Guerlain Tonka Imperiale

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Guerlain’s L’Art et la Matière line of fragrances celebrating great perfumers and great perfumes. The line has been going for some time now and Tonka Imperiale, as of this writing, is the newest release.Tonka Imperiale

In Bottle: Boozy vanilla with a slight almond edge and sourness. Tonka Imperiale reminds me a lot of Spiritueuse Double Vanille but the major difference is in the sourness. Tonka Imperiale has a sour almond scent to where. Spiritueuse Double Vanille, on the other hand, had smooth smokiness to back it up.

Applied: Vanilla liqueur with that hint of sour again. The sourness is quick to fly away though, leaving me with vanilla, almond and booze. The booze then escapes me leaving me with a lovely rich vanilla and almond scent that signifies the mid-stage of Tonka Imperiale. Lovely spiciness comes in to the join the parade, turning this into full on gourmand as I’m reminded of cookies at Christmas time, very vanilla and decadent rum and spice cookies. The dry down after the Christmas cooking phase is a smoky woodsy fragrance with the beautiful vanilla note hanging on by a thread.

Extra: L’Art et la Matière is Guerlain’s long awaited answer to their lost niche when they were acquied by LVMH. I always felt most of the mainstream Guerlain releases were really pedestrian and lacking that exquisite Guerlainess that defined them so well prior to the acquisition. Though I do like most of their mainstream releases, I am also overjoyed that they’re still putting out stuff like Tonka Imperiale,  Spiritueuse Double Vanille and the other L’Art et la Matière’s scents.  Guerlain’s still got it.

Design: Bottled in a similar shaped presentation as Spiritueuse Double Vanille, Tonka Imperiale has a neater presentation without the big label and the honey bee wax seal. It still comes in that fitted box that you can’t do anything with if you plan on using the fragrance while keeping it in its original box. But, in addition to having a regular sprayer, Tonka Imperial also comes with a pump atomizer.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: : Bergamot, rosemary, tonka bean, honey, spices, almond, jasmine, vanilla, cedar, pine, incense, tobacco and amber.

I really wrestled with wanting a bottle of this and wanting to keep money in my pocket. The L’Art et la Matière line is a few price points above Guerlain’s mainstream releases. It’s even a few price points above some niche houses. At $230 for 75ml, I found the price a bit rich for my tastes. I liked this, but not enough to blow that much on it.

Reviewed in This Post: Tonka Imperiale, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Guerlain Spiritueuse Double Vanille

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Two of the more interesting vanilla based fragrances I’ve ever smelled have been Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille and Spiritueuse Double Vanille. Being a vanilla lover, I wanted something that captured the essence of a really great vanilla. Tobacco Vanille was a nice one. Being more accessible was also a bonus. Then I found a bottle of Spiritueuse Double Vanille kicking around and fell hard for it. Spiritueuse Double Vanille is heralded by many fragrance lovers as the most convincing, the most real vanilla fragrance. And I have to agree. She’s beautiful. Spiritueuse Double Vanille

In Bottle: Smoky sweet vanilla liqueur. Very smooth, extremely pleasant. Reminiscent of Tobacco Vanille but with a nicer, milder, less tobacco interpretation. The smokiness is pretty light in the bottle as Spiritueuse Double Vanille smells mostly boozy.

Applied: Spiritueuse Double Vanille instead opens with a fabulous liqueur reminiscent of bay rum. The vanilla is up front too, smooth and sweet and pure. The smokiness and cedar make the next appearance as Spiritueuse Double Vanille heads toward the spice. This fragrance is golden and warm and has the most utterly pleasant vanilla fragrance I’ve smelled yet. It’s like having a drink, wearing a monocle, smelling a box of cigars and hanging out in your mahogany library. This stuff smells classy. And that vanilla? It’s the kind of vanilla you’ve always wanted in a fragrance but never quite got. It smells like true full-bodied, boozy with a touch of spice vanilla–not that stuff you usually smell that’s sweet, and a little plastic. As the fragrance ages on my skin I get less smokiness and more pepper and more spice. All the while, the vanilla is hanging about lending the fragrance a fabulously smooth and rich treatment.  The mid-stage is like a blend of tobacco, mahogany, vanilla bean, and cedar and it seems to have lost its booziness from earlier. When Spiritueuse Double Vanille dries down, it resembles a pleasant predominant vanilla. Sweet, smooth, sophisticated and utterly beautiful.

