Perfume Review: BPAL's How Doth The Little Crocodile

By Unknown

Purchased

How Doth the Little Crocodile is a perfume that makes up part of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's series of Alice in Wonderland-inspired General Catalogue scents--the portion of their permanent collection that first lured me into trying their perfumes. It's named after a poem in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that satirizes a moralistic poem of the time called Against Idleness and Mischief, which in turn has its own lovely scent in the BPAL catalog that smells like honey and chamomile.

Price: $17.50 for a 5 mL amber glass bottle of perfume oil with polyseal cap.
Samples: $4 for a 1/32 oz sample.
(More details about price and shipping can be found in our Company Overview post about Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.)
Description from the website:
"How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!


How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!

Chocolate peppermint, mint-soaked vanilla, pistachio, oakmoss, and green cedar."

Review:
How Doth the Little Crocodile is a rich, woodsy cedar scent sweetened by chocolate and mint. The mint, while it gives a hint of freshness to the scent, isn't a terribly strong presence in my bottle (which is a few years old now, so it may have smelled different fresh). There are hints of creamy vanilla, and it's grounded by dusty, dry, green oakmoss. I can't make out the pistachio as a separate element.

The cedar is a dry, clothes-chest type cedar to my nose, not a green cedar as described in the notes list. I definitely think of this as a woody scent, not a gourmand, in my mental categorization of my perfume collection.

I honestly wasn't sure about this scent when I first smelled it, but it grew on me, so I now own a bottle, and it's one of my go-tos for when I want to smell good, but not too sweet or girly--I think it could definitely be a unisex scent, despite the strong sweet chocolate presence, because the oakmoss and cedar carry it into masculine territory, and keep it sexier than just smelling like a Peppermint Patty.

So which wins out--the scent named after the poem that teaches a lesson, or the poem that satirizes it? I like both the scents a lot, but ultimately, in the scent sample showdown, this was the imp that got upgraded to a bottle--it's much less sweet and more complex than Against Idleness and Mischief.

Note: this scent is vegan.