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July 31, 2005
BPAL: the fabled Snake Oil
"By far, our most popular scent! Magnetic, mysterious, and exceedingly sexual in nature. A blend of exotic Indonesian oils sugared with vanilla."
Read the BPAL forums for five minutes, and you're going to see Snake Oil mentioned. It falls in the general category of "incensey", which meant that i was uninterested in it a month ago, but have since become quite curious about it. "What is this magical stuff that makes men weep with desire and women die of jealousy??!? Please send me a bottle of the world-renowned Snake Oil Liniment now!"
In fact, I stumbled upon an interesting post in the forums just this week-- Beth, the woman behind BPAL, said that Snake Oil was the first scent she ever created, long before BPAL became a reality. She swears it's responsible for her seduction of her current beau. And I think it is essentially her signature scent.
Anyhoo. So, last night Sarah swapped me a bottle and I finally got to try it.
Wet, it's overwhelmingly strong... I barely bothered to smell it in the bottle as I knew I wasn't going to get much out of it until it was less concentrated and reacting to my body chemistry.
On, sweet vanilla is the topnote. It's really quite delicious. Below it lurks... something odd. "exotic Indonesian oils" is very vague. At times it seemed like it could be patchouli (and that's probably part of it); at times, almost medicinal-- like herbs. Other times, it was a bit like baby things-- not the dreaded baby powder smell, but something related to it.
I put it on in the evening, fairly liberally after determining that it wasn't going to go completely sour on me. As I was falling asleep, it was like a sweet vanilla cloud around my head. Without sniffing closely, the medicinal smell wasn't apparent.
On the whole, it was a very odd scent on me. It's probably not destined to be my A-number-one seduction scent, though i'd be curious to see what happened if i wore it out to a rock show or party.
It did make me realize that I'm eager to try more sweet vanilla scents. That part was super yummy.
Posted by lisa at July 31, 2005 10:32 AM
ok, so a) your comment won't post right away because i have to approve it first and b) you might get a server error but your comment probably posted anyway and c) previewing doesn't work so i've removed the preview button.