Extra: Spiritueuse Double Vanille is a limited edition by Guerlain released in 2007. Jean-Paul Guerlain himself composed this fragrance for the house. I am not clear on whether or not it is still in production but I sure hope so because I believe this one is a definite keeper.

Design: Love the bottle. Thin and rectangular and easy to hold and spray. The details on it are also fantastic, with a wax seal-like design sporting Guerlain’s iconic bee. The major thing I didn’t like was how this was boxed, making it near impossible to both use this regularly and store it in its original packaging. Spiritueuse Double Vanille comes in a fitted box with a travel cap (that’s just a regular screw on cap) and a separate atomizer spray nozzle that you affix onto the bottle yourself. Due to the different heights of the travel cap and the spray nozzle, and the fitted box this fragrance comes in, once you install the atomizer, you can no longer make it fit in its original packaging. Very annoying. So you can’t keep Spiritueuse Double Vanille in its original box and if you’re nuts about keeping your perfumes out of the sunlight and light in general like me, you will have to shove it into a dark corner or drawer and hope the lack of extra protection from the box won’t make that much of a difference.

Fragrance Family: Woodsy Gourmand

Notes: Vanilla, benzoin, frankincense, spices, cedar, pink pepper, bergamot, Bulgarian rose, ylang-ylang.

Guerlain has been using vanilla for so long as a base for its fragrances. So when a house that built its prestigious reputation on vanilla outputs a vanilla fragrance, you better believe I’m going to go smell it. And of course they hit the nail on the head. When I first got into this whole fragrance thing I was afraid of two things. 1) That I would fall in love with a limited edition fragrance. 2) That the fragrance would be expensive. Thanks a lot, Guerlain.

Reviewed in This Post: Spiritueuse Double Vanille, 2007, Eau de Parfum.

BPAL Milk Chocolate and Green Tea Truffle

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Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s Milk Chocolate and Matcha Green Tea Ganache Truffle is as much of a mouthful as it is a noseful. It’s a wonderfully rich blend of matcha, sweetness, and chocolate. Smells so good I’m almost tempted to taste it. Truffle Green Tea

In Bottle: Strong cocoa and milky note with the bitter astringency of matcha layered in the background. The cocoa in this tips a bit more toward powder in the bottle and doesn’t smell like a heck of a whole lot of foodiness.

Applied: Where Milk Chocolate and Matcha Green Tea Ganache Truffle shines is upon application. The cocoa note turns into a much better and much more convincing chocolate when you actually put this on. It warms up, smooths out and gains a creamy texture smelling like very convincing chocolate. The matcha is still lending a bit of its bitterness but it has that nice grassy, sweet and dessert-like quality to it too making this seem almost edible on the skin. The bitterness in the matcha is giving this fragrance is a nice kick toward dark chocolate too and this scent will remain fairly linear though you will lose the grassiness as it ages on the skin.

Extra: Milk Chocolate and Matcha Green Tea Ganache Truffle contains a cocoa note in it. Like many of BPAL’s cocoa note contained fragrances, you may experience oil separation. If you notice your fragrance isn’t smelling as nice as it should, or smells a bit off, put the cap on, secure it tightly and roll the bottle or imp (sample vial) on its side between your hands for approximately five minutes to re-blend everything. Remember to roll. Don’t shake. Shaking may cause the oils to break down.

