Victoria’s Secret Amber Romance

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Amber Romance is a part of Victoria’s Secret’s Secret Garden Collection of which Love Spell is a member. Most of the fragrances are relatively simple, with some minor complexity but if you want complexity, you’ll likely have to look elsewhere. Of all the Secret Garden scents, Amber Romance is probably my favorite. Amber Romance

In Bottle: Creamy vanilla flowers with a hint of fruity, licorice-like cherry sitting on top. This stuff is sweet, strong and very familiar.

Applied: Blast of something over-sweet and fruity right up front that is quick to fade as the flowers and some smoother, rounder, creamier fruits take up the mid-stage with the florals being dead center. The vanilla is ever present, lending a nice sweetness to the whole scent and into the dry down the vanilla gets a bit more cakey and sugary when the florals recede. This stuff reminds me a lot of Chanel Allure and Fruits and Passion Orchid. Mostly because these three fragrances are sort of built on the same floral vanilla principle. Chanel Allure has a hand above Amber Romance for being a much more complex scent with a better blend. It also tends to last longer with a nicely tempered projection as well, whereas Amber Romance goes on loud, then settles down and disappears much quicker. I prefer Amber Romance to Fruits and Passion Orchid, however, as Amber Romance’s dry down does not involve the slightly strange powdery plastic that I detected in Orchid. The dry down to Amber Romance is a pleasant soft wood and vanilla without a whole lot of fanfare.

Extra: Like most members of the Secret Garden collection, Amber Romance has a number of other products available so you can layer your scent and make it last longer. There’s lotion, body mist, shower gels, body creams, body butters, hand sanitizers, and of course the eau de toilette featured in this post.

Design: Amber Romance is packaged in the same way as Love Spell. An unassuming small glass cylinder bottle with a spray nozzle and a metal cap. The fragrance’s name and other identifying markers are presented on a clear sticker applied to the bottle. The rest of the information is on a sticker applied to the bottom of the bottle. No fancy tricks, no fancy shapes, just simple and easy.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Black cherry, crème anglaise, vanilla and sandalwood.

Amber Romance is a remarkably powerful scent for what it is, and if you plan on getting some of this stuff, keep that in mind. If you’re not a fan of strong scents, definitely opt for the body mist over the eau de toilette or ease up on the trigger finger. It’s powerful stuff.

Reviewed in This Post: Amber Romance, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Bath and Body Works Twisted Peppermint

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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

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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.

Banana Republic Rosewood

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Seems Avril Lavigne’s Forbidden Rose was borrowing from Rosewood’s style of fragrance naming as there is no rosewood to be had in this scent. What there is, however, is a very nice sweet woodsy fragrance. Rosewood

In Bottle: Warm, sweet and sandalwood. There’s a sugary vanilla in this but it’s not overdone like some fragrances and actually blends really well with the sandalwood.

Applied: Sweet and warm sandalwood. Smells very comforting. I want to believe there’s a floral note somewhere in here but if there is, it’s very sheer. Rosewood, is lacking the note from which it draws its name but it’s a very pleasant and wearable woodsy fragrance. The sandalwood is comforting. The vanilla and amber makes this approachable and the scent as a whole smells soft and gentle and clean. I get the occasional kick of warmed spices here and there that my brain wants to associate with cinnamon but Rosewood is predominantly a two-trick pony. Warm amber and vanilla on one end and sandalwood on the other. Into the mid-stage is pretty much the same deal with the sweet sandalwood and the dry down gives us a more comprehensive sniff of the amber but by and large, Rosewood is one-dimensional. And hey, it works because I think this is a great scent for work that’s graduated a few levels above your typical easy to wear fruity floral.

Extra: Funny thing to note is Banana Republic selling this fragrance as a floral oriental when there’s barely any florals in here to trace. An oriental? Okay, I’ll give it that. Rosewood has actually polarized a portion of the fragrance lover community that those who hate it feel misled by the name and those who love it just like its clean simplicity.

Design: The bottle itself is an ugly thing to behold. It’s a very squat, rounded shape built out of muddy glass that feels a bit lumpy when held. The sprayer nozzle works just fine but the shape and how wide this bottle is makes it hard to hold for spraying. The metallic cap has a leathery-material as a band around it. I like the metal cap, I could do without the leathery-thing. The one good thing I can say about Rosewood’s packaging is the cylindrical wooden container it comes in. It looks nice in a way. The lid is magnetized and it does a great job at hiding the rather hideous bottle. I only wish the thing was more reusable but Rosewood’s bottle is a pretty specialized shape so just about the only thing the wooden container can hold after you’re done with the fragrance is the original bottle or something equally squat. I’m thinking my sample size perfumes are going in this thing when I’m all done with Rosewood.

Fragrance Family: Woodsy Oriental

Notes: Bergamot, champagne, white tea leaves, and white amber.

