Weekly Free-For-All

[synecdochic]

(I might move this around in the week a few times until I work out when it works for me to post these.)

This post is a free-for-all for people to:

a) post links to perfume-related content they posted elsewhere (on or off DW)
b) talk about anything they want to talk about that isn't big enough for a full post
c) socialize and hang out without worrying about "off topic"
d) or anything else that comes to mind!

Whatcha wearing today? (Me: BPAL's "Brimstone", which I am absolutely perplexed by. I can't decide if it smells amazing or hideous on me.)

Comments

[thatyourefuse]

I have been smelling things, and blogging them, and completely forgetting to crosspost.

Rochas Femme (reformulated)

Frederic Malle Carnal Flower

Jean Desprez Bal a Versailes [!!!!!]

Penhaligon's Amaranthine

Overall, one smash hit and one that would've been really quite good if it hadn't come straight after the smash hit, which is not bad odds.

[thatyourefuse]

Also, I just broke my "no new purchases" resolution because a money transfer came through earlier than expected, during a 15% coupon code sale at Surrender to Chance.

... I bought Giorgio.

and Poison

and Kouros

They're going to have to ship this in a hazmat bag.

[lunabee34]

Tell me more about this vaginal smell that you are noticing. /total newbie

*chin hands*

[musyc]

Oooh, today I am ... well, I'm on scent #3. XD BPAL's Croquet and Bewitched were my first attempts, and they were nice but not wow. Then I tried Dirty and OH MY GOD, I wanted to lick my own wrists. It was amazing and it's all the delicious smells and it might actually approach my feelings towards Storm Moon for fantastic yumminess delight. I put it on and was instantly happy. Like, bounce around the house singing smiling like a loon happy.

Unfortunately, it's one of those scents that BPAL went creative-writer on the description, so there's no scents listed. The forums reviews lean towards plumeria. Anyone have their own notes as to what notes are in Dirty? It's definitely something I like enough to hunt similar smells.

[synecdochic]

Sarah and I tried Dirty this week! My money is on plumeria, white musk, and orris, and I'm iffy on whether there's also pear. (I was amping the plumeria and white musk so loudly that I couldn't ID the rest.) There's at least one other thing in there (it's whatever note that goes peppery on me after about 45 minutes), but I couldn't figure it out.

The forums seem to think Shanghai and Embalming Fluid are similar!

[lunabee34]

Yeah, I get that it's all about site aesthetics, but I do wish that some of the descriptions were less of a poem and more of an ingredients list. LOL

[sathari]

BPAL's Jezebel! I'm finding it's helping me write the character whose signature scent it is for me (see icon). I talked a little about how it smells on me elsewhere. In a less synaesthetic way, I get notes of honey-but-not-sugar (definitely not a food scent) and sweet citrus--- not the acidic/sharp sort but sweet. Maybe a hint of talcum, but not much, which is good because I hate the smell of baby powder; possibly because of tactile associations, when I smell it I can taste it, like I'd gotten powder in my mouth, yuck. This scent is also pretty well-behaved on me in that it just sort of dies off, rather than doing the "where did that come from?" thing that can be kind of bad if you wear a perfume when going out-and-about in the world and it suddenly turns into something unpleasant-smelling on you. Jezebel doesn't always have the staying power I would like, but it's consistent as it fades.

Speaking of creative inspirations, anybody wanna talk TAL? AKA Twilight Alchemy Lab, BPAL's "utility scent" division, where they do oils that are meant to Get Results in a more spiritual way as opposed to being worn for smells-good purposes. (I'm being as general in my word choice as I can in the hopes of not tripping over anyone's belief system--- apologies if I failed!)

[lunabee34]

What's on your mind re: TAL? I've been scouring the site since my order, and I found that part of the BPAL line really interesting. Have you used anything from there?

totally random things

[teaotter]

I failed my sales resistance and ordered the Nu-Be sampler set from Luckyscent. Anyone else? I'd love to compare experiences.

Re: totally random things

[lunabee34]

I'm trying to google and can't quite come up with what you've ordered. :) What sort of scents are in the set?

Re: totally random things

[lunabee34]

Or possibly I am an idiot. I think I found it now. LOL

They're all element names, yes?

[byzantienne]

I am wearing Mandarine Mandarin again, because its efficacy on me apparently depends on where I am in my menstrual cycle, and sometimes I can smell like greenstick-celery-orange-ritual-fire ALL DAY (and sometimes it just goes to orange caramel.)

[thatyourefuse]

You're about the third person I've heard say something like that (although not about Mandarine Mandarin specifically). Interesting.

[minim_calibre]

I'm wearing Dune (parfum) layered with Jicky (vintage parfum), though it's less overtly sexual smelling on me today than it was yesterday, which I expect means I under Jickyed it. I can't get over how well these two completely different things manage to merge. Or that there's a version of Dune that can be layered at all, for that matter: in EDT form, Dune overpowers everything, but the extrait stays far closer to the skin.

Anyhow, the warm/salt/something of Dune accents the animalic aspects of Jicky (which, by itself, tend to get lost on my skin), and the bergamot sharpness of Jicky adds an edge to the softness of Dune, and everything's good, nothing hurts.

I have all these random vials I need to try, and I'm fixating on this particular mix instead.

[lunabee34]

I have been randomly reading perfume posts by the members of this comm, and I'm pretty sure I read a review of Jicky by you and/or some other members. It sounds fascinating. I suspect I would not like it, but who know? It sounds very different from any perfume I've ever smelled.

[lunabee34]

Since I found this comm I've been thinking about the perfumes I've worn over the years.

