Aquolina Chocolovers

Posted on by

How do you round out a week of reviews for one of the world’s most famous and respected fragrance houses? Easy.  Chocolovers. Chocolovers

In Bottle: Very sweet, rather cloying, chocolatey, milky, nutty fragrance with a splash of orange and lemon juice. I didn’t expect anything different from this and it really delivered.

Applied: The orange and lemon curdle the fragrance on initial application and I wholly believe Chocolovers would have been better off without it. Once the lemon recedes you’re left with–well, what else? A smooth, creamy chocolate milk with hazlenut dashed in there for a little added complexity. Chocolovers smells like a candybar. A gooey, rich, wafer-stuffed candy bar that probably has a thousand calories in it, is probably bad for you. Once you’ve eaten it, you aren’t left feeling satisfied but you do feel a little guilty. That’s my experience with Chocolovers. Big strong smell upfront, fleeting feeling of guilt in the back. The chocolate note in this smells as expected, it’s a synthetic and it’s a clearly detectable one which would harm the fragrance’s enjoyability but come on–the thing is called Chocolovers, how serious can it possibly be? It smells all right for what it is; a fun, cute, throw it on during an off-day fragrance. Just be warned, it is powerful. Chocolovers will fade in a few hours to a milky, dusty fragrance that seems to float up out of nowhere.

Extra: I’m not a fan of the Chocolovers fragrance and feel Aquolina got their Pink Sugar fragrance just right with how fun and simple and unapologetic it was. But the Blue Sugar flanker and now this one? They aren’t very original or unique from one another. They are all gourmands of some relative state and they all echo the Pink Sugar base.

Design: Chocolovers’ design is an interesting thing to love. I can’t get past how just how little it cares about being serious. Pink Sugar had a cute little motif. Blue Sugar was subdued and rather boring. Chocolovers just takes literal interpretation to the extreme with its bottle. Little wavy hearts on the glass. A chocolate heart on top of the cap. A red sprayer nozzle. There’s not a single serious thing you can say about this fragrance.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Bergamot, orange, lemon, lily of the valley, coriander, hazelnut, vanilla, malt, musk.

It’s great when the first thing I thought when I saw the notes list was, “Really? Coriander?” The second thing was to look up on Google how many flanker products Chocolovers has and it turns out the fragrance has been made into  body butter. Now that I can see.

Reviewed in This Post: Chocolovers, 2008, Eau de Toilette.

Demeter My Melody

Posted on by

My Melody was released in Demeter Fragrance Library’s Hello Kitty series alon with the Hello Kitty scent and the Little Twin Stars fragrance. My Melody is the foodiest one of the three. My Melody

In Bottle: Smooth vanilla and almond. Demeter tends to do simple fragrances anyway and My Melody is a pleasant enough blend of two very gourmand notes that creates an almost edible scent in the bottle.

Applied: Delicious vanilla almond and cake. My Melody smells like cupcakes and cute, happy, tasty things. Everyone needs a little pick-me-up, especially lately and this fragrance is a delightful reminder that–if nothing else–we still have cake. The fragrance doesn’t do any morphing or changing for a while and the scent is fairly fleeting. Being an eau de cologne and all. As the dry down sees a fade in the almond note making the vanilla note more prominent.

Extra: My Melody reminds me an awful lot of many Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab fragrances. The foodies, in particular. I want to say this reminds me a little bit of Dana O’Shee and Boo from BPAL.

Design: The bottle I came across was a small, very typical glass rectangle bottle that Demeter’s fragrances often come in. It’s got a very simple, plain level of packaging that seems a little clinical to me so there’s very little to the design for these fragrances.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Almond, cake, vanilla.

My Melody should be a big hit for its target audience but it’s not really for me. I got Black Phoenix for gourmands like this that I really don’t see a need for something like this in my collection.

Reviewed in This Post: My Melody, 2010, Eau de Cologne.

Bath and Body Works Twisted Peppermint

Posted on by

With Christmas coming up, I thought it would be nice to visit an old favorite of mine and a favorite of a lot of other people too. Bath and Body Works’ Twisted Peppermint is a seasonal offer that smells just like its name; peppermint candies. Twisted Peppermint

In Bottle: Strong sweet, sugary peppermint candy. There’s not a whole lot to say about Twisted Peppermint that you can’t get from immediately smelling the fragrance. It’s strong, it’s festive, it’s sweet, it’s just plain fun.

