Seraglio

[angelmecha]

In long-ago Arabia, harem girls rubbed an herbal poultice formed from a blend of sensual, luxuriant herbs and oils onto their bodies to prepare themselves for the Sultan’s pleasure. This lush, indulgent perfume is based on that ancient formula. Sweet almond and Mysor sandalwood enveloped by a heady veil of Bulgarian Rose, neroli, nutmeg, clove and orange peel.

In Imp: Utmost citrus peel. It's an EXTREMELY realistic orange peel smell, as if a real orange were being peeled right in my imp! There's a FAINT hint of floral in it, and if I try hard I can pick out the almond rounding it out (it's probably lending some sweetness at least) but really I pick out the orange peel the most.
Wet: Ummmm, hello? My skin ate this. o_o *waits* Now I'm getting a bit of neroli peeking out with the orange peel. I can't believe how faint this got on me. Uh oh. Is that powder coming?
Drydown: Faintly orange rosey powder... but not a bad powder, actually. It's quite clean and pleasant.
Verdict: I'll keep my imp and see how it goes in daily wear. It may be too faint for me to get much use out of.

[BoneBone24]

Wet: Almond extract.

 

Drydown: The almond fades into non-existence and the orange and rose come into play.

 

Dry: The orange becomes a side note and this becomes a heavier rose warmed by sandalwood and powdery clove.

 

 

Seraglio is a very warm, feminine, heavy floral-type scent. It's nice but not my thing. Unfortunately I spilled it all over my desk and pants when testing it and am not likely to try it again having already overdosed in such a big way. *yikes!*

Edited December 28, 2011 by BoneBone24

[ami226]

On the skin: Orangey. Sweet and orangey. It gets a little floral after a bit and less orange.

 

This is pleasant, but it isn't wowing me like my favorites.

 

Huh, this one took a 180. I really don't like what it has turned in to. It's weird. I feel bad, but it kinda smells like urine on me now. Icky!

[becca_s]

This started out as a very powerful almond scent. Completely changed in the dry down though. This is a blend that turns powdery on me. The orange peel and roses take over as this drys down. Seraglio is a very exotic smelling blend, it definitely changes over time.

Edited May 11, 2012 by becca_s

[Kayah]

Colour me not particularly impressed with my skin chemistry.

 

On wet, it's almonds - I register all almond as somewhat bitter so the "sweet almond" doesn't really do much to reduce that image. As it dries, the rose comes out and throws its weight around like nobody's business. I amp both almond and rose, and that's what I get from this perfume.

[whitsunweddings]

In the imp: Almond, rose and orange. Lovely.

Wet: Fragrant orange and rose dominant, with slightly foody almond in the background. Makes me peckish for cake.

Dry: Really nice. Zingy and sweet orange with lovely spices, and the same rose note from my beloved Knave of Hearts in the background. Gorgeous!

[Ilex]

In the imp, sweet marzipan and rose.

 

On me, rose, a not too boozy, not too green rose. Boring. I really wish the almond and other things popped up.

 

Long dry down, more rose. If I get my nose right up to the spot where I dabbed it I get hints of what this could be, and I bet on someone with the right chemistry it'd be magnificent. I am not that someone, unfortunately.

[mymymai]

In the Imp (ITI): Exotically delicious Neroli, sandalwood, fresh orange peel and sweet almond milk.

 

Wet: Still beautiful but the dominant notes have shifted to the almond and the orange peel with hints of rose, clove, and nutmeg.

 

Dry: It's lovely when dried. Light neroli paired with Bulgarian rose on a bed of clove and nutmeg. Wow!

[AngryRabbit]

In the imp and wet I immediately smell the almond. Once Seraglio dries all I smell is rose, no spices at all. It's nice, but I was really hoping to smell the cloves.

[yakiguri]

At first application I get a blast of sweet spicy orange, which was a little worrisome since I love the smell of orange but citrus tends to go rancid on my skin. After a few minutes though the rose, almond, and sandalwood come out to play, with tiny hints of orange blossom here and there. Seraglio is interesting, but while I love almond and I love orange I think the two together make a sickly sweetness that's making me queasy.

 

I'll give Seraglio a few months to let its notes hopefully mesh together better before I write it off.

Edited January 27, 2013 by thatbrownelf

[brilliantcat]

Imp: Almonds and a kick of orange.

 

Wet: Almond, citrus, and a hint of florals. It's quite pretty.

 

Dry: She's gone to ROSE! Yet another lovely blend ruined by rose *scowl*

[Sidhechaos]

In the imp, this reminds me a lot of a homemade potpourri my aunt in use two simmer on the stove. It would be an orange peel and some spices from a cupboard.

