Sacred Whore of Babylon

[venusinfurs]

An ancient formula that inspires unrepentant decadence, lechery and debauch.

I was scared to try this one due to a lot of bad ratings. I'm glad I gave it a chance though, it's a gorgeous scent!

In the bottle: FLOWERS, with a hint of sweet fruit.

Wet on skin: I wish I knew exactly what flower note this was (most are saying Gardenia, but I'm really not good at picking flower notes except rose) because it works on me. Smells like dewy wet flowers with cinnamon and sugar.

Dry on skin: Still fresh flowers with cinnamon and sugar. This is sort of turning into a fresh scent rather than a sweet scent. I love it. Very sensual and feminine. A seductress would totally wear this.

[KittyHawk]

This is the perfect boozy white floral. This is Lady of Shalott's sexy older sister.

 

There is a lot of heavy gardenia going on here, but with an exotic mix of spices for good measure. As it dries, it gets much sweeter, like a brown sugar-encrused gardenia petal. Sacred Whore is not for the faint of heart, but it is a fantastic scent. This will become one of my evening favorites, easily.

[Zorra]

I was curious about this one. And in fact now that I am trying it it still puzzles me. It seems to have two very different stages. When it's wet it's a strong gardenia, but when it dries down I seem to completely lose the gardenia and I smell perubalsam. When I put my nose to my wrist I smell there is more than just the perubalsam, but I do have to put my nose to my wrist to smell that. I don't get any of the smokiness that others have mentioned, for which I am glad because I usually don't like smoky scents.

 

I think I have to try it again, in a different part of my hormonal cycle.

[stellamaris]

This is quite beautiful. It smells to my philistine nose like a classic Chanel perfume, gorgeous. To me this is an elegant lady in 1925, in a dark smokey jazz club, wearing some gorgeous couture black silk dress. Love this, it's on The List.

[invisible iris]

In the imp: This smells sort of like sweet honeyed gardenia or tuberose to me, with a touch of resiny spice.

 

On skin: Pretty much the same as in the imp. The tuberose or gardenia is still there, and possibly there’s also honeysuckle, but the floral component is kept from being too heady by the sort of spicy honeyed copal scent.

 

Dry: Mellow honeyed floral and copal, with a touch of spice, or something similar. A languid, luxurious sort of scent, sweet and sticky and nightimey. A little like smelling cinnamon honey next to a cluster of tuberose.

 

Verdict: Not as repellent to me as florals often can be, this is on the dark sticky side of heady floral. Still not for me, but in my opinion it’s one of the nicer white floral bpal blends I’ve tried.

[Pyewacket]

This one started off a bit sharp and then quickly settled in to a rather lovely creamy/spicy/floral (not sure which floral though)

 

I only like florals with a bit of an edge to them (like Voodoo Lily) and this fits into that category for me.

 

I'll try the imp a few more times to see if I'll need a bottle but so far it's a probable maybe.

[Scentual_Scentress]

I defiantly smell ylang ylang and vanilla in it. I can't pinpoint anything else, but I love the scent <3 ...and I too also picture a Babylonian mistress splayed out on a fainting couch eating figs and grapes while being catered too. Love it!

[Dani87]

Imp: strong white floral, sweet, but with a bite. Reminds me of magnolia.

Wet: strong floral I thought lily, but it might e gardenia. I also get honey.

10 min: sweet floral covered in powdered sugar. It is almost too sweet. The floral mixed with powdered sugar makes me think of marie antoinette for some reason.

30 min: amaretto thick, sticky, and sweet. With yhe floral in the background.

1 hr: there is some spice now, clove. Amaretto, and vanilla.

1 hr 30 min: spice, honey, vanilla with hints of amaretto, and floral.

Overall: at first this was too sweet. It softened the longer it was on though, and morphed into a nice scent. I'm not sure about it, I don't dislike, but i'm not very fond of it either. I will hold onto it for awhile though, give it another shot.

[becca_s]

Sacred Whore of Babylon starts out really nice - a soft floral with a hint of spice. After 15 minutes or so, all I can smell is gardenia, and gardenia really doesn't work on me at all it smells like really horrible soap, not even nice soap ... It started out so well, but my skin chemistry really doesn't work well with gardenia which is a shame because I love the way it smells - just not on me.

[yakiguri]

Ugh, all I get is the scent of the hand soap from my work's bathrooms.

[SkySamuelle]

I rest my case- it doesn't matter how much I am drawn to exotic spices, they don't agree with my skin chemistry.

 

This one was all spicy musk on me and very strong for a couple of hours- i didn't feel sexy or decadent or in the mood for debauchry tough...I just felt covered with musk. And then, like the oil had felt my rejection, it slowly turned to baby powder. Shame.

 

eta: I don't know what to think - I gave it another shot after a week or so since I wrote the above and I get musk and a very sweet bouquet after it dries and then the musk almost disappears to leave the bouquet with hints of spices - it's pretty in a languid way and definitely sexy.

 

Still, the baby powdery vibe is there, in the background, but still there.

 

I will keep wearing it if I can keep this response in eventual retrials.

Edited August 9, 2012 by SkySamuelle

[KakashiMorph]

This imp was graciously gifted to me, so I am not sure of it's age.

 

In the bottle: Some kind of light floral. Is there jasmin in this?

On my skin: A strong floral scent (but what kind of flowers, I can not tell). It calms down after a few minutes, making room for faint white musk.

Drydown: Gentle white musk with a small hint of flower. It's rather soft and gentle.

[Atrous]

After reading all the positive reviews of this scent, I added it to my order of imps with high hopes.

Ugh! I sniff my wrists and think Cat Pee! Smokey cat pee with a dash of cinnamon. Not good.

