Lollipop Bling Honey

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Reviewing Lollipop Bling after last week’s classic perfume review-a-thon is like attending an opera then going home and watching reality TV. There’s really no graceful way to segue from one to the other but I review what I have in my notes as I smell things. Some days I might go through five or six perfumes. Some days none. Then there are weeks like this and the Chanel week earlier this month where I yaw between the sensual, dirty romance of Jicky and Mariah Carey sitting on a pink cloud. Lollipop Bling Honey

In Bottle: I don’t know why they called this “Honey” because it smells like pineapples. Maybe it’s Honey as in, “Honey, why does your arm smell like pineapples?”

Applied: After the pineapple hello, Honey evolves into a warmed up honey pineapple treat that makes me think of the tropics. The tropics being an interesting muse for recent perfume releases. I’m happy to see there is actually honey in this but I find myself having to focus on finding it as it is buried under the giant fruity  balloon that rubbed itself onto a field of unsuspecting flowers before it floated off. I don’t think much of Honey. I don’t like it much. It’s far too simple, lacking in imagination and I can’t even enjoy it for its sheer fun factor because this has been done before and so much better. If you were going to go for Honey, go for the better version of this concept in G from Harajuku Lovers. Unless you hate coconut, then you might as well go Independent and score yourself a bottle of Rangoon Riptide from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. I know it was a limited edition but at least you get more than this. This is just too simple to be any good. It makes me beg the question why I should care about it when there’s better stuff out there for the same price point. I smell three notes (pineapple, honey, flowers) for a period of an hour and then it devolves into that watered down, miasma of florals, “something sweet used to be here but died”, perfume scent that I hate so much.

Extra: Honey is a part of Mariah Carey’s (read: Elizabeth Arden’s) Lollipop Bling perfume collection. The collection is notably styled after M by Mariah Carey, only simplified to the barest essentials.

Design: There are three perfumes right now in the Lollipop Bling collection and Honey is identified as the yellow one. It’s a yellow glass bottle with a butterfly cap on top. Reminds me a bit of the butterfly bottles from Annick Goutal, only much clunkier and obviously designed to appeal to a much younger audience.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Pineapple, white florals, honey.

I can’t say Honey brings anything new to the table when it comes to tropical scents as we already had Desire Me by Baby Phat, G from the Harajuku Lovers collection, and Bath and Body Works’ Pineapple Orchid that doesn’t come in perfume form but if it did, I’m sure it’d be popular. After all that, do you really need another perfume that makes you smell like pineapples?

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

Britney Spears Radiance

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I’m still perplexed about the popularity of Britney Spears fragrances. The only scent I could take from her line was Midnight Fantasy which has its on and off days and became too synthetic and sweet for my tastes near the end of its 30ml bottle lifespan. Still I went into Radiance hoping for a surprise. I always approach celebrity scents hoping for surprise and always end up a little disappointed. Radiance

In Bottle: Sweet tuberose scent with a slight tart berry top note that isn’t particularly interesting but does remind me a bit of other sweet tuberose based scents. Namely, Baby Phat Dare Me.

Applied: Berries up front with a slightly tart treatment that is mildly reminiscent of Tommy Girl with less zing. The berries fade into the mid-stage where the tuberose amps up and leads a mild jasmine note in with it. The two create a sweet, and creamy tuberose-heavy floral heart stage that smells like it can’t decide whether it wants to be sensual and sophisticated or sweet and fun. But Radiance pitches an interesting middle ground and ends up smelling okay. Not great. Just okay. The orange blossom flares up now and again in the mid-stage but aside from that Radiance is a quicker fader into the base with a clean, very sheer ending.

Extra: Britney’s perfume line is one of the most popular fragrances for young women and girls. She’s got the market pretty much cornered with her fragrances. And this goes particularly for Fantasy with its huge fruity sweet personality.

Design: Not a fan of the bottle. I think it looks a bit garish to be honest. It’s a heavy glass bottle with a colored jewel motif that reminds me of Bejeweled, the Flash-based game. As stated, the bottle is glass but the cap is a blue plastic jewel that fits over the sprayer. I just can’t get on board with these types of over the top designs and I have yet to really like a Britney Spears perfume line bottle design and Radiance is no exception.

Fragrance Family: Sweet Floral

Notes: Berries, tuberose, jasmine, orange blossom, iris, musk.

