Lupercalia 2023
Lupercalia 2020 was our last major perfume launch before the pandemic dashed the world out from under us. Our video announcement for that launch featured The Lovebirds, a whimsically romantic duo which inspired an equally whimsical set of fragrances. It would be a long time before whimsy was something that felt accessible to us again.
Three whole years and a cross-country move later, it seemed appropriate to invite them to nest here again. The world’s health crisis hasn’t ended, we’re far from fully settled in our new home, and the excitement folks imagine they’re supposed to feel at this time of year can seem difficult to conjure. Whether it’s lust, romance, or purification you long for, please consider the common entry point they often share: whimsy, the melting away of seriousness, the erosion of those stark barriers set up to protect our soft interior selves from the world outside.
These boundaries we develop out of necessity often become the shell we must burst out of as we continue to grow. Relaxing into the absurdity of this conundrum is what makes it possible to bond with others, relating through our shared desires, frustrations, fears, often stumbling headlong into Eros by way of laughter, sympathy, or even just the discovery of pure animal attraction.
Pressure demands release, and release invites the smallest suggestion, any excuse to pour forth. The smallest and silliest thing, the most ephemeral gesture, a breath of scented air — and then wham, you’re outside of yourself again, and letting others deeper inside than ever. This eternal cycle of whim and wham is what Lupercalia is all about, and we wish you both in equal measure. May a small bird perch in your soul and sing! And may its call attract another, and another, and so forth, until the branches break under them and all the sap runs free.
We’d bottle that if we could! For now, these will have to do.
Lupercalia 2020 was our last major perfume launch before the pandemic dashed the world out from under us. Our video announcement for that launch featured The Lovebirds, a whimsically romantic duo which inspired an equally whimsical set of fragrances. It would be a long time before whimsy was something that felt accessible to us again.
Three whole years and a cross-country move later, it seemed appropriate to invite them to nest here again. The world’s health crisis hasn’t ended, we’re far from fully settled in our new home, and the excitement folks imagine they’re supposed to feel at this time of year can seem difficult to conjure. Whether it’s lust, romance, or purification you long for, please consider the common entry point they often share: whimsy, the melting away of seriousness, the erosion of those stark barriers set up to protect our soft interior selves from the world outside.
These boundaries we develop out of necessity often become the shell we must burst out of as we continue to grow. Relaxing into the absurdity of this conundrum is what makes it possible to bond with others, relating through our shared desires, frustrations, fears, often stumbling headlong into Eros by way of laughter, sympathy, or even just the discovery of pure animal attraction.
Pressure demands release, and release invites the smallest suggestion, any excuse to pour forth. The smallest and silliest thing, the most ephemeral gesture, a breath of scented air — and then wham, you’re outside of yourself again, and letting others deeper inside than ever. This eternal cycle of whim and wham is what Lupercalia is all about, and we wish you both in equal measure. May a small bird perch in your soul and sing! And may its call attract another, and another, and so forth, until the branches break under them and all the sap runs free.
We’d bottle that if we could! For now, these will have to do.
Lupercalia 2023 - Lupercalia Main
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Broken Stems Perfume Oil
Add to cartA rejected bouquet tossed in the gutter: oozing broken stems, macerated rose petals, gasoline, and asphalt.
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Con El Dolor de la Mortal Herida Perfume Oil
Add to cartCon el dolor de la mortal herida,
de un agravio de amor me lamentaba;
y por ver si la muerte se llegaba,
procuraba que fuese más crecida.Toda en el mal el alma divertida,
pena por pena su dolor sumaba,
y en cada circunstancia ponderaba
quesobrabanmil muertes a una vida.Y cuando, al golpe de uno y otro tiro,
rendido el corazón daba penoso
señas de dar el último suspiro,no sé con qué destino prodigioso
volví en mi acuerdo y dije:—¿Qué me admiro?
¿Quién en amor ha sido más dichoso?– – –
Love opened a mortal wound.
In agony, I worked the blade
to make it deeper. Please,
I begged, let death come quick.Wild, distracted, sick,
I counted, counted
all the ways love hurt me.
One life, I thought ― a thousand deaths.Blow after blow, my heart
couldn’t survive this beating.
Then ― how can I explain it?I came to my senses. I said,
Why do I suffer? What lover
ever had so much pleasure?
– Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, translation by Joan Larkin and Jaime ManriqueHeady red roses and white sandalwood pierced by Oman frankincense.
