The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Long Face came out of a collaboration between Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and AMC, timed to the third season of the network's Vampire Chronicles adaptation. The scent sits inside BPAL's The Vampire Lestat collection, which means it was built to conjure a character rather than a mood board. Elizabeth Moriarty Barrial, the brand's perfumer, shaped the formula, and the studio partnership gave the release a clear narrative anchor: the backstage world of a stage performer, the kind who lives in costume and exits through smoke. Released in 2026, the fragrance leans into that backstage mythology, pulling notes that evoke makeup greasepaint, leather costumes, and the sweat-salt residue of a performer mid-transformation.
The collaboration between Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and the production team behind Vampire Chronicles season three centers on a shared interest in translating visual storytelling into scent. Elizabeth Moriarty Barrial, the brand's perfumer, approached the project as a form of character research, building the formula around the idea of a performer caught between identity and costume. The perfume oil format suits the concept, since oils sit close to the skin and develop slowly, much like a role settling into an actor over the course of a long shoot.
The evolution
The first few minutes read almost antiseptic. A clean, slightly green synthetic wash, the way a theater hallway smells at five in the afternoon, all dust and hairspray and cold bulbs. Then the velvet arrives, and with it the leather, pulling the temperature up. Frankincense threads through the middle, more liturgical resin than church. What surprises is the orris, which never quite disappears, holding the powdery structure intact while the ambergris warms everything underneath. The sweat note is the tell, not as funk but as skin heat, the body under the costume. By the third hour the drydown has gone plush and close: makeup powder, worn leather, a thread of sweet ambergris. It doesn't project much past arm's length in the final stretch. The next morning, what remains is a faint orris-and-velvet shadow on fabric.
Cultural impact
Long Face sits inside BPAL's licensed collaboration work, placing the brand within a specific lane of perfume-as-merchandise where scent functions as a tangible piece of a larger fictional world. As a perfume oil tied to a television property, it carries the dual appeal of a licensed release and an independently composed fragrance, bridging collector culture and perfume enthusiasm. The release draws interest from the broader BPAL community for whom each new drop functions as an event, particularly when tied to a recognizable narrative property.
