BPAL samples
May. 23rd, 2023 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitI bought some BPAL samples recently and the first batch of reviews is below. I tested everything on me and on paper, and if there were important differences, I've noted it.
In many cases these are scents I've tried before, about a dozen years ago when I was big into BPAL for a while. I wanted to see whether my changing body chemistry due to testosterone therapy has made a difference to how they smell on me. (Spoiler: sometimes the scent seems drastically different, but I don't know whether that's me, or a reformulation, or the fact that these are new samples and not the sometimes quite thoroughly aged ones I had before, or whether my tastes have just altered.)
Victome de Valmont, Whitechapel, Jolly Roger, Aelopile, Black Forest, Satyr, Absinthe, Chimera, Goblin, Tombstone, Anubis, Black Tower, Incantation, Sloth below.
Vicomte de Valmont
BPAL notes: Based on an 18th century gentleman's cologne: ambergris, white musk, white sandalwood, Spanish moss, orange blossom, three mints, jasmine, rose geranium and a spike of rosemary.
The first BPAL I ever tried, so it seemed fitting to make it the first one I retried. Unfortunately, I didn't like it either time. On me, an initial burst of lemon cleanser turns into a non-sweet floral with the rosemary, orange blossom, and mint prominent. It then opens up with some warm woodiness and at that point I was really liking it for the blend of dry-ish florals. But then, alas, the jasmine kind of takes over everything for about half an hour, then the whole thing fades into just a creamy musk. (I don't hate jasmine! I just prefer it a bit tempered.)
Whitechapel
BPAL notes: White musk, lime, lilac, citron.
Back in the day, this was my favorite BPAL scent. My memory is of lime that actually stuck around, and restrained florals. On retrying, it was more floral than I remembered, very heavy on the lilac at first, but the lime does come out after an unusual delay to help balance things. But Whitechapel never becomes lime-centric as I remember it being. The musk makes itself felt after an hour or so. So it's not brutally sweet after that first hour, but I don't love it the way I used to. I'm considering making up a single-note lime oil to layer over fragrances where my body destroys citrus top notes too soon, and this would be a good candidate for that treatment.
Jolly Roger
BPAL notes: Sea spray, leather, bay rum, dry woods.
I liked this a lot in the past, and now I like it even more. On me it's crisp, salty, fairly dry, with some warmth (and after a while a whiff of clove and the barest hint of sweetness), and overall just a lovely, simple, old-fashioned men's fragrance. It is what it says it's going to be, and after a lot of disappointing experiences with both BPAL and fancy niche fragrances, that's kind of refreshing.
Aelopile
BPAL notes: Amber, citrus, labdanum, verbena, cedar, and oud.
Long after steampunk has ceased to be cool, I'm still easily seduced by that aesthetic, which is why I ordered Aelopile. Tested on paper it's got lots of citrus, with warm wood and the amber not excessively sweet. On me I get an incense-y quality, and otherwise a very "blended" kind of scent where nothing much stands out, apart from an interesting dry citrus-peel note. I worried when the labdanum started to appear, because labdanum is often not a happy note for me (Etat Libre d'Orange's Marquis de Sade, whose only listed notes are labdanum and cistus, is possibly the worst thing I've ever purposely smelled). But apart from some greasy hints the labdanum never got too noticeable, and interestingly at this stage Aelopile started to smell spicy despite no spice notes listed. (Maybe that was some trick of the labdanum?) However, it all went super sweet within an hour and stayed that way.
Black Forest
BPAL notes: Ambergris, black musk, juniper, cypress
On paper there isn't much but some pine, wood, and pepperiness, which fades quickly. Surprisingly, Black Forest lasts better and is more interesting on my perfume-destroying skin. Freshly applied it's a genuinely dark scent, almost smoky, with a furry and almost "doggy" quality (in a good way) from the musk. Over the first few minutes the pine ramps up, along with an intense spiciness. Then comes a honeyed note, and by that point Black Forest isn't nearly as black as I was hoping it would stay. The sweetness shifts up and down over time, and it's never excessively sweet, but the interesting beginning turns into a scent that's . . . nice enough. Some spice, some skin musk, some sweetness.
