but this does dry into a really beautiful unisex blend. The pine and frank soften and blend with the myrrh and it's a forest at nighttime, dark but not frightening -- a really lovely evocation of the concept.

My husband picked this one out for me, and I downgraded from bottle to imp because tea rose. When I first sniffed it, I wished I had gone with my husband's first instinct. It is beautiful. Soft honey rose with a whisper of lavender. There's some powdery amber in there too, and I guess the rosewood and benzoin are adding to the mix as well, though I couldn't really pick them out. It's a whole lot of lovely, old-fashioned and nostalgic and yet perfectly modern as well.

I haven't tried a lot of black rose blends, but on me (tested opposite Douze) it is a big, round, realistic rose that did not go sour like tea rose on my skin. I'm not getting the recognizable apricot or fig I was hoping for, just a hint of earthy fruit. It's very pretty, and a really successful rose on me, but ultimately too floral for me to need any more.

Tea rose. So lovely and delicate in the imp, and yet it almost always goes sour on my skin. Not always-always, or I would just give up trying. (Maybe; I'm an eternal optimist.) Douze is so pretty in the bottle, and then I get an hour of slightly sour rose. Not terrible, but given the glories of so much other BPAL, not anything I would bother to wear. After an hour the other notes emerge, but it's already fairly faint by then. Glad I got to try this, but I'll be passing on the imp.

I have been wearing Candles Moon for the grim spring days so common in Seattle, but the past few days we've had sunshine! I've been wearing The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, The Gaoler's Daughter, 413 US 15 and Harper. When the lilacs start to bloom, I will be wearing Cave of Treasures and Eusapia. And spring is perfect for Mad Tea Party faves: Alice, Against Idleness and Mischief, Mouse's Long and Sad Tail, Queen of Hearts.

This is one of those creations that Beth has clearly put a lot of thought into, and there is a lot going on, so many complex notes working together in concert. And I got... rootbeer. Super pleasant, snuggly as all get-out, but I was hoping for something a little darker, more intense. I tried again today, and this time I had a little more attention to pay to the various phases. (I also didn't have Prosperous Flowers on the opposite wrist to swoon over.) So wet, yes, definitely smoky sassafras, made even sweeter and more snuggly by vanilla, but this time I noticed that it quickly became darker around the edges with vetiver and opoponax, that syrupy cola opoponax. I got the mandarin this time, so now it's a smoky orange-cola rootbeer. With vetiver. Really great, in other words. Red musk decided not to show up to the party, which is fine, because it's not always all about red musk. This is not floral on me at all, maybe a tiny bit herbal, and I honestly can't make out the fig either. But it's a major comfort scent. My aunt asked what I was wearing and said she really liked it! And that was roughly 2.5-3 hours after application. Keeper!