Versace Bright Crystal

Bright Crystal’s one of those designer fragrances geared toward younger consumers. It hits that purchaser’s sweet spot that’s totally into easy to wear, light and floral, and most importantly young and approachable.

Bright Crystal

In Bottle: Rather strong presence of sharp green grapefruit and tart pomegranate. The florals try hard to make an appearance in the opening but the top of this scent is rather two-dimensional.

Applied: The big fruity opening nets you in if you like fruity fragrances and the light floral heart will keep you around. This opens as a sharp yuzu/grapefruit with a strong flare of pomegranate before it digs into the mid-stage where a mixture of sheer clean florals awaits. The magnolia in this is particularly well done, it’s lush and pretty but not overpowering. There’s just enough of it to make you smell clean and flowery. That mixed with the cleaned-up girly lotus and the always girly and cleaned up peony and you get a mixture of some of the easiest to love florals in perfumery. The dry down is a cool green amber, kind of reminds me of sap, and a rather nice gentle waft of woods and clean musk.

Extra: I think the word of the day here is “clean”. Bright Crystal is highly approachable, highly likable, and will not make people clear a circle around you. It’s really easy to love, and I do like it quite a bit. It’s not the most interesting composition in the world, but you have to hand it to Versace if you’re looking for a youthful and clean scent.

Design: All right, I’m not a fan of the bottle. The color is pleasing, the shape of the bottle itself is simple and easy to like. But that giant, jewel-shaped cap is a bit too much for me. It does make the bottle stand out rather well, but it’s a tad too flashy in my opinion.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Pomegranate, yuzu, iced accord, magnolia, lotus, peony, plant amber, musk, mahogany.

Bright Crystal is a good choice for office wear or elevator wear. It’s just one of those fragrances that I have to lump into inoffensive and not much else. It’s one of the better inoffensive and not much else perfumes out there though.

Reviewed in This Post: Bright Crystal, 2010, Eau de Toilette.


Fears Over Buying Used Perfume

I’m surprised (I’m often surprised, you see) to find how many people refuse to buy an authentic but used bottle of perfume on eBay or a similar auction site due to two common misconceptions. I’m a big proponent of buying used perfume, both vintage and new release. So here, have a post debunking the two common misconceptions against buying used perfume.

1. You never know what the previous owner did to the perfume.

Perfume and cosmetics inhabit a very special sphere of “used” where hygiene concerns come into play that aren’t as worrisome in other items people might buy used such as clothing, toys, and electronics. After all, you will meticulously launder clothing before you wear them. You can always clean toys before you give them to your children. And you can always wipe down electronics. But cleaning and sanitizing cosmetics is a hairy business and I don’t know about you guys, but I get a little nervous around the tester cosmetics they leave out in stores like Sephora. I am significantly less concerned about tester bottles of perfumes and used perfume bottles for one simple reason, most bottles are impossible to open in order to contaminate.

It is a common misconception that perfume can be contaminated like cosmetics. Consider this, most (note the bold for later) modern perfume bottles are factory sealed. This means that the manufacturer has taken it upon themselves to permanently seal the sprayer nozzle to the glass of the perfume bottle.

I can say about 90% of perfume bottles readily available in the mainstream market are factory sealed (note that I exclude niche, independent and vintage) and thus, near impossible to open without drastically altering the look and function of the perfume bottle and its sprayer nozzle. Most people don’t realize that their perfumes can’t be opened. So they’re met with a rather unpleasant surprise if their sprayer nozzles stop working one day. At that point, three courses of action are recommended:

1) Try fiddling with a number of different techniques to see if you can get any perfume out,
2) Smash the bottle, and
3) Cut your losses and buy another bottle.

Knowing that it is near impossible to separate or completely “open” a bottle of perfume, I hope you’re a bit more at ease about used perfume purchasing. However, like with all pieces of advice, nothing is absolute. You should still take care to ensure:

1) You are not purchasing a fake or counterfeit perfume,
2) You know whether or not a certain perfume bottle has a factory sealed sprayer and bottle or is a refillable type sprayer and bottle (See end of this post for more), and
3) You are purchasing an item that has been properly stored and the fragrance has not expired.

