I’ve had several people comment to me recently that ‘it smells like autumn’. Personally, I think it’s wishful thinking on their parts. I’m in Florida and I can still smell the sweat and cooking asphalt. Anything close to what most people would recognize as ‘autumn’ isn’t gonna happen until November. Maybe. Having the smells of the season in the forefront of my brain, I decided to see what our favorite perfumery, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, have available for this harvest season.
Black Phoenix celebrates all aspects of this special time of year with their Halloweenie 2008 line of perfume oils. The coming of fall is well represented from the nostalgic scent of freshly piled leaves with A Blade Of Grass to the sinister smells of charred wood and blood musk from Chant D’Automne. Halloween is shown in all its different guises like the fresh flowers and leaves of the cocoa and tobacco plants from the Bolivian festival of Day of the Skulls, the heady spices and the dangerous nectar of the agave of the ancient Aztec death goddess Mictecacihuatl and the spiced pumpkin and apple of the pagan Samhain 2008. Even Trick or Treat gets a nod with the sweet Sticky Pillowcase whose ingredients are
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Black Phoenix have in the past been inspired by great literature to concoct aromatic creations based on those works. Before they have developed scents based on Good Omens, Stardust, the adventures of Alice, and the works of Lovecraft and Shakespeare. Now they have made perfumes based on Washington Irving’s classic Halloween tale, The Legend of Sleepy Hallow. The oils capture the tempting sweet flesh of Katrina Van Tassel and the juxtaposition of the man of letters and the believer in dark tales that is Ichabod Crane. They even manage to recreate the atmosphere in which Ichabod listen to tales of ghosts and witches in Fearful Pleasure.
This has been a mere sampling of what Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has to offer. So select one of their perfumes as soon as you can. Because they can smell your fear.
I’ve actually got a bottle of Katrina Von Tassel on order even as we speak… it’s good to know that in the event you order something and don’t like it, there is a thriving secondhand swap/sale/ebay market for BPAL, especially for the limited edition scents.
I was gifted two tiny glass vials of black phoenix alchemy lab (Ichabod Crane and Chant D’Automne). Ichabod Crane smells like mildewed lilies but it’s actually quite palletable to these olfactory senses. Chant D’Automne is a heavy brown scent of burnt leaves and smoky bark; very evocative of damp autumn weather in the woods.
Color me impressed.
BPAL scents *are* very evocative – one of my perennial favorites is Rose Red, which smells like an honest-to-goodness fresh wet red rose – like a ROSE, not like rose perfume. I don’t know how they do it!