black phoenix reviews, part 4ish!
Sep. 19th, 2014 04:40 pmScent reviews: Defutata, Ultraviolet, Grandmother of Ghosts, Druid, Smokestack, Port-au-Prince, Ogun, New Orleans. I'm finding my reviews are less reviews and more 'very strong impressions of the scene the scent forms in my head to describe itself'.
( here reviews be )
( here reviews be )
First set of BPAL reviews!
Jul. 26th, 2014 05:15 pmReviews of varying insight. Miskatonic University, Lights of Men's Lives, Olokun, Alecto. I am reviewing these at the behest of a friend I may have lured into BPAL. Oops. Anyway, I talked these reviews at her, and I'm collating them here. I get a lot of imagery off scents, I'm finding. Vivid, vivid imagery.
( reviews under the cut! )
Vivid!
( reviews under the cut! )
Vivid!
Collating from my notes the past few days.
One day I was getting daring and I put on two Serge Lutens (Arabie, Ambre Sultan) and two Etat Libre d'Orange (Rien, Jasmin et Cigarette). Another day I put on Guerlain (Jicky), Piguet(Bandit), CB I Hate Perfume (Black Water March) and Bvlgari (Black).
Short reviews of all eight are under the cut.
( Read more... )
One day I was getting daring and I put on two Serge Lutens (Arabie, Ambre Sultan) and two Etat Libre d'Orange (Rien, Jasmin et Cigarette). Another day I put on Guerlain (Jicky), Piguet(Bandit), CB I Hate Perfume (Black Water March) and Bvlgari (Black).
Short reviews of all eight are under the cut.
( Read more... )
So some of my samples of alcohol-based perfumes arrived.
I was nervous about this because I've had exactly one good experience with department store perfume in my life, and for the last ten years at least I've mostly held a scarf or shawl over my nose and fast-fast-fast walked through the perfume department holding my breath until I'm clear of the Wall of Death by Scents.
And then I wheeze and cough and gag. A lot. That's if I can bring myself to go past a perfume counter at all, and most days I really can't because the wall of burning eye pain is just too strong.
So I was nervous. But I ended up placing a pretty enormous order for samples fro Surrender to Chance, reasoning that a) a 1/2 ml or 1ml wasn't a lot, and b) I could apply as little as I liked, and c) it could be INTERESTING, damnit. Shipping to Australia via USPS priority international took about two weeks. Well-packed -- beautifully packed! -- nothing broken, I've placed another order for a variety of more scents that I've seen mentioned around DW/LJ.
Today so far I've tried Serge Lutens' La Myrrhe on one wrist and, frankly, Etat Libre d'Orange's Secretions Magnifiques on the other.
( further notes on those )
And now I put Andy Tauer's L'Air du Desert Marocain on another patch of skin and OH MY GOD I AM IN LOVE.
( I LOVE THIS )
( comme des garcon's black is amazing, aka rydra is a rec genius )
I am so tempted to buy massive decants of all three of these. They are so warm and wonderful on my skin. I will hold off until I drain the sample vials, but holy shit I will totally wear the hell out of these three. (Not all at the same time again, though. They really deserve to be worn individually.)
SO GOOD, YOU GUYS. SO GOOD. I am so glad I took a chance on buying an array of recs from![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rydra_wong's posts and comments, because holy shit I am learning so much and these are SO GREAT.
I was nervous about this because I've had exactly one good experience with department store perfume in my life, and for the last ten years at least I've mostly held a scarf or shawl over my nose and fast-fast-fast walked through the perfume department holding my breath until I'm clear of the Wall of Death by Scents.
And then I wheeze and cough and gag. A lot. That's if I can bring myself to go past a perfume counter at all, and most days I really can't because the wall of burning eye pain is just too strong.
So I was nervous. But I ended up placing a pretty enormous order for samples fro Surrender to Chance, reasoning that a) a 1/2 ml or 1ml wasn't a lot, and b) I could apply as little as I liked, and c) it could be INTERESTING, damnit. Shipping to Australia via USPS priority international took about two weeks. Well-packed -- beautifully packed! -- nothing broken, I've placed another order for a variety of more scents that I've seen mentioned around DW/LJ.
Today so far I've tried Serge Lutens' La Myrrhe on one wrist and, frankly, Etat Libre d'Orange's Secretions Magnifiques on the other.
( further notes on those )
And now I put Andy Tauer's L'Air du Desert Marocain on another patch of skin and OH MY GOD I AM IN LOVE.
