By popular request and by that I mean two or three people asked me about it, I thought I might show you the current state of my BPAL collection. If you’re not familiar with BPAL, I am referring to the indie perfume house of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, beloved purveyors of stinks and sundries to all of us dark dreamers and weirdos. My hope is that if you’re not already obsessed with the brilliant creations that the Lab puts into the world, you’ll feel the stirrings of one beginning, by the end of this video.
I was a little hesitant about filming a video like this, it seems sort of all braggy and boastful and “behold my stuff!” but that’s what most of my videos are, so this isn’t really all that different, is it? And anyway, I don’t know about you, but I love getting peeks into people’s collections, seeing all of their beautiful, precious things, and hearing about what all of their favorites are, and why they love them! So I hope that you will take this in the spirit which it is intended, which is basically to say: here’s just another thing I love! Maybe you love this thing, too! Let’s connect and bond over our shared interests!
Another worry I had is that people may expect someone putting together this sort of content to be an expert in the thing they are sharing. Or, I worry that you think that I THINK I am an expert! Both scenarios trouble me a little bit. First, I am no expert in this or anything else, really. I am just a human person who likes to smell nice. And secondly, I think it’s really important to remember that you don’t have to be an expert guru virtuoso wizard with regard to a thing in order to appreciate a thing. I wrote further about this last month.
Now, back to Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. I discovered them back in November of 2004 and I guess it’s sort of odd to remember it down to the month, but I was having a really rough go of things at that time, so the one bright spot in the midst of that quagmire of misery is certainly going to be memorable for me. I had just found the website makeup alley, and I had fallen down the rabbit hole of fragrance reviews on the site.
It was at this time that I stumbled upon a review for a scent called “Snake Oil” sold by a mysterious, thrillingly dangerous sounding company, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. Penned by a user calling herself “shriekingviolet”, she described it as “exotic and unfamiliar, evoking images of bazaars in far-off locales”. So fascinated was I by the description, I read further her reviews for the intriguingly named “Chimera”, “Haunted” and “Hellcat”, growing more and more exhilarated with every fragrant word I devoured.
I raced over to the website, my excitement reaching feverish levels as I read about the company: “Inspired by a vast range of influences, from the passion and decadence of the Fin de Siècle movement to the ghastliest of Lovecraftian monstrosities, we specialize in eliciting emotional responses through perfume and creating unique, masterfully molded scent environments that capture legends and folklore, poetry, and the stuff of dreams and nightmares.”
I didn’t know there were people making these kinds of scents! I grew up in a household filled with, among other things, ouija boards, meditation circles, tarot cards, and astrologers, I was raised on books of mythology and folklore, fairytales and fables. In my early teen years I became obsessed by ghost stories and horror movies, and at the time of my discovery, I was in my mid-20s and the sole employee at an occult bookstore of surrounded by rare tomes of magic, antique grimoires, and volume upon volume of every sort of esoteric, arcane subject matter that you could possibly imagine. From what I was reading in these fragrance reviews, there was a person out there creating perfumes inspired by all of these things–the things I loved best! To be honest, I was smitten before I’d even perused the entirety of the website or placed my first order.
Peruse the BPAL website and you will find collections devoted to myths and folk tales, beloved books and cinema (Dark Crystal and Only Lovers Left Alive? Yes please!), RPG tropes, poison gardens, female positive comics and graphic novels – if there is a weird or obscure interest favored by dark-minded, romantic souls, no doubt you will find a fragrance dedicated to it here.
BPAL fragrances are oil blends, which may take some getting used to if you’ve only ever used alcohol-based perfumes. All of their products are hand-blended in house, and with only a few exceptions all of the scents are vegan – and there is absolutely no animal testing.
In addition to their general catalog scents–the fragrances that are stocked all year long–they have seasonal limited releases fragrances. I’ve been collecting both for many years now, and as you can tell, I’ve got a bit of an accumulation…so it’s probably going to be tough to narrow it down to ten favorites to talk about, but I’m going to try my best!
☨ Owl Moon is a collaboration between BPAL and jeweler of surrealist psychic armor, Bloodmilk. A scent steeped in mythology and magic, Owl Moon opens with the blackest, earthiest patchouli and calls to mind cool, moist soil at the base of a pine tree through which all of the busy little night creatures slither and crawl, the pale, ghostly light of the moon glinting off their scales and wings. A yellow-eyed owl, perched overhead, meditates briefly before silently embarking on his nightly hunt; the sour, screechy scent of his nest, littered with rodent bones and pellets, serves as a warning nearby. This is the fragrance of potent night magics, rich and ripe with darkness and feral mysticism. The sharpness of the patchouli streaked with high-pitched honey combine to form an aura that is both graceful and grotesque, sacred and profane. It dries down to a spellbinding, narcotic musk
☨ The limited edition Schwarzermond, which I believe translates from the German to mean “black moon”–which makes sense as it was one of their monthly Lunacy offerings from several years ago. This is the 2006 version, but they have restocked a few times over the years, with 2011 behind the most recent. Brimming with notes that feel like a warped and wicked tripping of the tongue when you attempt to pronounce them, it’s a heavy, velvety, and vaguely menacing fragrance, woven throughout with brooding resins and dark, lurking patchouli. It smells a bit predatory and poisonous, but in the very best way.
☨ Dana O’Shee is reminiscent of rice pudding with a soft pour of cream on top, and/or perhaps a honeyed milk custard, and stir in some sugared marizpan… but imagine dreamy spoonfuls of all of this while a faint incense lingers in the air. Or, perhaps, envision an unlit cone of sugared milk custard incense! It sounds delicious, but don’t eat it! Tempted though ye may be.
☨ Danube is a beloved scent that is, for me, more about memory than the actual fragrance itself. It is a deep blue aquatic scent – but not salty, ozone-y, beachy aquatic, nor is it murky, swampy aquatic. Like a cold swimming pool on a hot day (maybe if you were adding grapefruit to your pool instead of chlorine) with every blue flower imaginable floating on top of it. Imagine being 6 years old and holding your breath and submerging yourself in a swimming pool, then slo-o-o-wly sinking to the bottom. The water is chilled, you feel like the only person in the world and everything is totally silent. Imagine peering up and seeing the sun streaming down into the water, between all of the blue petals. It’s calm and soothing and serene and is an absolutely a must for hot, sticky weather and for people who haven’t got a swimming pool.
