nikaida

Boozy white wine mixed with glowy musk and jammy peach. The peach here is warm but not stewed or grilled. Instead, it's a gently oven-toasted peach half with a golden glowy amber syrup drizzled across it to amp up that sultriness. A gorgeous GORGEOUS peachy amber with a winey bite to it. This is one of my favorite BPAL peaches AND BPAL ambers. Every time I smell it I smile 🥰💕 Sexy, inviting, and fun 10/10 no further notes (;

I love Fae! It's juicy and bright and fun. While wet, this reminds me Amos 4D peach gummies. The white musk keeps this feeling fresh and flirty. As it dries and the “peach gummy” features die back, the herbs bloom on my skin and make it feel like a totally different fragrance for somewhere between 10-30 minutes. But then the peach and white musk appear again, shimmery-sweet and oh so darling. It quickly becomes super fun and summery and fresh. Fae does warm up and become more complex throughout the final drydown phase, too, which is quite nice 🥰 This is one that I believe requires at least a few hours of wear before one can fully judge it, the morphing it does early on is pretty dramatic on my skin, and maybe it will be on yours too~

Lives up to its name! Very fun and morphs a ton throughout wear. Upon application, a red musk thunders forward, incensey and glorious, hand-in-hand with a nose-clearing fresh note I at first suspected was some sort of Strange Mint From Another Planet. Not really mint, but cold-ish and makes my nose feel OPEN and CLEAR like mint does. I bet you can guess what that is from the notes (; A floaty floral lazily rolls out as this scent blooms on skin, joining the chaos with a smug lil smile on its face. Floaty and floofy, it plays such a fun foil to that W A S A B I I I I. Some resinous warm sweetness glows underneath, not overwhelming. I believe there's also my favorite BPAL black musk in here, with its incense dancing delightedly in the fray. Chaotic does not stay all-caps CHAOTIC for the entirety of wear, though. Warm, somewhat sweet, cozy notes are this cutie's base. I associate the base notes in this one with warm fuzzy brown coat, comfortably worn in, nice quality. The warm notes are the majority of the wear experience! That mélange of musks be mélangin' and I do be enjoyin. This one is definitely worth trying, even if it doesn't seem like your type of fragrance because it really is unexpected in how it smells, but in a fun way!

Ohhh, yummy~ sun-warmed juicy ripe strawberries, fresh and soft and bordering on jammy. Think fresh strawberries macerating with granulated sugar and you've got a solid vision of the strawberries here 🥰🍓. The inky musk was quite present when wet but on my skin w/ my nose the heart is strawberry-forward. I swear for a moment early on I got something that reminded me of a lightened-up Siberian Musk (BPAL), but then the strawberries took center stage snd I'm struggling to pick out the musk(s?) in play here. Around hour 3 of my wear test the strawberry started to die back, and by hour 5 it is mostly the musk(s???) that is being used. I don't really slather perfume so it is pretty faint by this point, but what I do smell is very lovely--a refined, dry musk that isn't terribly sweet and has low projection. I compared near a wrist dab from my bottle of Siberian Musk and it does bear a resemblance to the lighter, husk-like notes in Siberian Musk but not the deeper or more amber-like qualities. Somewhat paper note qualities in there. I love strawberry fragrances, they feel so summery and fun, and BPAL has so many FUN FUN FUN strawberry accords 🍓 I can see the connection that others are making to the wild strawberries and amber hair gloss. This and ws&a are going to be fun to layer together! I love the full wear experience 🥰

Fresh KICK of clean, wet, rainwashed greenery and white musk. There's tea early on but it's quiet in comparison to the blast of rain-vibrant cut greenery and white musk. I'm reading this as having a very clean "laundry day" kind of vibe, which I'm filing under "white musk." If I'm wrong, sue me 🤷‍♀️(for legal purposes Do Not, I have no money to pay u) After maybe 30 minutes, the edges on this scent soften and round. It is still very fresh and clean, very rainwashed, but less sharp. I'm no longer being slapped in the face with a bouquet of juicy wet grass. The tea peeks out more confidently around this time, too. As drydown continues, I get the whiter/sharper aspects of moonflower, a dusting of silvered moonlit powder at their centers as they bloom through continued wear, and big splashes of clean-cool water. Wet is morning laundry day after a spring rain: brisk, green, sharp, shiny, and bright. Fluffy white clouds, blue sky, wet green grass, early spring sunlight. Drydown is a cool, clean, wet spring *night* after a spring rain: white-silvers and greens, rainwashed new growth and glinting moonlight, spots of cool white powder-touched blooms dotting the landscape. That opening is a little rough for me (hissss, sun! hissss, chores!) but wow does it pay off in that drydown. If you like the vibes of both sides of this perfume, you're gonna have a GREAT time.

Beautiful church-incense frankincense layered over resins all the way down. I didn’t get any sweetness on my skin until the very end of wear (6+ hours in), instead getting a hint of the almost-bitter & somewhat dry incense ash lurking in its heart. Gorgeous. I may consider a bottle or larger decant in the future, depending on how my whimwinds blow.