All of these three criteria need to be remembered, but at the very least you can rest assured that if you’re buying a half-full bottle of perfume that’s got a factory sealed sprayer nozzle and bottle, that the previous owner has probably not been able to mix something unpleasant in with the juice.

2. The perfume might be counterfeit.

The slightly more ridiculous allegation for used perfume bottles is that because they’re used, they have a higher chance of being counterfeit. Now, I’m not sure about you guys or what these counterfeiters are doing with their time but it doesn’t make much sense to me why a counterfeiter would waste time making a convincing counterfeit item and then purposefully not filling it up all the way and then try to sell it as authentic but used.

People are going to see the bottle isn’t full, or they’re going to read that it’s used and they will expect to pay less for it because the item is not new. Counterfeiters are out to make money. As much money as they can get from their fake merchandise. It makes no sense for a counterfeiter to purposefully cut into his or her profit margin by making counterfeits and then trying to sell them off even cheaper than other counterfeits because theirs is “used”. I can’t say this is a universal rule, but when you think about it, it really doesn’t make any sense why some people think used perfume is more susceptible to counterfeits.

A Brief Mention for Refillable Perfume Bottles

I don’t have a lot of experience with refillable (non-factory sealed) perfume bottles but they are out there in the mainstream market. Of the manufacturers that I know of which do not factory seal sprayers to bottles includes Bath and Body Works (body sprays), Calgon (body sprays), Victoria’s Secret (some perfumes such as Sexy Little Things Noir), Hermes (most perfumes), Guerlain (so far the L’Art et la Matiere line is not factory sealed).

There are more of course, many, many, many more. The best thing is for you to do your research before you buy. Go online and see if anyone’s mentioned that bottle is refillable. If you can’t find any information, then go to a fragrance forum and ask. Someone is bound to have heard of the perfume and someone is bound to be able to tell you. If you’re sticking to the mainstream stuff and celebrity fragrances you can generally count on the bottle being factory sealed however.

Finally, perfume that’s not factory sealed is not necessarily bad or an oversight. Many fragrance lovers and collectors love the refillable bottles because it saves us money. Once we’re finished with the fragrance inside, we can actually reuse the bottle by buying refills or putting another fragrance in there. I vastly prefer many of my bottles to be refillable so I can use them again, of course this doesn’t help someone concerned about contamination but if you do your research, ask around, and know what it is you’re buying you will find that used perfume isn’t all doom and gloom.


Agonist Liquid Crystal

Our friends at Agonist (aka. Those weird glass art bottle people) have a new offer on the table with Liquid Crystal. For those of you turned off by the price tag and bottle design of The Infidels, you might be swayed to like Liquid Crystal a bit more. As for the price tag–well, that’s probably not going anywhere any time soon.

Agonist Liquid Crystal

In Bottle: Sweet citrus, barely there though as the lavender hits up the forefront right away. I smell predominantly sweet lavender. It’s a beautiful lavender though so I’m okay with that.

Applied: The citrus opens this up with a sweet note that’s quite pleasing and does well to help lead in the lavender notes. This is full-bodied, complex, high-quality lavender at its best. It’s like fields of lavender basking on a sunny day. It’s very pretty for a fragrance that’s dedicated to one rather predominant smell. You can tell the lavender is good and blended well with the slightly sweet notes also present in the fragrance. This doesn’t smell like straight up lavender essential oil as there’s some mild hints of clove and oregano that I get from this when the lavender starts to calm down a bit near the end of the show. She’s not one-dimensional, she’s prominently biased  on one note but allows a mixture of other elements to merge and form something that amplifies the beauty of that one note. With that having been said, it is very much  based on lavender and that is what you will smell the most here. So if you hate lavender for some reason, you will probably hate this.