 

On the skin it is the same thing it reminds me of Christmas potpourri, no florals or neroli really show up for me and it's vaguely nauseating because how sweet it smells, which is a shame because it sounded so very promising. I was really surprised is I usually amp rose and expected more floral to pop through.

[Eemia]

Creamy sweet almond with a spicy golden undercurrent. It reminds me of another bpal that I can't put my finger on. It's sultry and warm and has a touch of brightness. The rose is familiar and lush, it melds really well with the velvety almond spice. A little heavy but still really lovely. But then it changes from exotic to soapy before sliding right into a bland rose blend. No hints of the earlier complexity and all I can think of is holiday themed candles. Unfortunately I had to wash this one off.

[doobdub]

In the imp: almond.

 

Wet: almond and orange.

 

Dry: HOLY CAT PEE GODDAMN THIS SMELLS SO BAD HOLY SHIT. this hates my skin. I never understood how people could smell cat pee in perfumes but that's exactly what I get from this. i do smell citrus still and that's contributing to the cat pee thing. must be the combo of the orange with something else, possibly the almond and clove? I actually keep smelling it just because i can't believe it's so bad and have to keep going back to check. it is. do i have to avoid orange from now on? almond has never been a favorite scent but i do love orange and clove... sad!

[keileya]

(To put this review in context: I am female-bodied-and-mostly-female-identified, but present very firmly towards the 'butch' end of the scale rather than the 'femme' end of the scale, so anything that's more femme is generally not something I'd wear. This scent is the first thing I've ever tried that makes me a little wistful about this fact, actually.)

 

In the bottle: soapy bitter almonds, calling to mind the classic description of what cyanide smells like. Not enough to put me off completely, but definitely what I thought of first!

 

Wet on skin: almond and neroli, with a tiny tiny whiff of clove peeking out.

 

Drying: I'm getting a very faint hint of citrus sidling forward, and I can smell the rose starting to bloom -- it's a very old antique floribunda sort of rose. I like it a lot, which is a good thing because I tend to amp rose like whoa. It's overpowering the almonds entirely, which is good, because the almond is still making me think 'cyanide'!

 

Dry: Rose, rose, rose. The clove and nutmeg are keeping the rose from going too grossly floral on me -- it's mostly not the note that other perfumes call 'rose' that smells nothing like actual roses -- but it's still very floral. The almonds have disappeared by now, thankfully! No more cyanide perfume.

 

10 minutes later: the spices are starting to come forward a bit more, and I'm getting the faintest hint of the orange peel (really, just enough to brighten the scent a bit). It keeps coming in waves: first the roses bloom, then the spice jar gets opened, then the orange gets peeled. I'm still not getting any of the sandalwood, except as a very subtle background to the rose as one of the things keeping it from being TOO in-your-face about it.

 

20 minutes: It's definitely morphing a lot, and each of the components smells very good. It's a very well made scent -- this rose is staying rose, and one of the roses I actually like, instead of being "this is a bunch of different notes put together to try to emulate a rose", and the balance of notes is very good. I'm really enjoying smelling it as a scent performance, even if it doesn't mesh well with my gender performance.

 

25 minutes: Huh. And now I'm finally getting the sandalwood more obviously, just at the very very edge of the throw. Overlapping with the rose, it makes me think of heavy woody cane that hasn't been pruned in years and years, like an overgrown rose thicket, which makes it very Sleeping Beauty-ish all of a sudden. It's going darker, too (the neroli and citrus are burning off, and that's a lot of what was making me think light and soprano), so every subsequent sniff shifts further away from Disney-princess Sleeping Beauty and toward original-fairy-tale Sleeping Beauty.

 

1 hour: it's stopped morphing, finally, and has now settled in to be thickets of old-growth roses that are in that glorious moment of full scent just before they tip over the edge into dying, so there's that faint breath of the grave at the very edges: memento mori, the reminder to a beautiful thing that it too will pass, making the beauty even more poignant. The roses are growing wild around an abandoned castle, with the occasional waft of nutmeg and clove from the copse of spice trees at the edge of the kitchens' garden.

 

Briar Rose, ninety years in to her hundred-year sleep.

 

It's a lovely, complex, and well-made scent that smells beautiful and evocative on me, and I'm kind of sad that it's entirely too femme for me to want to wear it regularly.

[quickdrawkiddo]

In the Imp: SO MANY ALMONDS. Whoever compared it to marzipan was dead on. I actually thought it was cherries before I read the notes -- they always smell similar to my nose.

 

Dry: still very almondy, but not quite as intense, and I start to notice the rose. I can just barely pick out the sandalwood now that I know it's there, but no spices at all.

 

This is very feminine and exotic. It's a bit too sweet to be something I'd reach for often -- not so much foody sweet as syrupy sweet, if that makes sense. Almonds and rose both work better on me when they're tempered with something more earthy. Together they're just too intensely sweet on me.