☨ Thanatopsis is a meditation upon death inspired by William Cullen Bryant’s poem, and a deep, solemn earthen scent containing pine, juniper and musk. A green-ness so lush and concentrated that it is nearly a syrup, growing in mysterious realms alongside venerable woods and breathless darkness.
☨ I adore the summer scent of sweet musky floral orange blossom, so Bergamot, orange blossom and vetiver was destined for greatness long before I held the small amber bottle in my hands. The vetiver adds a bitter earthiness that binds the shimmering honeyed blossoms and tells a long forgotten story of how you sobbed your broken heart into an orange grove at midnight; you gathered the dirt and tears and blossoms and clouds that floated across the moon and hid them all in the pages of an old diary because you were young and sad and then you burned the whole thing for incense as a middle-aged woman and thought wow that was a good choice even though it felt scary and sad at the time
☨ Cottonmouth from the Carnavale Diabolique collection is a blend of the sugared incense of the Lb’s signature Snake oil combined with somber, waxy spring lilies brightened by the soft, honeyed green of fresh linden blossoms. I’ve not referenced any comparisons to previous formulations until this point but feel compelled to note that it is with Cottonmouth I sense the most notable difference. The 2006 Cottonmouth had a distinct linen/fresh laundry vibe that, when combined with Snake Oil, smelled like Bath & Body Works’ Fresh Cotton Blossom (sadly discontinued) had an affair with a super potent head shop. The result of this odd union was 2006 Cottonmouth, which summoned an apparition of the babeliest, most badass all-black-everything coven-gang leader, but who is also super approachable and cool and would respond to your comments on Instagram and you would have a total “senpai noticed me!” moment about it. All this to say: while they are two completely different creatures, both Cottonmouths are worth seeking out.
☨ Altarpiece no.1 A brightness as glimpsed through shadow, a keyhole’s view of the sun. Small and still as a single candle’s flame against the immense dark; as vast and total as annihilation’s afterglow. This is a scent that proves to me, more than anything, how much I have to learn about fragrance and perfume, how little I know. I can only speak of this in terms of fractured, fragmented imagery, the slivers and splinters of a dream. “It’s beyond everything,” is a phrase I just read in a (totally unrelated) book, and that’s how I feel about this gorgeously evocative offering: a bright, dry citrus haloed by amber’s translucent sweetness, bound by the spiced warmth of dragon’s blood and fixed in a state of permanent darkness by the heady, heavy imprint of where oud once was.
☨ Circe Individiosa, inspired by the work of John William Waterhouse and also in the Ars Inspiratio collection is a scent that for me, is inseparable from the painting itself. The colors in this mythic scene are so lush and beautiful that they defy description. I have always thought that tipping dish of poison, the shade of crushed emeralds and mantis wings, must be the precise color of our heart’s blood when we are in the venomous throes of enraged, envious desire.Circe Indiviosa captures the scent of exercising one’s powers…one’s divinity…in murky and dangerous and exhilarating ways. It’s such a gorgeous fragrance, mossy and musky with a subtly bitter treacle, and vaguely electric in the way that euphoria resulting from ill-advised behavior makes you feel. Sort of like WHEEEEEEEEE OH SHIT WHOOPS.
☨ In Night When To All Colors Into Black Are Cast
-I feel like I am typecasting myself, especially since I thought I was slowly coming out of my all-black-everything phase (but don’t worry, it wasn’t just a phase in my heart) but honestly, this is the me-est thing I have ever smelled in my life.
-If there was such thing as:
– “sad dried flowers from my mom’s funeral, marking a page in a ghost story” musk
– “when I have to get up to pee at midnight and I divine phantom shapes from in the shadows of the shower curtain” musk
– “reading poetry by candlelight at 5am because I perversely read early in the morning and not late at night” musk
– “ordering a lucid dreaming blend from Etsy and drinking it, not realizing that the seller and I got our wires crossed and she made potpourri—not tea— and I stupidly brewed up and DRANK potpourri” musk
-All of the me-ness of me, all of my weirdness and sadness, and strange inner darkness, but also so much joy for beauty and friends and the lovely things in the world, this too.
-Somehow found a way into this bottle.
-And it smells like me.
Leave a comment on the video to be entered into the giveaway and while you don’t have to subscribe to my channel, it would be a nice gesture! One winner will be contacted in a week’s time to receive ten BPAL scents from my collection, chosen at my discretion.
For those who asked, marbled top is the brand Scotch & Soda brand purchased from Anthropologie, the earrings are from Haus of Sparrow, and the lippie is Strange Creature from Rituel de Fille (though unfortunately, I think it is long sold out.)
A catch-up chat about what kept me so busy in the month of February (lots of stuff, and you may recall reading about some of it here, in which case you might just want to jump on ahead to the second half of the video.)
As well as a show and tell of some things which have recently come into my possession. Mostly because I bought them. Le whoopsie!
See below for the blogs, websites, and items mentioned in this video…
Perhaps I am picky and persnickety, but the YouTube algorithm always feeds me the worst suggestions for people who may be interested in fragrance. I don’t want to belabor the point, but these people have mind-numbingly boring takes and, in my opinion, are talking about dull, unimaginative things, to begin with. No one needs to see another video about Marc Jacobs Daisy, okay?
Ugh! I don’t mean to give pick on Daisy so much. It’s the lackluster low-hanging fruit that I always reach for. But listen, if you like Daisy, that’s fine. Mine is only one stupid opinion amongst millions of stupid opinions, so don’t listen to me. Like what you like! Whatever!
Anyway, now it’s even worse because YouTubers are making compilations of various TikTok videos. Things like SCENTS THAT WILL GET YOU A MAN… Or… MY TEN MOST COMPLIMENTED FRAGRANCES. To the former: ew, gross. Is that in any way relevant? (Answer: nope.) And with regard to the latter, I don’t give a crap about what other people think about your perfumes. I want to know what YOU think about them. Either way, if your enjoyment of something or to a further extent, if your assessment of something, is based on other people’s responses to that thing? Well, I’ll not go as far as to say that you’re doing it wrong…but maybe you should take a closer look at why you think you like that thing.
Also back to YouTube compilations. If you have your own YouTube and TikToks account…why are you making compilations…of other people’s videos? That seems supremely odd to me.
My antidote to this insipid, tiresome practice? Well, if you want something done right –or, if not “right” exactly, we’ll say if you want something done the way you wish it would be done–well, you know the rest. We do it our damn selves.