That notes list is pretty much bunk as it’s missing a great deal of what, I assume, is actually in this fragrance. There’s a spice note to be sure, and sandalwood, and something more than just amber. Which I suspected is vanilla.

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

Escada Tropical Punch

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Escada’s mostly known for their very nicely done line of fruity floral fragrances. I was never that interested in Escada’s stuff because there’s a wealth of fruity florals in the market. But if you wanted a good fruity floral, that’s reminiscent of the tropics then Escada’s got you covered.  Tropical Punch

In Bottle: Wet and sweet fruit juice. Like a blended tropical smoothie consisting of pears and pomegranates and peaches. It smells delicious.

Applied: Burst of that fruit smoothie scent with the pears overtaking the pomegranate until both of them fade into the background and let the florals up. Of the flowers in this scent, I smell the lily of the valley the most followed by the combined powers of hibiscus and freesia making the mid-stage of Tropical Punch a lush bed of florals. The peach note in this lends a bit of fruitiness to it but by and large Tropical Punch’s mid-stage is very reminiscent of an Herbal Essences shampoo. And I like how Herbal Essence shampoos smell so if you’re into that kind of thing, this stuff delivers. The dry down is rather unremarkable but so is the rest of this fragrance as it warms up a bit but fades with a clean fruity floral sweet amber scent.

Extra: Escada is a women’s luxury clothing group founded in 1976. They have a ton of other similarly built fruity floral fragrances in addition to Tropical Punch. Of which one of the most popular is Marine Groove.

Design: I don’t much like Escada’s fragrance bottles. They’re nice and colorful and fun looking but I’m not a big fan of the shape which is reminiscent of a stretched out heart. Actually, I think the design of these bottles is lacking and makes them look more like body mists instead of perfumes. Tropical Punch is a mostly pink glass affair with a gradient that fades into a pinkish orange. It’s easy to hold though, and the sprayer works great.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Papaya, pomegranate, pear, hibiscus, freesia, lily of the valley, white peach, white musk, amber.

I’m not interested enough in Tropical Punch to really get a bottle. The top notes on this stuff are fantastic. But as soon as it dries down, it heads into all too familiar territory. Then there’s the price and for the amount of an Escada fragrance, I would much rather get a mainstream Guerlain or a mainstream Chanel–even.

Reviewed in This Post:Tropical Punch, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Aquolina Blue Sugar

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Blue Sugar, as you may have already guessed by now is Aquolina’s male version of their female fragrance, Pink Sugar. The basic gist of this stuff is Pink Sugar with a slap of woods thrown in.  Blue Sugar

In Bottle: Most people who enjoy Blue Sugar like the woodsy notes added in. I have to disagree as the mixture of candy and wood is a bizarre blend for me.

Applied: I smell the embodiment of Pink Sugar’s caramel and candy on initial application but give Blue Sugar a few seconds and you’ll start to notice the woods coming in to play. The opening is a slightly fresher interpretation of Pink Sugar as the bergamot gives the fragrance a slight hint of sophistication. Only a very slight hint, mind you. Now, I’m not a big fan of sweet, woody scents as it makes me think of medicinal herbs steeping over a fire. A nice visual but a pretty scary olfactory experience that makes me think of wilted plants, bark, and trees covered in caramel. There’s a slick sweetness to this that, I admit, does great when toned down and it makes me wish Pink Sugar smelled more like the lighter sweetness. AS it is, I can’t get on board with the sweet woody fragrance. The dry down is a fairly easy story of sweet wood with the woods coming up a bit more. I like the dry down, it strikes a more fair balance between sugar and tree rather than the slugfest the middle stage was advertisting.

Extra: Aquolina is most famous for their Pink Sugar fragrance but in addition to Blue Sugar they have a gourmand fragrance called Chocolovers which, you guessed it, smells like chocolate.

Design: Bottled in a similar fashion as Pink Sugar. Blue Sugar boasts a tall blue cylinder of scent and like the Pink Sugar bottle, it reminds me of packaging for a shampoo or a body mist rather than a perfume.

Fragrance Family: Sweet Woods

Notes: Bergamot, tangerine, star anise, ginger, licorice, patchouli, lavender, heliotrope, coriander, cedar, tonka bean.

Not much to be expected of this fragrance and sometimes I wonder if it was truly necessary to have a men’s and women’s version of a perfume that was largely straightforward in the first place. Between the two, I will stick (or stink!) with the pink girly version.