Keep doing whatever it is that you do, Britney because it’s obviously working out for you. As for Radiance, it’s not my idea of a good time.

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

Sugababes Tempt

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I saw this thing laying about the internet and thought to myself, “Are you serious? Is that another Fantasy perfume I haven’t heard of yet?” Thankfully no, this isn’t an unknown bottle of yet another Britney Spears Fantasy. Tempt is actually a member of the Sugababes collection of fragrances. Being Canadian, unsavvy when it comes to music, and a general hermit, I had no idea who the Sugababes were. But I smelled Tempt anyway–in a safe, closed environment from a small sampler vial.

In Bottle: Fruity floral. If there’s anything I wholly expected from Tempt, it was this. Nothing exciting about this, it’s just  “that fruity floral smell” you can get anywhere else.

Applied: Berries up top, layered with a sort of sticky sweet tea scent that’s helped along in its tea-journey by blackcurrant that tries its best to bring the sugar down to tolerable levels but doesn’t succeed. It reminds me of a sweeter, sillier version of Tommy Girl. The midstage isn’t anything to phone home about either. It’s more fruits, more sweetness, a touch of rose to give this thing some florals, and an orchid note that might as well not be there because you have to dig to find it. The dry down is a typical, rather boring way-too-sweet vanilla scent that’s still too sticky for me to handle seriously.

Extra: Apparently the Sugababes is a pop group from the UK. No wonder I haven’t heard of it. Well, if nothing else, Tempt’s smell matches what the band seems to be all about. It’s definitely sugar.

Design: Ugh. I thought the Fantasy bottles were ugly to begin with, why on earth would there be another fragrance line to borrow design elements from it? The shape is awful and it’s made worse by the lack of embellishments.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Berries, blackcurrant, ced tea, rose, orchid, vanilla, musk.

Too sweet, too boring, terrible bottle. I’ll say what I always say for fragrances like this. It is by no means a bad smell. But it is definitely synthetic and unoriginal. If you like sweet fruity things, this is up your alley. If you are looking for something a little more sophisticated, this shouldn’t even be considered.

Reviewed in This Post: Tempt, 2010, Eau de  Toilette.

Paris Hilton Siren

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So I went and smelled a Paris Hilton perfume today and aside from the looks at the drugstore some people were giving  me, it went all right. A lot of people swear by Paris’ perfumes, if they can’t swear by her personality so I was curious.  Siren

In Bottle: Smells fruity in the bottle with a hint of citrus as is per usual for a celebrity perfume. It smells a little bit like a slicked back coconut resting on a bed of fruit salad ringed with flowers. Pleasant but uninspired.

Applied: Fruity flare-up immediately followed by sweet florals where the frangipani makes itself most known. Siren’s a surprisingly pleasant and more successful beachy, tropical fragrance than Dare Me by Baby Phat but I’m still not sure I’m entirely on board with this situation because while it smells pleasant enough, it smells pretty generic and rather dull. As the fragrance ages, its mid-stage is a decked out sweet floral with a predominant splash of vanilla that reminds me quite vividly of Viva la Juicy by Juicy Couture. The florals get a bit weaker as the fragrance wears on though and you’re ultimately left with the hallmark of the modern perfume’s drydown; soft sandalwood and vanilla.

Extra: Paris Hilton has lent her name to the fragrance game for a number of years now and her perfume are quite popular. Maybe, and I hazard to say this, as popular as Britney Spears fragrances. The ad campaign for Siren had a golden mermaid Paris shopped onto a rock with crashing waves. It was a little ridiculous.

Design: Siren’s bottle reminds me a little bit of Guerlain’s Champs Elysees. It’s just in the shape really. It’s got a weird, twisted art deco type thing going on as well that I’m not 100% on board with but the bottling is not bad. You can tell they were going for the whole mermaid tail motif with the myth of the sirens and whatnot. It accomplishes what it needs to accomplish if the imagery is a little bit heavy-handed.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Apricot, mandarin, frangipani, honeysuckle, orchid, lotus, lily, sandalwood, vanilla, musk.

I know a lot of people are put off by celebrity perfume but there’s no shame in owning or liking celebuscents. It’s a bit of a funny misconception that people think Paris actually comes up with her own perfumes. Rest assured, she did not don gloves and goggles and spend years or months mixing fragrances together into a coherent mix. I’m pretty sure perfumer, Honorine Blanc had something of a hand in formulating this stuff.