I can be an awful hater sometimes. I can admit to this! I’ll just react to something on a gut-level with no logic or real reason to back it up. Especially when it comes to a New Thing that everyone else seems to love. I don’t know if I am just a contrarian or if I think that if everyone seems to be into something then it’s probably a dumbed-down thing that was created to appeal to everyone, which is a big turn-off for me. That makes me sound a bit snobby, and I guess that would be true on some level.
The most recent New Thing I have been hating on is TikTok. Which ok grandma, yeah I know. It’s not actually all that new. But I’ve hated it since the moment I saw the stupid things that people were sharing from the app, and that hatred has only grown in intensity over the last year or so. This is unfortunate for me, because typically if there is a new social media platform, I want in on it. But not TikTok! Man, that place is obnoxious. And what’s worse, all of these TikToks are being shared in the other places I frequent. I can’t go to Twitter or Facebook or Instagram without someone’s viral TikTok nonsense screeching in my face. Make it stop!
But. Here’s the thing. In doing a bit more soul searching, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not the platform itself I hate. It’s actually sort of a neat concept, isn’t it? Short videos to inform or inspire you, where you could learn something new or interesting, and of course, connect with the people creating and sharing these things. I think where the execution falls short for me are the things that I have seen people sharing, which overwhelmingly are these horrifyingly cringey lip-synch videos or, even worse, people pranking each other. I don’t consider myself a humorless person (I happen to think I am hilarious!) but I do not, nor have I ever, understood the appeal of or the humor in pranking people. UGH. Pranks are mean and bad, and you shouldn’t do them. This VICE article agrees with me, by the way, and I love this sentiment:
“Ultimately, pranks ignore the fundamental truth that living can be hard, and most people are trying to do their best.”
Pranks and bad lip-synching aside, in giving my TikTok hostility some more thought, I considered an idea which is something I apply to any occasion, whenever I can. Which is basically this: ok, so, this thing has got a lot of sucky aspects; how can I make it better? Or not exactly better, per se. Who am I to assume that my participation can better a thing? But I guess, rather… but how can I make it what I want it to be? How can I contribute to it being the thing I want to see in the world?
And the answer, is, of course: to be part of it. Participate. Contribute.
I often say “I will NEVER do X/Y/Z thing…but I reserve the right to change my mind about it at any time!” Yes, I can be stubborn with my annoying, irrational hatred of a thing (see also: Taylor Swift’s cardigan…still haven’t changed my mind on that one) but I can also reassess, re-evaluate, and realign my perspective. I can say, ok, I was wrong! Everyone else was right! Or maybe just that one other person was right! But here’s me, saying that I probably was not right. And I can learn and change and maybe be just an Intense Disliker, if not a Hater. Here’s me, now on TikTok. And many thanks to Susan Jamison and Gooby Herms over on Facebook, for the encouragement and account name inspiration!
At first, I didn’t really know what to do with it, but I think I’ve worked it out for now: 10-second perfume reviews! Is this the sort of thing everyone wants to see? Probably not. To which I say: make your own thing, then! Or watch some stupid pranks. Whatever.
Are you over on TikTok? What do you watch? Are there people knitting or cooking or doing 30-second book reviews or sharing gardening tips or reading poetry or teaching about gothic tropes in contemporary fiction and comics (and if that last one is a “no”, I see a niche that needs filling and I know just the person to do it, although I think they’d hate the idea, ha!) Tell me all! Except for the dumb stuff! Still don’t want to know about that.
(If you receive email updates from my blog, and this shows up for you today in 2022, and you’re like, “what the heck? this is from 2020?” Your eyes do not deceive you, and I am sorry. A great deal of my writing lost its home when Haute Macabre shuttered the blog portion of the site. I am slooooowly trying to retrieve a lot of it. This is one of those things.)
For this year’s reviews of the ‘Weenies and various autumnal celebration scents from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, I thought I might do something slightly different. I’ve been watching a great deal of YouTube this year and in taking inspiration from the always entertaining How To Drink YouTube Channel, I am revealing my lists of “tasting notes” for each of these fragrances; the reflections and ruminations I had/experienced while testing each one.
Do not mistake me though, these perfume oils are not to be literally tasted or ingested in any way! To avoid confusion, let’s instead call them “smelling notes.” Because again, we’re not to be drinking them. So don’t do that!
Without further ado, then, I present to you:
…Smelling Notes On Fifteen ‘Weenies ..
Dead Leaves On Fire
-The manky, softly rotting vegetation and the dry, smoky embers are a spellbinding and pretty sophisticated arboreal chypre-like combination
-Makes me think of little forest goblins gone for a weekend of glamping
-This is ingenious
Pumpkin Gazpacho (roasted pumpkin pulp, tomato, bell pepper, cucumber, sage, and cream)
-I feel like…it’s not what you think it’s going to be!
-Warm autumn gourd -creamy sweetness at the outset, and then it morphs into something sort of airy and green and cool with a crisp bite….but still somehow a little sweet?
– It is sort of like a cold soup…but more of a palate-cleansing dessert soup?
-Like a fancy little after-dinner treat Ina made for Jeffrey because they are trying to eat less cake but they still want to end the meal on a sweet note.
Flickering Lights, Fluttering Curtains (Brittle smoked vanilla lace with yellow champaca, white cognac, davana, white amber, and chamomile)
-This seems to have that delicate vanilla and phantom floral of Antique Lace
-Also a smokiness that gives it a bit of depth of heft and an almost bitter 70% dark chocolate quality.
-A great many people will like this one!
From Sunset to Star Rise (Thorn-strangled roses, vetiver, honeysuckle, twilit musk, and black oud.)
-At the outset, strangely sour and a bit… fungal? Also smells alien and unknown, like feeling your way blindly through forking forest paths in the deep dead of night
-A bit earthy and rooty, things that grow at the base of ancient trees in feral violet shadows.
-Cosmic mycelium under the silver-scratches of a meteor-streaked midnight dome.
In Night When To All Colors Into Black Are Cast(ink-black vegetal musk, opoponax, velvet myrrh, nagarmotha, black champa, labdanum, and plum honey)
-I feel like I am typecasting myself, especially since I thought I was slowly coming out of my all-black-everything phase (but don’t worry, it wasn’t just a phase in my heart) but honestly, this is the me-est thing I have ever smelled in my life.
-If there was such thing as:
– “sad dried flowers from my mom’s funeral, marking a page in a ghost story” musk
– “when I have to get up to pee at midnight and I divine phantom shapes from in the shadows of the shower curtain” musk
– “reading poetry by candlelight at 5am because I perversely read early in the morning and not late at night” musk
– “ordering a lucid dreaming blend from Etsy and drinking it, not realizing that the seller and I got our wires crossed and she made potpourri—not tea— and I stupidly brewed up and DRANK potpourri” musk
-All of the me-ness of me, all of my weirdness and sadness and joy, and strange inner darkness, but also so much joy for beauty and friends and the lovely things in the world, this too.
