Fragrances Boutique

If you’ve been following perfume news over the past month or so, you’ve probably noticed that Gucci Guilty is one of this fall’s major launches, complete with full-page ads and scent strips in fashion magazines, a movie-star “face,” a television commercial with a theme song, a somewhat hyperbolic press release, a tie-in to the MTV Video Music Awards, and the now-requisite Facebook page. It’s being promoted as a fragrance for a “21st Century beauty” who is “young, audacious, discerning…an iconoclast who lives life at full throttle…sexy and slightly dangerous.”

Guilty’s bottle is certainly eye-catching: it looks like an oversized, gilded (gilty?) Gucci purse clasp or belt buckle, with its unmistakable interlocking “G”s creating a window onto the juice inside. Gucci devotees will want to own Guilty for the container alone. The fragrance is classified as a floriental, with notes of mandarin, pink pepper, peach, lilac, geranium, amber, and patchouli.

Guilty seems to be more of a sheer, fruity oriental than a floral oriental…

Acqua di Parma has “re-styled” original Colonia* (introduced in 1916) to produce the brand new Colonia Essenza. I’ve recently seen Colonia Essenza in two big department stores: Holt Renfrew in Vancouver, B.C., and Nordstrom in downtown Seattle. Holt Renfrew sells the fragrance only in the men’s department; but so far, Nordstrom displays Colonia Essenza with women’s fragrances — even though there’s an Acqua di Parma section in the men’s perfume boutique. Colonia Essenza is, in stores and online, sometimes referred to as a men’s fragrance and other times as a women’s perfume, but I think Colonia Essenza is a classic cologne-for-all…even children can wear it.

Colonia Essenza includes notes of bergamot, tangerine, lemon, orange, grapefruit, petitgrain, neroli, clove, rosemary, lily of the valley, rose, jasmine, patchouli, vetiver, white musk and amber. Colonia Essenza starts off smelling like a crisp orange blossom Eau de Cologne. As orange blossom fades, warm, but still pert, citrus peel aromas appear and lead directly to Colonia Essenza’s floral heart notes…

Sensuous Noir is one of two flankers from Estée Lauder this summer, the other being the Pleasures Bloom that Angie reviewed yesterday. I have always had a soft spot for Pleasures: whenever I smell it I am brought up short again by how great it smells, and it’s so much better done than the many other squeaky-clean florals of its ilk. Still, I have absolutely no desire to own or wear it. Sensuous is another matter. I would not argue with anybody who said Pleasures was the better fragrance of the two, but Sensuous was the one I bought. The pale honeyed amber works perfectly as a casual, not-quite-oriental (and not particularly sensuous) fragrance and wears well in almost any weather; it is one of my (many!) “what to wear when you don’t want to think about what to wear” scents.

Sensuous Noir, I take it, is supposed to be the sexy, evening-wear version of Sensuous. Estée Lauder is calling it a woody chypre…

At its truest, a flanker is a riff off an original scent, a lighthearted and maybe even forgettable spin on the themes of its forebear. After all, most flankers are around for a year or so then fall out of production. They’re not meant to be masterpieces. Sticking to this definition, Estée Lauder Pleasures Bloom is a textbook example of a flanker.*

I’ve felt so underwater on fragrance launches lately, that as much as I respect the brand, these days I wouldn’t turn my head at an Estée Lauder flanker. But I was wandering through the mall with my niece in Billings, Montana, listening to the ways of dating among teens (Niece: “And so I texted him for, like, two months before I met him.” Me: “You texted him all that time and he didn’t even know who you were?” Niece: “Aunt Angie, that’s how we do it these days. Anyway, I texted him and found out we were both at the mall at the same time…”) and stumbled across the Estée Lauder counter at Dillard’s. A tester of Sensuous Noir was on the counter. As I sniffed a tester strip, the sales associate handed me Pleasures Bloom. “Do you like florals?” she asked. “Try this.”

In that moment, Pleasures Bloom struck all the right notes…

Ah, the summer fling. I was never very good at short-term romances; I always got too attached. Still, late August seems like the right time to test out a few scented frivolities on a whim. I can love them and leave them, or if I feel a lasting chemistry, I can purchase a full-size bottle for fall. Wiggle Perfume has been one of my recent flirtations. I recently went through a set of samples from this indie perfumer based in Olympia, Washington, and several blends caught my fancy.