Oh! This is fun! I only have time for a quick “first impressions” review tonight, only 30ish minutes of wear went into this quickie review. Please, future me, come back and say more! Opens with a zingy ginger and a slightly …lemongrassy…? lemon? I can smell that clovey warm heart right away! This smells like something your yoga teacher friend who’s really into using essential oils would give you as a cheeky bachelorette party gift with a note about how you should wear it to help heat things up on your honeymoon. Invigorating and a little naughty. I am liking this one a lot more than I thought I would! I think it’ll dry down beautifully, but this might be a fun not-so-sleepy bedtime scent too 😂

This review mainly is a placeholder with quick notes from an early-morning 30-minute test on wrists and upper inner arm. Other reviews were read before testing and may have influenced review. I have had this bottle for at least half a year with multiple test attempts and much bewilderment, as this is outside my zone of confident perfume descriptions & notes identification! This does have the bracing-yet-sweet (but not-vanilla) TKO kinda vibe super early on, but then warmth blooms and something almost faintly….anise-like (but not??)…?? shows up? The bracing qualities die back and a softer sweetness is revealed. I can see why the other two reviews have mentioned a fruity sweetness, but I don’t know if I would’ve identified it as fruity on my own. I’m liking this on this warm spring morning—it’s reminding me of mornings in early summer as a kid, something about the first 30 minutes of wear feels fresh and cool, with gentle sunshine kisses of promised future warmth. Enjoyable! Definitely want to give this cutie a full day’s wear for deeper exploration in the future. edit: 45 minutes into wear a sweet amber has made its presence known! Pretty!

Lab frottle, tested several months ago w/o taking notes and then again this evening on-skin after a day of many other tests. This review currently only covers the first 90 minutes of wear. Wrote this review before reading others’ reviews. KPX130 opens SUPER lemongrassy, but after 10 or so minutes this morphs to a very convincing lemon drops perfume with lemongrass hiding in the background. For me, the lemon did die down pretty quickly after this, leaving behind faint lemongrass, fainter lemon, and a biiig poof of pillowy, dry sugar. It feels like I’m jumping into a big bowl of fluffy, lightly lemon-lemongrassed caster sugar! I think this will be fun to try wearing in the summer, since the sugar seems to be promising me some cool, dry, unsticky, uncomplicated sweetness. The sugar note does seem familiar, but I can’t quite place where else I’ve smelled it before—more seasoned BPAL enthusiasts may be able to place it!! I do want to wear this for a whole day and see how long it lasts! Regardless, I am absolutely loving my trial of KPX130 tonight, and it has earned its spot in my BPAL drawer. And here I was hoping to clear up a spot for future ‘fumes!

I’m loving this a lot! Updating as promised based on 4 total day-long wears with a bottle under 1 month old. I am getting fresh callas with a little bit of green bite to them (in the best way! A friend described it as “the spicy thing that some lily type scents can do”) and then only the coolest, freshest lilacs in the background. I don’t know peony well but I do know that it really is “peony milk” because there’s something a bit sweet and creamy in the background that is absolutely lovely here. Do I get any powder? Just a tiiiny bit, but not vintage or baby powder. (I like these kinds of profiles so would still be happy if I did!). This perfume dies down to a pink, creamy, cool, gently sweet scent! I feel like a wind-up music box ballerina when I wear this. Delicate, pastel-pink, and lightly floral-sweet. Very spring, VERY lovely, excited to wear this one through the springtime and then next winter when I need to pretend it’s a different season!!

This is veeeery pretty. It was a lil sweeter than I wanted on first application and then I forgot what I had put on and sniffed my hand and went “wow whatever this is, is great!! Not as sweet on drydown. Smooth woodiness, a little cool & bright, tempered by some dark & interesting qualities. Not a smoke perfume, the sandalwood smoke is incense-woody and the charred silk is reading to me as maybe vanilla somewhere between toasted and charred. Excited to see other people‘s thoughts on this one!

Whoever raved about this on BPAL Parlour when it had first come out…thank you. I threw this in my cart as a YOLO blind bottle and never sniffed—set it aside to rest then life got wild and now it’s months and months later! Super gorgeous, outdoorsy, balsamic. Does get sweeter on drydown, but it’s not a sugared amber. DEF some glorious heady sandalwood in there. Absolute banger.

I…love this?? I’m revisiting my Carmilla decants and remember feeling like this was too cold for my preferred autumnal ‘fumes & setting it aside for some future date. Well, guess that’s now! And wow, it’s glorious. Green, botanical patchouli vibes with a glowing warmth underneath. This is bottle-worthy!

This cutie is really pretty! Very clean gardenia that hits a lil bit baby-powder/clean-wet-wipes while wet, but dries down a little more grown-up. Gentle nag champa.

I keep reaching for this frottle from the GODS since my order arrived last week. I am having the wildest time trying to parse this fragrance as it is outside my identification wheelhouse—there is something fresh & soapy-clean & bracing that is the star of this perfume’s show, then there’s something a little sharp or acidic/tart in a great way, and something that maybe could be described as cold metallic? But nestled under a big pile of icy soapy-sharp-tart metal blankets is a sleeeeepy little trickle of nutmeg. I don’t know if this is a crowd pleaser, but I *do* know it’s a *ME* pleaser. This is Tilda Swinton as the White Witch at the height of her power, wrapped in furs on her sleigh or draped across her throne. No need for Turkish delight to seduce me, Tilda, I’m already in the carriage, fluttering my lashes at you & asking you about where I can get a matching outfit.