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

Avril Lavigne Forbidden Rose

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Forbidden Rose is the second fragrance the people in charge of slapping Avril Lavigne’s name on things have come out with. Forbidden Rose’s tagline is, “Dare to discover”. Which I’m assuming is related to trying to unearth where rose comes into play in this fragrance. Forbidden Rose

In Bottle: I’ll give you guys a hint; there’s no rose note in Forbidden Rose. Probably where the ‘forbidden’ part comes into play is when it’s making it obvious that you’re not getting a rose out of this thing. This fragrance is more content being a fresh aquatic floral and not a whole lot else.

Applied: Funny enough there’s a brief blast of sweet vanilla and florals. After about five seconds, Forbidden Rose heads into its longest and blandest phase. The florals ramp up their game into sharp, clean scent that made my nose immediately fire off a screaming message in my brain that read, “This smells like Turquoise Seas by Calgon!” Upon smelling my twelve year–rather well-preserved–bottle of Turquoise Seas, I’m likely to agree with my nose. Then I smelled Calgon’s Morning Glory sitting next to it and Forbidden Rose seems to have borrowed from that as well. I don’t know if it’s the banality of the fragrance that makes it smell like a amalgamation of at least two Calgon body mists but Forbidden Rose isn’t daring me to discover anything except where it borrowed its notes from. It’s not an offensive fragrance by any means, in fact, being compared to a couple of body mists is a testament to how inoffensive this fragrance is. It smells like cleaned up flowers that have been scrubbed extra well. It’s easy to wear, but highly unexciting. And if you let it dry down, the sharpness goes away and you get a faint whiff of a typical sandalwood vanilla base with the ghost of that Amalgamation of Calgon Body Mist lingering in the back.

Extra: Don’t rush out and blind buy a bunch of body mists because of me. Like every fragrance reviewer–I don’t care who they are–their experience with the perfume may different from yours. So if you are going to do some rushing, rush to smell Forbidden Rose then try to seek out the two Calgons and see if they’re similar to you or not. Like most fragrances, you can never get an exact duplicate and there are differences between the three fragrances I mentioned but they are also similar enough to my nose that you could conceivably spend $8 on a bottle of body mist instead of $60 on a eau de parfum.

Design: Forbidden Rose has a cute presentation. The juice is a fun purple color. The glass portion of the bottle’s shape is reminiscent of the tall Thierry Mugler Angel bottle with the silver cap. While at the same time it gives a nice little homage to the other Avril Lavigne fragrance; Black Star. Forbidden Rose has a cute little black plastic rose as a cap. It is nice and pleasant to hold. Easy to spray. No complaints here.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Apple, peach, bourbon pepper, lotus flower, apple blossom, heliotrope, pomegranate, vanilla, chocolate, sandalwood.

It seems that those of you looking for a daring fragrance is going to have to keep looking when it comes to stuff with Avril’s name on it. I want to reiterate that Forbidden Rose does not smell bad. It simply smells pedestrian, which is not always a bad thing.

Reviewed in This Post: Forbidden Rose, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Sarah Jessica Parker Covet

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Covet is a fragrance with Sarah Jessica Parker’s name on it. She has other fragrances too, ones that I actually like more. Lovely is a pretty one. That new fragrance she has coming out seems worthwhile too. Covet never really drew me in as I heard its mid-stage can be somewhat intense. And now that I know why, I can safely say this isn’t for me. Covet

In Bottle: Soft, citrus, lavender floral with a touch of sweetness–almost licorice-like. Nice green, clean and kind of average smelling. I lower the bar for celebuscents as I really don’t expect these to break any new ground. I just expect them to smell pretty, agreeable and nice. And in the bottle, Covet smells pleasant.

Applied: Light, green aromatic floral. A little reminiscent of Spider Lily by India Hicks. Pleasant on application with a slight citrus note that layers and plays well with the greenness of the fragrance. The pleasant top notes last for a few minutes before Covet takes a turn for the sharp and chemical and powerful. After the initial pleasantries are through, Covet turns into a powerful bright green and lemon fragrance that’s more reminiscent of Versace Versense’s crazy powerful citrus than it is of Spider Lily now. Spider Lily had a boundary but Covet does not. It crashes through the boundaries and gives off wave after wave of too-strong lemon and sharpness. I don’t know what’s wrong with me but the citrus in this is really strong and entirely too overpowering. It’s trying to be sweet and sophisticated and pretty but that citrus is just so strong. Finally when Covet enters the dry down stage it mellows out just a little as that chemical green finally lets up and I can smell some sweetness.