Extra: I’m going to talk about the bottle for Liquid Crystal because the bulk of the money basically goes into the packaging for Agonist’s stuff, it seems. The bottle is handmade, which adds to its value. It’s intricately designed, add more to its value. And it’s a high end niche brand, more value added. So it’s no surprise that you are going to have to pay up a pretty penny for this. I wouldn’t mind if I had a few million dollars laying around and $1,200 was pocket change as the bottle is gorgeous. It comes in two pieces, a stand and the bottle itself, so if you don’t like the melted glass look of the stand, you still have the bottle to display on its own. Though it looks fantastic on that stand too.

Design: Agonist’s bottle designs have been that one polarizing element to their stuff, and while I knew a lot of people who hated how The Infidels looked, Liquid Crystal is an easier to accept design. It’s absolutely intricate, very interesting to look at and makes for an absolutely fabulous conversation starter. “Hey Kay, I noticed you’ve got this weird artsy doohickey on your coffee table.” “Thanks, it’s Liquid Crystal from Agonist.” “Oh, is that what it’s called?” “Yeah, it’s a perfume.” “Really? A perfume? Where’d you get it?” “Oh, I got it online. it’s a bit expensive though.” “Expensive? Like $200 or something?” “Um, $1,200.” At that point I finally admit to myself that I’d never have the spare change handy to justify buying an actual bottle and will settle for refill bottles ($100 for 50ml) and sampler vials.

Fragrance Family: Aromatic

Notes: Bergamot, lavender, english clove, lavandin absolute, lavandin essential oil, oregano, vetiver, coumarine, praline, everlasting flower.

In case you were wondering, yes there’s three types of lavender in the notes. And mixed together, it’s just lovely.

Reviewed in This Post: Liquid Crystal, 2011, Eau de Parfum.


Etat Libre d’Orange Jasmin et Cigarettes

I didn’t want to leave Etat Libre d’Orange as, “Those people that made that one perfume” since they are a lovely, off-beat, and fantastic fragrance house. Jasmine et Cigarettes is one of their many very beautiful compositions.

Jasmin et Cigarettes

In Bottle: Tobacco is very prominent in the bottle with this fragrance with a lovely heady bouquet of dry jasmine flowers mingling with it.

Applied: Tobacco, smoky and heady, with that mixture of jasmine. There’s something about this fragrance that will stick to your nose when you smell it and you won’t honestly mind it that much because it’s simply lovely. The tobacco hangs out during the majority of the fragrance, even into the spicy sweet mid-stage as a cedar note tries to come up. It’s tame cedar, and I am happy for that, as the cedar attempts to clean up the fragrance a bit but just ends up adding another layer of complexity to the smoky spicy personality of Jasmin et Cigarettes. I get a lot of jasmine in the mid-stage too, but it’s well-behaved and works fantastically with the smoke and spice. By the time the dry down approaches, I get a crisp jasmine scent with a warm amber quality along with remnants of the spicy mid-stage.

Extra: Jasmin et Cigarettes was composed by Antoine Maisondieu, who is known for composing other Etat Libre d’Orange fragrances such as Antiheros.

Design: Most of Etat Libre d’Orange’s bottles are the same with differing labels. You will find the fragrances bottled in a rectangular glass bottle with a very simple cap and an equally simple label listing the fragrance name and its unique graphic on it.

Fragrance Family: Smoky Floral

Notes: Jasmine absolute, tobacco, hay, apricot, tonka bean, turmeric, cedar, amber, musk.

I’m a little addicted to this strange little beauty. It’s got the jasmine that I love in it mingled with that smoky scent. Some days I can’t stand the smokiness, other days I can’t get enough of it.

Reviewed in This Post: Jasmin et Cigarettes, 2010, Eau de Parfum.


Calgon Morning Glory

Last of my original Calgon four-pack of body mists that Calgon referred to as the “Take Me Away” series. Morning Glory was a another fresh floral in the line. Unlike its very familiar sister, Turquoise Seas, Morning Glory opts for green fresh rather than blue marine fresh.

Morning Glory

In Bottle: Green sharp opening with a floral backing. I get lily and green, very clean and sharp.