Reviewed in This Post: Aquolina Blue Sugar, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Juicy Couture Viva la Juicy

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Rounding out the Juicy Couture fragrance for women family is Viva la Juicy. By far, their most popular fragrance. So popular, in fact, that I smell this everywhere I go. On everybody. People love their Juicy, I guess. Viva la Juicy

In Bottle: Reminds me a lot of other fruity floral fragrances but I have to keep in mind that Viva la Juicy is the fruity floral that everyone wears. Funny enough the sugary sweet notes that are supposed to be at the bottom are also mingling at the top making Viva la Juicy smell like a fruit-flavored candy.

Applied: Okay, you can laugh me out of the ballpark, I like Viva la Juicy. I think it smells great. It’s a better treatment of a sweet fragrance than Couture Couture. Going on, it smells of creamy fruits and vanilla. Very reminiscent of sweet fruity florals everywhere, like I said. It’s got a strong resemblance to Love Etc. by The Body Shop, only done with more sugar and less tartness. As you let this age on you, the fruits go away and there’s a faint hint of flowers in the mid-stage that’s mixed with all the silly candy-like notes like caramel, vanilla and praline. The dessert factor only amps up as you keep wearing this as the florals in the middle give way to a lush full-on dessert course that smells mostly like soft vanilla tempered with a touch of sandalwood and gooey caramel. The caramel note in Viva la Juicy is actually used well as it isn’t cloying. This is a strong, sweet, fragrance and if you are afraid of cloying scents, be wary of Viva la Juicy as it is potently sweet and very young.

Extra: Juicy Couture has one well-known fragrance for men known as Dirty English. It is a scent that’s often been toted as being better than the series of women’s fragrances. I’ve had more than one opportunity to sniff it for myself but always manage to miss for some reason. There is also a fragrance for your dog called Juicy Crittoure which I have yet to see.

Design: Viva la Juicy is bottled in the same way as Juicy Couture. The accents and details are different with Viva la Juicy rocking a bright pink bow and a different seal. The bow can be taken off and used as a hair tie, whereas Juicy Couture’s wrap-around rope thing could be worn as a necklace. I don’t use either of these things but it’s pretty cute nonetheless.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Wild berries, mandarin, honeysuckle, gardenia, jasmine, amber, caramel, vanilla, sandalwood, praline.

Out of all the Juicy Couture fragrances I’m going to have to give it to Viva la Juicy. It’s a very good fruity floral. Good enough to smell it on everyone anyway.

Reviewed in This Post: Viva la Juicy, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

Jean Paul Gaultier Classique EDP

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You might be wondering why I bothered to put the concentration in the title there. Jean Paul Gaultier’s fragrance, Classique, has two interpretations. An EDT (Eau de Toilette) and an EDP (Eau de Parfum). They are packaged differently and they smell different. This review, obviously, focuses on the EDP. Classique EDP

In Bottle: Heady, floral, sweet oriental with a strong, smooth amber note that gives this a sort of honeyed scent.

Applied: I smell honeyed raisins and spice on first impression. Quite an interesting experience but I can see how people might be turned off by this. It’s a beautifully done fragrance as an oriental and very welcome as the spice deepens the longer you wear it until you reach a point when the honeyed vanilla amber has taken hold of the reins. Classique EDP sits in a heady section of spicy amber during its middle notes with the occasional waft of sweetened floral and spiced up ginger. At times it can smell foody, but the majority of this is spent as a sensually sweet floral. The dry down is equally nice, resting in a pleasant pool of amber woods.

Extra: As mentioned earlier in this review Jean Paul Gaultier couldn’t make things easier for us and has two versions of Classique floating around. Thankfully he made the two versions look different as well as smell different. The EDT was the original release of Classique in 1993 and is usually featured in an undecorated frosted glass bottle. The EDP reviewed in this post is an interpretation of the original and is featured in the bottle pictured in this post. Just to throw a little more wackiness into the mix, Gaultier also has Classique X out now, which thankfully, distinguishes itself a bit more than its concentration.

Design: Bottled in Gaultier’s signature silhouette bottles, the Classique EDP comes with an applique corset on the glass. I like the corset design but I’m not, and was never a fan, of the silhouette shapes. They are interesting looking to be sure but I’m just not feeling the groove. The packaging is also rather nice and interesting. Your bottle may come in an aluminum can, which is handy for keeping out light.

Fragrance Family: Oriental

Notes: Rum essence, Bulgarian rose, star anise, orange blossom, tangerine, ginger, orchid, iris, ylang-ylang, vanilla daffodil, amber, tonka bean, musk.

Floral orientals aren’t for everyone and Classique EDP is definitely an example of this. Some people might consider this too old while others find it divine at any age. If you’re looking for a dark, deep and sweet oriental fragrance then this is a good choice. Just make sure you smell both the EDT and the EDP so you can determine which one you like more.

Reviewed in This Post: Classique EDP, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

DKNY Delicious Night

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Delicious Night is one of the flankers from Donna Karan’s very popular Be Delicious line which centers around the apple note. Despite its shape and its heritage, Delicious Night does not contain a single apple. Delicious Night

In Bottle: Sweet, citrus and berries that verge on being cloying even as it’s sitting in the bottle. This is a fact that troubles me. It’s like a warning.