-Somehow found a way into this bottle.
-And it smells like me.
Dead Leaves, White Champa, Palo Santo.
-Reminds me of hippies and crunchy types? Is palo santo the new patchouli?
-Not the 60’s hippies, but rather a particular brand of YouTuber, zero waste, off-the-grid species of vlogger.
-I actually really love this, it’s a sort of refined outdoorsy scent, there’s a whiff of “fresh air” in it, and astringent herbal/lemony woodsiness but there’s also a hint of garden gloves and sunbonnets because we want to get all up in the dirt but we want to look cute doing it. Our fans notice these things.
-And now while I’m guilting you about your single-use plastics, let me tell you a bit about our sponsor, Squarespace. *
*I’m not shilling for Squarespace and neither is BPAL. I’ve just been watching a lot of YouTube…and man, a lot of YouTubers sure are doing that. Jokes are less funny when you have to explain them, but I felt I should probably make this point very clear!
It Was Just A Cat (a flash of amber fur skittering through shadows of opoponax, red labdanum, and myrrh)
-Old, vaguely antiquarian books and nose-tickling fur, fluffy fur with a pulse and a warmth and a softly rumbling purr
-Warm musk, rich, treacly myrrh, and a dry, powdery amber
An Open Grave Underneath the Heavy Leaves(Sweet hay, dry grasses, and wild herbs)
-Dry leaves on sun-warmed ground on a cloudless day, no decomposing plant matter or off-gassing leaves, here
-Light and clean, just this side of sharp, dry, and cool. Almost lemony, but…a cool weather, frost-tolerant lemon?
-Conjures the scent of air so pure and clear that you can smell winter from a month away
Dead Leaves, Red Currant, and Tuberose
-A a dash of eerie, with the spot-on decaying harvest of those dead leaves
-A spike of edgy with the bright bite of red currant, sort of like a punk in a twilight graveyard
-Like Linnea Quigley stripping in a cemetery, but with the addition of holly, and wintry greenery and Christmas lights?
–Festive, in a naked, brain-eating zombie way?
Dead Leaves and Black Licorice
-An anonymous benefactor (or villainous arch-nemesis) has sent you an unmarked packing crate, the olde-timey kind that cursed objects are stowed away in for overseas travel.
-Inside this box, once you have opened it with your rusty crowbar and/or Wile E. Coyote dynamite, all of a sudden everything goes sepia-tinted and you’re wearing a stiff corset and pointy-toed boots, and you see that swaddled inside is a bundle of fragrant, crackling autumn leaves several layers deep cocooning a mysterious bundle.
-You slowly peel away the autumnal wrapping to reveal that you have been gifted with a thick, glossy, twisting rope of Icelandic black licorice, dank and herbaceous and salty and delicious. Also included is a copy of the Icelandic version of Dracula, but you can go ahead and scrap that with the rest of the packing materials, it’s trash.
-Wow, these boots and corset are tight. But sepia-tinted November afternoons are lovely. And black licorice, as you are late in life to discover, is freaking phenomenal.
The Ghosts of the Year (white musk, lemongrass, neroli, white pepper, lavender, white cedar, oakmoss, dandelion sap, and white amber)
-This does smell deeply of the “April-clear” feeling referenced in the poem this perfume is inspired by; of daisies and dandelions, tremulous in a grassy spring breeze.
-A frank, appraising stare from the ghost of one’s self. Uncomplicated and uncompromising and free of all sentiment. Lemongrass smells like a cross between citronella and geranium to me, and that is the powerful core of this scent, a truth that you must get to the heart of and climb inside and ultimately embody…in order to properly meet the gaze of this other version of yourself.
Please Scream Inside Your Haunted House(funnel cakes entombed in teakwood, cedar, and sawdust)
-French toast from fancy, eggy bread?
– Ultra-luxe crème brûlée bread pudding?
-A floral, cedary thing? A sweet breakfast casserole, plated on a fragrant wooden tray, served with a spray of lilac?
-Tobacco? leather? Eating the above in parlor while your uncle oils his saddle nearby with an unlit pipe clamped between his teeth?
-At the very backside…ivy and green tea? Maybe? There is a lot going on with this one! A lot of loveliness, but still…a lot.
-To sum up, this is a delectable morning meal in a very charming and efficiently run haunted bed and breakfast which also happens to have a stable nearby.
Unsettling Portraits (amber resin, faded turpentine and torn canvas, pulverized frankincense, verdigris, and crushed malachite, lead white sandalwood, smoky umber, and lampblack)
-At first: a decimating wave of nostalgia, something that smells like memories and echoes of hearts long silenced
-Minerals and sooty carbon, oil, and wax and flickering flame
-The taste of oxidized copper and ghostly pigments
-At the last: the portraits have been taken down for a cleaning, dusted and polished, and the heavy curtains drawn to let the sunlight scour away the shadows. A slightly sweet, vaguely citrusy lightness remains.
Figure In The Attic Window(white frankincense, star anise, wormwood, and iridescent bergamot)
-Both translucent and occluded; cloudy visions in a teacup
-The tea was palest green and pleasantly bitter
-The pretense of a facade. A re-veiling of revelations for politeness and appearance’s sake. Embarrassed by what we shared after too many martinis, we pack it all back in, like we never said it in the first place. And now we are all pretending not to know each other’s secret scars, the ones that have seeped into our bones, and which are haunting both our own bodies and undermining our connections with others.
-What has got me thinking of martinis? There’s something about this scent, that, along with conjuring visions of secrecy and uneasy trust and damaged connections… makes me think of how I described my first sip of a martini: “sweet at the sip, savory at the swallow.”
-A trickery of the tongue, conned by aromas that lure you in and then morph and twist and disarmingly: junipery herbal and briny berries, and a bittersweet woodiness.
-This one was quite a journey, but cheaper than therapy.
-(I haven’t called my therapist in ten months.)
Pumpkin Smut
-Do you have a moment to talk about the autumnal gustatory goodness that is the Downeast Maine Pumpkin bread recipe from Allrecipes?
-Can you imagine this earthy, spicy bread gyrating alongside the breathtakingly tarted-up Christina Aguilera, Mýa, P!nk, Lil’ Kim, in the 2001 Lady Marmalade video?