Design: Milk Chocolate and Matcha Green Tea Ganache Truffle is bottled in much the same way as other Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab fragrances. Held in an amber apothecary bottle, Milk Chocolate and Matcha Green Tea Ganache Truffle  sports a limited edition label of a drawn, and quite delicious looking, chocolate.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: cocoa, matcha green tea, ganache.

Milk Chocolate and Matcha Green Tea Ganache Truffle was released in 2010 as a part of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s Lupercalia event.

Reviewed in This Post: Milk Chocolate and Matcha Green Tea Ganache Truffle, 2009, 5ml Bottle.

BPAL: Butter Rum Cookie

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There’s people who can you hook you up at Sephora with a fragrance that smells a little bit like a cookie. And then there’s Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab who can hook you up with a fragrance that smells exactly like a cookie. And what a specific cookie! Butter Rum Cookie

In Bottle: Butter rum cookie smells exactly like its name. It’s not pulling any stops on you, it’s not pretending its something it isn’t, it’s just boozy, sweet cookies.

Applied: First thing’s first, the butter rum cookie you smell in the bottle will be what you smell on your skin when you put this on. It’s a really nice, very well done blend of sweet, pastry, and rum. I smell the rum first on application but the note is so fleeting that it’s gone on me in a few minutes. The rest of the time is occupied by a lightly toasted, very rich cookie note. There’s a very subtle spiciness to this that lingers in the background but for the most part, you’ll get the full deal in the first few minutes with a drop off on the rum and hours and hours of cookie-smelling fun until it all fades into what I can only describe as a lightly floured pan scent.

Extra: This fragrance was released in 2008 as a part of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s Yule season releases.

Design: Butter Rum Cookie is a limited edition fragrance bottled in the standard amber tinted 5ml glass bottle. It has a special label with its name written on it.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Rum, butter note, cookie note, sugar, almond, orange rind.

Butter Rum Cookie was one of my first stepping stones to BPAL. I had a small decant of it in a 1ml vial and after a series of disappointing scents, I was happy to have discovered this. Remember that I came from a background where perfumes were heady and oriental. It shocked me to smell something that was so literal. While the novelty of it has worn off because I’ve since smelled so many other cookie-based fragrances that smell extremely similar to this, I’ll always have that one moment when I said, “Whoa! This smells exactly like a butter rum cookie!”

Reviewed in This Post: Butter Rum Cookie, 2008, 5ml.

BPAL: Dark Chocolate Keylime Truffle

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Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s chocolate scents are hit and miss for me. The white chocolates are always misses, as the white chocolate note tends to veer toward milk and heavy cream territory with a faint waft of plastic. Milk chocolate is a rich, sweet, buttery note that can get to be a bit too much. But dark chocolate is the magical medium where sweetness and cocoa mix to form a fantastic balance. Truffle Key Lime

In Bottle: Keylimes! There is a very slight difference between a keylime and a regular lime. Keylimes, to me, are sweeter smelling and have a cleaner, crisper citrus kick to them. In Dark Chocolate Keylime Truffle, the first and only thing I can smell in the bottle are the keylimes and I am okay with that.

Applied: Smelling keylimes always makes me happy. It reminds me of the tropics, most notably, Florida. BPAL did a good job with this note but I’m wondering where the dark chocolate is. A few more minutes in and I finally get faint wafts of cocoa, a hint of sweetness, and a pleasant creamy texture that lends well with Dark Chocolate Keylime Truffle’s gourmand profile. The dark chocolate is a bit fleeting though as it disappears in under an hour and takes the keylime with it leaving me smelling a bit like sweetened milk.

Extra: Dark Chocolate Keylime Truffle was a part of the 2010 chocolate collection from BPAL. The other chocolates in this collection include, Milk Chocolate and Matcha Green Tea Ganache Truffle, White Chocolate Black Raspberry and Apricot Cordial Truffle, Dark Chocolate Whiskey and Cognac Truffle, and Milk Chocolate Coconut Cardamom Rum and Ginger Truffle.

