Review of Antony by BPAL

[lunabee34]

The Catalog Description

The embodiment of Classic masculinity. A warrior’s scent: the green hills and grasses of the battlefields, the resinous incense from the prayers to his Gods, and a touch of the musky leather of his armor. Ambergris and frankincense with sage, and basil.

The Forum Reviews

The forums generally classify this as a masculine scent with many women reporting that they enjoy wearing it and that it makes them feel powerful. (Not every set of forum reviews can contain such a gem as Bread and Butterfly's "plastic baby doll head" comment, alas. LOL)

Our Reactions

Emma (the 11 year old): "This smells like an old man rolled himself in dirt, gasoline, and weird metal. Bad!" And she washes it off (the first perfume she has washed off; even though she didn't really like Incantation much, she still didn't wash it off)

Josh: (who smelled my wrist after the morphing process had completed) "This smells like baby powder."

Me: At first I smell sage and basil and a strong metal smell which quickly turns into an overpowering smell of gasoline that slowly burns off. I smell leather and something incensy, probably the frankincense. I smell nothing at all sweet in this scent to start with. It reminds me a bit of Juke Joint, and I wonder if they have ambergris in common. It's either the frankincense or the ambergris that I'm smelling as gasoline; my money is on the ambergris. And then it starts to get a little sweeter and more powdery, and I almost like it for about ten minutes, and then BAM!, all I can smell is baby powder. I wondered as I was reading forum reviews and everyone else's posts on smellsgood what everyone was talking about when they said a perfume had turned to powder. Now I know.

My imp of Antony is up for grabs. Free to anyone who wants it; I'm waiting to mail out giveaways until I finish testing this first round of imp purchases in case anyone wants more than one, but let me know if you're interested, and I'll reserve it for you. :)


And now, for the wonderful sallymn who made the lovely icon I'm using, have a double drabble of Daniel Jackson gen set during season 5's episode "Summit."



Antony

Daniel doesn’t know where the slave garb the Tok’ra gave him came from, but he certainly isn’t the first person to wear it. The leather collar and belt smell of incense, herbs, and something faintly metallic that Daniel can’t quite identify but suspects might be blood. He can’t help but wonder if the slave who wore these clothes before him died in them. Slaves who rise to the rank of lo’taur are prized but considered as expendable as other humans. That unknown slave may not be the last person to die in these clothes if Daniel can’t manage to hide his identity from Lord Yu.

Daniel quickly discovers what has perfumed the leather he’s wearing. Lord Yu drinks a tea, popular among the Goa’uld and made from herbs that must be ground by hand. As Jarren, he is expected to spend two hours each morning preparing tea for the day. By the time Daniel is finished, the scent of the herbs has worked its way into his pores, his hair, along with the sweet incense Yu keeps burning in his bed chamber. It’s enough to bury the tang of blood that clings to the leather, enough to mask Daniel’s fear.

Comments

[archersangel]

i like the double drabble.

[lunabee34]

Thank you so much!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I'd happily rehome this one if you don't have any other takers - I had an imp of this many years ago that I liked enough to use up, and I'd love to try it out on my friend undomielregina who has just been getting into perfumes and seems to do best with green/woody/resinous notes and masculine blends. :)

[lunabee34]

Sweet! I will gladly send it on to you. :)

It'll probably be a couple weeks before I mail things out, so I'll message you when I get ready to get your address.

I so wish this had worked on me because the forums made it sound so wonderful LOL.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Thanks, and take your time, please! And I'd be more than happy to reciprocate with something unwanted from my stash; take long enough to get through your current batch and maybe I'll have finally made some progress towards getting it all listed on Scentbase...

(I've got a ton of BPAL imps and a few ZOMG Smells samples that should really go to new homes, and will very likely have a few more from Alkemia in a few weeks when undomielregina has finished testing all of her recent order - I get all her handmedowns as we seem to have an Evil Perfume Twin going where a huge number of things that go badly off on her are wonderful on me, and she doesn't want to bother with setting up swaps on the rare things that don't work for either of us.)

[lunabee34]

Oh, cool. A trade is not required but would be cool if you end up having anything I'm interested in. :)

ZOMG Smells looks really cool. I love the geek angle.

And how lucky are you to have a BFF to trade perfumes with. That's really cool.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I can set Serpent's Kiss aside for you if you like! I like it well enough but I don't adore it, and it wouldn't break my heart to pass it along to another vetiver lover. (You may want to check out BPAL's Highwayman and Iago. Or if you want to explore its use in more conventional perfumery, The Perfumed Court does amazing decant samplers - http://theperfumedcourt.com/Products/Vetiver---3-vetiver-You-Pick-sampler-pack__vetiverpick3pw.aspx)

And I've finally got the entire inventory listed here:
https://scentbase.com/Smillaraaq - although I'm far behind on digging up old disorganized notes and retesting things for the actual ratings side. If there's anything there in sample size you're especially interested in, even if I don't have it listed in the swaps category, let me know - swaps is just for stuff I have zero interest in wearing, but there are bound to be a lot of other eventual 3-to-4-star things that I like but don't love and would be willing to rehome to someone who was more strongly interested in them.

