Rayleigh

This is a frimp I've had for a while. I have been running across it a lot lately, so I figured it was time to give it a try. Until I actually opened the imp and recognized the rose note, I kept reading the name like it was an ominous verb phrase.

This is the juiciest rose ever. The wine and dragon's blood aren't very strong, but provide a dewy, fruity haze surrounding the central rose. It's not as dark as the name suggests, but it's intense and velvety. I would have appreciated more bitterness from the wine to balance the headiness of the rose, but this is impressively powerful, and not at all soapy. Good for anyone who wants a rose that shows no mercy, or anyone who wants the phrase the days of wine and roses to run through the minds of everybody who encounters them while wearing this.

This reminds me of the GC blend Lurid, but without the ozone and with the currant/lavender replaced with cool lemon/grape. My skin eats the citrus right away, of course. A little soapy at first, then drying into a classic resin blend with some brightness for contrast. Not too fruity, and far less clashing than the description might lead one to believe. It actually smells quite refined.

Soft, papery, cuddles in a bottle.

Vanillic aged paper, fuzzy fabric, and a hint of lavender, but it all blends together into soft. It has plenty of throw, but the texture of the scent is downy and smooth. The hoodie note doesn't give me any laundry vibes. It seems similar to the wool blanket from 2019's Cafe Au Lait and a Wool Blanket -- a reflection of how pulling on your favorite hoodie feels. The lavender is mild, but sticks around, which is more than lavender usually does on me.

As a hoarder of books, I'm always surprised by how strong leather notes are in book blends. This paperback note rings truer to my nose to what I think of as booksmell, though smoothed out by the lavender/textiles, and I would love to see more of it.

Wonderful.

Holy Basil, Batman!

I could really stop at the pun and let that stand as my review, but there genuinely is much more going on here. The sandalwood is dry and meditative. The mitti attar is so serenely earthy. The tulsi, though, is easily the strongest note on my skin. It's not unpleasant, but it's not working for me. If this were a room scent, I would adore it. But the tulsi gives it this vegetal sweetness that I find distracting from the solemn beauty of the mitti attar/sandalwood. I have liked tulsi/basil in other blends, but it isn't my favorite in this company. I'll certainly use my decant, and I suspect this is one of those blends I may eventually be sorry I didn't bottle when I had the chance.

Now on the lookout for more blends that showcase mitti attar...

This staircase may be rickety, but it's also spotless. Oak and the faintest fringe of amber. This smells like just-mopped hardwood. I like that smell, though it's odd to have it emanating from my wrists instead of, well, hardwood. If you are ever fleeing an eldritch monster and need to take cover in a well-maintained wood-paneled room, this is the skin scent you apply to help you blend in with your surroundings.

I seem to be getting a nice middle ground in the impressions here, and this is gorgeous. It smells like a spicy, friendly little fire. A good balance of sweet and savory. Extremely natural and evocative. If you piled a heap of dried brush, threw some acorns and nuts on top, and burned it, this would be the idealized memory of that smell that you would think of later. It strikes me as nostalgic. I compared this in another thread to a controlled burn, because there's something clean about this. Out with the bad so that better things can take root.

The nutty notes make this stand apart from other woodsmoke blends. I initially got this because I wanted a smoke note that would knock me clear across the room. I'm not getting that, but I am happy to have this gentle warm glow in its place.

The lab's cedar is so nice on me. It's green, pliant, living cedar. The vanilla and sassafras balance the cedar nicely.

With wear, this sweetens up. It lasts a good long while on me, and eventually it's a root beer float that you're drinking on a cedar porch. I prefer the sharper early stage, but this is beautiful nonetheless, and the sassafras makes it stand out from other vanilla/cedar scents I have tried. It's sweeter than its cousin, How Doth the Little Crocodile, and less dry than its other cousin, The Small Brown Cat.

I don't get the ruggedness that others get, but I do enjoy pretending that the root beer float is being enjoyed by a world-weary gunslinger who gave up alcohol and now carries around a flask full of root beer to keep up appearances.

Milk Moon is Good Odd. In the vial, it smells like sour milk, and I found it off-putting on first sniff. On the skin, the sourness mellows right away. I get the dates and figs, but they don't take over. Fig can be weird on me -- not unpleasant, but it can distract from any other notes. Here, it's just a hint, and doesn't get in the way of the rest of the blend at all. The honey is subtle, as is the cedar. There is good balance between the sweetness of the honey and fruits, the sturdy woods, and the tangy milk. The tang that put me off in the bottle becomes my favorite part on my skin -- it makes this blend unique and interesting.