Satyr
BPAL notes: None listed, just the description: "A ferociously masculine scent: sexual, vigorous, and truly wild."
On paper it's quite sweet, neither wild nor especially masculine. I'm guessing black musk, lime, jasmine, sandalwood and some other woods I can't distinguish. On me, initially, there's less lime, more sweetness, and a lighter floral like neroli that tones down the jasmine a bit. Then frankincense (about the last note I would associate with wild sexiness) comes in and takes over for several hours; when it fades, there's not much left but sweet musk. Meh.
Absinthe
BPAL notes: Wormwood essence, light mints, cardamom, anise, hyssop, lemon
On paper this is medicinal in a good way, very herbal with of course a licorice note from the anise, and more lemon than I would have expected given that the copy calls it a "bare hint." On me, freshly applied, there's lots of mint and a bracing herbal thing that I'm guessing is the wormwood, plus a pungent lemon just on the right side of turning into lemon cleanser. It smells green to me, which is maybe just the power of association, but in any case, in this early stage it's wonderfully bracing, like a good aftershave. It gets rounder over the first few minutes with the coriander and the anise (but not as much anise as on paper) emerging, and this nice balanced point is my favorite stage of Absinthe. However, it turns out the anise was just taking its time--before long it's so dominant it just about wipes out every other note. The lemon and mint hold out better on paper, so this might be one for a scent locket, because I do really like it before it becomes 99% anise.
Chimera
BPAL notes: cinnamon, myrrh, honeysuckle, copal.
Another old favorite that I found to be much different than I remembered. On paper this smells like a honey-lemon candy, with almost no cinnamon or myrrh. On me it's somehow even sweeter, and there's a bit of cinnamon but virtually no myrrh at all, where my old sample had lots of gorgeous myrrh, hot cinnamon, and resinous copal to keep things getting candy-ish. A bit of myrrh does finally come out hours later, but not as much as I wanted.
Goblin
BPAL notes: coconut, patchouli, benzoin
This was a free sample, which I attempted to test with an open mind despite not being a fan of patchouli or, in perfumes, of coconut. It smelled as I expected: suntan lotion and dirt.
Tombstone
BPAL notes: vanilla, balsam, sassafrass, Virginia cedar
On paper, it's VANILLA and root beer, with little dab of balsam struggling unsuccessfully to create some balance. On me the root beer note is stronger, but also more medicinal (this is a good thing), and with the nice dry cedar gradually emerging. For an hour or so I had hopes of it overcoming the dreaded BPAL sweetness, but then it turned into pure sweet vanilla.
Anubis
BPAL notes: Myrrh, storax, balsam, embalming herbs
Lots of myrrh, which is great because I love myrrh, with the storax bringing a surprisingly floral, lilac-y note. I love lilac too despite its sweetness (it's probably my favorite flower), but I'm not sure the combination 100% works. At first there's also a sharp, herbal note that helps hold everything together, but over time that fades and the perfume becomes more and more honeyed. Honey isn't listed as a note but oh boy is it present--I guess understandably, given the perfume's theme, but not really what I wanted. Everything fades against all that honey, and the result is once again too sweet for me.
Black Tower
BPAL notes: white sandalwood, ambergris, wet ozone, galbanum, leather, ebony, teak, burnt grasses, English ivy, red wine.
BPAL's typically fanciful written description talks a lot about the coldness and desolateness of this scent, which isn't my experience at all. AT ALL.
On paper, Black Tower is sweeter and creamier (ambergris?) than I entirely wanted, but with lots of wood and a bit of one of those leather accords that conveys leather without actually smelling leathery. There's a hint of ivyish greenness that's almost floral, too.