Applied: Twisted Peppermint goes on with a big blast of peppermint followed by the sweetening sugar that layers on top of the fragrance, sitting in place until the vanilla comes in seconds later. There is no progression to this fragrance and very little in the way of complexity. As stated, it’s just plain, easy, simple fun. The peppermint in this lends a nice cooling, tingling effect to add some extra zing to the fragrance. This makes a great cooling spray for summer but you might be a little out of season wearing this stuff in July. It really does smell like peppermint candy and candy canes. The vanilla is the typical synthetic kind, but it’s easy to ignore that when you first spray it on. It will become apparent that this stuff isn’t composed of the highest quality materials as the scent ages, taking on that “something is off” smell that you get with synthetic scents sometimes. I find the synthetic smell distracting during the fragrance’s final stages and find it near impossible to tolerate in the lotion. In the perfume, it is easier to ignore. This stuff does not have a whole lot of lasting power as it will fade on you within a couple of hours. But for a couple of hours you can at least smell like a festive candy cane.

Extra: Twisted Peppermint comes in a variety of products. My favorites include the lotion and 3-in-1 shampoo, body wash, and bubble bath. These two, plus the body mist, have that same peppermint oil tingling effect that I really like.

Design: Twisted Peppermint has gone through a few makeovers as far as I can tell. Its current incarnation is as a plastic globe containing a shimmer mist. The sprayer nozzle is a little wonky as it is made out of plastic and it is trying to disperse sparkles as well as scent. I sometimes have to wipe the nozzle opening to clean the sparkles off or the sprayer will dribble product instead of spray it. I have an old bottle that lacks the sparkly business whose sprayer nozzle works much better.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Peppermint, sugar, vanilla.

If you’re looking for a fragrance that’s candy-like and will remind you of the holidays, then this stuff should be right up your alley. I think it’s kind of cute that Twisted Peppermint’s tagline on the bottle is, “Mint with an attitude”. There’s no attitude to this. It’s just a peppermint candy. A sweet, delicious peppermint candy scent that’s done rather well.

Reviewed in This Post: Twisted Peppermint, 2009, Body Mist.

Parfums de Coeur Vampire

Posted on by

I don’t know why I’m drawn to do reviews of some of these more silly fragrances sometimes but you can chalk this one up to curiosity. Like that time I smelled Danielle Steel and decided I didn’t like her. Vampire

In Bottle: Citrus with a bunch of florals, rather sweet, with a violent note that makes me think of sticky flowers floating in cough syrup.

Applied: Goes on as a citrus with a sweetened pile of sugar. Again, that sticky flowers in cough syrup scent. It’s quite distracting as Vampire seems to want to get sweeter and sweeter on me as it slowly introduces more and more flowers. But it hits a road block before it goes too far with the chocolate note coming in to join the fray. What I end up with is a sickly sweet floral with chocolate slathered on top. The dry down occurs about nine hours later because Vampire has one major thing going for it and that is that this scent will not give up. It’s strong and it’ll last a very long time. Anyway, the dry down is remarkably pleasant if somewhat banal as the sweetness finally goes away giving the base of Vampire a rather pleasant mix of sandalwood and gentle amber. But that’s after you survive the top and middle notes.

Extra: Parfums de Coeur etched a place for themselves making “Designer Impostors” a somewhat different concept than counterfeits–I guess. Impostor fragrances basically try their best to match the scent of a designer perfume. Often they are sold at a cheaper price in cheaper packaging as is the case with Parfums de Coeur. Whether you approve of this practice or not, Parfums de Coeur offers a few “Designer Impostors” and a few original fragrances, such as Vampire.

Design: The bottle design for vampire is obviously not for me. I’m not entirely sure what was being accomplished here but the bottling is a major turn off. I like simple though, and this is anything but. It seems like the bottling took a strange mix of Cashmere Mist and original Chloe’s packaging and mashed in a muscles or veins motif onto the glass.

Fragrance Family: Floral Gourmand

Notes: Clementine, plum flower, wisteria, violet, chocolate cosmos, sandalwood, amber, musk.

I don’t think cheapie is going to do it for me. I already have a cheapie in my top ten favorites with Plumdrop and Vampire is geared at way too young an audience for me to pull off. It’s sweet, it’s a gourmand, it doesn’t make me think of vampires or sultriness. But it is very young, and the price is right.