Design: Dark Chocolate Keylime Truffle is contained in a 5ml amber glass bottle with a plastic top. It has a limited edition label with the house name and fragrance name on it.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Cocoa, keylime, sugar, cream.

Reviewed in This Post: Dark Chocolate Keylime Truffle 2010, 5ml.

Bath and Body Works Twilight Woods

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Despite all these things I have with the word Twilight or related to the hour of twilight, I really do not have any affection for the popular book/movie phenomenon. Really. Though I can’t help but think that this fragrance, in particular was a well-timed release by Bath and Body Works to capitalize on the Twilight craze at the time. Twilight Woods

In Bottle: Warmth is what Twilight Woods is. It’s warmth first, vanilla second, and woodsy last. And that’s just from the bottle. This smells clean, sweet, comforting and quite competent.

Applied: Opens as a fruity vanilla woodsy scent and starts moving into creamy vanilla woods scent with the frangipani. Twilight Woods lingers in that area for a bit before the fruitiness comes back for an encore and bows out with a nice watery, sweet woodsy vanilla scent that’s very pleasant. This smells like a really good fragrance to cozy up next to fire to. It’s nice, pleasant, very smooth and creamy and has excellent longevity and moderately good projection.

Extra: This is probably my favorite fragrance from Bath and Body Works. They talked about this and P.S. I Love You being two of their ventures into more abstract fragrance. Before, Bath and Body Works had fairly simple to decipher fragrances that were fairly linear. I was partial to their Pink Grapefruit body mist.

Design: Cute bottle with a nicely detailed image of a tree laid over the glass so when you’re looking at the bottle on the right side, you get a very pretty looking design. The cap is also quite nice. The entire design is slick and functional and most of Bath and Body Works’ eau de toilettes now come in bottles shaped like this one. The sprayer is functional and works just fine.

Fragrance Family: Woodsy Gourmand

Notes: Juicy berry, sparkling mandarin, coconut, creamy frangipani, soft mimosa, wet honeysuckle, wild freesia, apricot nectar, oud wood, skin musk captive, vanilla milk, and warm woods.

How do you like that notes list telling you what each  note is supposed to smell like? Frankly, I kind of like it but acknowledge its unnecessariness (it’s a word now).

Reviewed in This Post: Twilight Woods, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Viktor and Rolf Flowerbomb

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Flowerbomb is a pretty silly name for a fragrance that features so few flowers in it.  In fact, it smells more like caramel  or cotton candy than anything. You could call this Candy Bomb and it would make more sense. Flowerbomb

In Bottle: Despite the notes listing for this fragrance the first thing you are going to smell is sugar, vanilla, and caramel. Yes, the  fragrance that calls itself Flowerbomb doesn’t open with any florals. It opens with a gourmand. But wait, there’s more if you give her a little more time.

Applied: As you’re settling into your dessert you may start to wonder, where are my flowers? Didn’t I buy Flowerbomb? Why am I tasting a mountain of sugar instead? Then it hits you, jasmine and smoke. Did someone burn the caramel? Wait, I think I found a flower in Flowerbomb! A faint floral whiff of it coming at you from behind the cotton candy bush. It sneaks up on you, this little jasmine note, but its feet is stuck in the sticky candy and caramel mush road. When you finally notice it, you also start to notice the other florals too. Florals who had bloomed and are now dying, sinking into the hot sugar quicksand made of powdered sugar and melted caramels. What I’m trying to say is, Flowerbomb has a sweet, toothache inducing caramel fragrance with a floral heart that’s barely detectable. If you are looking for a floral fragrance, you will be looking hard for it behind the candy. As the heart continues to develop the caramel turns burnt, and the sugar, vanilla and whatever else is making this stuff smell like the underside of an amusement park ride seat gets even sweeter and sweeter until it hits cloying. Not just cloying like Miss Dior Cherie. Flowerbomb is smoky cloying. It stays at cloying well into the dry down when sugar attack mania is still all that you can smell until it fades into nothing but a light smoke trail. Wait, is that patchouli I’m smelling at the very tail end of this? Well, a little late to the show but at least I caught a fleeting glimpse.