-Or maybe I need to pretend I’m not a million years old and divulge that the molasses-moist pumpkin loaf was most recently a guest dancer in this video, because it is without a doubt a certified freak seven days a week.
-Brown sugar caramelized crumbs and boozy pumpkin flesh and musky black satin sheets and you don’t cook, you don’t clean and while we don’t have to guess how you got that ring, I am gonna place bets that you probably ordered that amazing pumpkin bread from Goldbelly.
-Waaaay later. In a twist that no one was expecting, the filthiest Smut yet calms with time and becomes a soft, warm and disturbingly classy thing? But also very, very hot. Look, I don’t know how to talk about sex because I am incredibly repressed but smelling my wrist right now gives my lower bits a jolt that’s both electric and wibbly and it’s as if Mads Mikkelsen is smoldering at me from one side of the room and Tessa Thompson has brazenly caught my eye from the opposite corner and I don’t know where to look or what to do with myself so I just lock myself in the bathroom and cry. But in a good way? I mean I don’t know how your libido works, so I can only speak for me.
-Maybe let Pumpkin Smut do the speaking for you.
I took a bit of a summer break from the YouTubes, but this week I am back with a new video and some peeks into my somewhat sizable perfume collection. I also share a handful of favorites!
I hope you’ll stop by, give it a watch, and maybe leave a comment, because I sure do like chatting about stinks. Tell me your favorite notes, wax poetic about a beloved fragrance, heck, even share a scent you hate–I’m here for all of it.
I’m still relatively new to filming and editing and uploading videos, so please feel free to share your feedback and suggestions, as well. I know I have got a lot to learn, and I am grateful for your thoughts. And if you have anything you’d like to see in a future video–perfume related or not–please let me know!
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab released their annual smutty smorgasbord of Lupercalia and Shunga scents back in February, but no worries if you haven’t yet greedily grabbed a handful of this year’s shamelessly salacious scents! According to the folks at BPAL, “due to the current rippling of global infrastructure,” these prurient perfume oils, hedonistic hair glosses, bawdy bath oils, and amatory atmosphere sprays will remain live, indefinitely, on the site for purchase–as stock permits–instead of being taken down on the previously announced dates.
I have been taking my time with them, as you might imagine. I guess we’ve all got more time than we might have originally planned for right now. I try to keep busy. I stick to a routine and I do all of the things I normally do. I already work from home. I’m a homebody, even in the best of times. But that doesn’t stop the world from feeling off-kilter and scary to me, and to be honest, all of this pretending at normalcy has left me with the worst feeling, like making snow angels in my future chalk outline. Some days it’s paralyzing. I bet you feel the same on some of those days, too.
What has helped me, even for a few minutes every day, is a sniff of a smell. I have been doling out these Lupercalia scents one per morning, with five minutes where I just sit quietly and write about whatever I think I am smelling. No matter how maudlin or ridiculous, or trite or outlandish. No feelings or thoughts, or sensations are off-limits! Setting aside this sniff time over the past few weeks has provided me with a small but much-needed aromatic oasis in the midst of days that feel uncertain, uneasy, and unprecedented.
Green Lovebird (vanilla mint, spun sugar, and pistachio) This smells so familiar. The vanilla-mint combination contributes a sort of… shifty/shady 80s cartoon villainess-type vibe? I feel like if the Baroness, Evil-Lyn, and Pizzaz were at tea together, deviously munching sweetly iced petit-fours, this is the sly, scheming, miasma that would emanate from the cackling chambers of that tea-room.
Belgian Chocolate, Black Pepper, Whiskey, and Bourbon Vanilla is surprisingly wearable; and after the individual notes of creamy chocolate, peppery-floral heat and boozy whiskey-vanilla announce themselves, they blend seamlessly into a scent that somehow smells like none of the above, but rather just a mild, but wonderfully cozy perfumed-skin scent.
Elizabeth of Bohemia (the perfect rose oude) ROSE WITCH QUEEN. A rose that is both dark and bright and smells like a tragic Hans Christian Andersen fairytale that has been illustrated by the unhinged black and white gorgeousness of Harry Clarke.
Spectral Lovers Entertaining the King of Hell Home & Linen Spray (lily of the valley, white gardenia, cherry blossoms, and black pepper) I am never certain what I am meant to be smelling when it comes to lily of the valley; to my nose, it is a soft, sorrowful, delicate sort of floral. As if you could milk jasmine of its tears for the purpose of keeping the pale, aromatic droplets at hand for some sort of doleful spellwork. Pairing it with the efflorescent piquancy of black pepper is a fair bit of genius and as a room spray, it’s a fragrance that’s pretty without being cloying and lively without being obnoxious.
Beach Scene (driftwood, white patchouli, sea salt, and kelp) I grew up living close to a beach, and while I truly love the sea, the trashy delights offered up by Daytona Beach (our new motto: WIDE OPEN FUN. Good lord.) do not contribute to my platonic ideal of The Beach. I want jagged cliffs and icy waves and widows walks and the ghost of a lighthouse keeper. I want wild gorse and heather and selkies. I want monstrous scarlet lobsters with googly eyes bobbing at the end of 12-inch stalks! I know I am probably confusing the geographical landscapes of Maine and Cornwall, and I also don’t have a clear grasp on lobster anatomy, but these are the beaches that have long haunted my imagination. Beach Scene smells like this eerie mash-up of chill winds, salt spray, migratory shorebirds, and vegetative cover like witchgrass and beach-pea… which have never seen, let alone smelled…but I could be right?
Michiyuki Koi No Futusao (green tea, oakmoss, and star anise) The sage and coral hues of the couple’s robes on the label’s artwork are mirrored in the dusty, honeyed citrus/earthy-green tropical-watery cucumberyness of the scent.
The Sun Is Rising (Tunisian amber, French beeswax, jasmine grandiflorum, golden peppercorn, myrrh smoke, and neroli) Beautiful and understated and utterly intoxicating all the same; jasmine, soothed and quieted, its piercing sweetness hypnotized by soft hands of beeswax and spectral smoke.