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Green Lovebird Perfume Oil
Add to cartVanilla mint, spun sugar, and pistachio.
Crafted to be layered and worn with Pink Lovebird, but can also be enjoyed solo.
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Heart and Mind Perfume Oil
Add to cartSaid the Lion to the Lioness ― ‘When you are amber dust, ―
No more a raging fire like the heat of the Sun
(No liking but all lust) ―
Remember still the flowering of the amber blood and bone,
The rippling of bright muscles like a sea,
Remember the rose-prickles of bright paws
Though the fire of that sun the heart and the moon-cold bone are one.’
Said the Skeleton lying upon the sands of Time ―
‘The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun
Is greater than all gold, more powerful
Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes
Like all that grows or leaps… so is the heart
More powerful than all dust. Once I was Hercules
Or Samson, strong as the pillars of the seas:
But the flames of the heart consumed me, and the mind
Is but a foolish wind.’
Said the Sun to the Moon ― ‘When you are but a lonely white crone,
And I, a dead King in my golden armour somewhere in a dark wood,
Remember only this of our hopeless love
That never till Time is done
Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one.’
– Edith Sitwell
The flowering of amber blood and bone blooming into the Moon’s shimmering mugwort, creaking oaken boughs streaked with frankincense tar, and a trickle of benzoin to echo the cold silence before the end of time. -
How to Write the Beat of Love Perfume Oil
Add to cartHow write the beat of love, the very throb,
The rhythm of our veins’ deep eloquence?
How fix that darkness―rending final sob,
That perfect swoon of each united sense.
The full-sailed rising of your body’s sweep
― Adrift and safe on joy’s last tidal wave ―
Will toss you on the silver sands of sleep,
Forgetful of the ecstacy you gave.
Your breath ebbs restful as the falling tide:
A sea becalmed!… Lay me in valleyed part
Of breasts whose undulating crests subside ―
Ah how they marked the high beats of your heart!
– Natalie Clifford Barney
The high beat of your heart: pulsating red musk, red mango, labdanum, black honey, black gardenia, Indonesian patchouli, and champaca blossom. -
Lick it, Valentine Perfume Oil
Add to cartA winter BPAL tradition, lustified: chilly vanilla mint threaded through with wild strawberries, pink sugar, honeycomb, and red wine.
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Non Vider Gli Occhi Miei Perfume Oil
Add to cartNo mortal thing enthralled these longing eyes
When perfect peace in thy fair face I found;
But far within, where all is holy ground,
My soul felt Love, her comrade of the skies:
For she was born with God in Paradise;
Nor all the shows of beauty shed around
This fair false world her wings to earth have bound;
Unto the Love of Loves aloft she flies.
Nay things that suffer death quench not the fire
Of deathless spirits; nor eternity
Seves sordid Time, that withers all things rare.
Not love but lawless impulse is desire:
That slays the soul; our love makes still more fair
Our friends on earth, fairer in death on high.
– Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
Blackcurrant, frankincense, 7-year aged patchouli, oakmoss, leather, black cedarwood, and beeswax. -
Pearl Necklace Perfume Oil
Add to cartInspired by queer events.
Skin musk dribbling with pear cream, orris root, vanilla bean, and raw honey.
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Pink Lovebird Perfume Oil
Add to cartCotton candy, cardamom, and confetti cake.
Crafted to be layered and worn with Green Lovebird, but can also be enjoyed solo.
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Sister Death Perfume Oil
Add to cartMy sister Death! I pray thee come to me
Of thy sweet charity,
And be my nurse but for a little while;
I will indeed lie still,
And not detain thee long, when once is spread,
Beneath the yew, my bed:
I will not ask for lilies or for roses;
But when the evening closes,
Just take from any brook a single knot
Of pale Forget-me-not,
And lay them in my hand, until I wake,
For his dear sake;
(For should he ever pass and by me stand,
He yet might understand—)
Then heal the passion and the fever
With one cool kiss, for ever.
– Digby Mackworth Dolben
A sorrowful white lily fougere shadowed by yew branches. -
The Little Ghost who Died for Love Perfume Oil
Add to cart‘Fear not, O maidens, shivering
As bunches of the dew-drenched leaves
In the calm moonlight… it is the cold sends quivering
My voice, a little nightingale that grieves.