Bee (shown above) is “a honey-sweet outdoorsy blend” with additional notes of gardenia, neroli, cut grass, oakmoss, and woodsmoke. On the skin, it’s primarily a true-honey fragrance, and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s been on the hunt for a honey-based scent. The creamy-woodsy accent of the other notes keeps Bee from straying too far into Pooh-Bear territory, so it ends up being a rich but not candy-like gourmand. It also has amazing endurance: it lasted through a nine-to-five day on my wrist…

Today’s poll is simple: tell us about your best perfume bargain or incredible find.

Your host today is Tama, who says she has found a few good deals of her own lately. If you haven’t met, let me introduce you to Tama…

…I’d rather say that it is a perfume at the center of doubt; that the beam balance never settles between iris and hyacinth in the main accord, which is what makes the composition interesting. — Serge Lutens

It is rare that Serge Lutens says anything about his own fragrances that I find helpful, but in this case — he was doing an interview with Grain de Musc — he has so neatly summed up the experience of wearing his new Bas de Soie (silk stockings) that only a few more details need to be added.

First, the iris is that cosmetics-powder sort of iris, far from the turnips and dirt-caked roots of Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist. The whole fragrance is cold and spiky early on, and very peppery, and the hyacinth is green and slightly bitter; later, Bas de Soie is warmer, softer and sweeter, and as advertised, the two notes seem to weave in and out (or struggle for control, depending on your outlook) for hours without ceasing until it rather suddenly fades away…

The Jordanian desert — and the national flower of Jordan, the black-blossomed Iris petrana — are the inspirations for Odin 04 Petrana, a new unisex perfume created by perfumer Jean-Claude Delville. I think of “desert scents” as being dry and austere — smelling of “wood dust,” pungent grasses, sharp spices, warm incense ash. (Perhaps I’m being too literal?) 04 Petrana is not “gritty,” dry or “hot.” If 04 Petrana conjures anything desert-related, it’s a moist, flowery oasis. 04 Petrana is a lush perfume.

04 Petrana includes fragrance notes of deep purple cassis, pink pepper, herbaceous coriander, black iris, violet leaf, heliotrope, wild orris root, vetiver, and white musk. 04 Petrana opens with sweet cassis (think cassis cordial, not fresh berries); this smooth, sugared cassis note lasts throughout the life of the fragrance and adds a cheeriness to the composition. As cassis calms, I smell whiffs of citrus-y, green coriander, high-quality violet leaf, and an “undulating” and “wet” iris-violet accord (strong one minute, soft the next). The floral aspect of 04 Petrana is augmented with ‘fresh’ heliotrope — a note that complements both the opening floral accord and 04 Petrana’s slightly powdery base of pepper, vetiver, (cedar-y) wood and light musk.

The first time I smelled 04 Petrana it brought to mind another favorite scent of mine…

If you’re looking for a cheap thrill at the perfume counters, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than something from Pacifica. Since expanding into personal fragrance in 2007, they’ve launched 22 straightforward, reliably wearable scents available in a variety of formats, including spray perfume ($22 for 29 ml), solid perfume ($9 for 10 g) and the newer roll-ons ($12 for 10 ml). The packaging is basic but fun, and they’re reasonably easy to find: Sephora has them, and I see the line in gift stores here and there.

The California Star Jasmine fragrance is their latest offering. As all of you gardeners already know, star jasmine (sometimes called Confederate jasmine) is not the same plant as true jasmine. It’s a vine with clusters of small jasmine-like white flowers, and in Southern California, you often see it used as a ground cover or trained to spill over a wall. I never grew it myself and my memory of the smell is hazy — all I can tell you is “good” and “sweet” — but Pacifica’s founder, Brook Harvey-Taylor, calls the perfume “a love note to the Southern California neighborhood where she grew up”.

California Star Jasmine opens on a slightly green fizzy citrus…

Last week the editor of Culture magazine, a periodical devoted to cheese, asked me to write a feature about a coming issue’s centerfold cheese. (Instead of a naked lady, Culture features a photo of a cheese in the center of each issue, often with a slice removed to make your mouth water at its unctuous interior.) I jumped on the opportunity. Besides the money, it meant I’d get to travel to Oregon’s Rogue River valley and spend the night in a restored Airstream, then pass the next day helping to milk Nigerian dwarf goats — for real! — and learn about the craft of making artisan goat cheese.

