After a brief hiatus, I'm back to reviewing more of the Only Lovers Left Alive scents from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab! Only Lovers Left Alive is a vampire movie from 2013 directed by Jim Jarmusch, starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab recently released a limited-edition series of scents based on the film--there are five scents based on the characters in the film, seven based on songs from the soundtrack, and eleven based on specific plot points in the movie. Only 350 bottles of each perfume were created, and when they're gone, they're gone.
I'm reviewing Funnel of Love today, a soundtrack scent based on SQÜRL's cover of the classic Wanda Jackson song. (SQÜRL is Jim Jarmusch's band!)
Previously: Hal and Ian.
Price: $30 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: "17-year aged black patchouli, champaca flower, cardamom bud, green coriander, Haitian vetiver, red vegetal musk, black pepper, night-blooming jasmine, and leather."
Funnel of Love is much softer than you might expect from reading the notes list! Everything in here can be a very powerful scent, and I expected this to smell really sharp and strong, full of pungent patchouli and leather. But it's very mild and cozy. Wet on the skin, I smell vetiver right away, but a pretty mild, grassy vetiver; it lies on a bed of very fluffy-smelling red musk and and soft champaca and patchouli, like a soft floral incense smoke against skin. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's red musk can be very aggressive, very sexual and overwhelmingly strong, but this perfume is incredibly gentle and smooth.
The jasmine, leather, and spices start to just barely peek out as the perfume dries down, but the main note I can pick out throughout is that gentle, creamy red musk with its incense-smoke background. It hangs around close to the skin, and gives me a general feeling of warmth and well-being.
I bought a decant of this thinking I'd have a new power scent for nights out, something to wear with tall boots and a black leather jacket, but this smells more to me like a lazy Sunday morning--perhaps the night after a bonfire, or smoking a hookah, where you wake up slowly and languidly, and the faint aroma of smoke clings to your hair and pillowcase as the sun streams down through the window.
In my mental model of perfumes, I think of Funnel of Love as sort of a red musk sister scent to the cleaner, paler musk of Haus of Gloi's Cozy Sweater. It's not as clean-smelling, but it shares that sort of smooth, soothing fuzzy-musk gentleness that I love so much in Cozy Sweater.
A word of warning: your mileage may really vary, based on reading the reviews on the BPAL.org forums--a lot of people say it smells very strongly of patchouli and leather, and that it's "gritty" and "spicy" and "dirty"--but I am fairly sensitive to patchouli and I don't find it offensive at all here. I don't know if this is a variations in bottles or skin chemistry or people's individual senses of smell, but I was really surprised to read those reviews after writing up my own, as they portray a scent that's almost the polar opposite of the one I experience when I put this on. I really like this perfume, though--I give it a big thumbs up, although it's on the pricey end so I probably wouldn't buy a full bottle myself.
Note: this scent is vegan.
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