Equivalent No. 314

[doomsday_disco]

An intangible vapor, an obfuscating mist: grey iris, ambergris, mallow blossom, white tea blossoms, and scorched milk.

 

 

Alfred Stieglitz
 

[bheansidhe]

This painting's canvas is firmly in the "scorched milk" family of Snake Milk, Ghost Milk, Mummy's Milk, etc. It's layered with a soft iris that, combined with the white tea blossom, lends an Earl Grey bergamot vibe, like tea mixed into clotted cream. There's a perfumey musk middle section that I assume is the ambergris. Overall low throw, but very discernable on the skin.

 

Verdict: soft, creamy, "if milk was a perfume." 

[VioletChaos]

In The Bottle, milk, mallow and white tea are all quite prominent, but in this surprisingly unobtrusive way, which really fits the mood of the painting it's based on right out of the gate.

Wet On Skin: The iris and ambergris start to come out, but the whole things stays...hauntingly low-key. Which is a weird way to put it, but when I re-look at the artwork, it feels like an appropriate description for that, too, so I'm keeping it. 

Dry Down: It all evens out in the end. 
What I mean by that, is, following a period of morphing, where various notes came to the front then slipped behind again, once it sorted itself out, I can say that all notes are here and accounted for- something of a rarity, as usually something just disappears on me, or I amp something but lose something else. This one, I can pick out all the elements, and they all play nicely together. The scorched milk is a *little* bit out in front, but not massively. The iris and possibly the white tea pull it back and ground it, stop it from being a variation of Milk Moon (circa a billion years ago  )

In All: a lovely skin scent with low throw that I will wear for cozy summer days when a thunderstorm sweeps through and I sit near an open window reading a book. ❤️ 

[auraysu]

 It's a milky fog- everything comes together to become a skin scent. Equivalent 314 has a quality to it that evokes a mild aerated particle feeling, like vapor, that I attribute to the scorched milk. The lactonic sugars in the milk really do smell like they've been heated, and the scorched aspect differentiates from caramel: have you ever heated milk on the stove or microwaved it too long? I find the scorched milk to not run buttery- milk is a contentious note as people's skin chemistry react differently, but to me, this is a mild and recognizably lactonic smell (not butter or cheese!) and it's what persists in the drydown. The milk note gets stronger as the other notes fade away but remains tame.

 

Tl;dr: Foggy and grey. Creamy skin scent. Would wear on a grey day, sitting on a sofa near a window. Suitable for both contemplative and cozy moods. 

[puellacaerulea]

In the decant and immediately on application, the iris, mallow, and white tea are most prominent -- subtle and pale, but a little astringent. The scorched milk comes out more after application. The scorched milk note isn't as overtly gourmand as it is in scents like Snake's Milk -- it's mostly serving to smooth out the astringency of some of the other notes. Eventually settles to a subtle skin scent.

[roseus]

I agree this has a creamy sort of earl grey vibe, like if a cloud was infused with a white tea earl grey. It feels both creamy and airy at the same time, foggy is a great word for it. This has crazy throw on me, but is gentle enough of a scent that it isn't overwhelming. 

[Assimbya]

Milky! So milky!

 

The milk scent in this one is intense, and I agree that it's distinctively scorched milk, with that sweet but not caramelized nearly burnt quality which anyone who has had experiences of trying and failing to heat milk over a stovetop can recognize. It's a strange and almost disconcerting scent to have in a perfume, but I'm finding I really enjoy it in its strangeness. I definitely get tea, flowers, and musk as well, giving subtle sweetness and complexity, but I can't make out each of them so precisely (though I'm not all that familiar with iris or mallow flower yet), and they meld into a vaporous whole, gray and cream and enveloping.

 

This is far more milky than any of my other BPALs with milk or cream notes - it bears a faint resemblance to White Rabbit, but without White Rabbit's distinctive crispness. I've tried a few of BPAL's recent tea-adjacent scents which haven't quite worked for me (Angora was too astringent and Rose Milk Tea too sweet), but this milky floral tea feels more intriguing and wearable for me personally. It has more throw than one might expect for such smooth gray notes (my partner kept being ever so slightly weirded out by the milk scent!) and decent longevity. I'm glad I went for this one, and love the suggestion above about wearing it reading indoors during thunderstorms. This feels like a scent for staying inside and letting oneself stay with some fogginess for a little while.