Reviewed in This Post: Vampire, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Frederic Malle Musc Ravageur

Posted on by

A lot of good things have been said about Musc Ravageur. The one that caught my eye the most was the comment that this stuff smells like cinnamon buns and leather. Always on the look out for a cinnamon bun-like fragrance, I got my hands on Musc Ravageur. Musc Ravageur

In Bottle: Spicy citrus, I get the cinnamon but mostly I get citrus, a little bit of dark musk and strong lavender.

Applied: That lavender mixed with citrus makes an interesting scent that many people might say smells medicinal or even powdery. But no, that’s just lavender doing its thing. Wear Musc Ravageur for a little more and it will evolve into a sweeter confection with a blend of smooth vanilla and cinnamon with clove dashed in there for extra spice. This stuff is powerful, projects like crazy, and it clung to me all day, staying in that delicious mid-stage where, I have to admit, it does smell a little bit like cinnamon buns but there’s an undercurrent at work here making it far more exciting. I catch whiffs of leather, incense, and musk.  Musc Ravageur has a dark  base that wafts in and out here and there taking this a little farther away than just as a gourmand. It’s a spicy, dense, sweet, delicious but very grown up. When Musc Ravageur finally chills out, the sweetness leads way into a spicy woodsy scent with a dark vanilla note, aided a bit by fading leather, and a lingering animalic muskiness.

Extra: Frederic Malle’s line of fragrances includes such beauties as Musc Ravageur and one of my other favorites; Angéliques sous la pluie by the much esteemed Jean-Claude Ellena. You may also find in the Frederic Malle line the rather famous Carnal Flower a–what else–tuberose dominant fragrance. Musc Ravageur, itself, was composed by Maurice Roucel who also composed Insolence by Guerlain, Donna Karan Be Delicious, and many others.

Design: I don’t own a bottle of Musc Ravageur but it looks like its bottled in a rather simple cylinder. Musc Ravageur, I guess, is not about the packaging as it keeps things as simple looking as possible. Classic-looking bottle and I really like it that way.

Fragrance Family: Spicy Gourmand

Notes: Lavender, bergamot, clove, cinnamon, gaiac wood, cedar, sandalwood, vanilla, tonka, musk.

Out of all the gourmands I’ve tried, Musc Ravageur is one of the nicest. It’s a well blended fragrance with a lot of interesting evolution going on when you wear it. It has excellent longevity and projection.

Reviewed in This Post: Musc Ravageur, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

Bath & Body Works Warm Vanilla Sugar

Posted on by

Warm Vanilla Sugar is one of the lead selling fragrances from Bath & Body Works. This, along with Japanese Cherry Blossom, aretwo of the most predominant fragrances I smell on younger women. It’s easy to wear, it’s affordable and it’s a pleasant enough foody vanilla fragrance. Warm Vanilla Sugar

In Bottle: Someone loaded this up with a mountain of sugar and vanilla because that is all I can smell. It’s a big dollop of that, now very familiar to me, faux vanilla scent.

Applied: Extremely sweet, almost cloyingly so, upon application as the very delicate floral notes in this evaporate almost immediately. What I get with the rest of the scent is a hugely predominant sweet vanilla that just won’t quit. If you have smelled a vanilla based fragrance, you’ll have smelled the vanilla in Warm Vanilla Sugar. It is the same sweet, foody, vanilla that you’ve likely experienced before. It’s reminiscent of a lot of vanilla based scents that I can recognize in Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab vanillas and Comptoir sud Pacifique vanillas. It’s the same vanillas that tend to have that slightly plastic feel to it. Warm Vanilla Sugar, nevertheless, is a great little gourmand with a nice tasty edge to it. Like you’re drinking vanilla milk and smelling a puffy vanilla pastry. This is yummy smelling stuff and let’s face it, you don’t wear Warm Vanilla Sugar to get several layers of complexity in the ingredients. This goes on smelling like vanilla milk, it arrives mid-stage with vanilla milk, and it’ll dry down with vanilla milk and a bit of clean dry musk to keep things a little interesting.

Extra: This stuff smells great on the right person so don’t take my aversion to it the wrong way. It’s a really great baked vanilla goods fragrance to it and is one of the nicest, most pleasant and versatile gourmands I’ve smelled.