On me, it's much more wine-y than on paper: rich, dark, and restrained by some wood and that ivyish greenness from becoming excessively sweet. It's definitely a warm rather than cold scent on me, though an ozone-y note does emerge after a while. It does evoke cold winter rain, but by contrast: this is rain experienced indoors, from over a cup of mulled wine in a cozy library in an ivy-covered country house. Black Tower hangs on like this for about four hours, and then fades into what I think of as a typical indistinctly-sweet BPAL drydown. I do quite like the mulled-wine phase, but I'd like to try the scent I thought Black Tower would be.
Incantation
BPAL notes: Vetiver, dark woods, burnt black sandalwood, lemon rind.
At first this is more lemon and wood than vetiver on me, which takes it towards furniture-polish territory, but it's saved by such vetiver as there is, plus an interesting green herbal quality, like cut parsley stems. It fades down quickly into (unburnt) sandalwood, and for a few minutes I thought it was going to be one of those scents that vanishes on me in half an hour. And then the vetiver comes surging back, bringing some smoky notes with it. By about an hour in it's vetiver and lightly scorched wood and that interesting dry lemon somehow hanging on. After a few hours it's just vetiver, but there are worse fates and I like the earlier stages a lot.
Sloth
BPAL notes: Vetiver, black myrrh.
Vetiver and myrrh are my two favorite notes, so Sloth could hardly miss with me. It's pretty much what it says on the tin: mostly vetiver at first, then a gradual emergence of the myrrh to a nice balance. Google tells me "black myrrh" can mean one of two things: either a lower grade of myrrh that's deeper and more herbaceous than higher-grade myrrh, or another name for the resin of the styrax benzoin tree. From the smell, I'd say this is the lower grade myrrh rather than benzoin, and if so I'm all in favor of lower-grade myrrh. (I suspect the difference is like the old Grade A and Grade B for US maple syrup, where grade B was darker, more flavorful, and entirely to be preferred.)
After a couple of hours a nice salty quality comes along to add a bit more interest, and I like the result very much indeed. Over the drydown the salt and vetiver slowly fade until just myrrh is left, and it lasts and lasts (I could still faintly smell it 24 hours later, having taken a shower in the interim). My favorite of the BPALs so far.
I still have a lot of samples to test, but I'm coming to a few conclusions. They may not be applicable to people who aren't me, but here they are:
1) The more hyperbolic BPAL's promotional copy, the less interesting the scent. Be especially cautious of scents that claim to be wild, sinister, or ferocious.
2) BPAL will almost always be sweeter than it claims. This is not just a weirdness of my skin, because there are scents (even BPALs) that don't turn sweet on me. BPAL just has perfumers who really like sweetness.
3) BPAL does not do subtle and complex very well. (Given the number of new scents they crank out every year, it's not surprising.) Combined with my skin's tendency to wreak havoc with subtle complexities, ostensibly subtle and complex BPALs will fail on me.
4) Conversely, BPAL does straightforward scents very well, and sometimes with a surprising twist (as in the saltiness that come up in Sloth). Reliable old-fashioned classics as the best products of the infamous Goth perfumery? I guess so.
I'd love to hear what people who've sampled BPAL more widely think. I know my experience is especially limited because my scent preference is for unisex-to-masculine, and I don't really like sweet gourmands or many florals.
Part of the reason I ordered all these BPALs, apart from nostalgic curiosity, was to see whether there really was a difference between their work and that of fancier niche perfumers. Regarding price, there almost isn't one (if you work out the price per milliliter, BPAL is in the same price range as most niche perfumes, it's just that BPALs bottles are 5 ml and most other houses' bottles are 50 or more). But I do think, and I say this knowing my own deep ignorance of perfume, that there's a real difference in complexity and interest between my favorite BPALs and my favorite other scents (e.g. Beaufort's Coeur de Noir, Tauer's L'Air du Desert Marocain, even MDCI's Invasion Barbare).