Alleviate the Frenzy Hair Gloss (heady peach musk aglow with sugared amber) (TW) Peaches, man. I don’t like to eat them and typically I don’t like to smell them and quite frankly I don’t even care to look at them– and we can blame this, I suppose, on the preponderance of slick, syrupy Del Monte canned peaches I was served for “dessert” as a plump youngster by a mother concerned about diets. Alleviate the Frenzy has presented me with a flummox of a peach, and it’s got me in quite a state. It’s a slightly sweet and toasted bit of warm, tilted at odd angles with a wonderful sour musk, and it recalls for me Letter 8 in a collection of bizarre correspondence by the hand of surrealist art-witch Remedios Varo. The author has sent a missive to an unidentified scientist with regard to dissolving the skin of a peach, but through the circumstance of a cat’s meow and the mishap of a stranger’s miscast shadow, she has instead dissolved a hole in the atmosphere. This peach presents a shifting cipher whose charms I would very much like to mail a stranger about.
Body, Remember (raw black coconut, ambergris accord, ambrette seed, champaca flower, and sugar cane) a trembling sigh of coconut on a brown-sugar lollipop breeze.
Ooyogari No Koe Home & Linen Spray (aloe, bamboo reeds, ti leaf, lemon peel, eucalyptus leaf, and sea salt) I really hate to use the word “fresh.” I hate the actual word “fresh” and all of the clean, minty, youthfulness that it implies. Give me stinky and skanky and musty and shabby, and old, any day. But I’ll say it: with its woody-green bamboo, lemony clean cotton vibe, Ooyogari No Koe does smell, well, kinda fresh. Overwhelmingly so. This is a potent scent that I can smell in a room 24 hours later. And I love it. This is perfect and beautiful and my ideal guest bedroom scent. Then again, I’d really love to festoon the walls of my guest room with Louis Wain art and Clive Barker quotes graffitied on the walls…so maybe you can’t trust my sense of home decor or hospitality.
Snake’s Kiss (Snake Oil with sugar, honeycomb, and thick vanilla cream) While I do love Snake Oil sugary vanilla resins with all my heart–it is, after all, the first BPAL scent that I fell in love with!–even I can admit, well, it’s …a lot. Snake Oil is intense; it’s as if you took your most favorite thing, dialed it up to awesome and then broke the knob off. You love it, but it’s a lot to handle all at once, let alone for a sustained length of time. Snake’s Kiss is as if you get to enjoy your favorite thing from …across the room, or even more apt, from across time. The memory of your favorite thing. Your favorite thing as seen (or sniffed) through rose-tinted glasses. Snake’s Kiss is Snake Oil on the collar of your cotton pajamas two days from now.
A Vision of the Courtesan (tobacco leaf, rice milk, and frankincense) This walks the line between a foody/oriental fragrance but it never quite seems to inch even a toe in either direction. Imagine a monastic incense of horchata and cherry tobacco; the hands of the monks who labor over its creation are spiced with its very essence and they sleep in tranquil clouds of the stuff as their skin exudes the scent during slumber.
Tengu Demon Using His Nose As A Phallus (red musk, black pepper, Mysore sandalwood, ambrette seed, and smoke) A sharp-toothed, fiendish breath of dry, peppery musks and creamy woods, shifting and whirling through smoke and ash.
Dark Chocolate & Dried Red Fruits An intensely chocolatey chocolate cookie, something with a bit of a crisp and a crunch and a crumble; that’s dry and not too sweet; it’s less wafery and more biscotti-y, and perfect for dunking in midnight coffee. Did I mention it is studded with chocolate-covered blueberries? Or maybe the coffee has hints of blueberry mocha notes. I don’t think I am actually getting any coffee from this scent, but now I want a big steaming mug of it.
Champagne and Maraschino Cherries This is a vivid scent, that, once applied, you can nearly see it. Lurid day-glow red, almondy/syrupy cherries floating in a bit of soda-type fizz…totally reminiscent of my favorite Shirley Temple drink at Red Lobster when I was a little girl. Except there’s something a bit spring floral about it, too. Instead of finding this drink in my small midwestern town’s only seafood restaurant, I stumbled into a fairy circle…and somehow still wasn’t allowed a grown-up drink… and I was offered a Shirley Temple Flower Maiden instead.
Wild Cherry Chypre and Smoky Patchouli Hair Gloss This is such a fun, earthy, rooty take on cherries! A pulpy, juicy, bitter-sweet cherry jam atop a mud pie, decorated with dried oak bark shavings and autumn leaves.
Weenie time, weenie time! It’s Weenie time at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab! I think I can skip the preamble this year and get right into it. I mean, I could very well wax poetic about my love of autumn leaves and long, dark nights and bloody harvest moons and spooky Halloween feels, but I’m pretty sure you all love those things, too, just as much as I do! I am preaching to the choir with that sort of talk, you know? I don’t need to convince you.
Below are my “tasting notes,” if you will, on several greedy handfuls of this year’s Weenies: my initial thoughts, impressions, and reflections; the imagery and memories and stories and dreams that each scent immediately evokes. These notes comprise the raw material, which eventually gets incorporated into what I hope are thoughtful and cogent reviews. Think of them as “behind the scenes” (“behind the scents”?) peeks and insights, I guess! Some of them are more fully fleshed out than others and some, I’ll confess, don’t entirely make a lot of sense. Sometimes in the potent grip of a particular sniff, I’ll practice what I might chalk up to a bit of automatic writing and channel the spirit of the scent, the results of which I then reason with and wrangle into proper words fit for human eyes. Here today I have left them in their original, reflexive, stream-of-consciousness state.
Before I get into it, I will share one last thing: I am over the moon excited that I had the opportunity to sniff some of the lab’s Dracula: Order Of The Dragon collection (with amazing label art by Abigail Larson!) I have savored Bram Stoker’s classic vampire story on countless occasions in the course of my lifetime and I plan to do so again and again as far into the future as I am able. There is no tale quite so thrilling for me as Dracula, and of all my beloved stories, it is the one that has eternally snared the deepest, rarest love of my heart. This is the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab collection I have been waiting for, since, well, forever and I feel very fortunate to share some of my thoughts on it with you today.
So…let me know what you think about this format! Actually, now that I look it over, it kinda looks… the same as the other BPAL reviews I write. Huh. How did that happen?? Well, I await and appreciate your feedback, all the same. And please do let us know if you have any favorites from this year’s Weenie collection! If you have questions about a particular scent that I did not mention below, leave a comment, and I’ll see if I can’t come up with an on-the-fly review for you.
And, also, wow…my preamble-less intro was a lie. Read on for the good stuff!
Les Heures de la Nuit (blackcurrant musk, white lime, and sparkling white cognac) Mimosa icing sugar frosting a tea cake? Cold black tea sweetened with a citrus blossom sugar?
