supreme_c0rt

Hm. I had decently high hopes for this based on the notes, but this all flattened out on my skin into a dead-on dupe for Secret original scent/baby powder deodorant. Glad to have tried it, glad to pass it on to someone who can make it sing.

Garg is mostly oak/oakmoss on me, with the rest of the notes serving as warm, glowy, oh so flattering stage lighting for that star note. Not getting much incense or cedar, blackened or otherwise (granted I prefer my cedar to be punchier than most) so I assume these were lighter versions, or, once again, oak is stealing the show. I find myself missing them. Nonetheless, this handsome beard oil is charming and comforting, and would be right at home in the Steamworks line. Edit: Memory unlocked; Garg could be the cousin of Gloom Meeting HG from the 2020 weenies. 🧟‍♀️ -------- Ok, edit again! because this thing has made me the dingus! I don't have a beard (crowd gasps). Normally I test inside the elbow to get the truest expression of a scent, but that's always been with perfume. Whoops! Testing literally anywhere else seems to have brought all the rest of the notes to the yard. Totally different now! wow, wow wow! Garg Take Two: Yes, hello oakmoss right out of the gate, but it is now more moss than oak.The oak is almost transparent now, sanded down to a flat wafer and gently waxed. Crisp parchment paper, manicured lawns and dappled moss patches cold and wet under tree shade, brushed tweed, air-dried linen. Perfectly melded with the snootiest wax in town. White beeswax candle, handmade but perfectly shaped with the exact right amount of bloom, with none of the raw honeycomb or chewy clods suggesting its original biology. It's sold out of a downtown artisan market and totally out of your price range. Hygge (TM). But you're getting it anyway. It's handmade! It is affluent, but not pretentious. It is a perfectly genderless, gently perfumed cocoon of mid-to-late-90s androgyny -- CK One commercials, the waft floating across the fountains outside luxury department stores at the Nice Mall. Tilda Swinton's Gabriel smells like this. An approachable kind of holy. Stone-cold sophistication, yes believe it. Easy like a nap on Sunday morning. I'm standing by the Gloom Meeting cousin thing, but this is skewing much less sweet than she did, and I deeply prefer this expression of the lab's oakmoss -- which feels new to me. IT'S ALSO LESS SHOUTY.

Wet: Grape cough syrup! After the surprise Dimetapp fades away a few seconds later, I am left with an interesting olfactory knot to untangle. We’re dealing with a lot of rawhide suede, and there's a Snake Oil I barely recognize — way more vanilla, and much sweeter and drier than I remember. Still has the same Snake Oil vanilla & crotch musk thing going on (I can never shake it), but with the doeskin leather from Coyote turned way up, and the dry vanilla of Tombstone. So if you took out the sassafras of Tombstone, added the leather from Coyote, and dunked it in vanilla ice cream and musk you’d have it. I think. It’s confusing me and I know I can’t wear it, but it has a voluptuous cowgirl aspect to it that I seem drawn to regardless. Yee haw.

Finally got to try the Snoot! Turns out, I’m in the camp that can’t smell much leather, at least not right away. What I do get in spades is a big punch of spicy-sweet clove/black amber/cinnamon incense and the powdery, purple cloud of a fresh pack of nag champa. The patchouli hangs back a bit at this stage, but is holding everything together with a subtly grounding earthy note. One of my favorite record-shop incenses smells just like this (hello, Fire Goddess!) and it also reminds me of the first time I tried Urd, almost 20 years ago. Snooty Bat is driving the time machine and we’re going way, way back. As it wears in and warms up, things shift around a bit. The patch finally blooms and I feel like I might finally be getting some leather (it stays quite subtle, similar to the leather in Sphinx Skin). The florals of the champa recede at this stage and it becomes slightly more masc-leaning, which is a fun surprise. Spicy-sweet, patchouli-clove dominant now, like a very stripped down Gingerbread & Leather. I still find myself wanting a touch more leather but I'm very glad it eventually showed up, and I'm still overall quite smitten with this bat. If you’re in a particular kind of mood it absolutely will fit the bill: It’s moody, it’s broody, it’s (kinda) snooty.