Extra: I can’t understand the appeal of this fragrance that was released in 2004. I could understand Angel by Thierry Mugler but Flowerbomb’s youthful jolt of sweetness is beyond me. It polished the grit and character out of the patchouli so what I’m left with is a benign patchouli that can’t tame a sugar overloaded scent. I don’t think I will ever come to fully understand Flowerbomb either and can only commend it as one of the sweetest gourmands ever. If you want sweet and candy-like, you want this stuff. Did I mention this stuff has insane projection and longevity? Go easy on the sprayer, you will smell this for many hours.

Design: Flowerbomb has its rather signature pink grenade shaped bottle. Cute and iconic. A little conceptual if somewhat literal in interpretation. It makes this a nice looking perfume and a good conversation piece. The bottle itself is well designed, has a nice weight, is easy to hold and the sprayer is just dandy.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Bergamot, tea, jasmine, freesia, orchid, rose, patchouli.

Flowerbomb is probably one of the best examples of why the advertisements are not to be taken to heart. Official word labels this as a floral. But it is a gourmand above and all else and almost everyone who has smelled Flowerbomb would tend to agree. It takes a lot of digging, in other words, to find the flowers. This is a great fragrance for a very young audience who likes sweetness, likes caramel, and likes candy with a once in a while faint whiff of florals. It isn’t for me though.

Reviewed in This Post: Flowerbomb, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

Britney Spears Fantasy

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Watch a few perfume collection videos on YouTube and you’ll start to notice a pattern. Everyone owns relatively the same perfumes and one of the most commonly mentioned is Britney Spears Fantasy. That fragrance in the crazy rhinestone studded ball. So of course I went out to smell it. A scent this popular practically begs to be sniffed. Fantasy

In Bottle: Pink, sweet and candy-like. There’s a huge jolt of sugar. I’m thinking Couture Couture’s sugar mountain has a very likely adversary vying for first place in the tooth decay competition. This doesn’t mean that Fantasy smells bad. This stuff is sweet, but it’s not so sweet that it approaches the point of no return; cloying sweet.

Applied: Sweet fruits with a tiny bit of tartness on the opening. The tartness gives way to more sweetness as the gourmand notes come in for a jam. I don’t believe I could smell a big cupcake but I did smell vanilla and white chocolate that lends the fragrance a very nice creaminess. This is a pretty and edible smell that went from fruits to sugar and candy very quickly. The dry down takes a while as longevity in Fantasy was quite good for me. I get clean, sugary musk on dry down.

Extra: The advertising for this fragrance claims that it’s supposed to signify Britney’s more grown up personality. I don’t know what in Fantasy is supposed to represent that but I don’t have any of it. This stuff is extremely popular with young girls and younger women. I wouldn’t call it anything remotely approaching grown up. But it’s not a bad fragrance. It’s fun, it’s girly, it’s young. Just don’t try to take it seriously.

Design: The design, for me, is repellent. It looks like a number of things but none of those things are particularly attractive to me. I suppose the shape is sort of reminiscent of a fortune teller’s ball and the crystals…eh, I don’t know. Everything from the shape, to the crystals, to the detailing around the cap just isn’t doing it for me. Not me with my clean lines and ultra-minimalism. Interestingly enough the belted design around the sprayer featured in the picture above with the crystals is no longer being produced.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Red lychee, golden quince, kiwi, cupcake accord, jasmine petals, white chocolate orchid, creamy musk, enchanted orris root, and sensual woods.

Some of the verbs used for those notes are just silly. But it’s also fun and playful. I can’t take Fantasy seriously. This isn’t the kind of fragrance you wear to a board meeting. However, you could wear Fantasy to the beach, to a hoe down, or a cupcake festival. Basically, if it’s not whimsical and fun it’s not a place Fantasy would fit in.