Songs of Autumn I (sometime before: rain-damp grass and white sage) a herbaceous, purifying scent; hand made soap and icy, clear water.
Songs of Autumn III (dust and tumbleweeds, dry sage and chaparral, cactus nectar, and cinders) The scent of the absence of a thing; a melancholy, echoing pocket of once-was in a space where a thing was just-there. A faintly sweet, and slightly sad slip of void.
Songs of Autumn V (dry maple leaves, blackcurrant juice, patchouli root, and bourbon) It’s the sort of earthy-foresty-berried brew that a wood-witch keeps in a flask at their side for the revivification of lost souls and a nip for themselves on bone-cold nights. It’s probably about 51% ABV. I wish POM Wonderful made a version of it.
Dusk in Autumn(black tea, currant cake, mandrake root, a whirl of dried leaves, and hearthsmoke) Sara Teasdale made perfectly fragrant (I feel like the sweet comforts of her wonderful poetry were made expressly for this!) Dusky, musty, sweet autumn vegetation; the ancestral memory of smoke twisting up into a starry sky.
The Shadowed Veil (black pumpkin, leather, pomegranate incense, agarwood, and bourbon patchouli) a browned butter cake topped with autumn leaves and smoky icing sugar, served by the misty hands of by a solemn ghost; a widows (cake) walk.
Are You Digging on my Grave (snuggly musk, milky puppy breath, upturned earth, and a gently-gnawed bone) I was previously unaware of this poem, and the imagery plus the wonderfully pupper-centric scent notes make my heart sigh weepily. Dabbed on the wrist the fragrance conjures November-chilled cemetery gates, a frigid wind biting through woolen mittens, and an afternoon treat–a softly crumbling scone perhaps, wrapped in a clean cotton handkerchief, and stuffed deep into coat pockets for nibbling over forgotten gravestones.
The Empty House (black oud, woodsmoke, mahogany, pine pitch, and blackened pumpkin) the most delicious pine-log campfire coffeecake, enjoyed post-Wendigo escape.
Fall Leaves, Fall (starry musk melting into blackcurrant, black oudh, black roses, and blood-red maple leaves) this smells the way the phrase “a murmuration of starlings” feels on the tongue; spectral silhouettes fluttering behind closed eyelids in a cinematic sort of way.
Mictecacihuatl (copal, precious woods, South American spices, agave nectar, cigar tobacco, and roses) An intricately carved wooden tray with offerings of dried roses and fresh apricots, dusted with cocoa and cracked pink peppercorn.
The Listeners (mist-pale lilac, orris root, bruised violets, mugwort, white amber, yuzu, white champa, and white musk) Intensely aromatic dry, bitter citrus mingles with paraffin wax and fresh-cut, almost savory green capsicum for an oddly enjoyable scent that somehow smells exactly like the aggressively weird label art would have you believe it smells.
Pistachio Pumpkin Truffle an immediate deep saltiness, bordering on savory toastiness, followed by a wild, animalic chocolate. Like if cacao pods had scent glands.
Cozy Pumpkin Sweater (a dribble of pumpkin spice spilled onto a fluffy orange angora sweater) Ok so imagine that demented cashmere sweater scene from Lord Love A Duck but transplant it into the eternal autumn of the Sabrina universe. Pumpkin spices and that enchanted inch or so of knitted or woven fabric along your cardigan collar that even when removed at the end of the day, retains the warmth of your skin and the phantom perfume of your favorite shampoo.
Cardamom Cream Pumpkin Cake Cardamom is one of my favorite kitchen spices and, I think, one of the most unique scents and flavors that I’ve ever encountered. Woody, incense-y, soapy (is this just me?) and wonderfully aromatic–I add it to every “spiced” baked good I make, whether or not the recipe calls for it. In this instance, it makes for a warm, delicious fragrance, with milky-sweet aspects and a “fresh out of the oven” vibe.
Pumpkin Mead And Honey Cakes quintessential carmelized carbohydrates; the platonic ideal of a dense sticky, brown bread
Apple Butter Rum A fresh stick of butter, and a basket of fresh-picked apples. Later, these notes will come together in a cast-iron skillet and carmelize with sweet spices and a liberal spike of Kraken rum, but fresh out of the bottle, those two elements, the creamy dairy and the crisp fruit flesh, are so incredibly vivid and present and magically distinct from one another.
Miskatonic University Pumpkin PatchLILY–>GILDED Everything you love about the Irish coffee, dusty tomes, and polished oakwood of the original Misk U scent, added as an extra shot to a grande PSL. Somehow this really does call to mind a campus coffee shop for me (I went to a community college which I am pretty sure had no coffee shop, but I’ve got a good imagination.)
Devil’s Night In The Pumpkin Patch (a flaming pile of pumpkin guts, booze, and sweaty dark musk) A leathery dark musk, and the vegetal funk of clingy-stringy seasonal gourd innards. A crazy skeleton on a lurid horror paperback cover smells like this. Maybe this guy.
Popcorn Ball Snake Oil Popcorn is my favorite food. I could eat it for every meal. And while there are many “foodie” scents I don’t think I’d like to smell of, popcorn gets a pass. Hell yeah, I’ll smell like popcorn! This is the hot-toasty-salty-buttery-corniness of movie theatre popcorn, bound stickily with that sugary-resinous Snake Oil, which gives it a complexity and depth that you wouldn’t get with your run-of-the-mill, plain old popcorn perfume (because … there’s so many of them out there?)
Pumpkin Spice Snake Oil Here’s my Downeast Maine pumpkin bread again! But imagine if you substitute Snake Oil for the cooking oil (which I already swapped for olive oil) and the result is a sugared-vanilla incense-xxxspicy loaf (because I use at least three times as much cinnamon, too.)
Lollipop Snake Oil Effervescent, grapefruity-limey Fresca + a watermelon Dum Dum!
Carotene (sunset orange, a marigold-bright throb of light: sweet amber, ginger root, apricot, patchouli, red mandarin, chrysanthemum, and yam) if carrots smelled more like tangerines–fresh, citrusy, a little waxy; if tangerines grew up from the rooty earth rather than hung down from high, sunny branches.
Chlorophyll (dew-dotted grass, tea leaf, and sun-warmed herbs) Oddly enough, this smelled like a matcha custard bun when I sniffed it straight out of the bottle! On the wrist though, it is a riot of vibrant greens, from fresh tomato leaf to sharp ivy to sweet marjoram.
