Perfume Review: Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Snow White

By Unknown

Purchased

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's limited edition Yule perfumes recently went up on the site, along with an unfortunately rather buggy redesign of the site. The Yules are typically a mixture of new and returning seasonal scents; Snow White is one of the most popular recurring scents. While the bottle I have of this scent is an older vintage, 2011, I don't think the scent changes that much from year to year, so the review may still be helpful. In addition, Pink Snowballs is very similar to Snow White, so I'll review it alongside (this version is from 2009).

Price: $23 for a 5 mL amber glass bottle of perfume oil with polyseal cap, of either scent.
Samples: Not available
(More details about price and shipping can be found in our Company Overview post about Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.)
Description from the website:

• Snow White: "A chilly, bright perfume: flurries of virgin snow, crisp winter wind and the faintest breath of night-blooming flowers."
• Pink Snowballs: "A lighthearted winter scent: chilly vanilla rose snowballs! Dainty, soft, and certainly unfit for flinging!"

Snow White is a weird and polarizing scent. It's one of the most artificial-smelling perfumes I've tried from BPAL, though not necessarily in a bad way--it smells like nothing else to me, not so much a cheap imitation of something natural as its own entity. I've seen the scent described as almond, coconut, mint, lily musk, Play-Doh, and Scotch tape.

I think it smells closest to almond extract plus Scotch tape, or possibly a floral nail polish remover with the brain-cell-killing chemical reek dialed down. It's a clean and unsweet scent, rather plasticky and Play-Doh-like, but with hints of soft white flowers and almond under the bizarre synthetica. It is strong as all get-out, definitely headache-inducing if you apply too much, and lasts forever and a day.

I can see someone really hating it--I really hate it myself sometimes--but other times I'm absolutely in the mood to smell like a white plastic Play-Doh golem wreathed in almond blossoms, and I put the tiniest dab on my pulse points, and go swanning about in my Snow White force field, hoping I don't run into anyone with scent sensitivities.

Pink Snowballs is essentially Snow White with a generous helping of sugared rosewater poured over the top. It smells a little more normal than Snow White because of the familiarity of the scent of roses, but has a similar synthetic base and the potential for even more headachiness if overapplied, with the combined aggressive powers of Snow White + roses. Personally, I reach for it more often than Snow White, since the rosewater element makes it more wearable for me.

What perfumes do you like to wear for the holidays? Do you have your eye on anything from the BPAL Yules this year?

(Oh, and by the way, Violette Market's Creatures of the Snow are back this year--if you were intrigued by my review of the discontinued scent Splendor and Magnificence, Pink Vanilla Glacier from this collection looks pretty similar.)

Note: this scent is vegan.