I usually wear perfume when unwinding in the evening, so every scent ends up becoming a sleep scent. It usually doesn't make much difference one way or the other in my sleep quality. Milk Moon is the exception -- it knocks me out. I noticed I sleep deeper and feel more rested when I am wearing it, and it lasts long enough that I can still smell it in the morning. I wish I had figured out that fringe benefit earlier, because I would have been tempted to get a rare back up bottle.

Most of these I'll wear happily year round, but give me colder weather vibes. Apparently, the notes that make me think "winter" seem to be beeswax, spices, evergreens.

Probably the strongest winter association for me is No. 93 Engine. The warm resins work well with the crisp mastic and balsam.

Spellbound is too much for me when it's warm out, but I like it when it's cold out. Rose in general I like a lot more in the colder months.

Sin has a cozy, cinnamon-tea-and-a-blanket feel to it. Also Shub! And Hellfire should always be worn when there's a wicked, blustery storm outside, and you're standing by a crackling fireplace conspiring whilst decked out in fancy attire -- so that's holiday-esque, right?

Lights of Men's Lives for softly burning candles.

Dee is a perennial favorite, but it best suits autumn/winter, and brings to mind a comfy study, surrounded by aged paper.

And I agree that Elf works well in both summer and winter. It has enough of each season to be welcome either way.

Soft, clean, floral laundry. Gentle and mild. Considering that "clean" and "floral" are not usually my favorite things, I like this better than expected. It reminds me a bit of the lily water from I Wish I Were Your Mirror, for being a smooth, misty floral that manages to avoid being soapy. It stays very close to the skin. I want my sheets to smell like this at the end of a long day. Given my usual scent preferences, I'm not sure this is one I will reach for much, but it merits more testing before the Liliths come down.

I seem to amp honey dust, though not regular old honey. In the bottle, this is a lovely, nuanced scent, with lots of the same milk note I love in Milk Moon 2020, toasty honeyed warmth, and a wisp of lavender. Unfortunately, on my skin, the honey dust turns to butterscotch candies and drowns out the other notes. I had the same issue with the recent honey dust trio. After an hour or two, it starts to get some nuance back, but it never loses the candied aspect. The wear time and throw are impressive. I just wish my skin would let me keep the way it smelled in the bottle.

I'm not familiar with either ambrette seed or white clove, and part of why I tried this was to see if I could isolate ambrette seed as a note -- and no, I still can't, but I think I get how it contributes to a blend, at least. This starts off sharp and medicinal. I can just barely pick up on ambrette seed as a kind of musky note? But it's not at all prominent. The lavender and clove clash for a while, and I was sure this was not only not going to work, but it was about to veer towards headache town. Then the two decide to get along. The clove is toasty and bright, and the lavender is a clean (not soapy) complement. Lavender is generally used as a calming scent, and clove is so energetic, and I am a big fan of dissonance in all art forms. I'm happy to hang onto my decant of this, though the wear time is shorter than I'm used to.

I would love to find a citrus perfume my skin doesn't eat, so I wanted to try this to see if lemon peel has more staying power than regular old lemon. It does -- in that it doesn't flee the instant it touches my skin, but sticks around for a record fifteen minutes. 

I'm not sure how I feel about it while it lasts. It flips between a smooth citrus scent, with surprisingly tame marshmallow -- and smelling like those chalky Valentine candies, with fresh grated lemon zest on top and some bitter orange blossom. It seems to start to settle into the former, thankfully -- crisp but not cleaning fluid, sweet but not candied -- but then its time is up. I'm left with a whiff of marshmallow alone, which isn't my jam. That brief middle stage was pretty, but citrus and I remain star-crossed.

Fuzzy, furry musk, dry dusty grass, and smooth, soft, suede leather. This scent has a lot of texture. The amber is unobtrusive, coming out mostly in the late dry down to add a faint sweetness and spice. The musk is animalic without being aggressive. Very evocative of the eponymous animal, dusty paths, and swaying golden summer prairie grass. The best word in the description is "downy," because it captures the fluffy, slightly wild quality of this blend. Soft, deep, and relaxing. Good to wear when you're feeling feral, but also really chill about it.

I seem to be a magnet for frimps of Coyote, and I am never disappointed to have more of it around.

Smells like summer! Nice, non-cloying honey, lightly scented with a muddle of herbs/spices that I can't easily pick out. No citrus for me. The lab's blackberry works well on me, and smells wonderfully realistic. I don't have many good summer scents, so I'm happy to have this one around.

This cements it -- I love hay notes. Starting off, I get a lot of honeyed oat cakes, but then amber and hay step up. I would love more cardamom (as usual), but here it adds a spicy whisper. The hay is lush and dry and pleasantly musty, and it pairs nicely with the oats, the drizzle of honey, and the richness of the amber. This was July's moon, but to me it smells like the end of August -- sweet grasses and gentle breezes, the last gasp of late summer under an orange sun.