Now Time beats not, and dead Love is forgotten…
The spirit too is dead and dank and rotten,
And I forget the moment when I ran
Between my lover and the sworded man ―
Blinded with terror lest I lose his heart.
The sworded man dropped, and I saw depart
Love and my lover and my life… he fled
And I was strung and hung upon the tree.
It is so cold now that my heart is dead
And drops through time… night is too dark to see
Him still… But it is spring; upon the fruit-boughs of your lips,
Young maids, the dew like India’s splendor drips.
Pass by among the strawberry beds, and pluck the berries
Cooled by the silver moon; pluck boughs of cherries
That seem the lovely lucent coral bough
(From streams of starry milk those branches grow)
That Cassiopeia feeds with her faint light,
Like Ethiopia ever jeweled bright.
Those lovely cherries do enclose
Deep in their sweet hearts the silver snows,
And the small budding flowers upon the trees
Are filled with sweetness like the bags of bees.
Forget my fate… but I, a moonlight ghost,
Creep down the strawberry paths and seek the lost
World, the apothecary at the Fair.
I, Deborah, in my long cloak of brown,
Like the small nightingale that dances down
The cherried boughs, creep to the doctor’s bare
Booth… cold as ivy in the air,
And, where I stand, the brown and ragged light
Holds something still beyond, hid from my sight.
Once, plumaged like the sea, his swanskin head
Had wintry white quills… “Hearken to the Dead
I was a nightingale, but now I croak
Like some dark harpy hidden in night’s cloak
Upon the walls; among the Dead, am quick;
Oh, give me medicine, for the world is sick;
Not medicines, planet―spotted like fritillaries
For country sins and old stupidities,
Nor potions you may give a country maid
When she is lovesick… love in earth is laid,
Grown dead and rotten” … so I sank me down,
Poor Deborah in my long cloak of brown.
Though cockcrow marches, crying of false dawns,
Shall bury my dark voice, yet still it mourns
Among the ruins ― for it is not I,
But this old world, is sick and soon must die!’
– Edith Sitwell
Give me medicine, for the world is sick: dew―drenched new leaves shuddering in the moonlight, a shiver of white musk, and a drop of Italian bergamot. -
The Morning Star Among the Living Perfume Oil
Add to cartThou wert the morning star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled;
Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendor to the dead.
– Plato’s epigrams on Aster and Agathon
Black fig encased in saffron-threaded amber. -
The Serpent in the Roses Perfume Oil
Add to cartSnake Oil dribbling across a cluster of amber-flecked, blackened rose petals.
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To Lallie Perfume Oil
Add to cartUp those Museum steps you came,
And straightway all my blood was flame,
O Lallie, Lallie!
The world (I had been feeling low)
In one short moment’s space did grow
A happy valley.
There was a friend, my friend with you;
A meagre dame, in peacock blue
Apparelled quaintly:
This poet―heart went pit―a―pat;
I bowed and smiled and raised my hat;
You nodded ― faintly.
My heart was full as full could be;
You had not got a word for me,
Not one short greeting;
That nonchalant small nod you gave
(The tyrant’s motion to the slave)
Sole mark’d our meeting.
Is it so long? Do you forget
That first and last time that we met?
The time was summer;
The trees were green; the sky was blue;
Our host presented me to you ―
A tardy comer.
You look’d demure, but when you spoke
You made a little, funny joke,
Yet half pathetic.
Your gown was grey, I recollect,
I think you patronized the sect
They call “aesthetic.”
I brought you strawberries and cream,
I plied you long about a stream
With duckweed laden;
We solemnly discussed the ― heat.
I found you shy and very sweet,
A rosebud maiden.
Ah me, to―day! You passed inside
To where the marble gods abide :
Hermes, Apollo,
Sweet Aphrodite, Pan; and where,
For aye reclined, a headless fair
Beats all fairs hollow
And I, I went upon my way,
Well ― rather sadder, let us say;
The world looked flatter.
I had been sad enough before,
A little less, a little more,
What does it matter?
– Amy Levy
Pale white rosebuds aflame with sweet amber, golden honey, frothy ambergris, vanilla bean, red benzoin, and coconut milk. -
Wandering Eye Perfume Oil
Add to cartI know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.
– Edna St. Vincent Millay
Artwork by Becky Munich
A heart-rending, grief-clenched perfume of blackcurrant, carrot seed, rose otto, immortelle, salt musk, violet leaf absolute, and lemon peel.