Anthocyanin (red musk, mandrake root, patchouli, pimento, saffron, red oudh, clove, and basil) Fall air rich with decaying leaves and cider-y scents and gorgeous spice and incense-saturated veils billowing in a sun-warmed October afternoon’s breeze. Like… if your very favorite head-shop had a stall at your favorite autumnal renaissance fair. This is basically the best of all worlds.
Dead Leaves, Nutmeg, Sweet Vetiver and Virginia Cedar I don’t normally love nutmeg, but this is such a sweet, simple, wholesome combination that now I want to start putting nutmeg and cedar shavings in my morning porridge. I also want to be the kind of person who eats porridge.
Dead Leaves And Chai Really lovely, reminds me of the enchantment of autumns in NJ. A sweet-tempered spiciness mingled with those manky, musty, softly rotting vegetal dead leaves–this is such a great combination. It conjures the memory of an evening stroll I took over a decade ago, on Halloween night. Without the slightest hint of a breeze, a whirlwind of crushed and broken leaves rose up from the sidewalk to swirl around my head. One smacked me in the face so hard it felt like someone punched me. It was weird and exhilarating.
Dead Leaves, Moss, And Mushrooms if there was ever a better argument for “more is more,” I don’t know what that could possibly be. My favorite “Dead Leaves” scents have thus far been those signature dead leaves plus some unexpectedly bright or springy floral pairing…but as it turns out, the very best one is comprised of a “like + like” formula. This one smells as if you had swept your favorite mug across an autumn flotsam of forest floor and brewed up in boiling rainwater all the sylvan sweepings you had gathered. Best served warm and cozy in tiny acorn cups, to ring of sleepy woodland creatures. If you love fall but you don’t love pumpkin, maple, or apple scents, I think you are really going to fall for this one. Pun intended–I always intend my puns.
The Country Gets Wilder As We Go (a snow-capped, untamed maze of fir, poplar, and oak. Ghostly beech reaching skeletal arms into the ink-black sky.) Sweet, peaceful mountain flowers.
The Meaner Things (thundercrack of ozone and moist, salty fog. A flap of leathery wings, a cluster of bark-brown feathers, and skittering, chattering black musk) A wolf in mermaid’s clothing; a subtly sweet aquatic for people who think they don’t like aquatics. Beautiful.
Wax Cylinders (polished mahogany, soft leather, and gold-molded wax) soft swirls of waxen, creamy, chewy, golden confections;
Death’s Head Moth (dusty brown sandalwood, nagarmotha, brown oudh, clove husk, white patchouli, black pepper, vetiver, green cumin, and ash.) Hand-made lace, only a little moth-eaten and musty, that has retained the gentle perfume of its owner –a combination of warm skin, fine-milled soap, and sweet, cooling herbs– a century later. This is an understated and sublimely beautiful scent. *I believe “nagarmotha” is a kind of cypress*
The Empty Coffin (dead roses, oud blanc, and white sandalwood) at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, this is the creepiest thing I have ever smelled. If you have ever sat, alone, in a funeral home and sniffed at the sterile atmosphere and softly rotting blooms, almost certain that your nose could eke out the decaying flesh and embalming fluid and grief and loss and heartbreak and terrifying dread of your own mortality, underneath it all. Well, then. I challenge you to dribble a bit of this on your wrist and try to read Dracula without going a little bit insane. (Edited to add: this dries down to an eerily beautiful rose.)
Flesh of my Flesh (deep crimson musk threaded with mesmerizing Tunisian amber, voluptuous champaca blossom, vanilla absolute, labdanum, bitter almond, and black orchid) This is a wildly hypnotic, narcotic scent; a feral floral with a hint of musk and talc.
Come, Sister (icy musk draped in osmanthus and white gardenia, a whisper of ti leaf and orchid, crystalline amber, and incense smoke) A chilly scent-scape of misty wheeling figures and transparent gloom, of intolerable laughter in sweet, tingling tones; the low voice in a dream that befools, and leads you from one nightmare to the next, promising weak light and wakefulness. A fragrance of lightly falling snow and beguiling madness.
The Sleeping Draught (a haze of lavender and black oudh, laudanum accord, and opium tar) first: sharp, somewhat camphoraceous lavender steam; later, a dark, sticky, honeyed sweetness, like opium manufacturers jumped on the cbd gummies trend. Ye olde-time sugar-dusted opium gumdrops.
The Sun Rises To-day ( blue lilac and violet leaf, white musk and eucalyptus, carrot seed and ti leaf.) Fruity amber, a lavender + violet tonic, lemony green tea.
The Blood Is The Life (blood trickling through thick, dark myrrh and a rivulet of unholy, desecrated sacramental wine) This is the deepest, richest, reddest, most indecent goblet of spiced wine.
Kisses for us All (red roses and honey, a throb of red musk, bitter neroli and clove husk all staining a slash of sheet-white vanilla sandalwood) Out of the bottle, this is very similar to the deep claret of The Blood Is The Life, but it shortly differentiates itself as jammier, stickier, and more floral in the way that sometimes tuberose smells to me like grape jellies.
The Embodiment of Funeral Gloom (a shroud of black agarwood, cypress, myrrh, and upturned earth, scattered with crushed lavender and creeping with moss-smothered stone) This is an uncanny creation and smells exactly like this passage: “Never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funeral gloom.” I mean, that’s always the point, I’m sure, to have your work match up with your vision, but dang they nailed this and if you want whispering shrouds and grave tombs and misty clouds and ominous doom, you have come to the right place.
Lucy’s Eyes (a pulsing infernal amber, shot through with lilac-blue, bloodshot and blazing) Lilac and amber really is a strange and sinister combination! Miky green leaves, dewy and fresh, incased eternally in a glowing amber shrine. The amber lends a perversely sweet note to the potion, a sort of “evil Play-Doh” vibe. If Lucy rose out of her coffin and filmed a relaxing slime ASMR compilation for her YouTube channel, the shimmering ooze would smell like this.
The Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Halloween 2019collection of perfumes, hair glosses, and atmosphere sprays are currently live and available for purchase. As this is a limited edition series, sample sizes imps are not available for Weenie 2019.
A few years ago, at the request of Sam over at Haute Macabre, I wrote up a little primer/course guide for folks who were looking to dip their toes (or dive straight into) the mythical, mystical, magical catalog of fragrance oils offered by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.
Shortly afterward, I came on board as a staff writer and have written all kinds of stuff about all kinds of things for the Haute Macabre blog since that time, but this week they are again sharing that BPAL guide for curious newcomers to the brand–along with a giveaway of some of my favorite scents that I give mention to!
