Smelling good is big business.
Sales of perfume are in the billions of dollars, and there seems to be a scent named for every celebrity from the A list to the K-Fed list.
But, as with everything, there's an underground alternative.
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is a gothy, independent scent producer with an army of devotees. Known as BPAL to its followers, the Los Angeles lab sells scores of perfume oil blends with spooky names like Embalming Fluid, Dragon's Tears and The Hamptons.
Jenn Stroebel, an Allison Park thirty-something and BPAL fan, works at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School and moonlights as a medieval-style cook. Over lunch last week, she unpacked a little Nordstrom's box full of sample vials, known in the BPAL world as imps, for me to sniff.
Every scent works differently on each person because of body chemistry, Jenn explained to me as she passed an imp of Freak Show, which smelled a little like marzipan. That makes trying out the oils a kind of science experiment.
Jenn says a scent called Calliope wasn't a hit with her and her husband. Both of them felt like they were face-first in a freshly opened box of Pampers.
And scents often change once you put them on. Dragon's Hide, Jenn says, smells like a leather jacket at first but by the end of the day morphs into smelling like dryer sheets.
Andrea O'Donnell, a forty-something seamstress who works at home in the South Hills and in Shadyside, swaps scents with women she meets through the BPAL message board.
She has a fistful of playfully named imps in a decoupaged box. One series, Mad Tea Party, was based on "Alice in Wonderland," and two of the scents are Eat Me and Drink Me.
Drink Me should not be drunk, and in fact makes me kind of nauseated. "Me too!" Andrea says.
BPAL aficionados are all about spreading the word about their hobby.
Jenn's 3 1/2-year-old daughter, Lake, already has a favorite -- Snow Moon. And her teacher noticed: "Lake smells so good!" she told Jenn. She passed on a few imps to the teacher, and a fan was born.
One of the things she likes about BPAL is that the limited runs of the scents teach her to let go. Unlike the eternal wearers of Chanel No. 5, "I know I'm not going to be wearing the same perfume in five years," Jenn says.
Andrea wears a different oil every day, determined by her mood. Her kids notice. "You smell like a candle, mom," one told her.
But her husband doesn't: He has no sense of smell.
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