This was practically a no-miss guarantee on me, and it's perfection. The frankincense is woodsy, grounding, and radiant, and the bourbon vanilla blankets it softly and unobtrusively. Resins hit an instant 'slow down, calm down' button deep in my brain, and this is simple and soothing. I adore it.

Firstly, the short version about this scent: This is a foodie, well-made, realistic scent, with enough spices to keep it interesting. I agree with pretty much everything above -- churros, french toast, fried dough, crème brûlée, all of it. And it's delicious and summery and amusement-park nostalgic, with lengthy wear time and powerful throw. Unrelated to the scent, I have developed an intense fondness for the possum on the label art. I'm really rooting for that screeching marsupial. I, too, have opposable thumbs and high stress levels, my friend.

Now, the meandering, long-winded version, less about the scent and more about how I am a Dummy: Everything about this scent told me exactly what it would be -- foodie. And yet! My brain went, "Well, I like the smell of funnel cake and churros. And even though I don't like foodie scents on my skin, I do like walking around carnivals and smelling those things, and that in a bottle sounds fun. Let's go!"

My attitude toward foodie scents is, fittingly, a bit like my attitude toward cake. I'm not that fond of regular old cake. It's fine in small doses, but it's just not for me, unless it has so many other things going on that it is no longer cake, to the point that it has to change its name to something like tiramisu or cheesecake, or else it gets in trouble for identity theft. If I'm given a choice between cake and something else, I'll usually pick the something else, even if I can appreciate how well-crafted the cake is. Same with foodie scents -- I can appreciate the craft of bottling them, but I only like them for myself if they're in the company of enough non-foodie notes to balance it out.

So I was as nervous trying this on as I would have been had it been a real, live possum. But! I'm always happy to admit exceptions to my rules (Snow White killed No White Florals dead in its tracks and wears it around her neck in triumph), and this smelled good in the vial. It got the tiniest little dab. This possum is not screaming inside its heart; it wants to be heard, and smelled, and it has the throw to make sure it will not be ignored! Notice the possum, or there will be consequences. And at first, it was mostly spices -- like what a spice candle wants to be when it grows up, minus the fakey notes that make spice candles smell like potpourri. But as it dries, more and more buttery dough comes out. I swear that way, way down in the depths of this scent, I can smell the powdered sugar dissolving into the melted butter into bonus globules of deliciousness. Best-foodstall-on-the-promenade stuff, but still food.

"I smell edible," I wail, and the possum wails back, "What were you expectinnnnng?" And that's fair, possum.

This is a very good scent. Strong recommend for foodie-lovers. And I like smelling it! And I would like being around someone else who smelled like this, or -- even better -- around some place that smelled like this. I even liked catching whiffs of it when I was outside, where it seemed most at home. Inside, though, it kept following me, as one would expect with something applied directly on the skin. I wanted it to waft by for a gentle reminder that Summer Fun exists, and then let me keep working on All-Season No-Fun until I wanted the reminder again (aka, an unreasonable expectation for a perfume.) I will give this a chance to rest and try again, because it is exactly like a day at an amusement park, and I could use some unbridled happy in my collection. But I suspect it's a masterfully made slice of cake -- totally wasted on me.

This is a powerhouse of a scent. Strong stuff. More coffee than any of the kaffeeklatsch scents I tried. Something smoky, and a distinctive, decadent hazelnut cream mingled with the dank earthiness of the patchouli and the sage/cassis. It makes me think of college, of late night discussions with coffee, coffee, coffee. Or, perhaps something more convivial -- like sitting in a coffee shop with your friends and having a shockingly heated argument about, like, the logistics of time travel, or if vampires can catch blood borne illnesses (they're not alive, Eric! They don't have functioning physiology, ERIC!) This scent speaks its mind, but doesn't lose its nurturing qualities.

It's very well made. The blend of sweet and savory is intriguing -- but there's a meaty quality to the smokiness that I was hoping would age out. Four months in, no luck, though that doesn't stop me from trying. I suspect my skin is not being kind to something in here. A shame, because it's perfect in theory, and I really want to love it. I still like it -- it's dark and unique and I feel warmed by it -- but the meaty note prevents this from being entirely wearable on me.

No. 93 Engine is a true stand out in the general catalogue -- there are notes here I have never seen elsewhere, and they're quite distinct. I can't think of anything else that smells like it. It has a sharp, coniferous opening, but then the warmth of the resins and beeswax rise up. It is bright and dynamic, and deep and mellow. It smells both mechanical (the gleaming, sterile notes from the sage, mastic, balsam) and inviting (the soft glow of the beeswax and elegant resins.) Unique and atmospheric, yet eminently wearable. An enduring favorite.