( I LOVE THIS )
( comme des garcon's black is amazing, aka rydra is a rec genius )
I am so tempted to buy massive decants of all three of these. They are so warm and wonderful on my skin. I will hold off until I drain the sample vials, but holy shit I will totally wear the hell out of these three. (Not all at the same time again, though. They really deserve to be worn individually.)
SO GOOD, YOU GUYS. SO GOOD. I am so glad I took a chance on buying an array of recs from
rydra_wong's posts and comments, because holy shit I am learning so much and these are SO GREAT.First set of perfume reviews (oils).
Jul. 1st, 2014 12:56 pmFirst package of scent samples arrived. The package was VERY fragrant! I was a little surprised at how fragrant, even though none of the imps were broken (yay!) and all packed very well (yay!). I am also surprised by how hard the caps are to gently take off the bottles -- it seems like you either yank them and splash a bit on your hands, or you don't yank -- and it pops out, you get startled, and some gets on your hands anyway. synecdochic called this imp spit, I think. NOW I KNOW WHY.
So this set is non-BPAL, because I figure focusing on only one producer of anything is a bad life plan. There's Insalata Nocturna from Haus of Gloi, Sluagh from Sidhe Creations, Morgan le Fey from Possets, and Bastet from Nocturne Alchemy. Smaller houses and as far as I can tell from internet reviews, generally excellent.
Looking at reviewing two scents a day and I don't want to post about only two perfumes at a time for the moment (may change my mind soon and just perfume-blog every day or something, just to get into the rhythm of blogging about ANYTHING), so here's two sets of two.
( Morgan le Fey )
( Bastet )
And then today's reviews:
( Insalata Nocturna )
( Sluagh )
synecdochic called this imp spit, I think. NOW I KNOW WHY.So this set is non-BPAL, because I figure focusing on only one producer of anything is a bad life plan. There's Insalata Nocturna from Haus of Gloi, Sluagh from Sidhe Creations, Morgan le Fey from Possets, and Bastet from Nocturne Alchemy. Smaller houses and as far as I can tell from internet reviews, generally excellent.
Looking at reviewing two scents a day and I don't want to post about only two perfumes at a time for the moment (may change my mind soon and just perfume-blog every day or something, just to get into the rhythm of blogging about ANYTHING), so here's two sets of two.
( Morgan le Fey )
( Bastet )
And then today's reviews:
( Insalata Nocturna )
( Sluagh )
So I appear to have been sucked into at least giving perfume fandom a shot. I have imps on the way from an Aussie Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs fan, and an array of samples from Surrender to Chance also in the post. This is how I fandom. It is very very good that sample sites exist, because some of these perfumes look ... expensive, and this is one of those cases where I can't just go to FFN and browse through Author's Favourites. Well, I can, for reviews. The reviews are really, really interesting, actually, in the ways they resemble fandom rec posts for fanfic and in the ways they don't.
Which brings me to: This issynecdochic and rydra_wong's fault. Totally. Absolutely. Theirrrrr faaaaaaault. I am hoping it will be a delicious and wonderful fault to hold against them. (Most of the Surrender to Chance samples are from reading Rydra's excellent 'guide to perfume categories' posts. It just all sounds so interesting.)
I don't know either! But the reviews sound so intriguing, and I am loving the perfume blogs I am reading.
Yes, this feels weird.
Generally I am an unscented-but-for-deodorant ugh-perfume-counters sort of person (very little is as offputting to me as that wall of scent) but I have a memory from around 1999-2001, where my father and I were spritzing ourselves with random things in Harris Scarfe, and there was this one perfume that smelled like it had potential on the cardstock. Potential. It was nice, but it mostly smelled like potential. And I remember very clearly spraying it on my arm, just a quick spritz, and then putting my nose in it and discovering something incredible. It was ... I don't even know what the perfume was. It was around that time period, the glass was frosted, I'm quite sure it was by Shiseido, or at least at their counter. It might have been a squat round bottle, or a tall one. But definitely frosted. And it was amazing. It was incredible. It was the best thing I have ever smelled on my skin, bar none. It was better than hot chocolate and better than my mother's spaghetti. It was amazing, and it was on my skin. It didn't take to my father at all the same way, that I remember, but on me that sense of Potential turned into Wonderful.
What I mean is: I know it is possible.
And now that I have an array of different things to try, I will try them, and see what happens! I am thinking of reviewing everything and posting batches of reviews here, which ... may temporarily turn this DW into a perfume blog. I will definitely put reviews behind a cut. On the upside, it will mean that I actually use this account some more, which would be a good thing. I've missed DW, but I don't always feel like I know what to talk about. This is a ready-made thing to talk about!
