pommelo

THIS IS MAD LOVE, i don't find this manly at all!!! On wet it's like this overwhelming SEA note, like a tsunami that completely overpowers everything else. Ambergris? But within 5mins it recedes, leaving a very musky fruity shore, it's one of the most intriguing scents I've ever come across from BPAL! I'll try my best to pick out the notes, this is a huge morpher. Foremost is the musk, if sea musk were a thing, this would be it. And I get little sparkles of.. lemongrass? and peppermint? But these sparkles fade quickly, revealing a warm spicy layer which are probably the plundered spices I got this as a frimp, never would have guessed how absolutely in love I would fall with it, it's so far out from my usual scent profile - florals.. I think it's the musk that's doing it for me, it's absolutely to die for. *Edit: The drydown really reminds me of Hecate's drydown - kind of an almondy musk? They are both my absolute favourites from BPAL

this!!! is absolutely stunning! on skin instantly it reminded me of Lush's All Good Things perfume - which has the notes cade, rose, tonka, cedarwood. the tonka was a huge top note, sweet and slick. on wet, it's very sweet tonka with a punchy spicy wood, very unisex. the drydown is subtly more classically cologney than the start, as the sweet tonka fades to the background and the rosewood, and.. leather?? comes to the fore. loved it for the start, the drydown was just a smidge too much of a familiar cologne to me.

agreed with kytha! on me, it's not so much as meaty as it is soapy, due to this one very screechy white floral, it doesn't smell exactly like lily, I'm thinking orchid, or iris..? It's a familiar soap smell. this screechy soapy note tones down a lot in my hair though, and i get this halo of green-purple florals. 5/10 for me

Completely agree with SoupyTwist up there! The fake lime destroyed everything :-( I get a little of the blackcurrent musk, which also smells fake-bright to me and is completely overpowered by that lime anyway, and none of the sparkling white cognac. I think lime hates me, Whitechapel and Schroedinger's cat both turned lemon car perfume on me. The overall scent of this one is that of a very cheap body soap. Yuck yuckity yuck.

Fresh out of the bottle I get the snow note the others mentioned, it smells a little like a very cold and clean car. Or like a cold gloomy misty morning. But the moment it touches my skin, the snow disappears and it instantly turns sweet on me, and I get a torrent of exotic flowers. I can't exactly pinpoint what they are, but there's a sense of night-blooming flowers.. maybe jasmine? champaca? ylang-ylang? There's also that incense note, which turns the whole bouquet into something deeper, somewhat exotic and regal and antique. It smells like something I could rummage out of my Thai grandmother's cabinet of decades old perfumes. I have two imps I bought from some very lovely people off this forum, one new and one old, no idea about the date. The snow/mist/clay note is definitely more present in the newer one, and in the older one the flowers have reeeeally bloomed, rather like someone slapped me with a slightly overripe bouquet. There's a bit of a sour note, but it's not really noticeable for it to matter. *20mins later* this incense is really amping on the drydown. I feel quite sacrilegious now

a very even blend of violets and tea roses for me. although I do think the rose has a greater sillage, I keep catching whiffs of rose throughout the day. the violet stays more muted, sweetening and rounding it out. this is a really delicate perfumey floral, but not at all like commercial perfumes, this one just feels pure. like pure rose and pure violet, nothing more and nothing less. it's exactly how I imagine the French aristocrats in the 18th century would smell like. typically I'm more of a musk gal, but this one was just exquisite. it took quite a few wears for me before I started to like it. my bottle is a second hand one, and I think about a year old. the first week or two after I got it in the mail, it was sooo powdery on me, the scent was literally Marie Antoinette powdering her nose, very reminiscent of an old French grandma kind of perfume, and i thought i hated it! but persistence paid off! after a couple of days of wearing it, one day I noticed it stopped going powdery on me. It turned into a really dewy and pure scent. It's the smell of springtime and freshly bloomed roses with the dew still hanging off them, against a bed of violets.. I'm a huge rose lover, but I'm very particular about my roses, and most rose perfumes are just too harsh for my taste. Even Rose EOs, too somehow smell a little chemical to me. But Marie is one of the best true rose scents I've ever smelled (beating other roses like Diptyque's Eau Rose by far) I haven't come across another rose like this in my BPAL collection, not Spellbound, not Jezebel, not Alice, not Black Rose. Marie is absolutely the purest. EDIT ONE YEAR LATER: so i just got another bottle & this confirms it: MARIE NEEDS RESTING u guys give it a good long chance

This scent is such a green, fresh violet on me, if it weren't for the dark musk holding the fort down, I think this would straight out turned white floral on me! I think it's the iris + neroli combo that keeps it so green, it really livens the violets up. In fact, I think the iris smells really similar to the neroli, and I had to put on some of Lush's Calacas, to compare and search out the neroli notes. I'm not familiar with white sandalwood so I'm not going to talk about it 😂 Straight out of the bottle, it's fresh, and a vibrant green and light purple scent, rather like a raven fledgling rustling around his nest in the early dawn. An hour later, the freshness dies down a little and it blooms into this really classic perfumey fragrance, it smells quite familiar, like I've smelled it before in some classic luxury perfume from one of those heritage perfume houses. It smells quite British, or French, very classic, not in an old lady way, but rather in a mature posh mom way. It has good throw, but only a couple of hours' wear length on me, which is sad as I quite like it. Not sure if it's bottle worthy though, I usually love black musk and it loves me, but in this one it's a bit overshadowed by all the freshness..

I scrawled through this page looking for a review that says it smells like lemon car perfume.. but I couldn't find it. Am I the only one who thinks this way?! In the imp, it was an intriguing lemon, plasticky but still tolerable, with zings of.. I want to say pepper? But on my skin, it immediately turns into straight up car perfume😫. Right down to that very particular new car leather smell, even though I know there aren't any leather notes.. I suppose it's the unholy combination of lemon + chocolate + oak moss + my skin, although all those notes seem to work individually on me. There's also that slight hint of sourness, the sign of skin chemistry gone wrong. An hour of me resisting the urge to scrub it off later, it dries into a slightly sweeter, woodier car perfume. However, sweet car perfume is still nonetheless car perfume. This one is a huge miss for me, and makes me question my nose, my chemistry, everything (except BPAL of course) *Edit* - ok, so of course I only get the chocolate and mint in the dry down. Mind you it's in the very end stages of the dry down, where I have to put my nose right up to my skin. But still there are traces of bad lemon. Bad, bad very ick lemon.