Having said that, there's certainly a place for BPAL in my life. As I've mentioned, I have perfume-unfriendly skin, and some straightforward BPALs give me very good results.
In many cases these are scents I've tried before, about a dozen years ago when I was big into BPAL for a while. I wanted to see whether my changing body chemistry due to testosterone therapy has made a difference to how they smell on me. (Spoiler: sometimes the scent seems drastically different, but I don't know whether that's me, or a reformulation, or the fact that these are new samples and not the sometimes quite thoroughly aged ones I had before, or whether my tastes have just altered.)
Victome de Valmont, Whitechapel, Jolly Roger, Aelopile, Black Forest, Satyr, Absinthe, Chimera, Goblin, Tombstone, Anubis, Black Tower, Incantation, Sloth below.
Vicomte de Valmont
BPAL notes: Based on an 18th century gentleman's cologne: ambergris, white musk, white sandalwood, Spanish moss, orange blossom, three mints, jasmine, rose geranium and a spike of rosemary.
The first BPAL I ever tried, so it seemed fitting to make it the first one I retried. Unfortunately, I didn't like it either time. On me, an initial burst of lemon cleanser turns into a non-sweet floral with the rosemary, orange blossom, and mint prominent. It then opens up with some warm woodiness and at that point I was really liking it for the blend of dry-ish florals. But then, alas, the jasmine kind of takes over everything for about half an hour, then the whole thing fades into just a creamy musk. (I don't hate jasmine! I just prefer it a bit tempered.)
Whitechapel
BPAL notes: White musk, lime, lilac, citron.
Back in the day, this was my favorite BPAL scent. My memory is of lime that actually stuck around, and restrained florals. On retrying, it was more floral than I remembered, very heavy on the lilac at first, but the lime does come out after an unusual delay to help balance things. But Whitechapel never becomes lime-centric as I remember it being. The musk makes itself felt after an hour or so. So it's not brutally sweet after that first hour, but I don't love it the way I used to. I'm considering making up a single-note lime oil to layer over fragrances where my body destroys citrus top notes too soon, and this would be a good candidate for that treatment.
Jolly Roger
BPAL notes: Sea spray, leather, bay rum, dry woods.
I liked this a lot in the past, and now I like it even more. On me it's crisp, salty, fairly dry, with some warmth (and after a while a whiff of clove and the barest hint of sweetness), and overall just a lovely, simple, old-fashioned men's fragrance. It is what it says it's going to be, and after a lot of disappointing experiences with both BPAL and fancy niche fragrances, that's kind of refreshing.
Aelopile
BPAL notes: Amber, citrus, labdanum, verbena, cedar, and oud.
Long after steampunk has ceased to be cool, I'm still easily seduced by that aesthetic, which is why I ordered Aelopile. Tested on paper it's got lots of citrus, with warm wood and the amber not excessively sweet. On me I get an incense-y quality, and otherwise a very "blended" kind of scent where nothing much stands out, apart from an interesting dry citrus-peel note. I worried when the labdanum started to appear, because labdanum is often not a happy note for me (Etat Libre d'Orange's Marquis de Sade, whose only listed notes are labdanum and cistus, is possibly the worst thing I've ever purposely smelled). But apart from some greasy hints the labdanum never got too noticeable, and interestingly at this stage Aelopile started to smell spicy despite no spice notes listed. (Maybe that was some trick of the labdanum?) However, it all went super sweet within an hour and stayed that way.
Black Forest
BPAL notes: Ambergris, black musk, juniper, cypress
On paper there isn't much but some pine, wood, and pepperiness, which fades quickly. Surprisingly, Black Forest lasts better and is more interesting on my perfume-destroying skin. Freshly applied it's a genuinely dark scent, almost smoky, with a furry and almost "doggy" quality (in a good way) from the musk. Over the first few minutes the pine ramps up, along with an intense spiciness. Then comes a honeyed note, and by that point Black Forest isn't nearly as black as I was hoping it would stay. The sweetness shifts up and down over time, and it's never excessively sweet, but the interesting beginning turns into a scent that's . . . nice enough. Some spice, some skin musk, some sweetness.