Applied: The green freshness in this isn’t the normal grassy green, you can tell this is an unabashed and unapologetic synthetic element being used to give the fragrance that clean and crisp feel. If you look past the green opening there’s a very thick layer of florals in the mid-stage that’s marked, once again, with a prominent lily note that’s intermingled with varying degrees of florals. However, there’s something a bit sweet and licorice like about Morning Glory that’s very appealing. It makes this fragrance seem a bit more grown up than the other three body mists I reviewed. I love that little licorice nip in the mid-stage and it sticks around for a bit as we round off near the end where the fragrance ends on a floral woodsy affair.

Extra: Morning Glory flowers don’t really smell like this but this is a nice interpretation of it anyway. I don’t mind Morning Glory though I doubt many of the notes in its notes list (see below) were really present or they were their heavily synthetic elements.

Design: Last time you get to hear this for a while but, Morning Glory is a blue liquid bottled in a tall plastic cylinder with a plastic spray nozzle. Once again, functional if somewhat plain in form.

Fragrance Family: Clean Floral

Notes: Green notes, galbanum, anise, apple, peach, pineapple, jasmine, lily of the valley, clove, oakmoss, musk, sandalwood.

So that about wraps it up for my trip down memory lane. These four body mists were far from the first perfume I ever wore but they were the first four I wore on a regular basis. I’m sure many of us can attest to trying on mom’s perfume when we were younger. I don’t quite remember what my first actual brush with perfume was, I want to say it was a Givenchy or maybe even Chanel No.5. What about you?

Reviewed in This Post: Morning Glory, 1999, Body Mist.


Diesel Only the Brave

I was hesitant to test out this fragrance largely because I couldn’t get over the ridiculous-looking bottle. But hey, the gimmick got to me one day and I said, “Welp, might as well smell that fist perfume”.

Only the Brave

In Bottle: Citrus, something sweet and dirty in the background with a huge cedar note in the foreground. Hooray, more cedar.

Applied: Only the Brave opens up rather sweet to me, smelling a little bit like citrus candy. The candy citrus appeal doesn’t last very long as Only the Brave starts amping up the woods–more specifically–amping up the cedar as it floods the mid-stage, drowning out whatever else may have been in this. I have such terrible luck with cedar and certain wood notes. Only the Brave felt like it was actually punching me in the face with the woods in its composition. I managed to wait it out, getting too-strong wafts of woodsiness as I let the fragrance sink in and age. The dry down is a more agreeable affair with a soft, leathery warm amber fragrance touched with a bit of spice.

Extra: Only the Brave was a collaboration between L’Oreal and Diesel. This fragrance involved three noses for its composition too, Olivier Polge (Balenciaga Paris), Pierre Wargnye (Drakkar Noir), and Alienor Massanet (Tresor Sparkling).

Design: I mentioned the bottle in my opening sentences. Only the Brave comes packaged in a glass fist. I think the bottle design is ugly, clunky, and at times hilarious. Due to its shape, the bottle falls over easily so I imagine most people keep their bottles lying on their sides. Still, the humor in Only the Brave’s fist bottle isn’t lost on me and I can chuckle at it now and then. At the very least, there isn’t a single fairy on it.

Fragrance Family: Woodsy

Notes: Lemon, mandarin, coriander, violet, cedar, labdanum, amber, styrax, leather, benzoin.

Cedar ruins yet another fragrance for me. At the very least Only the Brave is a generic masculine fragrance that I don’t think is particularly unique or fascinating but probably wearable by everyone but me.

Reviewed in This Post: Only the Brave, 2010, Eau de Toilette.


Calgon Turquoise Seas

Number three of four in my original four pack of Calgon body sprays is Turquoise Seas. A fragrance I stated smells similar to Avril Lavinge Forbidden Rose. And I stand by that statement.

In Bottle: Clean aquatic white floral with a very heavy, sharp aqua note up front. There’s a slight sweetness to this stuff in the bottle too.

Applied: Sharp aquatics and white florals up front with a slight sweetness to take away from the sharpness of the fragrance. The floral aquatic opening is very reminiscent of Forbidden Rose as the fragrance digs into the mid-stage with the aquatics calming down a bit and letting the floral heart float up. I smell lilies and jasmine mostly in the mid-stage. This is is not a very complicated fragrance and it won’t get any more complicated when it starts to dry down with a cleaned up iris note mingling rather well with the aquatic lily jasmine. Turquoise Seas seems to add notes as it goes along rather than let notes drop off, which is a nice approach given how pleasant this ends up smelling by the end.

