The classical Greek chimera was a fire-breathing monster cobbled together from a lion, a goat, and a snake. The word is now generally used to refer to any one of a number of piecemeal entities--for example, a virus containing genetic material from other organisms, or a fossil reconstructed using parts from two different animals.
However, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Chimera perfume oil feels perfectly unified and coherent, and smells much nicer than anything involving a goat (or, I imagine from my visits to the zoo, a lion or a snake). Warm and spicy, it's one of my favorite perfumes for fall and winter, and it's always readily available from the BPAL General Catalog, so I thought this would be a good time to share it with you in case you're looking for a new fall scent.
Samples: Available for $4.00 or as part of a 6-pack for $22.
(More details about price and shipping can be found in our Company Overview post about Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.)
Description from the website: "The fiery, volatile scent of cinnamon, thickened by myrrh, honeysuckle, and copal."
Chimera is a perfume from the Bewitching Brews section of BPAL's general catalog. I avoided it for a long time because I thought I hated cinnamon and resins--I had smelled several other spice-themed perfumes incorporating cinnamon, and they tended to smell very dry, bitter, and sharply spicy, almost burning my nose; and I thought myrrh and copal would smell too "new agey" for me. The description of the cinnamon as "volatile" and "fiery" didn't help with my worries about this one. I finally overcame my fear of cinnamon and resins to give this a shot, and it turned out to be one of my favorite perfumes from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.
The cinnamon is definitely the dominant note, so if you straight-up hate cinnamon, this isn't going to be for you. However, it's much softer than many other cinnamon scents I've tried, smelling a bit more like cinnamon buns than straight cinnamon sticks or gum. In other words, it doesn't burn my nose, although it sometimes stings my skin a bit if I apply it somewhere sensitive like my neck. If you have an issue with this, try applying to your hair or clothes or using a scent locket so the perfume isn't touching your skin directly.
The honeysuckle comes across to me as a creamy, rich vanilla sweetness, and the resins serve only as a mellow, slightly earthy-smelling base to temper the cinnamon note--they're not dominant at all. Chimera melts smoothly into the skin as it dries down, until you have a warm, sweet, soft cinnamon richness seeming to waft from your pores. It has a good throw, and good longevity; I can see this being objectionable to some people, but I find it more complex and pleasant than, say, straight cinnamon potpourri.
Over time, the cinnamon mellows and fades a bit, but it is always present in the scent--it doesn't undergo any huge transformations as it dries down, but the creamy floral and resin base becomes ever more dominant, making the scent seem a bit more mysterious, and leaning into smooth, rich vanilla-amber territory more than woodsy, dry spice.
Sometimes I top this off with a drop of a more straightforward vanilla scent to increase the sweetness and creaminess, like Lavanila Pure Vanilla or BPAL Madagascan Vanilla Rum. Other times, the extra sweetness feels inappropriate, and I wear Chimera alone.
This is one of BPAL's easier scents to appreciate--it's pleasant, not too heavy, and doesn't take a highly sophisticated nose to pick out the intent behind the scent. Sometimes I'm worried that a more unusual perfume will leave me smelling weird or gross when I go out in public, but Chimera reminds me of tromping through leaves in cool fall weather, or baking in a cozy house in the winter--universal signifiers of comfort.
What perfumes do you like to wear as the weather cools down?
Note: this scent is vegan.
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