Black Cat with Tomato Plants rushes the gate with a flood of bright, grassy earth notes and the sweaty, juicy tang of a dewy tomato in the summer sun. The orange blossom is skillfully restrained here -- far less poofy and floral, more "beam of sunlight." The spicy geranium is the genius balancing note here; tempering the cloying aspects of the orange blossom while giving the whole thing a sharp pop of life. And truly, of all the BPALs I have tried this one feels the most ALIVE. It is positively thrumming like the backyard garden in the full flush of summer. As it dries, the black rich earth notes emerge (more patchouli than dirt, but maybe a cousin of both) and that delicious musk -- I want to say it's a darker growly kind of skin musk -- comes along to swaddle the whole thing in an almost erotic embrace. Sexy garden. Sure, I'm into it. Like a lover's neck after they've been digging in the garden all day in the summer heat. Yes please. Ecstatic to report that my skin doesn't blast the orange blossom at the end of the ride the way it usually does; no small feat there! The musk and the earth notes are holding it tight in a fine balance, and it's giving dewy summer skin with wafts here and there of patchouli and salt and earth. Absolutely delightful, and a beautiful sonnet to the simple pleasures of a tomato garden in its full glory. I'm wearing this in the blustery early days of March and it's a beautiful reminder that life ... uh.... finds a way. Another stunner in the Cats line and I will be harvesting a bottle. 🐈 🍅

Trees opens with the beloved ho wood from Foot Warmer blended with a sheer oak, giving an impression of gently toasted sandalwood. The black pepper, despite being described as burnt, is neither obtrusive nor all that spicy, in fact I barely register it. Tobacco leaf really makes this sing, with the same ephemeral intensity of Vision of a Courtesan. White oud acts as an adhesive and amplifier more than an actual presence on its own, so if you have issues with oud generally (as I do) I would not stress about it here. I could not tell you what costus smells like, but I get a vaguely white-floral something-or-other that might be it. The woodiness is very gentle, buttery, and mostly on the wet phase; as it dries the whole baby blends into some real top-tier Coco Chanel vibes. There are a lot of similarities to Faster, Kittycat -- they don't smell the same but I had a similar "whoa this smells expensive AF" response to it. This has the complexity of the best of the Shunga line, and it is definitely hard to describe, but this feels ** special ** in the same way that Vision did, and I wouldn't sleep on it if you are into any of the listed notes. Just lovely.

The imp has been resting for a couple months now so it feels safe to retest. Wet: A&D diaper ointment and red hots ? Dry: Thicc sex. Qandisa and Snake Oil's love child, but with a pending paternity test for Satyr and Bloodlust. Very spicy, very musky, day-old sex, smeared lipstick, spilled Fireball on the carpet. It feels *VERY BPAL* in the traditional sense, like the kind of hip swaying, va-va-voom scent profile that gets people hooked on this house. I would not be able to tell you that jasmine is in this. The cinnamon bomb is real though.

Big metallic bite up front with that lacquer note, like hot tinfoil and yuzu. Backed by a flood of warm, flushed sensual skin musk and leather, giving Like the Very Gods vibes but stronger and more forward. It smells like sweating through yuzu body butter on a hot summer day. Humid, intimate, skin-but-better. I like it much better once that lacquer note wears off.

If Baby's First Ballista, Bookcase Passage, and Two Westerners had a sweet, gentle, chill AF baby it would smell like this. There's a toothy salty-sweetness emerging from the vanilla-oak-mushroom that reads earthy-gourmand, allllmost foody but not quite there. The lacquer note gains strength over time, and pulls me out of the enjoyment a bit for the same reasons it does in other blends -- goes a little too clean, tidy, floor wax (?) for my liking. This is still really nice though.

If you snagged the Honeysuckle and Wisteria duet, you will recognize the wisteria note from that. This is a complex, breezy, light purple floral that has a floaty quality on the waft like the sweet promise of spring, but on deep inhale reveals layers of dusky-purple velvet (there's a soft toothsome quality to it), and a skin-musk base. If that's red musk, it's more delicate than any I've encountered from the lab. This is so well blended that no single note dominates, however the lilac and wisteria are certainly at the forefront. It's much lighter than I was expecting, and I'm almost getting an ozone/watery/yuzu/citrus blossom element to it that I cannot identify but lifts the whole thing up into a lighter strata. This is a lilac bush after a rain, or touched with early-morning dew. I don't tend to reach for these types of florals often but I'm still enjoying this decant. If you've been following BPAL for long enough to experience several luper seasons, this is a classic Shunga. Complex, dimensional, wistful, sophisticated and elegant. Much like the duet, it's springtime in a bottle.

