Lucchesa

Baruch's Phoenix is good-not-great on me. It's mostly cedar, sandalwood and galbanum. I don't get any honey, which is too bad because it would help keep the cedar in check. The fruit notes are there but soft, in the background; no detectable almond. I love the scent descriptions for so many of the anniversary blends, and so few of them are home runs on me. Oh well, I'm happy to have smelled this one, and I keep trying...

This Wan White Humming Hive was sickly, scary honey when it first hit my skin. But quickly the overpowering sweetness of the beeswax gave way to the dry patchouli, the oceany ambergris, and a light incense around the edges. It is stranger and less straight-forward than I had imagined. This is not a bad thing; it's a beautiful, magical strangeness. Imagine your totally goth girlfriend, with the dyed black hair, the all-black wardrobe, the clove cigarettes, decided instead to wear all white, to line her eyes with white and wear white lipstick and dye her hair platinum blonde -- this is the perfume she would wear. Despite the pale quality of the notes, a little goes a long way, and there is quite a bit of throw on me.

Like the very first reviewer, I get essentially single note lavender from Love and Pain. As always, it goes on in a blast of lavender; unusually, the lavender lasts and lasts, but I really wanted to hear from the tobacco, the vanilla, the black musk...

I will try any blend with chestnut in it, but on initial application this seemed like a fail. It smelled like the rose dusting powders that elderly relatives owned in my childhood, the kind that would come in a round striped box with a pink powder puff inside. Pink powder puff = not me. But within 20 minutes or so, the warm nutty chestnut stepped in to save the day, creating a scent that is delicate and powdery while at the same time earthy and warm. I can't say I get any vetiver here at all, though it might contribute to the latter qualities. No throw but pretty decent staying power for a Shunga; this would be a good workplace scent on me.

Hmm, the Goblin Rider in my imp must be almost a decade old by now. It still smells great, still a little sharp ITI with pine and cedar. On my skin I get more opoponax, and a hint of ozone which doesn't bother me here because it's so perfect with the concept. The woods are lovely, dark and deep...

So, I thought I was getting the October 2006 13, but the label just says 13 2006, and based on the notes and reviews, I think it's the January 2006 one instead, which was this formulation. The two blends it reminds me of most strongly are Young Pine Saplings and Phantom Cow of Yerba Buena. Both were dreadful on my skin, like curdled milk. I'm not getting recognizable chocolate here, which makes me think this is a white chocolate blend, not a cocoa one. And white chocolate is not my cup of anything. I'll be frimping this out in my very next swap, and hopefully my swap partner can figure out what they're dealing with here and have better luck with it.

2008 version and I'm shocked I didn't review this when I received it for the 13 Nights of Halloween swap last fall. Maybe it just seemed like the wrong season. Now is very much the right season, and this blend is so beautiful. I don't like straight florals, but carnation is my favorite floral, and this is carnation and a lush field of green grass with clover and heather and ivy, and frankly tea rose can be dreadful on me but I'm not getting any here. This is pure pastoral poetry and perfect for those overcast spring days that just make the greens seem that much greener and the pinks of blossoms that much pinker.

Pallas Athene is perfect both for the goddess herself and for the Klimt painting. I get a rich, golden amber as the principal note, backed up by saffron, gentle cedar and resins, a hint of citrus. I don't actually get any cinnamon at all, and not enough cumin to worry about. Beautiful, strong, glowing. It doesn't last long on my skin, unfortunately. ETA Gustav Klimt, Pallas Athene, 1898 Historical Museum of the City of Vienna

I didn't care for Gomorrah when it first hit my skin. It was gritty, ashen. And despite fig, date and currant (I never actually get the latter), it is not at all sweet. But as it develops, it gets interesting. I wonder if there's black pepper in here, which is a note I have trouble smelling, because there is a kind of kick to it. The fig and the date emerge, though not strongly; this is a skin scent throughout. I still don't love it, but it's very complex and I think it would be marvelous on the right skin chemistry.

