I have now tried over fifty perfumes (because these “weeks” are eight days long, for silly reasons). That’s . . . kind of boggling? And I’m nowhere near done yet! People keep offering me more samples, hah.

* Beeswax & Sweetgrass (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “the golden glow of beeswax mingled with dry sweetgrass.” It . . . basically just smells like honey on me, with maybe some underlying musk at the end. It’s not bad, but it’s also pretty simplistic.

* Burial
Described as “deep, brooding forest scents, including juniper and patchouli. The scent of upturned cemetery loam mingling with floral offerings to the dead.” In the bottle, it is VERY sharply juniper, taking on a bit of an herbal tone when applied. As it dries, the “floral offerings” emerge as a distinct rose — but I like how the evergreen helps to restrain that note. It achieves a nice balance; I’m just not sure it’s a me balance.

* Pink Grapefruit and Egyptian Musk (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “pink grapefruit, green tea, bergamot, and Egyptian musk.” Surprisingly (and counter to how it normally seems to behave), the musk only comes through faintly at the end; mostly this has a nice fresh green scent from the tea and maybe the bergamot.

* Winter Divinity (Haus of Gloi)
PEPPERMINT. HI, THIS HAS PEPPERMINT IN IT. CAN YOU TELL THERE IS PEPPERMINT? Eventually vanilla comes out to play. It made me smell like Christmas candy. I may hold onto this until next Christmas, and then if I decide I don’t really want to wear it in that season (it would have to beat out BPAL’s Thieves’ Rosin), I’ll unload it.

[Here endeth the batch of samples Yoon sent me. The next bunch are a combination of some from a different friend, a couple I bought, and random freebies BPAL included with my order.]

* In Omnibus Caritas
This is one I bought, because I liked the sound of it. Described as “honey and mallow flower, sugar cane, white sandalwood, orris, and vanilla bean.” Started out buttery, which fortunately it lost over time, but on me it’s just kind of uninterestingly warm and sweet.

* Kabuki
Described as “cherry, red musk, and star anise.” I . . . really don’t understand this one, because at no point did I smell cherry or red musk (even though musk more often takes over anything it’s in). And I guess star anise in perfume doesn’t smell like licorice the way I assumed it would, because I don’t get that, either. It’s sharp and medicinal, almost like cleaning fluid, though not unpleasant. Not for me, though.

* The Arrival at the Sabbath and Homage to the Devil
Described as “bourbon vanilla, benzoin, caramel, Mysore sandalwood, aged black patchouli, carnation, and iris florentina.” This one was hard for me to parse, because I’m still not sure several of its element smell like (benzoin in particular). People on the BPAL forum described it as a very foody scent, but it wasn’t at all like that; I’m not even sure how to describe what it was like.

* Fae
Described as “white musk, bergamot, heliotrope, peach and oakmoss.” So today I learned what heliotrope smells like! In the bottle it came across as, like, really high-end artisanal bubblegum; then it turned into marzipan. Sadly, though, the musk did what it usually does, retaining only maybe a faint trace of peach.