Lucchesa

I should preface this review by saying that I am Italian-American and cook with a great deal of olive oil. Perhaps that explains the feeling of rightness I get from Mithras. It doesn't even smell like perfume; it simply smells the way I think my skin should naturally smell. Milk and honey, olive oil and blood. It is just perfectly good and right and beautiful. I was intrigued by DiesMali's likening of Mithras to Alice, which was my very first BPAL love affair. If Alice is puppy love, Mithras is all grown up. The scent is unisex, beyond meaningless categories like male and female. It is a skin scent on me, and it is the scent of skin on me. I am almost tempted to give away all my BPAL, buy ten bottles of Mithras and wear nothing else. But if I were that kind of person, I would have just stuck with Alice and would never have discovered Mithras in the first place. I will wear this when I want to give the impression of utter naturalness.

This! What a beautiful description, LiberAmoris. I was afraid wintry musk might involve a soapy snow note, but the musk stays very much in the background for me. I don't get much frank, either. What I get is an elegant vanilla cream sandalwood with a little bit of earthiness from the herbs.

Apparently I must amp cubeb, because for the first hour or so, Liebeszauber smells exactly like Crib Girls on me. Not that I mind, I like Crib Girls, but I was hoping for some carnation, some clover, some bloody vanilla cream. I could differentiate the blood note wet, but it got swallowed up by the cubeb pretty quickly. The carnation emerges after about an hour, and then it's lemony cubeb and carnation honey. I don't think the clover or vanilla cream is ever going to make itself known. So, this is nice but not as complex as I was hoping for, as my skin chemistry just foregrounds the cubeb.

I love beeswax too, but something in an older Day of Skulls decant was horrible on me. I kept looking at the notes and thinking, why isn't this working? I ultimately blamed kantuta blossoms...

I'm not sure about linden, but everything else is a note of bliss on me, and A Wonderful Light does not disappoint. At first it is all amber, that beautiful warm glowing amber that has a bit of an edge to it -- I'd guess at least one of the three is the same amber as in Bast. After about 30 minutes of the amber show, the other notes start to emerge, the honey soaked orange peel, the bourbon vanilla, and then it is sublime. And it lasts -- I applied nearly six hours ago, and there is still a ghost of a scent with its character intact, which is really long wear length for me. I'm really torn -- I have other radiant amber blends I love, but I may need to go in search of a bottle of this one.

2013 version. La Befana is lighter and brighter than I'd expected. I am getting very little soot or charcoal or evergreen, unless the cypress is contributing an almost citrusy vibe, but lots of violet candy, which seems to work better on my skin than plain old violet. I can see this as a spring or summer scent. It's very pretty but a skin scent on me, gone after 4 hours.

Last night’s lavender drops and a whiff of Pickle’s vanilla coconut pupper shampoo. Beautiful bright lavender at first. I was afraid from the scent description that it would be faint, but I was pleasantly surprised by its strength. Gradually, as it dried down, the soft coconut emerged, and the combination, which I wasn't quite sure about, is just lovely. Unfortunately, the lavender didn't last as long as I would have liked, and within an hour or so it was nearly all coconut, with an accompanying sweetness. I am thinking of buying a bottle for my teenager, who adores lavender, and I need to have them try wearing it (on sniffing there was STRONG approval) to make sure the lavender lasts a little longer on their skin. ETA This is aging beautifully and its staying power and throw have indeed improved. Gorgeous!

2017 Aeronwen morphs so much in the first ten minutes alone it makes me a little dizzy. In the imp I smelled mostly fig and a tiny bit of orange, like a dried fig dessert filling with a little orange peel in the mix. Did I say I love fig? When it hit my skin, it was all myrrh. Then moments later, all black musk. Then fig again. Ooh, there's the redwood. Myrrh. Musk. Fig. My skin tends to soak up citrus scents, so the orange went offstage. The three main players for me were fig, sweet myrrh and dark musk, and while at first each of them wanted to give soliloquies, they eventually ended up forming an ensemble. I found all the morphing fascinating and kept sniffing my wrist to see where it was at now, and none of the stages was unpleasant or uninteresting, and most of them quite beautiful. Now I want to try it again to see if I can make out any of the nutmeg or tarragon, but I can't figure out where I put my imp! Damn.