[lunabee34]

Iago is on my list to purchase next already! LOL

I would hate to take something you do like in swap (especially since I might end up not liking it); I'd rather take something you're not interested in at all. I'll have a look at what you've got listed and let you know when we've finished sampling this first round.

And Perfume Court sounds cool. *clicks link*

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I wouldn't have offered you that imp if it was something I couldn't bear to part with! I like Serpent's Kiss well enough but I'm not in love with it, and like many other things that I'm only middlingly fond of, it mostly languishes unused in the sample box; when I'm in the mood for something resinous or vetivery there are too many other scents I love more that I turn to first. It's all yours if you want it!

[lunabee34]

I am so sorry for the late response. I have been sick since this weekend and just barely floating my head above water. I finally got back to shore last night (to belabor a metaphor to a ridiculous point LOL).

I really appreciate the offer, but I think I am going to stay away from discontinued/LE stuff just because I don't want to fool with trying to replenish a supply of something I really love but can't order from the general catalog. I know it can be done, but I'd rather not have to go through the hassle. I am lazy, yes. LOL I think when the time comes, I will be interested in the Somnium one you have; I want to try all of those at some point. :)

[sallymn]

Oh that's lovely, thank you so much! I loved the use of sense and imagery that the scent brings to it.

I've just ordered a bottle of Samsara perfume - one of my two favourites, but so hard to get where I am...

[lunabee34]

You are so welcome! :) <3

I'm not familiar with Samsara (love the name!); what does it smell like to you?

[sallymn]

I'm hopeless at describing them, but there's a bit of jasmine it in (we have that in the garden, I love it) and sandalwood. It's an older perfume, was very popular in the 80s, I know.

I find (and I know it's just me being odd) a lot of perfumes, especially the trendy sort, make me think of the smell of slightly overripe watermelon - I love watermelon but not in perfume. So I tend to stick to a couple of older ones I love...

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

There's a nice review and comparison of different versions of Samsara here, from one of my favorite perfume bloggers: http://boisdejasmin.com/2011/10/guerlain-samsara-new-and-vintage-perfume-review.html

Samsara is a great favorite of mine, it was my first real higher-end classical fragrance and I wore it for several years in the early 90s. It has regrettably changed a little bit in the reformulations over the years - I don't know if it's just the proportions of real to synthetic sandalwood shifting, or the variety of real sandalwood has changed, or both, but to my nose a recent bottle of EDT picked up a few years ago is a bit sharper, especially when fresh, and less full and creamy than I remember it being. (It's still quite lovely and retains the essential big-sandalwood/jasmine/vanilla-Guerlinade character of the original, thank goodness - far too many older scents have been reformulated into shadows of their original selves.)

And you're not being odd about the recent trendy stuff - the biggest popular categories of recent years have been watery "clean" scents and sticky-sweet fruity-florals, and the latter are doubtlessly what are giving you that overripe watermelon impression because they're everywhere.

[sallymn]

When I got my first job, back in the late 80s, the office was next door to one of the classier department stores in town, and one of the other women - bravier and/or more barefaced than little me - used to swan in there at least twice a week on her lunch hour to 'test' one of her favourite expensive scents (she must have gotten through bittle and bottles of White Diamonds, her favourite).

Mind you, checking them out when she got back was one way to find some I liked too...

[lunabee34]

I love this story!!

And now I am thinking I need to read a fic where Vala does this very thing and Sam is mortified but then she starts looking forward to smelling whatever Vala has spritzed herself with. LOL

[sallymn]

Oh yes, I can see Val doing that...

[lunabee34]

I have seen this lament everywhere now that I'm reading people's perfume posts. What do you think is contributing to the scent change? Is it just that it's cheaper to use the synthetics?

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

There are lots of different factors with reformulations - sometimes it's all about the profit margin and switching to cheaper ingredients, sometimes it's problems with the availability and reliable supply of a particular ingredient, sometimes it's particular ingredients being subject to new restrictions out of allergen concerns, sometimes with older scents it was a switch away from animal-derived ingredients to synthetics for humane reasons as well as cost...and most frustratingly for fans of older perfumes, sometimes things get drastically reworked because they're out of fashion and the marketers hope catering to more contemporary trends will boost sales. :(

[lunabee34]

All those reasons make sense but I can see how it would be disappointing to fans of the original formulation. I guess the good news for me is that I won't have any memories to be tainted. LOL

[lunabee34]

I'm with ya there. I can't take too much fruitiness in scents. Citrus I can deal with, but too much sweet fruit ends up cloying to me.

I don't know what either jasmine or sandalwood smells like off the top of my head. *cries* Sometimes I feel completely out of my league trying to smell all these things and figure out what they are. LOL

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I grew up around jasmine and a lot of other tropical florals, which can be kind of a mixed blessing - it's easier to identify scents that you're familiar with in the natural form, but it can also make you incredibly picky about them!

Sniffing flowers and such directly isn't always an option, but if you can find a local retailer that sells perfume oils (Whole Foods often has a display in their beauty aisle), sniffing and sampling the testers may help you get a handle on what some of the more common elements smell like.

[lunabee34]

Next time we take a trip to Atlanta, I think I will do that. Rydra_wong linked to somebody who did just that and reported about it (maybe teaotter?), and it sounded really helpful.