Satyr
BPAL notes: None listed, just the description: "A ferociously masculine scent: sexual, vigorous, and truly wild."
On paper it's quite sweet, neither wild nor especially masculine. I'm guessing black musk, lime, jasmine, sandalwood and some other woods I can't distinguish. On me, initially, there's less lime, more sweetness, and a lighter floral like neroli that tones down the jasmine a bit. Then frankincense (about the last note I would associate with wild sexiness) comes in and takes over for several hours; when it fades, there's not much left but sweet musk. Meh.
Absinthe
BPAL notes: Wormwood essence, light mints, cardamom, anise, hyssop, lemon
On paper this is medicinal in a good way, very herbal with of course a licorice note from the anise, and more lemon than I would have expected given that the copy calls it a "bare hint." On me, freshly applied, there's lots of mint and a bracing herbal thing that I'm guessing is the wormwood, plus a pungent lemon just on the right side of turning into lemon cleanser. It smells green to me, which is maybe just the power of association, but in any case, in this early stage it's wonderfully bracing, like a good aftershave. It gets rounder over the first few minutes with the coriander and the anise (but not as much anise as on paper) emerging, and this nice balanced point is my favorite stage of Absinthe. However, it turns out the anise was just taking its time--before long it's so dominant it just about wipes out every other note. The lemon and mint hold out better on paper, so this might be one for a scent locket, because I do really like it before it becomes 99% anise.
Chimera
BPAL notes: cinnamon, myrrh, honeysuckle, copal.
Another old favorite that I found to be much different than I remembered. On paper this smells like a honey-lemon candy, with almost no cinnamon or myrrh. On me it's somehow even sweeter, and there's a bit of cinnamon but virtually no myrrh at all, where my old sample had lots of gorgeous myrrh, hot cinnamon, and resinous copal to keep things getting candy-ish. A bit of myrrh does finally come out hours later, but not as much as I wanted.
Goblin
BPAL notes: coconut, patchouli, benzoin
This was a free sample, which I attempted to test with an open mind despite not being a fan of patchouli or, in perfumes, of coconut. It smelled as I expected: suntan lotion and dirt.
Tombstone
BPAL notes: vanilla, balsam, sassafrass, Virginia cedar
On paper, it's VANILLA and root beer, with little dab of balsam struggling unsuccessfully to create some balance. On me the root beer note is stronger, but also more medicinal (this is a good thing), and with the nice dry cedar gradually emerging. For an hour or so I had hopes of it overcoming the dreaded BPAL sweetness, but then it turned into pure sweet vanilla.
Anubis
BPAL notes: Myrrh, storax, balsam, embalming herbs
Lots of myrrh, which is great because I love myrrh, with the storax bringing a surprisingly floral, lilac-y note. I love lilac too despite its sweetness (it's probably my favorite flower), but I'm not sure the combination 100% works. At first there's also a sharp, herbal note that helps hold everything together, but over time that fades and the perfume becomes more and more honeyed. Honey isn't listed as a note but oh boy is it present--I guess understandably, given the perfume's theme, but not really what I wanted. Everything fades against all that honey, and the result is once again too sweet for me.
Black Tower
BPAL notes: white sandalwood, ambergris, wet ozone, galbanum, leather, ebony, teak, burnt grasses, English ivy, red wine.
BPAL's typically fanciful written description talks a lot about the coldness and desolateness of this scent, which isn't my experience at all. AT ALL.
On paper, Black Tower is sweeter and creamier (ambergris?) than I entirely wanted, but with lots of wood and a bit of one of those leather accords that conveys leather without actually smelling leathery. There's a hint of ivyish greenness that's almost floral, too.
