Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s new collection, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque Of The Red Death, is live on their site (along with the 2018 weenies, wooooooo!) In a brilliant stroke of genius, to accompany these new scents, they have created a wonderful audiobook recording of this bloody tale, narrated beautifully by Tom Blunt and illustrated with an assembly of reveling phantasms brought to life with label art by the marvelously clever Tenebrous Kate.
If you’ve never read the story –and would you believe I have not?–now is the time to slip on a pair of headphones, darken your chambers, and dream of delirious fancies, and, “much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.”
It’s always so thrilling to me to see the artists and artisans I adore collaborate on projects together, so when I saw that Kate was going to be working with BPAL on this collection, my heart exploded with glee (no gore, it’s a metaphorical explosion, of course.)
I asked Kate if she had any thoughts about the collaboration, and she enthused on the following points:
Like many spooky folks, I’m a longtime fan of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, to the point where I own special storage boxes to organize my collection. I’d had the opportunity to create art for BPAL’s inaugural Drag Con scents, and when I was asked to return to illustrate a Halloween collection, I agreed before I even heard the full details of the project. When I learned it was a multi-part Edgar Allan Poe collection, I realized that I’d be adding to the imagery already created by two of my biggest influences, Harry Clarke and Aubrey Beardsley–a daunting but fabulously rewarding prospect! Oozing gore, overblown decadence, and the sinister threat of death–what more can one ask for in a scent collection?
What more can one ask for, indeed! This collection is gonna be fantastic.
At Haute Macabre today we give a glimpse beyond the veil and share a few secrets regarding the hauntingly beautiful fragrances from Seance Perfumes–as well as the collection’s creator, Lacey Walker.
A few mini reviews as well! Did I finally find a rose to love, and which will love me back? Am I late to the love of creamy white florals? Read more to find out, and avail yourself of a discount code to pick up a few of these otherworldly scents for yourself!
Welcome to another installment of Stinkers & Duds, wherein I complain about the products that really gross me out! Don’t expect thoughtful, articulate commentary on these things (I hope you have figured out by now that you should probably shouldn’t ever expect that from me). These are beauty products and cosmetics that usually make me a little bit irate, so it’s basically just a lot of cusses and hate.
Why is it that when someone gifts you with something awful, it’s a jumbo-sized version of that awful thing? Yes, I’m a jerk for complaining about a gift…but…it’s not like I’m complaining to their face, right? Aqua di Gioia from Giorgio Armani was a Christmas present this past year, and I am fairly certain I already knew I would hate it; a very similar scent was gifted to me right after high school, as well. And true, when we are young, we haven’t really developed all of our tastes, we are still trying to figure out what we like, but I can assure you that when it came to fragrance, I knew what I was all about–and it was not “shower fresh”, “soapy clean”, or “the world’s most watery glass of lemonade.”
This is a bland, polite scent whose very inoffensiveness offends me. ALSO, and here is a loathsome confession. I am kind of addicted to the youtube channel of this really horrible celebrity; I don’t know why I continue watching her, but I just cannot look away. There is really nothing at redeeming about this person or her place in the world, including and especially her horrible taste (which I know is so subjective, and I am sorry, but she’s pink and UGGS and spray tan and oh my god why can’t I stop watching her?) Anyway, she bought herself Aqua di Gioia as a Christmas gift and as soon as I saw that this dumb dummy loves it, well, that just summed it all up for me. It’s just a dumb, pointless perfume.
Oh my god, I am such an asshole. This LUSH Shoot For The Stars bath bomb was a gift, too, and even worse, it was a gift that I suggested someone buy for me. It’s beautiful, right? It purports to smell of bergamot which sounds super classy, right? Well, we would be wrong for thinking that. It smells like a peach gummy scented urinal cake. Which is the exact opposite of classy. It also left both the tub, and my post-tub bod, super greasy. I know this for a fact because when I went to bed that night, I snuggled up against my partner, who remarked, “…ugh…you’re super greasy.”