Lupercalia 2023 - Box of Chocolates 2023
Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said
Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
Which but to-day by feeding is allay’d,
To-morrow sharpen’d in his former might:
So, love, be thou; although to-day thou fill
Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fullness,
To-morrow see again, and do not kill
The spirit of love with a perpetual dullness.
Excerpt from Sonnet 56, William Shakespeare
Lupercalia 2023 - Cherry Bomb 2023
Out of the nursery and into the garden
where it rooted and survived its first hard winter,
then a few years of freedom while it blossomed,
put out its first tentative branches, withstood
the insects and the poisons for insects,
developed strange ideas about its height
and suffered the pruning of its quirks and clutters,
its self-indulgent thrusts
and the infighting of stems at cross purposes
year after year. Each April it forgot
why it couldn’t do what it had to do,
and always after blossoms, fruit, and leaf-fall,
was shown once more what simply couldn’t happen.
Its oldest branches now, the survivors carved
by knife blades, rain, and wind, are sending shoots
straight up, blood red, into the light again.
– David Wagoner
Lupercalia 2023 - Raunchy Hearts
[CW: rough sex, consensual violence, superficial injury]
By now, updating conversation heart lingo to reflect filthier or more contemporary sentiments has become its own time-honored February tradition. And who are we to buck tradition? So here ya go, have some dirty candy.
Reminder: these are perfume oils for wearing on the skin, do not consume them or put them on your raunchy bits.
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Choke Me Perfume Oil
Add to cart[CW: rough sex, consensual violence, superficial injury]
Salty tears streaming down cherry red cheeks.
[Breath-play is inherently risky, approach with caution and in an educated, mutually consensual way!]
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Femdom Perfume Oil
Add to cart[CW: rough sex, consensual violence, superficial injury]
An eagerly-anticipated whip crack of wild plum, champagne, and blackcurrant.
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Go Slow Perfume Oil
Add to cart[CW: rough sex, consensual violence, superficial injury]
Lime candy dissolving in sloe gin.
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I’m Close Perfume Oil
Add to cart[CW: rough sex, consensual violence, superficial injury]
Pure sugar cane bursting with the urgency of ripe, juicy watermelon.
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Leave Marks Perfume Oil
Add to cart[CW: rough sex, consensual violence, superficial injury]
Bruised violet candy fading into yellow amber.
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Step on Me Perfume Oil
Add to cart[CW: rough sex, consensual violence, superficial injury]
Honeyed fig and hazelnut grinding down on old-fashioned molasses candy.
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Tie Me Perfume Oil
Add to cart[CW: rough sex, consensual violence, superficial injury]
A bratty, rambunctious pineapple candy bound in hemp.
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U Strip Perfume Oil
Add to cart[CW: rough sex, consensual violence, superficial injury]
A voyeuristic vetiver watches as layers of sugared coconut lace hit the floor.
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Yes Sir Perfume Oil
Add to cart[CW: rough sex, consensual violence, superficial injury]
Freshly smacked peach candy and torn cotton Y-front underpants
Lupercalia 2023 - Silk Flower Bouquet
The more heightened the fantasy, the more specific the pleasure. These make-believe flowers didn’t push up from the earth, and may never be confused for the genuine article, but their beauty exists in a realm of its own – guided into creation by human longing, plucked into existence by thousands of mechanical fingers, blooming in defiance of the impermanence of nature or the topsoil’s temperature.
Artificiality can be a playground for the senses, giving way to an undeniably authentic experience. So go ahead, have your spring daffodils in February, burrow deeply into the bluest rose, sheathe yourself in a cape of orchids spun from the very blackest silk. Seeking itself in uncanny valleys, pleasure nearly always finds what it’s looking for.
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Black Silk Orchid Perfume Oil
Add to cartA ripple of dark bourbon vanilla and sleek black musk with black truffle, tuberose, and ambergris accord.
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Blue Silk Rose Perfume Oil
Add to cartBlue musk, sugared violets, dried blackberry, opium tar, bat orchid, and blue rose petals.
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Green Silk Carnation Perfume Oil
Add to cartCypress-green carnation petals crushed into grass, hemp flowers, and weed.
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White Silk Chrysanthemum Perfume Oil
Add to cartA silken – yet effervescent – vanilla floral aldehyde laced with spicy chrysanthemum.