Reviewed in This Post: Britney Spears, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Lolita Lempicka

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Something about apples just draws me in, I guess. One would think an apple bottle would a bit silly but Lolita Lempicka’s designs have always had these fascinating shapes with interesting textures and line work on them. The bottle for Lolita Lempicka drew me in, the fragrance kept me around. Lolita Lempicka

In Bottle: Sweet and spicy, almost woodsy quality in a way. I can smell the licorice in this along with a very fresh, almost fruity note right up top.

Applied: I smell apple opening this fragrance. I swear I do. I don’t care that the notes don’t list it, it’s right up there to my nose. Big inertial apple. Then it disappears within seconds to be replaced with this green sweet spice scent that is anise. As the fragrance ages, Lolita Lempicka turns into a vanilla spice fragrance with that faint sweetness of licorice. Despite all the gourmand notes in this one, the scent as a whole doesn’t strike me as a gourmand immediately. It needs to settle into its heart notes before you really start to see where it’s coming from. The fragrance dries down to a soft sweet vanilla scent.

Extra: Lolita Lempicka is a fashion house by Josiane Maryse Pividal who adopted Lolita Lempicka as her pseudonym.

Design: More truly apple shaped than the Nina by Nina Ricci bottle. Lolita Lempicka’s bottle is a purple apple with leaf and swirl linework in gold and muted colors. The design is whimsical, young, fairytale-like with a nice final touch of the sprayer that resembles the thin and delicate stem of the apple. I would have preferred the sprayer to be made of more sturdy material since it is so thin and delicate but it works just fine for what it is.

Fragrance Family: Spicy Gourmand

Notes: Ivy, anise, violet, amarise, licorice, amarena, vetiver, tonka, vanilla, musk.

I don’t much like licorice, or how it smells. But Lolita Lempicka makes it acceptable for me by mixing it in with other notes. It is one of the better done gourmands out there. Sometimes compared to Angel by Thierry Mugler. I personally don’t see the connection as Lolita Lempicka is drier and less sweet to my nose.

Reviewed in This Post: Lolita Lempicka, 2008, Eau de Parfum.

Comptoir Sud Pacifique Vanille Mokha

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Because Miskatonic University by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab let me down, I was on the hunt for a really good, really clear and simple gourmand coffee fragrance. For those days when I want to smell like coffee. And Comptoir Sud Pacifique’s Vanille Mokha is as clear an answer as I hope to get. Vanille Mokha

In Bottle: Simple dark coffee with a jolt of vanilla added in to sweeten and smooth out the fragrance a little. An absolutely delicious gourmand fragrance that makes me want to drink everything out of the vial if I didn’t know it’d make me ill.

Applied: Creamy vanilla swirling in dark coffee. This is a really rich, lightly sweet coffee fragrance that’s almost as good as the real thing. There’s no florals in here to complicate things, I can’t detect anything but two very good notes and maybe a note of sugar to sweeten things a little further. Vanille Mokha takes a page from Demeter and just smells as advertised with no frills attached. The beginning of the dry down  signals the loss of the coffee note as the vanilla note dominates the scene, it’s just sweet and creamy vanilla now. Apparently coffee notes just don’t like sticking around. This fact saddens me as I had hoped the coffee would hang out a lot longer.

Extra: Founded in 1976, Comptoir Sud Pacifique focuses on bright island colors and scents. They offer a lot of really nice and simple smelling fragrances. A lot of those being gourmands.

Design: Brushed metal bottle with a brushed metal cap. Simple design with no real frills attached. The use of metallic bottles kind of reminds me of how Montale fragrances are bottled.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Coffee, vanilla.

Coffee continues to be a frustratingly fleeting note. I don’t so much care to drink the stuff but I love how it smells and if anyone has any idea where I can get a lovely, long-lasting coffee fragrance, do let me know. This fruitless hunt is getting ridiculous.

Reviewed in This Post: Vanille Mokha, 2009, Eau de Parfum.