Joseon Beauty of Joseon Dynasty Cream was highly recommended to me, first by friends, and secondly by the internet–reddit threads, facebook groups, beauty blogs. It has a cult following, all sorts of heavy-hitter ingredients, and it seems to be everyone’s Holy Grail multifunctional skincare cream. It’s supposed to be brightening, anti-aging, and give you beautiful, bouncy skin. Use it as a face massage, a sleeping pack, with your bb cream, whatever. It was starting to sound like coconut oil, in that regard, right? Like, what can’t this amazing stuff do?
Well, I could not use it long enough to find out. While I didn’t love the powdery-cucumbery scent, it was the slimy, sticky texture that I couldn’t get past. It had a this horrible jellied, stringy consistency (if you are familiar with snail mucin products, you know what I mean), and if I am being honest with you, it looked like someone jizzed all over my face. It was really bad. Like, Faces Of Jizz 18: The Jizzening bad. To add injury (injizzy?) to insult, not only did I look like a glazed fucking donut the few times I used it, it really reddened and inflamed the sensitive areas on my face. Not cool, Joseon Dynasty Cream*. Not cool at all.
To be fair, I purchased this product through amazon. I am aware that purchasing things like this through third party sellers can be risky business, but I truly think I was using the actual product, and it just didn’t work with my skin.
So that’s it for my recents Stinkers and Dud products? What about you? Tell me what you’ve been hating lately!
At Haute Macabre today I review some of my favorite scents from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s 2017 Yule collection…and there were quite a few! There is also a giveaway for an assortment of the scents mentioned, so be sure to leave a comment on the post to be eligible!
Spoiler alert: my favorites were Diable en Boîte, and Claircognizance! Have you tried any of these seasonal scents and festive fragrances yet? What were your favorites?
Psssst…! Over at Haute Macabre right we have an exclusive preview of the new scented offerings from Bloodmilk Exquisite Corpse Chapter III, in collaboration with Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and Three Ravens Co., and which will be launching in oh…about five minutes at 3PM est this afternoon 🖤
Apologies, all! It’s the most wonderful time of year–it’s WEENIE time of year–and your faithful reviewer has been laid up with violent food poisoning. I am sorry to say that with the ol’ tum in turmoil, the last thing I have wanted to smell over the past week was Pumpkin Spice anything.
Cinnamon Chai Cupcake(no notes provided) The coziness of lightly spiced cake batter on a chilly autumn night, a bowl of sweetened buttercream frosting, a dusting of cinnamon.
Pumpkin Brownies The Lab’s description indicates this is a pumpkin brownie swirled with caramel and topped with sour cream frosting, but to my nose, these are peanut butter brownies.Begin with a beurre noisette, and swirl high quality butter in a pan on low heat until it gets foamy and brown, and begins to release that nutty, toasty, delicious scent. Toss this in a bowl with a minimal amount of cocoa powder–really, just a dash– and add a jar of the chunkiest, saltiest, most delicious peanut butter you can find. Then do all that other stuff that makes brownies, brownies. I don’t know man, I make mine from a box.
Hallow-e’en, 1914 (Dried ivy and maple leaf with honeyed fig, black cypress, and grave dirt.) An incense of dry, dusty earth sweetened with dark, syrupy fruits, for welcoming for the dead come home.
Samhain 2017 (Damp woods, fir needle, and black patchouli with the gentlest touches of warm pumpkin, clove, nutmeg, allspice, sweet red apple and mullein) Autumn fruits stewed on the stove, spiced with all the usual seasonal suspects, and with half a mug of local apple cider stirred in to gild the lily. The mixture, perhaps left on the burner a few seconds too long as you stepped outside to turn your face up to the October sun, begins to break down into a pulpy jam, the sugars caramelizing and smoking slightly.
Haunted Seas (Seaspray and flecks of foam welling with opoponax and labdanum’s sepulchral moans.) Ooh, at first Haunted Seas smells very much like one of my long-discontinued favorites–Danube. A cool, dark, and mysterious floral-aquatic. A slow, lazy current, running through a sun-dappled glade, swirling with strange, pale blooms.As it dries on the skin, the spectral grey skies and cool, faint fog become apparent, but even so, there is a hopeful brightness at the core of this scent, the breaking of dawn after a midnight of storm-tossed seas.
