Perfume Review! Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Blithe Hollow

By Unknown

Purchased

Fall is in the air! Our weather went straight from unbearably hot to cool, gray, and windy in the last week, and it got me in the mood to check out a perfume tester I've had for a while but never worn--Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Blithe Hollow, from the ParaNorman collection, a scent meant to smell like a dark forest and cool winds.

Price: $26 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: "Dead leaves and cold, moist breezes set at the edge of a forest of maple, pine, cedar, and cypress."

I liked this perfume at first sniff, as it smelled like a green, fresh, piney scent with a heavy dose of sweet white florals. As I smelled it up close, though, and as it developed on my skin, the sweetness started to get more overpowering.

Over a woodsy, conifer-laden base, the scent develops a sort of cloying aquatic soapiness with a honeyed sweetness that brings rotting leaf mulch to mind. There's the dry dustiness of a dirt note in there, but the sweet note combines with it to make me feel a little ill overall. The longer it wears on the skin, the more it smells like a straight honey accord.

If I smell just whiffs of the perfume from a distance, it's really nice, and it definitely brings cool, shady autumn forests to mind either way--the description feels pretty accurate to me--it's evocative of dead leaves and evergreens for sure. But up close, the sweet rotting leaf accord makes my stomach feel kind of funny. I would prefer my autumn forest scents to smell smokier and more dry--less like sweet honey, and more like dirt and oakmoss.

It is very long-lasting, but it's the honeyish note that sticks around for ages--all the other elements eventually fade away until there's just a sweetness that lingers close to the skin.

If you are looking for a sweet but earthy perfume, a scent of forests, honey, and dirt, you might want to give Blithe Hollow a try. For me, personally, it's a pass, but it's so close to being good to me, I can see how it would work well on someone whose tastes are just slightly different.

For other reviews of Blithe Hollow and other scents in the ParaNorman collection, you can also check out Sequential Tart, cookinguptales, or the bpal.org forums.

Note: this scent is vegan.