On me, it's much more wine-y than on paper: rich, dark, and restrained by some wood and that ivyish greenness from becoming excessively sweet. It's definitely a warm rather than cold scent on me, though an ozone-y note does emerge after a while. It does evoke cold winter rain, but by contrast: this is rain experienced indoors, from over a cup of mulled wine in a cozy library in an ivy-covered country house. Black Tower hangs on like this for about four hours, and then fades into what I think of as a typical indistinctly-sweet BPAL drydown. I do quite like the mulled-wine phase, but I'd like to try the scent I thought Black Tower would be.
Incantation
BPAL notes: Vetiver, dark woods, burnt black sandalwood, lemon rind.
At first this is more lemon and wood than vetiver on me, which takes it towards furniture-polish territory, but it's saved by such vetiver as there is, plus an interesting green herbal quality, like cut parsley stems. It fades down quickly into (unburnt) sandalwood, and for a few minutes I thought it was going to be one of those scents that vanishes on me in half an hour. And then the vetiver comes surging back, bringing some smoky notes with it. By about an hour in it's vetiver and lightly scorched wood and that interesting dry lemon somehow hanging on. After a few hours it's just vetiver, but there are worse fates and I like the earlier stages a lot.
Sloth
BPAL notes: Vetiver, black myrrh.
Vetiver and myrrh are my two favorite notes, so Sloth could hardly miss with me. It's pretty much what it says on the tin: mostly vetiver at first, then a gradual emergence of the myrrh to a nice balance. Google tells me "black myrrh" can mean one of two things: either a lower grade of myrrh that's deeper and more herbaceous than higher-grade myrrh, or another name for the resin of the styrax benzoin tree. From the smell, I'd say this is the lower grade myrrh rather than benzoin, and if so I'm all in favor of lower-grade myrrh. (I suspect the difference is like the old Grade A and Grade B for US maple syrup, where grade B was darker, more flavorful, and entirely to be preferred.)
After a couple of hours a nice salty quality comes along to add a bit more interest, and I like the result very much indeed. Over the drydown the salt and vetiver slowly fade until just myrrh is left, and it lasts and lasts (I could still faintly smell it 24 hours later, having taken a shower in the interim). My favorite of the BPALs so far.
I still have a lot of samples to test, but I'm coming to a few conclusions. They may not be applicable to people who aren't me, but here they are:
1) The more hyperbolic BPAL's promotional copy, the less interesting the scent. Be especially cautious of scents that claim to be wild, sinister, or ferocious.
2) BPAL will almost always be sweeter than it claims. This is not just a weirdness of my skin, because there are scents (even BPALs) that don't turn sweet on me. BPAL just has perfumers who really like sweetness.
3) BPAL does not do subtle and complex very well. (Given the number of new scents they crank out every year, it's not surprising.) Combined with my skin's tendency to wreak havoc with subtle complexities, ostensibly subtle and complex BPALs will fail on me.
4) Conversely, BPAL does straightforward scents very well, and sometimes with a surprising twist (as in the saltiness that come up in Sloth). Reliable old-fashioned classics as the best products of the infamous Goth perfumery? I guess so.
I'd love to hear what people who've sampled BPAL more widely think. I know my experience is especially limited because my scent preference is for unisex-to-masculine, and I don't really like sweet gourmands or many florals.
Part of the reason I ordered all these BPALs, apart from nostalgic curiosity, was to see whether there really was a difference between their work and that of fancier niche perfumers. Regarding price, there almost isn't one (if you work out the price per milliliter, BPAL is in the same price range as most niche perfumes, it's just that BPALs bottles are 5 ml and most other houses' bottles are 50 or more). But I do think, and I say this knowing my own deep ignorance of perfume, that there's a real difference in complexity and interest between my favorite BPALs and my favorite other scents (e.g. Beaufort's Coeur de Noir, Tauer's L'Air du Desert Marocain, even MDCI's Invasion Barbare).