La Calavera Catrina (Autumn leaves, wild roses, bourbon vanilla, dry chamomile, and a bouquet of bright chrysanthemums and Mexican marigolds.) This elegant Lady of the Graveyard’s arrival is heralded by a sour pungency, green and bitter, and the sweet rot of fallen foliage, damp and decaying. She extends her hand, and gripped lightly in the furled, gleaming bone of her fingers, is a bouquet of the reddest roses you can imagine, their scent lemony and uplifting, mingling gently with the sweetly herbaceous chamomile and the musty spice of marigold petals, crushed underfoot.
Pumpkin Chypre (A gleaming auburn chypre shot through with streaks of pumpkin) Roasted pumpkin, sprinkled with sea salt and not quite Parmesan. Maybe nutritional yeast? Foody, but in a savory main course sort of way, as opposed to the fancy dessert cart options. There’s..something here. I can’t put my finger on it. I want to say umami-esque. Umami adjacent. I don’t know if I want to smell like it, but I’m pretty sure that I like to eat it.
Dead Leaves, Hemp, Mossy Soil, Frankincense, and Oudh Confession time, friends. Your stinky friend here never properly partied it up during her youth and wouldn’t know what hemp or any other weedy business* smelled like even if she was right in the middle of it getting a contact high. Is that what you call it? I don’t even know the language for drug talk. My sister once laughed at me because I referred to “crystal meth,” she told me I sounded like an out of touch octogenarian. I was 30, by the way. I’ve led a fucked up, fascinating (well, I think so, anyway) existence, but super fun, mind-altering substances were unfortunately not a part of that. ANYWAY. This particular Dead Leaves blend smells briefly of dank earth, but it’s final form is a rich, fruity resin.
*I know hemp and marijuana are different plants! …but that’s pretty much all I know.
Dead Leaves, Violet Candy, and Sugar Crystals This initially struck me as one of the more unusual Dead Leaves combinations and I wasn’t entirely convinced it was going to be a pleasant. It begins with an earthy, murky, pile of damp leaves with the powdery woody-floral of the violets growing in a patch next to it. A waxen, sugar-crusted candy wrapper blows by in a brief but sudden breeze. All of these pieces are like jerky stop motion animation; you see them in separate frames in your mind’s eye, disparate entities that don’t even interact, let alone connect, until all of a sudden they do. Underneath the decaying plant matter is an elusive fragrance that smells like, oh, I don’t know…nougat made by dryads? Pillowy and sweet and utterly magical. Imagine there was a secret woodland fairy folk candy shop, shelves sweetly stocked with confections concocted and created with forest roots and resins. You’d have to go pretty far into the forest to find it; you might not be allowed to leave once you do. If you do make it back home again, you’ll not remember a single moment of your delicious adventure …but you’ll dream about those sylvan sweets for the rest of your life.
Pumpkin Spice Shoggoth (Bursting bubbles of self-luminous pumpkin spice!) Amorphous and radiant, and definitely drinkable as a latte, it’s possible that something either went horribly awry…or exactly as it was meant to be, when the The Elder Thing created created the Pumpkin Spice Shoggoth. Iridescent lemongrass and coconut slime, pustules of tartly fizzing lime, rolling over and crushing the gentle pumpkin spices, like so many frantic penguins–this is an oddly refreshing fragrance that is not at all terrible or indescribable.
Chiroptophobia (Fear of Bats) A flutter of leather becomes a swarm of buffeting musks, tangled with a white flash of sandalwood and near-inaudible shrieks of eucalyptus and elemi. Dark and velvety in the bottle, Chiroptophobia immediately turns screechy and bite-y on application, nipping with tiny mentholated fangs. This phase is fleeting too, as the fragrance shifts again to a mild, oily leather and milky, soft sandalwood. The result is a fuzzy creature that you want to cuddle and feed banana chunks to just like in those bat rescue instagram accounts, but whose dark heart beats an unknowable, alien song…and you remember why you were afraid of bats to begin with.