It should at the very least be interesting for me. I've always been a bit sensitive to smells, but I know I like interesting smells. It just happens that I ordered a lot of interesting. And really -- switching between a range of BPAL oil-based and a range of commercial alcohol-based perfumes should at least give my nose a crash course in smelling things. I'm rather excited by the idea, truth be told. Not that I think I'll ever be one of those people buying full bottles of anything unless I find something I can love love love love and wear repeatedly the same way I've played certain songs on repeat for ten years now -- the prices make me blanch, good grief -- but I think I will have fun. It will be nice to have fun with my nose for once, rather than ignoring this entire sensory organ I've got.
Let's just hope that my reviews don't always stay at the "something is happen but I don't know what exactly" stage. I know at the least they will turn out to be embarrassingly personal, probably -- I know I'm one of those people who taste/feel/echo scents as much as I smell them, which is part of the problem I have with smelling a lot of perfumes all at once. It's like association-o-rama in the form of a concussed rhino. "I dunno there is a horn on my face and I think I have feet I DUNNO!"
We'll see what happens when the first lot arrives! I even have, like, notepad files set up with everything HTMLised for posting reviews, arranged in alphabetical order by house (alcohol-based) or collection (BPAL). I think this feeling is what we could call excitement!
Which brings me to: This is
synecdochic and rydra_wong's fault. Totally. Absolutely. Theirrrrr faaaaaaault. I am hoping it will be a delicious and wonderful fault to hold against them. (Most of the Surrender to Chance samples are from reading Rydra's excellent 'guide to perfume categories' posts. It just all sounds so interesting.)I don't know either! But the reviews sound so intriguing, and I am loving the perfume blogs I am reading.
Yes, this feels weird.
Generally I am an unscented-but-for-deodorant ugh-perfume-counters sort of person (very little is as offputting to me as that wall of scent) but I have a memory from around 1999-2001, where my father and I were spritzing ourselves with random things in Harris Scarfe, and there was this one perfume that smelled like it had potential on the cardstock. Potential. It was nice, but it mostly smelled like potential. And I remember very clearly spraying it on my arm, just a quick spritz, and then putting my nose in it and discovering something incredible. It was ... I don't even know what the perfume was. It was around that time period, the glass was frosted, I'm quite sure it was by Shiseido, or at least at their counter. It might have been a squat round bottle, or a tall one. But definitely frosted. And it was amazing. It was incredible. It was the best thing I have ever smelled on my skin, bar none. It was better than hot chocolate and better than my mother's spaghetti. It was amazing, and it was on my skin. It didn't take to my father at all the same way, that I remember, but on me that sense of Potential turned into Wonderful.
What I mean is: I know it is possible.
And now that I have an array of different things to try, I will try them, and see what happens! I am thinking of reviewing everything and posting batches of reviews here, which ... may temporarily turn this DW into a perfume blog. I will definitely put reviews behind a cut. On the upside, it will mean that I actually use this account some more, which would be a good thing. I've missed DW, but I don't always feel like I know what to talk about. This is a ready-made thing to talk about!
It should at the very least be interesting for me. I've always been a bit sensitive to smells, but I know I like interesting smells. It just happens that I ordered a lot of interesting. And really -- switching between a range of BPAL oil-based and a range of commercial alcohol-based perfumes should at least give my nose a crash course in smelling things. I'm rather excited by the idea, truth be told. Not that I think I'll ever be one of those people buying full bottles of anything unless I find something I can love love love love and wear repeatedly the same way I've played certain songs on repeat for ten years now -- the prices make me blanch, good grief -- but I think I will have fun. It will be nice to have fun with my nose for once, rather than ignoring this entire sensory organ I've got.
Let's just hope that my reviews don't always stay at the "something is happen but I don't know what exactly" stage. I know at the least they will turn out to be embarrassingly personal, probably -- I know I'm one of those people who taste/feel/echo scents as much as I smell them, which is part of the problem I have with smelling a lot of perfumes all at once. It's like association-o-rama in the form of a concussed rhino. "I dunno there is a horn on my face and I think I have feet I DUNNO!"
We'll see what happens when the first lot arrives! I even have, like, notepad files set up with everything HTMLised for posting reviews, arranged in alphabetical order by house (alcohol-based) or collection (BPAL). I think this feeling is what we could call excitement!