The problem was this: besides being an enthusiastic cheese consumer, I don’t know the first thing about making cheese. I bought an issue of the magazine to get my feet wet and waded into a world of rennet, cure times, culture, and curds. The reviews of cheeses mention balance, texture, and accompanying food and wine. Then, at once, I knew I could do it. Thanks to perfume, I can examine quality, structure, and suitability. I may not yet know the technicalities of making cheese, but my enthusiasm for perfume has given me the ability to fully appreciate a whole menu of sensory experiences…

First things first: there is no rose in Forbidden Rose, the second fragrance release from Canadian pop-rock singer Avril Lavigne. The notes for Forbidden Rose, whose theme is “Dare to Discover,” are listed as red apple, white peach, bourbon pepper, lotus flower, apple blossom, heliotrope, pomegranate, vanilla, chocolate and sandalwood. The rose of the title is a “symbolic black rose,” an emblem of fantasy, and the commercial for Forbidden Rose features a thorny rose amidst visual references to fairy tales both old (“Sleeping Beauty,” “Beauty and the Beast”) and new (the “Twilight” series and Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” for which Lavigne recorded a song).

If Lavigne’s first fragrance release, Black Star, was a pop-punk single that you could dance to, then Forbidden Rose is a more introspective ballad…

Most of perfumanity has experienced a variation of the same nightmare. You find a fragrance that unlocks something in you, a scent that speaks a language that is personal and saturated with feeling. A sample is included in a package from a friend or in the sizable and random order that somehow made it from an online shopping cart to your mailbox. Sniffing the vial or a patch of skin carelessly lavished with the liquid, you are pierced to the heart… and you laugh, cry or do whatever you do when overcome with emotion. (My reaction is apparently to blush furiously.) The fragrance has been discontinued, of course. Inevitably, too, it had a niche distribution and has never been reliably available through internet discounters or it was the most weirdly confidential scent in an otherwise mainstream line.

Frantic, late-night searches of the web reveal that you have more soul mates than you ever could have guessed and each of them has already purchased a 1.7 or 3.3 oz bottle of your juice, leaving the online retailers out of stock. The auction sites are merely offering the layering products, flacons or candles. Perhaps you put in the winning bid on bubble soak, even though you don’t own a tub. Over several months, you cobble together a collection of precious millilitres: a mini from seller in Singapore, rare and hideously expensive decants, and the original sample, preserved in museum-quality condition. Haunting the blogs and dead forum threads, you search for smell alike suggestions or rumors about well-stocked stores run by strangely unwitting owners. The Gobin Daudé scents, Comptoir Sud Pacifique Thé, Hermès Doblis… The horror! The horror!

My nightmare has been about Slatkin Persian Lime (Blossom) & Mimosa…

After finishing In Search of Lost Time, I spent several weeks reading nothing but my old children’s books and fashion and travel magazines. Sometimes, following days of eating rich and spicy foods, all I crave is a sliced cucumber or tomato drizzled with rice vinegar. As hot weather arrives, I like to pour on Eaux de Cologne and let their sparkly, invigorating notes “cleanse” my sense of smell of its winter residue of incense, amber, vanilla and leather perfumes.

We all (most of us) like, and need, variety in our lives — and in our rotation of perfumes. I could never wear only “natural” fragrances or rely on one perfume house for my perfume ‘needs’. I can’t stick with one genre of scent: say, vetivers, ambers or chypres. BUT: I didn’t think my need for change would ever take me into the blue-bleu world of marine-sport fragrances….

Bleu de Chanel is Chanel’s “first major male fragrance since 2004’s Allure Homme Sport and its first men’s master brand since 1990’s Egoïste.”* Even though Bleu de Chanel is not geared to a particular demographic/age-group, Chanel hopes this fragrance will broaden its appeal with young men. Bleu de Chanel was created by Chanel’s in-house perfumer Jacques Polge and it contains notes of citrus (bergamot, lemon, grapefruit), “deep blue sea” accord, peppermint, pink pepper, nutmeg, ginger, jasmine, cedar, vetiver, patchouli, labdanum and frankincense…

Same old open thread: talk about anything you like — the perfume you’re wearing today, the last vacation you took (and what fragrances you brought with you), whatever. Or, ask a question about fragrance, then see if anyone else has asked a question that you can answer… Note: image is Shells by walknboston at flickr; [...]

For my last review during Drugstore Week, I wanted to track down an old drugstore classic, like Coty Sand & Sable, Jovan Jungle Gardenia, or the fragrance I eventually landed, Dana Classic Fragrances Love’s Baby Soft. You’d think this would be easy, but no. Drugstores have really classed up their fragrance offerings.