Blood Squib Who knew that blood splatter smelled of rich cherry cordials and marzipan?
The BPAL Halloween 2017 update is always big and exciting, like a jam-packed trick-or-treat bounty bag. This year’s especially thrilling addition to the line-up is a collection based on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, with wonderfully spoopy label art by Drew Rausch. There are 14 scents total; I have reviewed a handful of my favorites for you below.
Suspicion of Foul Play Clean wood floors, a clean tub, clean, clean, clean, with no stain of any kind, no blood-spot whatsoever. I had to try this one a few times before I got where it was coming from. At first I thought it smelled like one of the scratch-n-sniff stickers that you always tried to trade away because you wanted something that smelled like ice cream or popcorn, not hot garbage. Obviously my sniffer was off that day, for the next time I tried it, it made total sense. I might have been getting a nose-burning trash heap pile of citrus peels right out of the bottle, but Suspicion of Foul Play is a actually just a very limey floral cleanser. Nearly caustic, but it reigns itself in after a moment or too. Could you clean the shit out of some blood stains with this? Well. Maybe just scent yourself with it. Or you know, don’t do any murders.
Groan of Mortal Terror (Opaque grey amber and opoponax swelling up like thick smoke, pressed under the weight of baleful tobacco.) Soft smoke and delicate resins.This is a gentle scent that makes me think of a lonely soul who might volunteer to spend a night in a haunted house because the ghosts might be the most company they have had in quite some time. Groan of Mortal Terror is absolutely lovely and wonderfully wearable. And think of all the phantoms you’ll befriend!
The Dead Hour of the Night (Mist-shrouded pine and moonflower creeping over flaccid opium poppies.) THIS SMELLS EXACTLY LIKE A WOMAN IN A FILMY PEIGNOIR RUNNING HEADLONG FROM A TOWER, WITH A SINGLE LIGHT IN ITS TOP MOST WINDOW, IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT. Seriously. This smells like running for your life across a landscape of darkness. If you’ve been searching for the perfect scent to pair with your date night ensemble worn to impress the creepy sweetheart who may or may not want to kill you and also possibly has a lunatic spouse locked in their moldering attic, this is the one.
The Mournful Influence of the Unperceived Shadow (Thick black patchouli, shadow musk, myrrh, and threads of hot saffron mired in sweet, viscous labdanum). I wore this one afternoon, and felt myself cocooned in a cloak of old-world glamour. There’s a deeply powerful leathery note present that seems simultaneously mellowed/amped up by something earthy and intimate and just slightly sour. It reminded me of the last dregs of perfume in a cloudy glass flacon on a starlet’s mirrored vanity table from another era.
The Hellish Tattoo of The Heart (Blood musk and pulsating black pepper, a throb of bitter almond, and cracked pimento.) This is a gloriously bittersweet scent for me; it conjures every time I ever crept into my mother’s bedroom and inhaled the combined odors of her perfume tray, her costume jewelry, her stacks of astrology books precariously piled at her bedside. The wafts of Rachel Perry products from her medicine cabinet, with that gorgeous label artwork that I thought was so very beautiful and sophisticated when I was younger. For you, The Hellish Tattoo of The Heart may smell of cool musks with a peppery bite, but for me it’s the scent of every secret my mother kept, and the sadness I forever carry knowing that I no longer have the chance to unlock them.
I Heard Many Things in Hell (black iris, French lavender, Roman chamomile, and frankincense) These Tell-Tale Heart scents are crazy, I tell you what. I don’t think I have ever had so many shifting and contradictory thoughts about a collection of scents. When I initially sampled the scent, I got a strong blast of something that I can only refer to as bubblegumm-y. It pains me to say that. It pains me to even type that. If there is one thing you should know about me, it is that I just cannot even with gum. People chomping and chewing on their gum grosses me out me out in such a way that I can’t even think about without retching a little bit. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to gum-shame. I don’t mean to tell you that what you enjoy is wrong. But that’s just a thing about me, okay? So, anyway, when I smelled that, I thought “what in the world…?” But, in researching the fragrance of iris, though, many gardeners do say that their irises smell very much like grape bubblegum! That validation would be all well and good, but the next time I wore I Heard Many Things in Hell, the metallic, medicinal aroma of the lavender was most prominent–but was soothed and softened by the apple-y chamomile. The iris, that strange, hateful bloom, was nowhere to be found.
