More BPAL reviews

[petronia]

Procrastinating from writing the current ficlet onna card. Dammit, this LJ is full of "content" already and I keep adding features all the time. XD;

Delight
In ancient India it was believed that a specific combination of flower petals, when strewn across a couple's bed, would amplify desire and sexual pleasure. This blend is a blend of the same floral essences, refined into a gloriously sinful perfume blend. Frangipani, with rose, tuberose, and jasmine.

The bottle scent startles. Sure there's the expected "giant bouquet of flowers" effect, but the top note is sharply, orangely acidic, like the spray you get when you punch through citrus peel with your fingernail. It's not citrus though (when I say 'orange' I mean the colour, synaesthetically), more green. ...Some flowers, like lilac, have such penetrating scents that they exhaust your nose quickly: on first inhale you get intoxicating perfume, on second inhale it's much weaker, and on third all you get is vegetal sap. That's the same 'greenness' here. (FTR, the worst flower for this is datura - light and fresh and intoxicating, but you can only get the scent on the first sniff. Creepy, but so much about datura is. XD)

So yeah, floral, but almost more chypre than floral. I'm guessing it's the frangipani/plumeria.

On my skin the green predominates for a few minutes, then the nicely balanced rose/tuberose/jasmine combination takes over. As it develops it gets sweeter and sweeter until it's almost sugary, like bubblegum. I had to think hard about what I was smelling until I realised it was... roses. I'm not exact on names but from years of experience sniffing blooming roses in the Botanical Garden (ahem =_=) I can tell a number of different varieties: wild rose, tea rose (which I think is what people call "old lady perfume" rose), the deep red rose with a spicy, almost cinnamony undertone, and a - I think it's an intense pink? - rose that smells like candyfloss. That's the rose in this blend, or a good part of it.

It's funny how mental associations dictate people's reactions to scents. I'm a Red China fob and the thought of my elderly female relatives wearing any perfume causes hilarity; the only thing roses make me think of are the flowers themselves. Jasmine OTOH comes with an immensely complex memory-tangle, and when I went back to Shanghai two years ago during osmanthus season I regressed to five years of age. And as for frangipani... well, it reminds me of somewhere I've been. Hawaii? Florida? Wherever it is, I would like to go back kthx.

Not very long-lasting, as expected from a blend with no base notes. If I had the willpower (or were sufficiently distracted by other blends) I'd save this one for summer.

Shanghai
The crisp, clean scent of green tea touched with lemon verbena and honeysuckle.

I totally begged this off ametatsu because of the name; I'm not even very fond of lemon verbena. XD; ("Real" lemon yes, but not lemony herbs: lemon verbena, lemon basil or lemongrass. I can't drink herbal teas that contain lemongrass, the aftertaste drives me nuts. It baffles me that people are apparently unable to tell the difference.) And green tea in cosmetics - here's an association for you - totally reminds me of Elizabeth Arden or whichever department store brand it was started that fad. I don't think I've encountered a single green tea-scented anything that really smells like fresh green tea to me, though the note itself is pleasant enough. I guess it's really aiming for matcha anyway, rather than a steaming mug of bilochun?

There are no secrets or surprises in this blend. Lemon verbena, green tea, and when those two have evaporated sufficiently, honeysuckle. ...Actually I like the honeysuckle drydown quite a bit. But ideologically speaking it's not really me. And it doesn't remind me of Shanghai, which should more be like... osmanthus, lotus and opium. Or something. XD

Will someone more accomplished than me make a good joke out of the fact that the BPAL search engine is at spicybrains.org?