I was hoping for more of the other earthy notes, but the mahogany and tobacco are stealing the show here. This has quite a lot of similarities to the Vengeance Eternal Hellboy hair gloss that came out a few years ago ("Rage-red musk, razor-sharp tobacco leaf, black oak leaf, dried blackcurrant, and a smoky burst of patchouli"), so if you were a fan of that you'll probably feel right at home here. I recall thinking that was the sharpest tobacco leaf note I'd ever encountered, and here it is again. On me this is quite sharp and masculine.

Cucumber, melon, and lettuce leaf shine and sparkle on top, and they are grounded by this absolutely gorgeous earthy green musk that almost reads as a garden basil/light patchouli. I was so curious how the onion and sesame would play out here; it's an umami-adjacent richness that reads as neither sesame nor onion but does give it a pop of something different that I am here for. I agree with doomsday_disco that this is a very sophisticated, artisan grown-up cucumber melon. I adore it and want to wear it through spring and summer. Throw is surprisingly punchy for such delicate notes. I agree there's a watery vibe to it (like fresh spring water, not like shower gel). There's almost something floral to it too, like just the palest white spring rose or tulip that wafts gently in the spring air when there's still the crispness of winter hanging on the breeze. Lovely.

My turn to try! On me this smells like vintage paperback books. If I sit and think about it, I get cracked leather and old copper coins. On the drydown a grassy moss note shows up that reminds me of cash. But first impression was used bookstore paperback. Very cool!

Oooh I like this a lot. Bright green, grassy, and alive. Dandelion and clover are forefront, and if you liked Tennis Match these are the same. Peppery, vibrant green, and indeed almost green apple-y. The soil note is barely there and reads a bit more like earthy, soft patchouli than the suffocating type of dirt (zombi, et al). There's a top note that is clear, bright, almost-kinda-floral, like tulips maybe? Below it all there's a cold note, like melted runoff snow that makes it smell like the first day of spring when everything comes back to life after a long winter. NOT the lab's snow note, but something like a chill on the wind. This is what I was hoping Sprouting Grass Moon would have been, but with zero of the strange swampy, melted-gumdrop gloopiness I got from that one. Fans of Tennis Match, Imayo, and Gaia's Blessing will probably love this.

A lovely forumite gifted me a sniffie of this, I've been waiting to try it for a long while. I suspected it would remind me a lot of Gaia's Blessing since they share a lot of notes, and it does. The same purple sage and mossy patchouli (I think I'm reading the ivy as moss) are most prominent, while the chamomile and rose follow close behind to soften the edges and give it a comforting warmth. Myrrh appears at the tail end to round it out into an incense-adjacent blend, also in the same way that Gaia's Blessing did. Gaia's Blessing felt more like fresh-dipped black forest incense and Woman feels more like a softly faded rose-pine-vanilla incense. They're in the same rack. At first there is an alcohol burn that VetchVesper describes, but I find this floats away quickly (it came back and it seems to want to stay). It's a bit like the sharpness of pine resin or pine tar, but not as immediately identifiable as either. It's not overwhelming but it's there when you get close. Not getting much elderberries; if I reach in there I can pull out a vague purple juiciness, but only if I reach. The smoky vanilla is hiding back there but I sense it is growing its courage to bloom more over time. Fully dry, it lands on a myrrh/rose/vanilla combo with a distinct sharp darkness that I am really loving. It's not leather, but something black and thorny enough to read a little bit like it. Quite nice. I really like this. Gaia's Blessing is one of my favorite BPALs and I think this is same-enough and yet different-enough to warrant a bottle. In fact I think this is how I wanted The Witch/Strega to perform on my skin. I really enjoy these atmospheric/narrative forest blends that aren't a punch in the face of pine and dirt. You get the whole experience of what this is describing without anything being too literal. It's powerful and and yet still very wearable. Beautiful, I'm thrilled I got a chance to try it out.