The Wild Audacity of My Perfect Triumph (A jubilant and deranged lime absinthe) I’ve never been able to reconcile myself to the taste of absinthe (which I of course want to adore, but I think in reality is disgusting); but I think The Wild Audacity of My Perfect Triumph is the perfect antidote for my absinthe aversion. This is a remarkable little fragrance. The notes are so simple, and so well-blended that you can’t tell where the tart, tangy lime ends and the dry, bitter absinthe begins–because it is actually none of those things at all. It is a cool, woody cologne that smells vaguely but handsomely poisonous, but in the very best way, and I imagine it would smell equally beguiling on men, women, and dismembered corpses with still-beating hearts.
What are your favorites from this years Weenie collection? Which scents are you dying to try? Give us your thoughts in the comments!
The Weenie 2017collection is currently live and available for purchase in 5ml bottles for $23 each. As this is a limited edition series, sample sizes imps are not available for Weenie 2017.
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab are purveyors of fine esoteric goods, perfumes, and potions–and if you’ve spent any amount of time with me, or reading my blog here, then no doubt you already know all about them. But for those who may be unfamiliar with this marvelous perfumery, here’s the gist: Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has mastered the art of encapsulating allegorical ideas into singular olfactory experiences, and they 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. TLDR; they make you stink real pretty in the most amazingly creative ways.
And not only do these singular scent slingers work long hours, toiling away to create compelling fragrances inspired by your favorite ghost stories/mythologies/comic books/horror movies/holidays (that would be Halloween, obviously,) for which to make your olfactive aura beautiful! The do-gooders at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab also put in a great deal of time and personal attention in the attempt at making our world a better, more beautiful place, with many years of activism, community involvement, humanitarian work, and ongoing fundraising efforts and events under their belts.
About these efforts, my dear friend Elizabeth Barrial, owner of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, shares:
“Since the day we first opened our doors, helping support and strengthen marginalized communities has been of paramount importance to me. At Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, we have never shied away from our civic duty, and since the inception of the company, we have made it a point to do everything within our power to support organizations that provide emergency aid and disaster relief, support environmental and conservation causes, help the homeless, protect civil liberties and reproductive rights, and offer succor to the LGBTQ community and marginalized ethnic, racial, and minority religious groups. It is our way of helping to protect and provide for our communities, and we feel it is our obligation as human beings to help those who may not be empowered to help themselves.”
Jeanne d’Arc, Albert Lynch
BPAL currently offers a line up of scents inspired by Nasty Women and those who would persist; by courageous federal employees who risk their careers to ensure that the public is kept informed on issues of climate change; by those ceaselessly fighting injustice and hatred and bigotry. Scents to bolster courage as you refute ignorance and insincerity; scents to encourage kindness and compassion; scents to provide relief and recovery to those imperiled by disastrous circumstances. The proceeds from all of these scents go to such organizations as the ACLU, NCTE, Planned Parenthood, Emily’s List, NAACP, the National Parks Conservation Association and the National Park Foundation, as well as hurricane disaster relief efforts, and below you will find the descriptions and links to all of their current philanthropic, fundraising fragrances.
Alternative Facts: The truth hurts — so why tell it? Muffle the blow with Alternative Facts. If you truly want to obfuscate what you really smell like, this is the scent for you! Sugar-crusted vanilla, a firecracker-blast of cherry and sour lemon, a hint of scuttling spiders, encroaching fog, and trumpets of bombast, bluff, and bluster. Proceeds benefit the American Civil Liberties Union.