[tziporra]

Frimp from the lab.

 

Opening all the imps to test and this one hits me over the head with Copal and I must immediately slather. Flowers-with-copal is my favorite brand of perfume!

 

Mmmmmmmmm..... Copal, a good flower (gardenia?), spiciness that reads as cinnamon or cassia (but could be cardamom), a verrrrrrrrrrry nice vanilla (not a note I can usually wear, but this one is like Tombstone's vanilla) and a bad flower - almost certainly jasmine. It's the cat pee smell.

 

So everything except the cat pee is so lovely and so very perfume-counter-y and exactly what I look for in a scent - this is like the summer version of Sheol - sweeter and wetter. But I don't know if I can live with the bad flower smell.

 

Thinking......

 

 

Tzi

 

ETA: later in the car I get a wafting scent and think, "am I wearing Tissue?" So definitely gardenia, and definitely on my buy list now. Tissue is one of my top 5 scents, and this can now be my backup.

Edited June 26, 2013 by tziporra

[Balaclava]

Got this as a frimp with my order. The floral notes are fresh and complex, but I would like it so much better without the vanilla which sweetens it into "hotel soap" territory.

[Teaker]

I wanted to love this because of the fabulous name, but alas. It is the worst bpal- actually, make that the worst scent- I have ever had the misfortune to come across. Clearly this is a personal skin chemistry issue, since I see other reviewers were able to smell things like flowers, vanilla, and spice. If only!

 

As soon as I opened the imp it was like getting a boot to the face of the strongest, oldest, most rancid antique perfume. I love musk, but this could only be described as "the musk of the very very elderly." If there is any spice in here, it's curry. If there are any flowers, they died in the 1940s. I was literally afraid to have it touch my skin, but I applied a drop anyway. Whoa baby! I didn't even make it 3 minutes before I scrubbed frantically to get it off my skin.

 

I wish I could see what the notes are in this scent so I could know what caused me to have such a bad reaction to it. There seems to be a consensus that it contains gardenia, so I'll be sure to stay well away from that one in the future just to be safe. I know this isn't a bad scent (the lab doesn't make bad scents!) because it seems to be beautiful on other folks. I only wish I could borrow one of their noses...

[BoneBone24]

Wet: Heady and enticingly feminine. Jasmine-dominant.

 

Drydown: Heady gardenia and jasmine, lightly kissed with honey and spice (cassia and coriander??). Lusty, pale, and dewy. There’s something passive aggressive about it, if that makes any sense.

 

Dry: It smells exactly like a figure from a Botticelli painting lounging atop ivory-colored silk sheets, being fed honeycomb and grapes all day. This is the ultimate toga party scent.

 

 

 

 

7.5 out of 10 bones

[Veronica]

Musky and sticky sweet.

[doomsday_disco]

This one is dominated by a white floral (I do think those that have mentioned gardenia in their reviews may be right), with the addition of a sweeter floral (perhaps mimosa blossom? it has a candy-like sweetness to it, but isn't too sweet) and a bit of spice.

 

It's not bad, but I don't plan on keeping my imp, as I can't see myself reaching for this one.

[torikitty]

Wet: cherry candle

Drydown: I do get a bit of the gardenia and slight smokiness other reviewers have mentioned. It is kinda decadent, but the florals are a bit much for me. It does smell nice, but it's not for me.

[LizziesLuck]

Wet: Jasmine. Lots and lots of it. Very sweet. Some spices I can't identify. Some fruit. But mostly jasmine. Surprisingly it's not completely horrid in this, but still never something that works on me.

 

Dry: Jasmine with hints of kitchen herbs/spices. Not for me! glad I tried it though.

[Mermaid-on-Land]

For something with a name like Sacred Whore of Babylon, I'd have expected something less innocent than how this turned out on me. It eventually ended up mostly powdered sugar! Right out of the bottle it was sweetly floral. No specifics are listed in the description and I suck at telling floral notes apart so far, but the consensus in the reviews seems to be gardenia. Now that the gardenia flowers have faded a bit I smell exactly like powdered sugar lol. Not that I'm complaining, I somehow smell almost exactly like walking past the bakeries on Main Street in Disneyland and I'm loving that vibe! That's more the throw, closer to the wrist it's a little more floral still. I'll enjoy using up the imp I think. The throw is still great 6 hours later. At some point it loses the powdered sugar in favor of a honeyed floral (not sure what kind, again I'm not really familiar with flowers. If I had to guess I'd say maybe honeysuckle? It's sweet and honey smelling).

 

Editing to add that I love this and come back to it quite a bit. Gardenias smell like a floral powdered sugar on me and mixed with the other notes, the scent is lovely. This is a heavy, sweet scent, somewhat indolent and very much in keeping with the concept, I think. It's also oddly comforting in a way? Anyway, it's a fave of mine and one I wear often.

Edited November 29, 2016 by Mermaid-on-Land

[Casablanca]

SWOB seems to have jasmine, something honey-like that might be honeysuckle, maybe gardenia, something fruity, a little cinnamon or cassia, and something resinous, maybe amber.

It's OK. (nod nod) Not bad. I'm not super excited.

[gloame]

Gardenia, jasmine, and pot. Definitely an interesting mix!

[Bones613]

I don't know what flower it was (gardenia, maybe?), but it punched me in the face. I'm still reeling. The thick floral was all I could smell for hours. When that faded, it turned into a warm vanilla scent, which isn't surprising, since I seem to boost the hell out of vanilla. However, it took me hours to get to that point. It's a lot richer on my friend, so this imp is definitely his. I'd maybe daub a bit on my wrist if I wanted to smell very flower-y, but there are florals I like that do it better with my skin chemistry.