Applied: Sweet blackberry and citrus fruits. Or should I say, SWEET BLACKBERRY and CITRUS INFUSION 9000!!! Because Delicious Night goes on loud. Very loud. Also very sweet and that cloying sweetness I got in the bottle is full throttle on my skin. This stuff is like blackberry and lemon syrup, dumped into a vat of sugar and then rolled into a giant candy ball. I had thought Miss Dior Cherie was a cloying headache inducer but Delicious Night really takes the cake as I wait out the top notes amidst this bizarre combination of scents that remind me uncomfortably of children’s flavored and sweetened cough syrup. Much to my chagrin the mid-stage echos the same level of syrupy sweetness as the opener except with a bland mix of flowers that are trying to swim out of the Sweet’n’Low sea but they can’t quite make it under the merciless sugar baron’s iron-fisted rule. If you think you can get away from the sugar baron on the dry down you’ve got another thing coming. The sweetness is miles long, and it won’t stop until you do. It invades the base notes as well, sugaring up the sheer clean patchouli and if it’s one thing I don’t think patchouli should ever have to do, it’s be both clean and sugary sweet.

Extra: Be Delicious was the original DKNY apple scent that a lot of people really like. And it’s a pretty decent apple scent that inspired Victoria Secret’s Appletini.

Design: Bottled in the same shape and concept as DKNY Be Delicious and DKNY Red Delicious. Delicious Night is a dark purple affair with an apple-like shape. The black plastic cap also hides the sprayer that makes a distinctly plastic sound as it splodges the fragrance out onto you like a hooked fish would regurgitate the last of its water. I wasn’t impressed by the lackluster function of the sprayer nozzle–in other words. Maybe I just hit a bad bottle. I will admit that it’s a pretty cute shape and a rather clever way of hiding the sprayer.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Pomelo, ginger, blackberry, pink freesia, martini, night orchid, jasmine, pink iris, amber, frankincense, myrrh extract, patchouli, vetiver.

Delicious Night was supposed to be sexy and modern. All it made me was kind of nauseous. Sorry, Delicious Night.

Reviewed in This Post: DKNY Delicious Night, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Victoria’s Secret Delicate Petals

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Victoria’s Secret has a line of fragrances based off of a garden of flowers type of motif. Their first fragrance that I reviewed in this blog was Love Spell, a confusing conundrum of a fragrance that reminded me of sweet herbs and slippery banana. Love Spell, it should be noted, was my least favorite of the Secret Garden scents. Delicate Petals, on the other hand, I love. Delicate Petals

In Bottle: I am a big fan of roses and rose-based perfumes (when done well of course) and Delicate Petals is a cute, sweet, light take on the celebrated rose. In the middle it is a light, mildly citrus rose fragrance. Not a classic rose, but a very nice one all the same.

Applied: Yep, cute, sweet and rosey. This is no where near Guerlain’s Nahema rose with its dense, rich, dark complexity. Delicate Petals is–well, delicate. It opens with a slight citrus to clear the area and sort of impart a clearing of the slate before the rose comes up pretty much immediately. There’s very little complexity to this scent as I mentioned as most of it is heavily relying on the rose to do its job. It’s the kind of rose you would find in a pleasant soap. A modern and cute rose that won’t offend anyone and smells good in a variety of situations. When Delicate Petals dries down, I’m left with very little as the fragrance just seems to drop off entirely with a very sheer (or non-existent) base note.

Extra: Delicate Petals has been likened often to Stella by Stella McCartney, but once again, I have to give the prize to Stella because she’s just a little more complex. As for me, I’d say Delicate Petals resembles Juliette Has a Gyn’s Lady Vengeance a bit more. It’s the same clean, fresh, cute rose concept. Though Lady Vengeance has a smooth, soapy quality to it that I prefer.

Design: Delicate Petals is bottled in the same way as Love Spell and the other eau de toilettes in Victoria’s Secret’s Secret Garden line. That enough secrets for you? It’s a relatively simple glass cylinder with a clear label depicting an appropriate flower and the fragrance’s name as well as Victoria’s Secret on it. You will find the perfume’s identification stamp (and lot serials) on a sticker on the bottom of the bottle. The cap is a metal and is usually gold.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Tangerine, velvet rose, musk.

I do get tired of rose fragrances eventually and as a result can’t keep wearing rose scents day after day. It’s strange, like rose is one of those now and then treats and if I use it too often I get bloated and sick of it for a while. But Delicate Petals helps assuage this a little as it’s so light and clean and plain old peppy!

Reviewed in This Post: Delicate Petals, 2009, Eau de Toilette.