At Walmart, my first stop, a half ounce bottle of Coty Exclamation was $14. Forget it! Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of a cheap thrill? Nine-tenths of the fragrance display was celebrity fragrances and perfume you can find in a department store. I moved on to Walgreen’s. A friendly SA with virulently blue contact lenses attended the locked display case. “Among the older ladies, the Elizabeth is popular,” she said, nodding toward Elizabeth Taylor White Diamonds. “The younger ladies like Jessica, and I absolutely love Dare Me,” she said, referring to Fancy Jessica Simpson and a Baby Phat fragrance. “Have you smelled the Hilary? It’s quite nice.”

For a moment I wondered if Hillary Clinton had fronted a perfume, then recalled Hilary Duff…

I’ve had a mini of McGraw by Tim McGraw for over a year and have put off sampling it. Its squat bottle with the plastic, faux-pebbled leather collar and vague cowboy motif didn’t allure me. And, frankly, before I looked Tim McGraw up for this post, I couldn’t have told you a single song he’d recorded.

When this review posts, I’ll be in Billings, Montana, visiting my father, a horseshoer. Maybe we’ll be at the Muzzleloader for breakfast, where my dad wears his summer work cowboy hat (dirty white straw, smashed on the top from the ceiling of the truck’s cab, distinctly different from his pristine summer dress hat.) My teenaged niece, a rabid George Strait fan, might be with us. I can manage a two-step, used to be an o.k. shot with a rifle, and even go on rare Merle Haggard jags. But for decades my life has been more about the city. I don’t have a clue about country western culture today.

One spritz of McGraw tells me if McGraw is the smell representation of country now, then life is pretty easy…

In my neighborhood Walgreen’s are two shelves of perfumes, bottled plainly, with banners proclaiming things like, “If you like Giorgio, you’ll love OdorGrenade!” For Drugstore Week, I decided to tackle one of these fragrances. I passed by the dupes of Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue, Juicy Couture, and Thierry Mugler Angel and went straight for the InStyle Fragrances “Impression” series for An Impression of Chanel No. 5.

I understand the desire for a deal. Heck, there’s nothing I like better than finding a bottle of Guerlain Eau Impériale at Goodwill or getting a Caron half off at a discounter. I can imagine someone looking at a bottle of perfume and saying, “$100? For alcohol and chemicals? Why should I pay for the name when it all smells the same?” It’s true that if you simply consider the value of the ingredients in a bottle of perfume, the markup is stupendous…

Along with the usual suspects — Tabu, Old Spice, Jean Naté — drugstores in the United States these days seem to carry a few fragrances also found in department stores. In the drugstores I visited, they’re an odd collection. In the Rite Aid downtown, I found minis of Britney Spears Curious and Calvin Klein Escape, but also a 50 ml bottle of Christian Dior Dune Eau de Toilette for $35. I thought Dior had tightened up its supply outlets. What is Dune doing in a store known for its deals on multipacks of Pringles? In my neighborhood Walgreens, Guerlain Shalimar sits next to Elizabeth Taylor White Diamonds and Coty Emeraude. Shalimar? For real? How did that happen?

Continuing this week of drugstore fragrances, I picked up a mini of department store fragrance I’d never tried: Giorgio Beverly Hills Red “extraordinary Eau de Toilette spray.” It seemed emblematic of some of the other mid-level perfumes I saw at drugstores in that it was an old favorite that still had a following but didn’t have enough cachet to regain its lost seat at Nordstrom…

Welcome to a week of reviews of drugstore perfumes! Each day I’ll review a fragrance from a different category of drugstore scent. Today’s category is Cheap (in More Ways than One). My selection is Body Fantasies Sexiest Fantasies Strawberries & Champagne, Love Struck, and Va Va Voom! body sprays.

You’ve got to admire a company — in this case, Parfums de Coeur — for naming its line Sexiest Fantasies. Nothing subtle about it. This is also the company that brought us Sexiest Musk (and now owns Prince Matchabelli and makes Wind Song.) What could the sexiest fantasies smell like? A suite at the Ritz? Caribbean beaches at midnight? Fireplaces in Alpine lodges? Whatever they smell like, Parfums de Coeur has a hunch the Candy Man plays a major role.

I put off testing Strawberries & Champagne until last, but let’s get the scariest out of the way right now…

Our usual open thread: talk about anything you like — the perfume you’re wearing today, the perfume you think would best fit Mata Hari, the last fragrance you bought but wish you hadn’t, whatever. Or, ask a question about fragrance, then see if anyone else has asked a question that you can answer… Note: image [...]