Fake News: A scent of misdirection, of 140 frantic characters typed out in spite at 3am, and paranoia-clouded churlish accusations hurled at perceived enemies: crushed pink pepper pod, bitter white tobacco, gnarled patchouli, all covered in glinting, garish slashes of gold. Wear it in vigilance as you sift through the memes, trolls, clickbait, hate-speech, and outright propaganda that continually threaten to overwhelm all the world’s kindness, wisdom, and informed expertise. Wear it in courage as you refute ignorance and insincerity at every turn — even from our nation’s highest-ranking figures — with indisputable facts from well-researched sources. Proceeds benefit the American Civil Liberties Union.
COVEFE: Is it abstract nonsense poetry? Surrealist performance art? Cryptography so subtle and devious that it would make an Enigma machine blush? This perfume makes no fucking sense: orange marshmallow cream, bitter lemon, black pepper, orange carnation, and gin.
Proceeds benefit the American Civil Liberties Union.
Nevertheless, She Persisted: A rallying call: golden oudh, frankincense, iris, and steel. Proceeds from this scent benefit EMILY’s List, an organization that supports electing pro-choice Democratic women to office.
Nasty Woman: “Such a nasty woman.” black fig and patchouli, filthy bourbon vanilla, honeyed amber oud, and loukhoum. Proceeds will be split between Planned Parenthood and EMILY’s list.
Irish Coffee Buttercream: Irish whiskey, granulated sugar, brown sugar, whipped cream, buttercream and coffee, and Spiced Rum Buttercream Coffee: Coffee and rum laced with allspice, nutmeg, clove, star anise, cardamom, and cinnamon gently whipped into buttercream. Two cheery, uplifting scents slated for a future, 2018 coffee-theme release which instead became emergency fundraiser scents in order to take an immediate stand to fight the reinstatement of the unconstitutional, immoral, and unnecessarily cruel US military ban on transgender people. Proceeds benefit the National Center for Transgender Equality and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Take a Knee: This is the scent of apple pie, as American as it gets, and a smudged grass stain. Taking a knee…this isn’t a protest of America itself, its flag, or anything that this country stands for. It isn’t disrespectful of the US military. On the contrary, it is the acknowledgement that we as a country can do better, that we must do better, and that we must renew our commitment to fight for equality and justice for all. Proceeds benefit the NAACP.
Theoi Nomioi: The National Park Service refuses to be muzzled. On January 24th, South Dakota’s Badlands National Park social media team defiantly posted a series of climate change facts from the National Wildlife Federation before being shut down. The Theoi Nomioi are the gods and spirits of the wild: the countryside, the pastures, the forests. Under their auspices, untamed nature thrives, the beasts of the wild feast and multiply, the mountains reach to the heavens with their stony, snow-capped fingers, and the forests grow thick and dark with mystery. Proceeds to the benefitNational Parks Conservation Associationand theNational Park Foundation.
And last but certainly not least, The Collected Poetic Works of Antonin Scalia, the “federal court’s beat poet of indignation and right-wing rage.” We’ve had myriad political figures throughout US history that have possessed acid tongues, but few in the modern era have provided such a constant stream of colorfully vitriolic superlatives as the Sick Burn Champion, the cranky, flamboyant, inimitable Antonin Gregory Scalia.
I haven’t sampled all of these scents, and more importantly, I don’t want my opinions on them to overshadow the fact that these scents exist in the world, doing good in the first place, so you won’t find reviews here today… but feel free to ask questions in the comments if you wanted my thoughts on any of them, and I will do my best to fill you in!
Are you a creator who gives a damn? Are you aware of artisans or indie businesses speaking up, reaching out, and creating art or goods to express outrage with injustice, promote anti-hatred, or which encourage safe spaces in their communities? Please let me know about them for future Friday Fripperies!
Do you want to smell of an ice cream sundae enjoyed in the murky seaside town of Innsmouth? Or perhaps strange desert visions? Or nostalgic Spring Break make-outs with your high school boyfriend? Leave a comment over at Haute Macabre and tell us which scent you’d most like to try!
Why is it that when someone gifts you with something awful, it’s a jumbo-sized version of that awful thing? Yes, I’m a jerk for complaining about a gift…but…it’s not like I’m complaining to their face, right? 
Oh my god, I am such an asshole. This 