Design: Warm Vanilla Sugar is bottled in a similar way as other Bath and Body Works eau de toilettes. A nice, classic looking glass bottle with the fragrance’s name on the glass and a plastic cap to protect the sprayer. Nothing too fancy. It just plain old works.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Florals, vanilla absolute, basmati rice, coconut, heliotrope, musk, veltol, sandalwood.

You might be wondering to yourself what in the world ‘veltol’ is. It’s a food additive meant to give things a freshly baked scent. So in this case, if you think you’re smelling a vanilla pastry, that’s the vanilla absolute mixed with the veltol talking.

Reviewed in This Post: Warm Vanilla Sugar, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Soivohle Pink Praline

Posted on by

Soivohle does one of the best and most true gourmands I’ve ever smelled. The very lovely, very rich and very beautiful, Pink Praline. It’s a lush and sweetly nutty fragrance that takes the best from the gourmand genre.

In Bottle: Sweet and lush nutty fragrance with a a big hit of maple syrup and cocoa. Smells good enough to eat.

Applied: A small flare of grapefruit hits my nose upon application but the moment is fleeting. It’s priming the canvas for the fantastic remainder of the fragrance when the rest of the notes roll in. These pralines are rolled lovingly in a sweet and sticky mixture of coffee and maple syrup, then lightly dusted with cocoa. The fenugreek does a fantastic job at conjuring the concept of praline while the rest of the notes push your brain even further into that category as you sit contented in your bubble of maple-coated goodness. The scent starts to wind down with a slight muskiness while the nuttiness fades first followed by the last lingering traces of maple. Pink Praline is a fantastically blended sweet gourmand that should serve as an example of how a sweet and candy-like perfume should be done. It is sweet, but it is not cloying or annoyingly sweet. It’s foody but it doesn’t rely on vanilla, sugar or chocolate notes to accomplish its foodiness. And best of all, it doesn’t use that accursed caramel note that always turns to burnt sugar on my skin.

Extra: With mainstream fragrances gone to the tried, tested and true formulations that seem to be recycled again and again, independent perfumers like Soivohle are a welcome change of pace. I can enjoy my mainstream stuff for its safe bets and pleasantness but when it comes down to artistry, you really should try niche or independent.

Design: Bottled beautifully from what I can see as I have yet to purchase a Soivohle scent, I cannot directly comment on the packaging or bottling.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Pink grapefruit, coffee, cocoa, maple, fenugreek.

Pink Praline is an Eau de Parfum natural that’s definitely on my “to buy” list. For now the cute little sampler jar sits happily with its other Soivohle sample brothers and sisters.

Reviewed in This Post: Pink Praline, ~2009, Eau de Parfum.

Aquolina Pink Sugar

Posted on by

Pink Sugar is as simple as its name. It’s a sweet fragrance made for younger perfume consumers that’s not ashamed of admitting that it’s just a candy-like confection for people who like to smell sweet. And that’s about it. I can respect that. Pink Sugar

In Bottle: Sugar, caramel, and strawberry. Very reminiscent of Miss Dior Cherie but much more tolerable due to the lack of patchouli and the toning down of the strawberry note. This smells like the pink cotton candy you buy at carnivals and little strawberry hard candies.

Applied: Dominating the opener is the cotton candy and strawberry hard candies. If Pink Sugar were a food–it’d be aptly named. As the scent ages, it stays the same but for a caramel note coming up. The caramel note has been toasted a bit too much, smelling burnt. I have a suspicion there’s really only one caramel note shared between this fragrance, Miss Dior Cherie and Flowerbomb and it’s Burnt Caramel #2990. A pox on you, Burnt Caramel #2990! I’m convinced that due to this mysterious caramel note that these three fragrances are related in some smelly conspiracy. But they aren’t the same, Pink Sugar lacks the extreme sweetness and harshness of the patchouli and strawberry. The burnt caramel in Pink Sugar is more muted than in Flowerbomb. Pink Sugar has a not bad licorice note that makes brief appearances in the mid-stage. When Pink Sugar dries down, it’s a bit of vanilla and slap of clean woodsiness and then it’s gone.

Extra: Pink Sugar is consistently one of the most popular and well-loved fragrances among its target audience. If you were ever wondering what young people like these days, Pink Sugar is probably a good guess.