For years, I thought of Clarins strictly as a higher-end French cosmetics company; then, a friend shared a few gift-with-purchase items with me, and I had the chance to try the brand’s “Relax” shower gel and body lotion. I’ve been interested in Clarins’ fragranced products ever since then, so I looked forward to trying Eau des Jardins when it was launched in May. Eau des Jardins is recommended as an aromatherapeutic product, created with “more than 10 essential oils and three bud extracts (beech, blackcurrant and sorbier)”; the plant-bud extracts are also reportedly beneficial to the skin.

More specifically, the notes of this “treatment fragrance” are listed as an opening of grapefruit, citrus, bergamot and orange; a heart of mint, laurel leaves, rose and blackcurrant bud absolute; and base notes of cedar wood, patchouli, vetiver, white musk. Eau des Jardins’ bottle is visually appealing, with shades of ruby and chartreuse that complement the fragrance well: it’s a blend of tart red fruits and crisp green leaves…

There’s a new trend in niche fragrances: expensive presentation bottles filled with reasonably priced perfumes — perfumes that can only be bought at the “reasonable price” after the initial “trophy bottle” purchase. Agonist Parfums, based in Sweden, is one such (what I’ll call) “niche-niche” perfumery; it specializes in “unique fragrances embraced by handcrafted Swedish glass.”

Agonist Parfums highlights its perfume presentation as much as it does its perfumes. I wonder if Agonist’s sales would increase greatly if their perfumes could be bought without the deluxe bottles? (Or is Agonist really geared towards glass collectors who like a splash of hard-to-find perfume with their glassware?)

The Infidels, purchased with the bottle shown above, costs $495 (when you buy The Infidels perfume for the first time, the scent is contained in a separate bottle until you decant it into the “presentation” bottle). After your bottle is empty, you can use your special customer registration number to buy a refill (50 ml Eau de Parfum for $90). When paying almost $500 (unless price is not a concern), one must really love and want The Infidels bottle as much as the perfume. I really like The Infidels fragrance, but I can live without the bottle, so I’ll never own this perfume…

The short film that the Brothers Quay made to promote the new Comme des Garçons fragrance, Wonderwood, opens with the words “Someone who loved wood more than words can say…”, and Comme des Garçons describes the fragrance as a “positive overdose of woods, woody notes and synthetic wood construction (wood gone mad)”. They’re not kidding. Have they not yet made the fragrance that screamed WOOD loud enough to suit you? Then do try Wonderwood.

Wonderwood was developed by perfumer Antoine Lie, and it includes all the wood notes a wood freak could ask for, plus some spices to liven things up: Madagascan pepper, bergamot, incense, nutmeg, cristalon (a floral fruity note with rosy, plum and apple nuances), cashmeran, gaiacwood, cedar, caraway, javanol (sandalwood), sandalwood, vetiver, patchouli and oudh. What is smells like, mostly, is — you guessed it — wood…

I’ve never had much luck with Ralph Lauren fragrances. I like Polo and used to wear Monogram (discontinued long ago), but no other Ralph Lauren cologne has excited me. The new Big Pony Fragrance Collection, aimed at 18-30-year-old men, isn’t cutting-edge, but all four fragrances are well-made and perfectly formulated for their target audience: young men who — from what I see and hear in the shops and smell on the streets — don’t want “weird” perfumes, but prefer familiar-smelling, not-too-complex, clean/fresh fragrances.

Big Pony No. 1 (the “sporty” offering of the collection, in the blue bottle) is one of my Big Pony favorites; it lists only notes of lime and grapefruit, but I detect strong lemon peel-bergamot during its opening. After the lemon-bergamot burns off, I smell an aromatic lime-grapefruit accord that reminds me of a drink made of one part spicy ginger ale to one part Fresca (lime wedge squeezed on top). Big Pony No. 1 is “fizzy,” crisp, refreshing and clean with only the tiniest driblet of light musk in the extreme dry-down…

A statuesque blonde draped in bias-cut, ivory silk charmeuse is a classic image of glamour. She drinks champagne, has breakfast in bed on a tray, takes bubble baths, and breaks hearts. A puff of maribou trims the toe of each of her slippers. Now that this image is firmly in mind, let’s tweak it. Give our blonde a few years in a Swiss finishing school, a lusty appetite for lobster at midnight, and a laugh a little too loud for her patrician mother, and you have Guerlain Vega. Substitute wine coolers for the champagne, a facility for Pig Latin rather than French, and an addiction to patent leather heels from Payless, and you have Etat Libre d’Orange Vraie Blonde. They’re sisters from opposite sides of the tracks.

Jacques Guerlain created Vega, a blowsy floral aldehyde, in 1936…