Fire and Spice
Jun. 27th, 2007 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaA few weeks ago, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
starcat_jewel reviewed BPAL's Phantom Calliope scent (one of their Carnival Diabolique scents), noting that on her it ended up smelling like cherry cough syrup. From what I've seen from a few reviews posted around the web, that seems to be a fairly common reaction. I wanted to try it, because fruit scents tend to fade quickly on me, while the base note, patchouli, is one of my favorites, and verbena usually "pops" on me nicely. I thought I might get a richer, less fruity drydown from it. So I borrowed it from her, and I tried it on after getting out of the shower today.
In the bottle: Very cherry, with undertones of something woody, and . . . cinnamon. There's no cinnamon in the ingredients list! How odd.
First on: The cherry goes subdued as soon as it hits skin, which I thought it might. This is a very 'hot' scent. Partly that's the cardamom, which is the top note right now, very spicy. Right underneath it is something woody, possibly cedarwood, and then underneath that is pure cinnamon. There has got to be a typo in the ingredients, here, because I don't smell blackcurrant at all - they must have meant "cassia" (aka Vietnamese cinnamon) rather than "cassis" (aka French blackcurrant).
Ten minutes later: The cassia is the top note now, with the cardamom wafting above it like smoke. There's no cherry left now, no fruit note that I can smell at all, and the verbena is present but overpowered. There's that woody note again, and now I can smell the pachouli underneath it all. Very spicy, very heavy. I think my skin is starting to tingle.
Fifteen minutes after application: Holy cRaP I'M ON FIRE GODSDAMN IT!
At this point I had to wash it off; there were huge angry red splotches on my skin everywhere I'd applied it. I'm now guessing that the 'woody' note is cassia bark, although there still might be an unlisted wood as well. I'm rather disappointed, because I've never had a BPAL blend do that on me, and because it was actually smelling pretty good, if insanely spicy, before the 'Diabolique' aspect decided to go all fire and brimstone. I'm pretty sure that was the cassia, too - skin irritation is a known issue with me and cinnamon oil, although it's not usually that bad. (There are still large pink circles in the bends of both my elbows where it was, and I washed it off over half an hour ago.)
So, yeah. That's two of us this blend doesn't work on, for distinctly different reasons.
starcat_jewel reviewed BPAL's Phantom Calliope scent (one of their Carnival Diabolique scents), noting that on her it ended up smelling like cherry cough syrup. From what I've seen from a few reviews posted around the web, that seems to be a fairly common reaction. I wanted to try it, because fruit scents tend to fade quickly on me, while the base note, patchouli, is one of my favorites, and verbena usually "pops" on me nicely. I thought I might get a richer, less fruity drydown from it. So I borrowed it from her, and I tried it on after getting out of the shower today.In the bottle: Very cherry, with undertones of something woody, and . . . cinnamon. There's no cinnamon in the ingredients list! How odd.
First on: The cherry goes subdued as soon as it hits skin, which I thought it might. This is a very 'hot' scent. Partly that's the cardamom, which is the top note right now, very spicy. Right underneath it is something woody, possibly cedarwood, and then underneath that is pure cinnamon. There has got to be a typo in the ingredients, here, because I don't smell blackcurrant at all - they must have meant "cassia" (aka Vietnamese cinnamon) rather than "cassis" (aka French blackcurrant).
Ten minutes later: The cassia is the top note now, with the cardamom wafting above it like smoke. There's no cherry left now, no fruit note that I can smell at all, and the verbena is present but overpowered. There's that woody note again, and now I can smell the pachouli underneath it all. Very spicy, very heavy. I think my skin is starting to tingle.
Fifteen minutes after application: Holy cRaP I'M ON FIRE GODSDAMN IT!
At this point I had to wash it off; there were huge angry red splotches on my skin everywhere I'd applied it. I'm now guessing that the 'woody' note is cassia bark, although there still might be an unlisted wood as well. I'm rather disappointed, because I've never had a BPAL blend do that on me, and because it was actually smelling pretty good, if insanely spicy, before the 'Diabolique' aspect decided to go all fire and brimstone. I'm pretty sure that was the cassia, too - skin irritation is a known issue with me and cinnamon oil, although it's not usually that bad. (There are still large pink circles in the bends of both my elbows where it was, and I washed it off over half an hour ago.)
So, yeah. That's two of us this blend doesn't work on, for distinctly different reasons.