[lohengrin]

In the imp: Almond with just a hint of florals. If only it would smell like this on me, but I know it won't.

 

On skin, wet: Hello, rose. I see you are still determined to take over 99% of scents you're in. Also, clove. Rose and clove. There's a faint hint of almond left, but I do not expect it to survive the drydown.

 

On skin, dry: Sure enough, this is now straight-up rose and clove.

 

After an hour: Even the clove has faded into the background, leaving the rose to run rampant. Curses!

[theseagrows]

how have i never tried this?! i love almond and rose. maybe it was the nutmeg that frightened me. i always think of it as when it's a strong note and all foody, but there are a lot of scents with subtle nutmeg that i adore. anyway...

 

this starts out with a lovely almond, very marzipan like. then some rose comes through with the neroli and it smells good for a time, then suddenly it just turns to a sour rosy scent. i don't know why but some of BPAL rose scents are absolute favorites and some go all sour like this.

 

 

[BuxomM]

starts out almond, ends up neroli, soft throw

[anaengel]

I really do try to keep my thoughts positive when I'm trying perfume. This one just keeps having me go "it isn't right" in a disturbing, to me, way. So, here goes. And, no, I can not figure out why it bothers me. I want to like it, but I can't bring myself to wear it and enjoy it.

On wet, I get lots of orange and soap. The rose is trying to amp on me, but can't. It's kind of a good thing, since this is the perfume rose that it's trying to do.

As it dries, it gets a little spicier, which I actually enjoy a bit. I wish it would have stayed that way.

Afterwards, it turns very powdery and rose. It reminds me a lot of rose dusting powder that is in the air.

This is going to someone at work, since she's decided that the only problem with it is that is wasn't on her, so I know the imp will be loved until it is gone. It just isn't for me.

[doomsday_disco]

In the imp: I am mostly getting the almond, orange peel, and rose. I like almond, and Bulgarian Rose is one of my favorite rose notes, so I am looking forward to this. The only note that concerns me is the neroli, which has made some scents turn cough syrup-like on me.

Wet: Mostly almond and rose at first. The sandalwood starts to peek out, along with the nutmeg, clove, and orange peel. The rose and the orange peel have become the dominant notes, followed by clove.

Dry: Orange peel and clove, followed by rose. I am getting more of the nutmeg as well. It is somewhat bitter now, but I am not sure whether that is the orange peel or the neroli. The sandalwood is faintly in the background, along with a faint trace of the almond note.

Verdict: I like this. I wish the almond note hadn't been so fleeting, but I do enjoy orange and clove scents. I will give this a full day test before deciding whether or not I need a bottle.

Edited January 11, 2015 by dementia_divine

[Veronica]

This starts off as lovely spices and almond but turns into straight rose on me. A very green, strong rose.

[Teamama]

This lovely scent is tricky to wear, because it's got an oil that disagrees with the more sensitive parts of my hide. If I put it on my neck, chest or abdomen, it stings. The prime suspect is the orange rind, which also keeps me from wearing Ravenous. Patch test if you're sensitive!

That said, I like it.

Wet, the almond is in my face. For about five or ten minutes, it's like MARZIPAN and some spices.

After the almonds have gotten over themselves, the spices, rose and orange rind show themselves. I like Seraglio, but the Orientalist harem image isn't what I get. For me, this is the outrageously feminine smells that would have signalled preparation for Christmas in the kitchens of my Norwegian ancestresses. Ground almonds, grated orange rind, rose scented cold cream, and all the spices.

This is about a 4 hour fragrance on me. It dries down into a spicy whisper with no throw.

Edited November 9, 2015 by Teamama

[LizziesLuck]

Wet: Strong almond and orange. Quite nice! I have a hard time with orange, it often goes really powdery on me, but the times it does work is often when it is orange peel or zest, so I am hoping this will be ok. This is much foodier than I expected, but I like the almond in it, as almond has a real tendency to go sickly sweet on me, but I think maybe the orange is keeping it in check. The rose is coming through now, and it's a somewhat citrusy rose, without being sour. Overall, I quite like this so far.

 

Dry: This goes through some very interesting phases. There's a very smoky incense phase, overlaid by quite a bit of soap. It's now settled to a spicy, incensey rose, with hints of spice and orange. The almond has pretty well disappeared, aside from some lingering sweetness. I really like this, but I am not sure how wearable it will be for me. I think I will keep the imp though. Not sure what I will do with it....I might like this as a room scent.

[freyasfae]

Considering that this has almond and clove which are usually death notes for me, this isn't a total failure on me, but clove is like cinnamon on me as it tends to burn. This one doesn't irritate my skin, but it does make my nose tingle when I huff it.