Design: Pink Sugar is bottled in a tall glass cylinder with pink crisscrossing lines on the glass. The presentation itself makes me think of cake. The lettering is playful, a bit messy for my tastes, but I’m not the target audience for the fragrance or–I assume–the design of the bottle.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Bergamot, sicilian orange, raspberry, fig leaves, lily of the valley, licorice, strawberry, red fruit, cotton candy, vanilla, caramel, musk, wood, powder.

From a choice of Miss Dior Cherie, Pink Sugar, or Flowerbomb, I will have to give props to Pink Sugar. It’s the most wearable, the least cloying and at least it’s upfront about what it is.

Reviewed in This Post: Pink Sugar, 2008, Eau de Parfum.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Stinky

Posted on by

Stinky is the scent whose name invokes the spirit of dogs everywhere. At one point in almost every dog’s life he or she has been stinky but Stinky by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab smells like everything but dogs. Stinky

In Bottle: Sweet and stinky honey layered over soap and powder. Smells a lot better than I make it sound. For one thing, the honey is a well blended matter as if it’s a honeyed bar of soap resting next to a pot of fluffy white powder.

Applied: The honey is the first thing that I smell, it gets a bit sharp on the initial application before it mellows out a little as the scent ages on me. But for the first hour or so, it smells like warm, sticky honey with a clean background. As Stinky ages, the clean background of soap and powder comes up a bit more and the honey takes a few steps back. It will remain present as the fragrance continues to age and starts to fade with the soapy smell going away the quickest, leaving a powdered, warm and sticky honey type of scent lingering until it all dissolves into nothing. Think honey-scented powder and you’ve got Stinky.

Extra: Stinky was released in 2009 in and around the summer months as a celebration of mud-covered and mischievous dogs. In particular, the dog featured on the label.

Design: Stinky is bottled in much the same way as other Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab fragrances. Held in an amber apothecary bottle, Stinky sports a cute Limited Edition label with a photograph of the dog which inspired this scent.

Fragrance Family: Clean Gourmand

Notes: milk, white honey, baby powder.

Leave it to Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab to come up with a fragrance that pretty much defies any sort of fragrance family.

Reviewed in This Post: Stinky, 2009, 5ml Bottle.

Thierry Mugler Angel

Posted on by

Angel is one of the most widely imitated fragrances. It’s introduction in 1992 changed the fragrance world. It became incredibly popular and still remains popular as people still rock this scent up and down high school hallways, fashionable city streets, and unfortunately for the rest of us , on the elevator. Angel

In Bottle: Beware of your first smell of Angel as your first impression will likely be something to the tune of, “Oh God! What is that horrible smell? Get it out of my nose! Aaaah!” Your second smell will yield an intriguing, jarring mix of bitter, spicy patchouli blended with rich, warm chocolate and some fruit.

Applied: Angel starts off with a typical citrus burst that disappears to lead you in on a roller coaster ride of gourmand thrill. The patchouli wastes no time on me to get straight to the point. It comes out of the gates, announces itself and drags the rest of the fragrance in. What I get is a mish-mash of sugary fruit. The chocolate is quick to come up with its creamy, warmth. The candy-like sweetness of the caramel mixed with vanilla is always present in Angel. Like a syrup cloud hovering over an outdoor chocolate fashion show. What? Too weird? How about the idea of dipping your chocolate bar in caramel and vanilla extract and then dropping it on the lawn? The dry down doesn’t come in until hours later when you’ve had just about all you can of the chocolate and sweetness. Where upon drying down you get more chocolate, sugar and patchouli. Hope you liked the ride.

Extra: Angel is strong. Mercilessly strong that its introduction in the 1990s could have been pushed up a few years into the Powerhouse Era and people would still say it’s strong. Go easy on this one, folks. You will be smelled from a mile away. And if you do happen to put too much on, avoid crowded elevators.

Design: Angel comes in a variety of bottles, concentrations, flankers and other products. The most iconic and instantly recognizable is the slanted star bottle design shown above. If you don’t like that one, there are many more. Most Angel bottles have the added bonus of being refillable too.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Bergamot, patchouli, chocolate, vanilla, caramel, red berries.

I wrestled with whether or not this fragrance could be considered a classic. Considering its iconic rise to fame and its still firm grip on popularity, I decided to just hand the label over. Not to mention the fact that it’s so instantly recognizable to so many people.

Reviewed in This Post: Angel, 2008, Eau de Parfum.