Seven Horses

[doomsday_disco]

Chestnut musk, hay, cacao absolute, tobacco, pu’er tea, sweet vetiver, and coffee bean.

 

 

Theodore Gericault

[theredkilt]

This perfume develops differently on my skin both indoors and outdoors.

 

Indoors i get a green honeyed tea, I'd say the green variety but very restrained and dainty.

 

Outdoors, it's more vibrant, well blended and multifaceted, and i get the hay, the sweetened tobacco/ tea melange, and also something akin to suede, although it's not listed.

 

It's airy and vividly aromatic and sweet in a refined way. Nothing about screams manure or saddle leather or whatever olfactive associations you may attribute to horses. 

[SmellsPrettyGood2Me]

Despite the label imagery evoking a cavalry of sorts, this really isn't an overwhelmingly masculine scent. In the bottle, the tea is what presents most strongly, followed distantly by the coffee, then the cocoa. On skin, the tea note unfurls even further, with sight ferment and maybe even with a touch of cinnamon there in the background. The hay gets it's moment to shine as it dries down, sweet and airy, alongside a very toasted chestnut note and a dry tobacco. It takes a good hour for me to be able to pick the vetiver out of the lineup, but I never fully experience the cocoa absolute or the coffee as individual notes, once applied, even after dry down. Two hours in, there is a powdery, slightly furry musk that sits at the base and lingers on for another 4 hours more. 

 

Olfactorily, this is both pleasant and complex. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, but there is almost a HAPPINESS to it. I found it very comforting, and even thought about wearing it again the next day after testing because I liked it so much. Very glad I let my love of BPAL's hay and tobacco notes lead me here.

Edited February 3 by SmellsPrettyGood2Me
removed typo

[leptonpyr]

This is a beautiful, very well blended and well balanced scent. To me it feels very cozy and comforting but without being cloying or leaning too gourmand (like It Was but the Wild Blast was, sadly), which was kind of exactly what I needed today.

 

It opens with a lovely, buttery-smooth, sweetish chestnut, but right away I can pick up on a little more going on underneath, it's accompanied by a barely detectable lift of earthy freshness. As the hours go on and the chestnut opening fades, Seven Horses proves itself to be a beautifully complex blend. There's a touch of cool, peppery spice that winks out every now and then, although this blend is mainly about the nutty, golden, enveloping warmth. I can smell the sweet fresh hay, the spicy-sweet herbaceous tobacco, and I think I'm getting just a faint, somehow very smooth touch of vetiver's slightly leathery smokiness. It is sweet and deep and I keep repeating this word, but Seven Horses is so well balanced it gives me the overall impression of smoothness, which is decidedly not to say it's boring, but rather it feels sort of round and comforting, enveloping. I associate this smoothness with the pu'er, but it's possible it's the overall effect. It's a delightfully smooth, perfectly blended cup of tea. There's an almost cinnamon-y aspect that comes out every now and then, too. 

 

A couple of hours in, I start getting almost a dried-fruit aspect. The hay, the pu'er? Something else? I'm not sure where the effect comes from, but it's fascinating and really lovely. I'm not sure if I ever got the cacao or the coffee bean, although perhaps what I'm taking to be cinnamon-y could actually be cacao. 3-4 hours in it gets softer and more cinnamon-y, and there's this sweet softness to it that almost approaches powdery, I think from the hay, that I find so soothing I want to curl up and take a nap in. 

 

To me Seven Horses feels like a very deep, rich brown scent. A gorgeous, rich, autumnal brown like chocolate or freshly tilled soil, a mahogany credenza or a cup of tea. Just really mesmerically beautiful, in a quiet way that invites but doesn't demand attention. Frankly I'm a little upset that I want a bottle, because there are already so many bottles I want to snag before their down dates. I'm going to have to sit down and take a long hard look at my budget, I think. This feels like an absolutely *perfect* scent for November, the cooler latter days of autumn. Beth knocked it out of the park with this one.