Extra: Turquoise Seas is a discontinued fragrance, which is a real shame because it’s a very wearable aquatic floral. If you do love it, there are still bottles of it kicking around on eBay.

Design: Once again, typically bottled in tall plastic cylinder with plastic sprayer nozzle. Nothing to phone home about, it’s simply practical. You’ll have to excuse the lack of a photo for this post, the bottle doesn’t look any different from its Calgon body mist brothers and sisters. The label depicts the image of an ocean, the body mist color is a light turquoise-blue. My own bottle is an empty, beat up mess so a photo of it won’t be indicative of what  it should look like.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Marine accord, lily, jasmine, iris, white musk.

Once again, I am guessing with the notes. Some people express some surprise when they find out that Calgon is a part of the Coty brand. Some aren’t too surprised until they find out that Coty is an old perfume house with quite a rich history and prestigious legacy. This is the house that made Chypre so I’m not surprised its body mists are not too bad. But maybe that’s the nostalgia talking.

Reviewed in This Post: Turquoise Seas, 1999, Body Mist.


Calgon Hawaiian Ginger

Hawaiian Ginger really takes me back. It’s a blast from my past. A reminder of middle school hallways, the slummy lighting in the basement floor of the school, and English class where I sat behind a girl who reeked of this stuff.

Hawaiian Ginger

In Bottle: Sweet, juicy and tropical. A hint of tangy pineapple layered with sweet, ripened melon notes. Honeydew and cantaloupe together, maybe.

Applied: If you’re looking for spicy, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Hawaiian Ginger focuses more on the tropical aspect of its name than the gingery part. You’ll get a fruity opening that smells like fruit punch, a decent enough fruity scent that makes you think it could almost be edible. The opening is very juicy, I get mostly melon notes an indistinguishable blend of honeydew and cantaloupe with a few pieces of pineapple in there to cut a bit of the sweetness. The ginger seems to be almost an afterthought as I went into the mid-stage with a marked desire to find it. Instead, I found more tropical fruits and a mild bit of sweet florals layered with the weakest sugared up ginger ever. The dry down is almost markedly underplaying this mysterious ginger note with a very sweet ginger candy-like thing making an appearance during the mid-stage’s decline into the end phase.

Extra: I wore Hawaiian Ginger for a brief time when I was in middle school having just discovered what this “amazing smell” was. Then me and this fragrance grew apart as I realized every other girl in middle school was also wearing this and I was getting a bit tired of the fragrance. Revisiting it was a trip down memory lane. I still wouldn’t start wearing it again as it is a very young fragrance.

Design: Bottled like almost every other body mist is bottled like. Tall cylindrical plastic container, plastic sprayer nozzle, sticker label. Not a perfume, quite plain, a bit ugly, but very functional.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Pineapple, honeydew, watermelon, cantaloupe, orange flower, sugar, ginger.

Again, took a stab at the notes list as I didn’t fully believe the official ad copy which tried to pawn this fragrance off as a floral fragrance. I get almost no florals out of this.

Reviewed in This Post: Hawaiian Ginger, 1999, Body Mist.


Calgon Moon Petal Musk 1999

I remember a long time ago when I got my first set of body mists. They came in four. They were body mists, and they were Calgon. They started my long sordid decline into the perfume obsession I find myself in today. Now, Calgon’s never really gotten any better with these fragrances but I can’t help but feel that little sting of nostalgia whenever I smell one of these.

Moon Petal Musk

In Bottle: Sharp floral twang with a bit of fresh greenness up top. The greenness is very fleeting because it’s easily overpowered by the floral bite.

