BPAL reviews

[brigdh]

Eos
Website Description: An 'Excolo' scent. The Rising Sun. She is Ostara, Easter, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility and the dawn. She is a protector and friend to all children. Her scent is that of softly glowing skin, jasmine, buttercup and honeysuckle.
In Vial: Musk is definitely the strongest scent. A warm musk, like the smell of skin when you're in the sun or wrapped up in bed.
Wet: A big burst of daffodil (which I guess is actually the buttercup)! And then the jasmine comes right after it. Very floral, although not too sweet, more like a jar of real flowers. I don't really smell the musk at all now, but I think it's what's keeping the florals from being too sweet.
Dry: A very sweet, spring-time floral. This is just a wonderfully happy and bright scent. Highly recommended if you like florals; this is the scent that is most like actually carrying around a bouquet of flowers.



The Hamptons
Website Description: A 'Wanderlust' scent. Diese Tage, die leer dir scheinen
und wertlos für das All,
haben Wurzeln zwischen den Steinen
und trinken dort überall.
...
But nothing's lost. Or else: all is translation
And every bit of us is lost in it
(Or found—I wander through the ruin of S
Now and then, wondering at the peacefulness)
And in that loss a self-effacing tree,
Color of context, imperceptibly
Rustling with its angel, turns the waste
To shade and fiber, milk and memory.

The scent of a Cosmopolitan cocktail.
In Vial: Champagne. Or maybe more accurately, club soda. A very strong scent of that carbonated-beverage type.
Wet: Same thing. A very sugary carbonation. You know, it actually seems closest to ginger ale.
Dry: Totally ginger ale. Which, you know, is awesome, because I really like ginger ale. I've never had a Cosmo, so possibly I'm interpreting the smell to something I'm more familiar with, but I can't say this smells particularly sophisticated to me; it makes me think of, like, silly picnics. There's very little change in this scent from vial to dry.



Port Royal
Website Description: A 'Wanderlust' scent. The Sodom of the New World! -- touted as the richest and wickedest city in all creation! Port Royal was the center of 17th century Caribbean commerce, a notorious safe harbor for pirates, and the site of our third flagship store, which was, sadly, destroyed in the earthquake of 1692. Spiced rum and ship’s wood mixed with the body-warmed trace of a prostitute’s perfume and a hint of salty sea air on the dry-down.
In Vial: Rum. This is very boozy, that sharp alcohol scent, though a bit more sugary than real rum.
Wet: The first burst is genuinely salt-soaked wood. I can completely get that wood scent, down to the detail in the grain, and a very strong salt-water scent with it. It quickly mellows out, with spices (I can particularly detect cinnamon) coming in.
Dry: There's a strong ozone scent, which I think is supposed to be the "sea air", but which is just gorgeous and sharp, mixed with this salty-wooden-box-of-spices scent. The whole thing is just gorgeous, and absolutely reminiscent of a pirate town. This is one of the few BPAL scents where the perfume actually makes me think of their description of it, and it's one of my very favorites.

Comments

[cellophane_ria.livejournal.com]

Oh my God, your description of Port Royal makes me wanna research BPAL nearby. I don't understand how could you make salt water+ozone and rum+spices work together, but this is a combination of my favourite scents, so I could simply bow before the makers.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee, I'm glad you like it. I really, really love Port Royal; it totally makes me feel like a pirate. But if it's hard for BPAL to ship to you, I am so sorry! Because I adore BPAL, and everyone should have access.

I ramble because I'm an idiot.

[pierreuse.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think I should give bpal a try. Maybe I don't because I lack sophistication in the extreme where perfume is concerned. I'm picky about them, and have sort of a vague idea of what the notes are expected to accompany one another in any one "scent," but I just can't figure out what I'm smelling when I actually smell perfume.

I just bought this (http://www.amazon.com/Kai-Spray-devastatingly-Feminine-Dangerously-Flirtatious/dp/B000PHVRYG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=beauty&qid=1274130368&sr=8-2) recently. It was exactly the sort of perfume I'd been idly seeking when I found it, but I didn't know what was in it (and the website doesn't tell you either!). And, well, it makes one look stupid to pop onto AIM for a moment to tell her best friends, "I've found the perfume of my dreams!" if, when asked what it smells like, she will then say, "I don't know."

A friend said she smelled gardenia, freesia, and, faintly, jasmine in it. According to a review posted online: The notes are gardenia, jasmine, tuberose, and lily.

I envy you people who can pick out the components of one perfume with your noses. It's another ability which I feel probably informs a person's existence in tiny ways. I guess I compulsively wonder how decisive small differences can be.

My roommate, for instance, has a far keener sense of smell than I do, and can smell when our pilot light is our or when the stove is leaking gas. Without her, living in this old apartment, I might get myself into all sorts of Tex Avery-esque predicaments. I might also occasionally leave the house wearing too much perfume without a discerning nose to warn me.

Not an idiot!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I definitely couldn't pick out different notes when I first started playing around with perfumes. While of course some people simply will be able to smell more details than others (just like most people don't have 20/20 vision), I think a lot of it is just learning the names of smells. Since we (as in, Western culture in general) don't really think as much about smells as we do about colors or sounds, it takes a while to be able to identify and describe smells. Like, personally, I only learned what 'ozone' smells like recently. People would tell that "it smells like before a thunderstorm!", but I guess I just never paid much attention to what storms smell like. :)

I'm still pretty bad with florals. There are a few I can recognize- jasmine in particular has a very distinct scent to me- but I have no idea what the difference between gardenia, tuberose, freesia, and lily is. Usually I can just tell that there's a generic "floral" scent. But as I test more perfumes, and compare what I smell with the list of what's supposed to be in the perfume (and do things like hang around Bath & Body Works or Yankee Candles smelling lots of things), I've definitely noticed that I've started to be able to recognize more things. There does still to be a big aspect of training your brain to it.