I put Bestla on before heading out to work today and couldn't remember what was in it. (I think I had it confused with Audumla and was expecting streams of milk.) Well, oudh was immediately obvious. Stinky oudh, like the one in Nevertheless She Persisted. I gritted my teeth and, nevertheless, persisted. And the indolic quality only lasted about 10 minutes before it turned into the gorgeous, non-stinky oudh of, say, Cassiopeia, but with rose instead of plum. I knew there was other stuff in there, but I couldn't have said precisely what -- something chewy, that must have been the fig. And like lizabelle, about 2 hours in, I would have guessed there was a late-blooming cinnamon or cassia note, a lovely spicy quality. This is quite beautiful on me, with a little throw and good wear length.

A BPAL friend of mine described this as one of her favorite masculine-leaning blends, which surprised me since I don't think of lavender, bergamot and plum as trending in that direction. I finally got the chance to try it, and it is quite a morpher on me. It starts out with lavender and bergamot doing the me, me, no, look at ME! dance. Clean, bright, happy vibes, not hellish at all. Things start to get a little weirder when the musk comes into play. I wouldn't have been able to pick it out as green musk either, nor could I identify a specific plum note, just a hint of fruitiness. The lavender lasts longer than usual on my skin, blending with the fruity musk, and after a couple of hours it felt very much like a citrus chypre, a cologney feel to it, and I understood where my friend was coming from. Wear time was pretty good on this, and I quite liked all the phases. Keep!

I'm testing Incipient Madness on one wrist and Inextinguishable Hatred on the other (it's tax day, I'm still working on mine) and they have a similar dark, sweet, smoky tobacco thing going on. Both are sexy and perfectly unisex, maybe skewing a little towards the masculine end of the spectrum. Madness is musky rather than resiny. I'm not getting any recognizable currant, just sweetness. The patchouli is in the background, kind of structuring the scent but not dominant at all. I like both these scents but am not madly in love with them, so I think I may pass these decants along.

Inextinguishable Hatred has mellowed beautifully in the 6+ years since it was decanted (my imp is dated Dec 2011). It's not sharp or acrid at all but spicy ginger with that lovely coca-cola opoponax -- I get the ginger beer comparisons, although I wouldn't call it fizzy. Gingery sweet dark resins with a hint of tobacco and neroli. There may be a bit of bite from the pepper but I can rarely smell the pepper note in anything. Average wear length, totally gender neutral.

I love this! The gorgeous spicy earth note, smoky vetiver, grassy vetiver, something evergreen twining through it all. Believe seems to capture all the power inherent in the natural world. It has great throw, which is rare on my skin (at least for scents I like...) and is lasting very well so far.

Cock Stamen is a floral on me, not a gourmand, and I have to admit I was hoping for more of the latter and less of the former. I love Dragon's Milk but it's the only DBR-heavy scent that really works on me. So what I was hoping for was Dragon's Milk with cacao and blood orange (which would be lovely, oh Lab saints, if you're interceding for us mortals). Instead, I got lilies, orchids, and dragon's blood, lots and lots of dragon's blood. It had a little throw (which for me is a lot of throw) and lasted well through my yoga class, and after 90 minutes or so the blood orange and cocoa did peek out around the edges. So as with Alabaster Vulva, which I was testing on the other wrist, I really like the drydown, and the wear length is excellent for a Shunga, but the wet stage doesn't work on me so well.

Like dementia_divine, I had to try this because vulva, but I wasn't too optimistic. Orris is not a favorite note of mine, and wet, Alabaster Vulva was a lot of dusty orris, a little vanilla and white floral, no bergamot or amber. It made it through the yoga test just fine, in terms of wear length (throw, as is usual on my skin, is almost non-existent), and became more and more beautiful as time passed; now, four hours in, it's a faint, creamy, vanilla-amber floral, lovely. I'm delighted to have tried it, but will pass the decant on to someone who can appreciate it wet as well.