Applied: Strong flowers floating in ozone notes. Moon Petal Musk might as well be standing ontop of a mountain and shouting, “OZONE!” for the whole world to hear because that ozone note is what lends to the sharpness and powerful fresh smell in this. And fresh, in this case, is defined as overly clean and very sharp. The ozone does fade, however, leaving you with a rather pleasant bouquet of white florals. The most prominent notes being lillies and roses. Mix lily and rose together in equal parts and you will get this vague feel of white, powdery flowers. As Moon Petal Musk dries down, the florals devolve into a very vague floral fragrance where you can’t really tell what flower it is you’re smelling, but you’re sure it’s at least a flower. The florals are mingled with a sharp white musk to usher out the fragrance completely.

Extra: It should be noted that Calgon re-imagined and reformulated Moon Petal Musk since my bottle’s time. The new Moon Petal Musk smells nothing like this and one glance at its new notes list should tell you that. So, if we were going to be ridiculous, I’d venture to say my bottle of watery perfume is a vintage–but we’re not feeling ridiculous right now. I will say that compared to the new Moon Petal Musk, the original is far more competent.

Design: All body sprays tend to be bottled in the same way. Tall cylindrical plastic container with plastic sprayer nozzle. It’s not fancy, it’s not exciting and it’s not meant to be any of those things. This is simply functional, with a little bit of plain and ugly thrown in.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Ozone, orchid, rose, freesia, muguet, white musk.

I took a stab at the notes list with what rarity of information I could find online regarding the original Moon Petal Musk’s notes. I refused to believe the one place I found a notes list that “airy green expression” was a serious thing I was supposed to smell. It’s like when you’re playing Pictionary and some smarty pants decides to make you illustrate the concept of humility. My thanks to LittleGnome on Makeupalley for the notes list I referenced. I believe her list might be the official word on this fragrance, so take mine with a grain of salt.

Reviewed in This Post: Moon Petal Musk, 1999, Body Mist.


Bath and Body Works Cotton Blossom

I was surprised to find how many people wanted to smell like laundry. Can you really blame them? Laundry scents are among some of the most finely tailored fragrances out there. While perfumes are an artistic canvas where the lives of the abstract smells dwell, laundry detergent and other household cleaning or hygiene products is the world of the wildly successful but ultimately uniform. And then there’s Cotton Blossom.

Cotton Blossom

In Bottle: Sharp and floral. This smells so benign. And benign in this case is a compliment because what else is Cotton Blossom really trying to achieve but that ultimate laundry smell?

Applied: Goes on sharp and clean. Clean in all caps even as Cotton Blossom wastes no time at all telling you what it’s going to be about. And what it’s about is laundry and soap. This smells like any number of laundry smells you may have enjoyed. It’s slightly flowery, it’s powdery, it’s huge on the soap, it’s sharp and clean white musk and it’ll make you feel fresh and neat and there’s nothing else to it. The opening stage is a bit sharp and this stuff goes on strong. It mellows out a bit in the mid-stage where the sharpness is rounded out a little and the powder becomes more noticeable. Cotton Blossom, strangely enough, smells a bit watery on me in the dry down but maintains its powdery floral personality. Experiencing this was like smelling laundry detergent, pouring it into the machine, then turning it on. Sharp initial blast, mellowed pour, mixed with water. Kudos to Bath and Body Works for this one. If you want to smell like laundry, Cotton Blossom’s your gal.

Extra: For what it is, Cotton Blossom has surprisingly awesome longevity. So while this doesn’t come in eau de toilette or eau de parfum, I don’t think this fragrance needs to be any more potent.

Design: Cotton Blossom is presently available in a body mist form in Bath and Body Works’ older design. So you don’t get anything special. Just a tall bottle that’s entirely plastic with a semi-transparent label bearing the fragrance’s name and theme. The best thing about the body mist at Bath and Body Works is you get a ton of fragrance for very little money. There’s 236ml in a full size.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Sun dried linen accord, grass, mandarin blossom, jeans accord, peony, cotton, musk, baby powder.

I will never be able to take that notes list seriously. Never. I love how playful the list is though. Anyway, Demeter also has a fragrance that’s supposed to smell like laundry in Laundromat. I vastly prefer Cotton Blossom as it lasts longer and is far cheaper.

Reviewed in This Post: Cotton Blossom, 2010, Body Mist.