VPD was the one Lilith I coveted most. I am having a run of good luck with oudh, and amber, vanilla and orange blossom are all right in my wheelhouse. Sadly, the moment it hits my skin, it goes awry, into high-end liquid hand soap territory. I'm getting very little oudh, mostly artificial orange blossom, amber and vanilla. I'm going to wait it out and see but something about this combination is not working with my chemistry. So sad!

Shaggy fur, snow-flecked and rose-touched. Bear Prince is a much gentler scent than I expected. I haven’t tried Rose Red or Snow White (I know, I know) but my initial impression was similar to the Marchen scent The Rose, which is a realistic, non-heady rose on me. I didn’t get a lot of snow, but as it developed the rose mingled with a soft warm musk. Very pleasant but my skin ate it up fairly quickly.

I just want to continue the Danse de la Mort lovefest. These notes were not a slam dunk for me ; tobacco leaf can be unpleasantly sharp and opium tar can take over. But here they work together like a dream, with pale sandalwood and golden amber and yum! Unisex in the best possible way. Five hours in it’s a gentle skin scent but if I were home I’d have reapplied at least once. So good!

Lunasariel, if you lean toward the leather end of scents, I find the book-themed scents to be very quiet on me. That may be a skin chemistry thing -- a lot of reviews for Philologus say it's like men's cologne, but on me it's very gentle leather and parchment and candlewax. Buggre Alle This Bible barely showed up on me at all. I've also tried The Book (Fleurette's Purple Snails, not Paranorman, but I suspect they're similar) and Scholar's Tower as well, and both are quiet and cozy. Dee in the regular GC. But maybe some of it is my middle-aged skin sucking up scents; I rarely get any throw. Still, I think as long as you don't slather and stick to soft worn leather scents, not brand new black leather jacket, you'll be fine. Have you tried White Rider? I also second the recommendation of coconut scents like Blood Pearl and Black Pearl that can pass as sunscreen. Very quiet on me. I'm not supposed to wear scent to my yoga studio but I do it all the time with my gentler scents and no one has ever noticed.

Yup, that's frankincense and myrrh all right. Which is not what I want to smell like every day, but in certain (penitential?) moods, on a dark rainy day, it's heaven. This is more frank than myrrh on me, at least at first, in its dryer incarnation. And I get about a foot of throw, which is unusual for me. After about an hour it has settled into something really beautiful, softer and warmer and sweeter, with the two incenses blended into a single cloud of lovely. I tested this about an hour before going to bed, so I'm not sure how long it lasts, but given how full-voiced it was an hour in, I suspect it has good wear length.

Morgause is strong, and when it hits my skin it is simultaneously sour and sickly sweet. I don't think violet and night-blooming jasmine is a good combination on me. As it dries down it loses the sour patch kids vibe and I get hints of the incense (or is it the Penitence on my other wrist?). Deep, dark, heady floral that would be absolutely gorgeous on someone else.

I amp lily of the valley, so not surprisingly that was the predominant note on me here, tempered by the pale musk. This is a beautiful, lemony lily blend, very wearable. I'm not really certain what osmanthus smells like, so I'm not sure if the citrusy vibe comes from the flower or the frankincense, which otherwise stays mostly in the background for me. Lovely!

I find dried rose petals one of the lab's most evocative scents. In Zombi they were too melancholy for me, but here the combination of fresh and dried flowers and the dusty woods is really lovely. I don't get the camphor or toothpaste scent some reviewers have complained of, but I wonder if that's what reads as dusty to me. (The faintest whiff of mothballs in my grandmother's closet?) This didn't morph a lot on me; the woods and florals settled into gentle balance and stayed there. A dry, haunting scent.

This was weird and bad on me, and not in the direction that cedar and saffron can sometimes send a scent, so I'm blaming chiuri bark and Nepalese spices and avoiding them like the plague in the future (shouldn't be hard). Of course since I disliked it, it lasted forever. I didn't get a forest smell but a sort of astringent herby incense, which made me think of my friend who spent a year in a Nepalese monastery eating water buffalo.