The Pleasure starts out with a blast of honeyed almond, love this note but it never lasts on me (see Six), though it doesn't completely disappear here. This settles down into a blend I knew I'd love. There was a point in the drydown, about a half hour in, when the teak went a little high-pitched and perfumey, but that didn't last long, and now, another hour in, it is a skin scent of amber, coconut and almond goodness. I wish it had a little more staying power, but age may improve that.

Six was lots and lots of lovely toasted almond at first, and I love almond, with rose next and leather the most retiring of the three notes. In short order the almond calms down as it always does, and the rose steps forward, a red rose that stayed round and true on my skin. I've had trouble recently with rose going sour, but not here. Lovely. But the leather decided to play hooky. I was testing Snake Skin on the opposite wrist, and it was like all the leather was over there. It's very possible that age will make the leather more prominent. I'm going to test this one more time shortly before Lupers come down to see if I get any more leather.

2018 Snake Skin, which I'll need to death match with my decant of Western Diamondback, my favorite Snake Pit so far, which was on my buy-next list. I think I may like Snake Skin better; it's drier and less sweet than WD when wet. But in both cases, I wish the leather lasted longer. When I smelled Snake Skin ITI, the leather was the main note, with some SO in the background. It's a really nice leather, too. Wet, the leather still predominated, but in drydown, although I could smell a lot of leather on my wrist, the throw was all Snake Oil. And gradually the leather receded until in about 3 hours it was really just SO. Both this and WD are great. Both will age spectacularly. I don't really need two leather/SO blends, do I? Do I?

I liked Lolita better than I expected to, based on the heavy floral of the notes and the fact that the mitigating ingredient was not actual citrus but verbena, which can take over on me. I did get a lot of lemony verbena, but it didn't go into cleanser territory, and it also didn't get to candy sweet. The orange blossom and honeysuckle reined themselves in. A summer garden party scent, when you want to be a little bit sexy and maybe to feel a little bit younger than your years (but this is in no way a teenybopper scent on me). Keeper.

This is one my husband picked out for me. I wasn't so sure, though it is working better on me than any chypre I've tried previously. Wet, it's citrus and a lot of lavender, which always starts out strong on me and fades quickly. True to form, the lavender recedes and it's citrus, bright and sour but in a good way, like a kumquat. I'm imagining clove bud is the flower that is formed before the hard woody spice thing comes into being, because all I'm getting is a hint of clove, very much in the background. Scraps of Poetry has a really distinct personality, and I can see using it as a pick-me-up kind of scent. I'm glad to have the decant but don't think I need a bottle.

Big dark indolic oudh versus carnation. Carnation loses, big time. I'm going to age my decant a bit to see if the carnation bucks up at all, but I'm not hopeful.

Bright, tart and fruity, and very "red." I was afraid pink musk was going to be red musk plus white musk, my two most problematic musks, but this blend wasn't particularly musk heavy on me at all. Also, I almost never smell the pepper note, though there is a zingy quality here. Cranberry is front and center but not as sweet as it often goes. A fun summer scent, with slightly shorter than average wear length on me.

The Red Egg is an odd duck. I wasn't sure what to expect from crimson eggshell musk, but I expected it to be a version of red musk -- hopefully one that doesn't take over on me completely. Instead, it was a very gentle, almost fruity musk, and I would have guessed there was dragon's blood in the mix somewhere. The myrrh and coffee were similarly gentle, though perceptible, but I didn't get any cassia at first. Low to no throw on me. In fact, I thought it was completely gone at one point, but it kept coming back, like oh, there's the coffee, or ok, still kind of musky and interesting, and only after a good two hours or more did I get any cassia at all. It very rarely happens to me that a note shows up so late. Anyway, I think I like it but don't need to hunt for a bottle.

Bright strong pine and cedar. I was curious about the tomato leaf but am not sure I could differentiate it over the evergreens and blackberry leaf. Not much sweetness, so when the cranberry emerges it’s tart and realistic, not Ocean Spray. I like this but have other foresty blends l prefer.