The first I can remember wearing was Exclamation! Oh, hello 1988. Internet tells me that this perfume has apricot notes and peach and other stuff, but I don't remember a lick of that. What I do remember is that it smelled so divine on all my friends but turned into this icky icky BO smell on me. So sad, baby Lorraine.

In high school I started wearing Tresor by Lancome, and though I don't wear it now, every time I smell it, I am almost viscerally thrown back in time to my teens. I started my first sexual relationship at that time, and that smell is connected with all that as well for me.

In college, I started wearing Clinique Happy. My then boyfriend now husband wore it too. And we had the body wash and the lotion and just smelled like yummo lemons and grapefruit all day (which okay, apparently there's no lemon according to the note description; but I have always smelled lemons).

In grad school, Josh bought me some Kate Spade Beauty. It was such a sweet gift as he'd seen me randomly sniff it and say that I liked it while in a store, but ultimately not a perfume that worked for either of it. It's just too sweet and floral. I will probably be offering this to a good home on a give-away post at some point. It's lovely but not for us.

Then I pretty much stopped wearing perfume and started doing Bath and Body Works shower gel + lotion + body spray, most notably in White Citrus, which Josh also uses sometimes; Aveda's Stress Fix Line (lavender + clary sage); and Fresh Lemon shower gel which is sour lemony and glorious.

So that's my perfume history. I would love to hear about anyone else's history in perfumes. :)

[minim_calibre]

Oh, gosh! Exclamation! Make a statement without saying a word! I keep wanting to smell that again.

Apparently, it has the same nose behind it as Tresor.

My history, it being the 1980s, started with those horrible Designer Impostors scents. I mean, discounting Jean Nate and Love's Baby Soft. I think my first Adult Real Perfume was White Shoulders, which my mother had, and I loved, and was therefore given for Christmas one year. After that, it just got random, because that was when it was far easier to find perfumes in the thrift stores, so I'd grab whatever caught my fancy there, and then whatever sample vials were around the house, which is how I wound up with a strong affection for both Paloma Picasso and Fendi.

I fell in love with Dune in college. A friend who wore Poison had a sample and gave it to me, and it was love at first smell. Same for Fahrenheit, which I love enough to never associate with anyone I've convinced to wear it. (I wear it myself sometimes, too, which helped that.)

Then there was that period of my life where I spent a lot of time waiting out traffic in a mall with a really good fragrance selection during a time where most of my income was disposable income. So many fragrance mistakes during those years. So very, very many. Oh, so many.

Of course, it did result in me discovering Annick Goutal, and also in me finding my One True Standard, L'Heure Bleue, so I suppose the WHAT WAS I THINKING??? of some of Those Other Scents was worth it. (Westwood Boudoir, I am looking at you.)

[cyprinella]

Not wearing anything because it was a hike and garden day, but I managed to BUY ALL THE SAMPLES last night. Like 75% of the Comme des Garcons samples at STC and a random assortment of ambers suggested on other forums as akin to my favorite (only) perfume from my early 20s.

I really need to come up with a storage solution for all these little vials.

[synecdochic]

We use pipette tip boxes (my wife's a forensic DNA analyst and they go through dozens of the things) but I've seen other people using ammo boxes as well.

[pebblerocker]

My essential oils have been dispatched today! rydra_wong gave me some recs to add to my small collection; I ordered cedarwood, vetiver, benzoin and frankincense, and at the last minute added patchouli as well since it was cheap. I gather that patchouli is widely despised, but I liked it when I sniffed a tester once.

If nothing else, I will learn some new smells and drive moths away from my winter woollens.

[lunabee34]

That sounds like fun. :)

[niqaeli]

I'm not wearing any perfume but I did shower with my preferred scented soap, which is an Avocado-Birch/Eucalyptus shea butter soap by The Blue Ridge Soap Shed, which is faintly masculine and smells fantastic on me. And it sticks pretty well to my skin, without having an excessive throw, since I showered with it last night and have gone out and then also done five hours of massage therapy since then.

(Also, I am discovering, from poking at the web-site, that it does not appear to be available in and of itself, as opposed to as part of a sampler. *CRANKY*)

[synecdochic]

Oh, man, I hate it when you find a scent you love but the company that makes it doesn't think of it as worth selling separately. My shaving cream is like that -- Black Oak by Basin White. Smells amazing on me, wish like hell I could get it in a lotion in addition to the shaving cream (or a sugar scrub, or, you know, any of the rest of Basin's products), but they only make it in the shaving cream and all their other products are all only available in floral or fruity scents. Grump.

[feldman]

My day will involve car rides with a smoker, so I've daubed BPAL's Antikythera Mechanism in the cleavage to turn the stale smoke smell into something more woodsy tobacco palatable.

[lunabee34]

How did it work?

[dejla]

I was running I-don't-want-to-tell-you-how-late this morning, so I had only the remnants of Femme on my skin.

Remembered in time that I had straight patchouli and Blue Grass in my desk and decided, since I've never mixed scents, that I would mix them.

This may be a disaster, but I'm in one of those moods.....

[lunabee34]

How did it turn out?

[kaberett]

Yesterday: Penhaligon's Opus 1870.

Today: ridiculous rose-and-spices shower gel (Malabah), over which ridiculous rose-and-different-spices edp (Vaara). And possibly I am going to end up wearing Endymion to bed, because I seem to want comforting. Hmm.

[lunabee34]

So you like roses? LOL That sounds like it smells wonderful.

[cirque]

I'm wearing Soap & Glory's Original Pink. It's a lovely combo of citrus and floral and it's such a calming scent to wear ♥

[lunabee34]

I love the instructions for the perfume. Spray it on and then spray it some more. LOL

It sounds like it smells lovely.