Having said that, there's certainly a place for BPAL in my life. As I've mentioned, I have perfume-unfriendly skin, and some straightforward BPALs give me very good results.
no subject
Date: 2023-05-24 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-24 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-24 07:57 am (UTC)I have pretty bad chemical sensitivities and bpal is just about the only thing I can wear that isn't super expensive and doesn't wear off in half an hour. I do like Hexennacht a lot and she does bigger decants with Ajevie, too. Bpal was just so much all about the community really.
no subject
Date: 2023-05-24 09:16 pm (UTC)It makes sense that BPAL is a really important perfume source for people who need alcohol-free perfumes, or need to avoid ISO-E Super and the like. And the affordability thing matters a lot too. Even though per milliliter BPAL's prices aren't lower, there's still a big affordability difference between $25 for a 5 ml BPAL bottle and $250 for a 50 ml bottle from Beaufort or ELO or whoever.
BPAL's just . . . such a big deal in certain circles, so venerated beyond what I think their perfumes merit, that the urge to kick them a little is kind of irresistible for me. But I shouldn't kick harder than I think is merited!
no subject
Date: 2023-06-13 04:32 am (UTC)(Disclaimer: I'm severely hyposmic and synaesthetic, meaning that my perceptions may not reflect common experience.)
Jolly Roger:
Sea spray with an undercurrent of leather, Bay Rum, and salty, dry woods.
Anticipated synaesthetic color: the mutable grey/green/blue of seawater and the weathered browns of leather, dark rum, and driftwood.
Synaesthetic color: pale grapefruit yellow with a slight greenish cast; nothing resembling the sea blue several reviewers report.
This isn’t even remotely the pirate adventure in a bottle that I’d hoped for, and that so many commenters are rhapsodizing over—all I’m getting is a nice clean gentlemanly lime-scented aftershave, and the maritime association it evokes is my Navy veteran dad vacationing at Sanibel. I have to agree with Caltha’s assessment:
It's just light and fresh and generic and citrusy.
The guy who played Norrington in Pirates of the Caribbean described his character as wanting to chase away all of the pirates and spray air freshener wherever they had been. Well, then this is the Caribbean after he's done. Jack Sparrow is certainly nowhere to be found. (Source: https://www.bpal.org/topic/562-jolly-roger/?do=findComment&comment=459743)
no subject
Date: 2023-06-13 04:50 pm (UTC)BPALs
Date: 2023-06-23 12:57 pm (UTC)here are some I like for reference, even though they're not all in current production.
Milk, Burnt Honey & Ambrette seed **nice for its genre**
Cacao & Oud **nice**
Honeysuckle & Wisteria
Elderberry Flower & Sandhill Plum (not as interesting)
There are a lot that I find intriguing, but I've been trying to buy less BPAL over the last year. A few I'm pretty interested in now:
https://blackphoenixalchemylab.com/product-category/a-little-lunacy-limited-edition/menage-a-trois-a-little-lunacy-limited-edition/
Caramel, Teakwood, and Vetiver
Almond Blossoms, Patchouli, and Sea Salt
Coffee Bean, Oak Bark, and Patchouli
Oakmoss, White Sage, and Woodland Fern
Sandalwood, Lime, and Tahitian Ginger
I have a lot of florals, so I'm not as interested in those offerings rn.
Looks like Duets are not live, but this is their page:
https://blackphoenixalchemylab.com/product-category/in-memoriam/a-little-lunacy/duets/
I think I have a small bag of masculine imps I didn't like. I would love to mail them to you if you're in North America. They are just languishing here. If you don't want email, you can PM me here or try me on discord at crankydevon.
Re: BPALs
Date: 2023-06-24 02:01 am (UTC)I'd love to try the imps, thanks! I'll PM you my address.