This may be the citrus blend I have been looking for forever! The combination of the blood orange and bergamot with the stone fruits is just stunning. Half an hour after application, the geranium is beginning to emerge. I have no idea what langsat smells like, and I'm not getting any cardamom, which is one of my favorite scents, but I'm not sure it would really contribute much here anyway. So far my skin is not sucking it into a black hole like it usually does with citrus scents. While this does have a cheerful sunshine vibe, oranges are in season in winter, and I think it will be delightful to wear to warm up dull, cold winter days. Absolutely beautiful, and I'm hoping it will have a decent wear length as well.

Veronica Franco is a heroine of mine, so I tried this for the name, not the notes. I got very little fruit from this; it was a delicate floral dominated by the iris, with some fuzzy oakmoss in the background, and it didn't last long on me at all. Sadly, not for me. ETA Retested this today and thought Veronica was glorious? Why is this in my swapbox, I wondered. Then an hour later she was gone, and I remembered why. Oh well, I'm glad I got to try this one.

I am always on the lookout for almond scents, and this one is a beauty. It doesn't fall easily into a category - almond without being foody, rose without being too floral, etc. Feminine but not girly or seductress -- you could easily wear this one to work, or to a garden party, or to have tea with friends or even visiting royalty. My decant has aged into quite a viscous fluid, and the almond is most prominent when wet. As it dries the rose emerges, but it's not one of those big hit-you-over-the-head roses. My skin tends to eat up tea notes, so I don't perceive a lot of tea here though I'm sure it's tying things together. The dragon's blood blends really nicely with the rest and doesn't do that sickly sweet thing. All the notes combine into a lovely skin scent which manages to last a long time.

I never thought I would say this, but I wish I could make out more vetiver in Anathema. (And this I say all too often, but I could not have guessed any of the notes in this blend from sniffing blind. I was thinking lily or some other powerful floral. But the honeysuckle here is plenty potent, and I am not as familiar with the opium note.) Anathema is strong, heady floral on me, the kind of thing a villainess in a Bond movie might wear to dance a sultry tango with the hero. It's gorgeous, but I'm having trouble imagining where it would fit into my more mundane kind of life. Straight, strong florals are not usually my thing. I will keep the imp, though, because who knows, maybe someday I will have to sashay into that role. I am still hoping for the vetiver to come out and muddy the waters somewhat. I've had it on for over half an hour now, and no sign of it.

Oh, this is lovely! I am a huge fan of beeswax and candle scents, and this is the sunny springtime cousin of Lights of Men's Lives, with the bees still busy in the fields. The hyssop is reminiscent of Tzadikim Nistarim, another of my favorite blends. It's the wrong scent for this time of year, but it will go on my 5 ml long list for the spring.

There are definitely cocoa globules suspended in my bottle. I wanted to try this because I saw it described somewhere as like Golden Priapus with cocoa, and I love Golden Priapus. This is definitely cedar as opposed to the pine of GP, but it's a gorgeous, well-behaving cedar, which is a comfort note for me and blends beautifully with the chocolate and hint of vanilla. Unisex and not at all foody. I like this a great deal.

I bought a bottle of 2016 Jacob's Ladder here on the forums recently to wear to my nephew Jacob's bar mitzvah later this month, if I liked it. And it's beautiful. Some of my favorite blends are amber based, but this one seems like more of a pure amber blend than any of them. I can't really pick out any of the other notes - maybe a little nuttiness from the ambrette seed, a little sweetness from the tonka, but they really just seem to support making the amber even more amber-like. And as some reviewers have commented, it has more of an old-fashioned, perfumey vibe than anything else I wear regularly, but it's absolutely lovely, and while I might not reach for it every day, I will wear it with pride for Jacob's bar mitzvah and whenever I want to smell sophisticated and feminine.

Whoopie Cushion reminded me a lot of Akuma, which I haven't smelled for a while because I traded it away. It was a near miss on me. I was hoping the patchouli and red musk would keep it from being too cloyingly sweet, and the red musk did behave and not take over as it usually does, but the raspberry is just too much for me. As LizziesLuck says, sickly sweet. I'll pass this one on.