Carnation stars here, in all its spicy glory. The orange blossom is bright, and the patchouli is earthy. This blend is all about light and shadow. It's rich and warm, but not heavy. Orange blossom can be a little bitter, but it's well anchored in the smooth carnation/ambergris base and just adds a whiff of floral bite, while the patchouli provides a hint of grit.

This also benefited tremendously from about a month of age -- if at first try, it is sharp and unbalanced, it's worth coming back to it when it has a chance to mellow. The loud notes calm down and let all the components shine.

I have tried only two of the four Come and See blends (the other being my first BPAL love, The Bow & Crown of Conquest,) and I really need to get around to trying the remaining two. Both of the ones I have tried are complex, well-layered scents that are both evocative and just plain nice-smelling. They were also good when I was new to perfumes, because the individual notes are pretty distinct, even though the scent as a whole isn't at all disjointed.

The Scales of Deprivation is fascinating for its striking hollowness. I test most of my imps blind, without looking at the name, because it gives me the best impression without being influenced by the idea behind a fragrance. Even without the name, this scent stood out for that vast, empty core. It's an olfactory cylinder. Citrus is doomed to a rapid demise on my skin, but the lavender and white sage seem to help sustain it a bit. The top notes are crisp. Then there's the depth of the resins. Frankincense is soothing, warm, and golden, so it contrasts with the colder notes around it. The labdanum is unobtrusive, but must be contributing some amber-like sweetness. Beneath that is the core -- that dry, dry vetiver. In my notes from the blind test -- which, in fairness, it wasn't hard to guess which blend this had to be -- I called that core a "scorched earth" scent, with the warmer notes contrasting.

This isn't a big morpher. The frankincense gets warmer, and the lemon peel eventually succumbs to my skin's citrus-killin' ways, but for the most part, it stays remarkably consistent, and sticks around steadily for a good long while. This one grew on me tremendously, even over the course of the first wear.

Most of this is about how interesting the scent is as a concept -- so far, the Come and See blends do "scent experience" very well -- but I also like wearing it. It's meditative and a bit bleak, but mostly, it's steady, cool, collected, and calm. It has a ruthless clarity. It goes great with those "get down to business" days when you need to cut through mental clutter, though I wear it often enough just because, and even as a sleep scent. Some days, you have to raze some fields to the ground and stand in detached observation. And smell great while you're at it.

I passed on this when it was first available, though I was curious about it. I've been on the lookout for a good lilac scent, but I thought the other notes would overpower the lilac, and I have a lot of ambers already. Lilacs are such a comforting smell, but I'm also particular about my lilac scents (looking at you, every "lilac" candle I have ever encountered.) I get judgey about the company it keeps, and on the other hand, I'm also leery of strong florals -- I kind of can't win. In my indecision, I let this one go.

Then 2020 rolled around and killed my impulse control. I ran across a bottle for sale and snapped it up. And, unfortunately, I've been rewarded for my lack of frugality, because I have worn this regularly since I got it.

The lilac is prominent in the first half hour or so, and it's a beautiful, vivid, non-soapy blue lilac. I'm going to have to double down on my lilac hunt, because it's so pretty and realistic. The amber ramps up with wear. This is a spicy, no-nonsense amber. It settles into a well-balanced compromise between the lilac and amber, between blue and warm tones. The amber is more prominent, but the lilac never leaves, just wafts around over it. Presumably, there is blue musk in there, but I couldn't tell you what it smells like. This is probably not as complex or interesting as my usual favorites, but I enjoy it exactly as is.

I like this a lot. I love the label art. The search for the perfect lilac scent continues, but this was a wonderful first step. And no lessons in impulse control were learned.

I keep trying to come up with a different way to describe this other than lavender cola, but that's exactly spot on. This smells like lavender cola. Fizzy, darkly sweet lavender. Lavender is a little unpredictable on me -- sometimes it sticks around, and other times I get a whiff of it just before it poofs into the ether. This lavender waffles for a bit and then departs, leaving just the cola. I'm not a big fan of pop, either in taste or smell, so it isn't a keeper for me, but I can see how it would be cool and refreshing, and it's definitely interesting. And if there ever were a drink that tasted how this smells, I would be willing to give it a try.

This is a dark green scent, like taking sage leaves and crushing them between your fingers. Crisp and wild. The musk adds a subtle haze. When the blackberry started to make itself known, I thought this would take a turn towards berry hand soap. Fortunately, the lab's blackberry is juicy and realistic, and and smells like plucking blackberries off the bramble. The berry never overtakes the greenery, and it never gets too sweet. Like florals, I like my fruits paired with strong supporting notes. Bewitched is beautiful.

This scent will always remind me of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as I had an imp of it handy when I was reading the book. The two went perfectly together, and it got me thinking about other book/scent pairings. It was a joy to have a scent enhance the reading experience -- it helps that both the book and the scent were enjoyable on their own!