Hello! This week, I have another review of of one of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Lupercalia releases from Valentine's Day 2015, Venus Genetrix. (Click through with caution, as the bottle artwork shown on the BPAL site for Lupercalia is not safe for work.) Part of the series called "Ode to Venus," Venus Genetrix honors the aspect of Venus as the mother goddess.
Price: $24 for a 5 mL amber glass bottle of perfume oil with polyseal cap.
Samples: Not available for this scent.
(More details about price and shipping can be found in our Company Overview post about Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.)
Description from the website: "Venus the Progenitor. Black amber and jasmine tea with 7-year aged vanilla bourbon absolute."
Every note in this perfume sounded amazing, and if I hadn't just treated myself to a full-sized and quite expensive bottle of Hal, another jasmine perfume from BPAL, I probably would have blind-purchased a bottle of this one as well. It wouldn't have been a bad choice if I had, but it's actually not quite what I expected from the notes list.
When I first dabbed this on for testing, I forgot that this contained a tea note, and my first impression was that it smelled puzzlingly fruity and fresh, with a note of something almost like green apples. I think this is the tea part of the jasmine tea note, and it's quite green and fresh-smelling, almost grassy. As it settles on my skin and dries down, the jasmine floral develops a bit more and the fruitiness lessens. The bourbon vanilla is subtle but absolutely heavenly in this--it smells mellow and soft, and hovers as a sweet creamy layer beneath the sharp fresh-floral tea. I actually couldn't pick out its presence until I sniffed a couple of other jasmine perfumes alongside Venus Genetrix, and then the ice cream sweetness of the vanilla came into sudden focus by comparison.
I thought it would be instructive to compare this to The Fox-Woman Kuzunoha Leaving Her Child, a discontinued BPAL scent that is the perfume I wear when I want to smell like jasmine tea. The Fox-Woman Kuzunoha smells much more like "expensive rich-lady perfume" to me, having a much more perfumey, sophisticated, dry woodsy vibe--and smelling more like actual jasmine tea to my nose--while Venus Genetrix smells brighter, fresher, and sweeter, with the vanilla giving it a distinctive creaminess, almost like a green tea ice cream.
I think if you're expecting a perfume that will smell realistically like jasmine tea, you may be disappointed by this one. It's a really lovely scent and I think I'll wear it regularly, but I don't find it particularly true to the scent I would have expected from reading "jasmine tea" in the notes. Although I would have expected this to be a total win for me from reading the scent notes, I still prefer The Fox-Woman Kuzunoha for a jasmine tea scent, and Hal (which is smokier and more golden-smelling) for a non-tea-related jasmine floral--that pretty vanilla isn't evident enough for me in Venus Genetrix, and the strangely fruity freshness of this perfume doesn't appeal to me as much as the headier, sexier takes on jasmine in my preferred jasmine perfumes.
For other reviews of Venus Genetrix, you can also check out the BPAL forums or /r/indiemakeupandmore.
Note: this scent is vegan.
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