Extra: I don’t know if this is just my experience or if a small swathe of people out there who also experienced this overpowering green lemon monster mid-stage just have really awkward skin chemistry but we do exist and Covet should be tested prior to purchase. Or you might experience what I did and just be thoroughly perplexed.

Design: It’s a cute bottle, little cap is a plastic flower petal ring type thing. It’s easy enough to hold and the design is not over the top. I have to agree with Tania Sanchez and what she said about this bottle in, Perfumes, The A-Z Guide, “The bottle looks like a Super Mario power-up”. It really does.

Fragrance Family: Citrus Floral

Notes: Geranium leaves, lemon, honeysuckle, lavender, lemon, amber.

I suspect one of those lemons–maybe both of them–are causing this sharp over-green explosion every time I try to enjoy a citrus-based fragrance. One of these days I’ll figure it out.

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

Britney Spears Midnight Fantasy

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Everyone has that one fragrance in their collection that looks out of place. For me, it’s Britney Spears Midnight Fantasy. Having tried the original Fantasy and not really finding it all that special, Midnight Fantasy struck a nice balance between sweet, fruity, and creamy without being over-the-top about anything. “It’s a nice enough perfume.” Is probably the first thing I utter when someone finds the studded purple bottle. Midnight Fantasy

In Bottle: Sweet, candy-like berry, and green notes with a tart citrus that prevents the whole thing from falling apart.

Applied: Like a big bowl of ripe blueberries, layered with vanilla frosting and presented on a cool spring day in a flowering garden. Midnight Fantasy (despite the  PR) is not trying to be anything else but what it is; a simple, young, fun fragrance that isn’t meant to be taken seriously. It’s hilariously fruity, very sweet, and absolutely offers no explanation or apologies for it. I like its zing. Starts off with a clean, fresh spray of tartness followed by a sweet blueberry and blackberry middle that hangs out with a creamy vanilla note until it dries down into a sheer vanilla fragrance. There isn’t a whole lot of complexity here and Midnight Fantasy doesn’t even try to pretend it’s anything but a synthetic.In fact, I find I have to take breaks in between smelling this because two days in a row and the synthetic quality of it just gets to me. But hey, I can enjoy a good synthetic now and then, you don’t go out wearing Midnight Fantasy for the complexity.

Extra: Midnight Fantasy is a flanker to the original Fantasy. While these two smell very different, they do have thematic similarities in the treatment of the sweet notes. And, don’t worry, Britney didn’t concoct this on her own. It was created by Caroline Sabas. A real life nose who composed Midnight Fantasy for the Elizabeth Arden company.

Design: Packaged similarly to the original Fantasy, Midnight Fantasy is a deep bluish-purple with purple crystals set into the bottle’s glass. It remains as unappealing in terms of aesthetics as ever to me.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Black cherry, framboise, plum, night blooming orchid, iris, freesia, amber, musk, vanilla.

Notice a lot of musks in fragrances? Modern musks aren’t what you would normally think of when you think about musk. Modern musks are mostly synthetics that are used in fragrances to stabilize the scent. There are thousands upon thousands of different types of musks and they are in almost everything scented.

Reviewed in This Post: Midnight Fantasy, 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.

Avril Lavigne Black Star

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Black Star is Avril Lavigne’s first fragrance (well, one that’s named after her anyway) and it’s just about as unremarkable as I thought it would be. Though my initial hope for it, upon seeing the bottle was that it would be something more interesting. Black Star

In Bottle: Smelling citrus and juicy fruity notes. Blackcurrant, I’m thinking, with plum and something smooth, sweet and flowery. Maybe honeysuckle.

Applied: Plum and citrus up front with the citrus receding very quickly. Something in this smells of apple for about ten seconds. It’s a very recognizable and familiar apple note that I swear I’ve smelled before. But it was a very fleeting note. The rest of Black Star evolves into a nice, full fruity vanilla fragrance. Highly agreeable but very reminiscent of Love Etc. by The Body Shop. The difference between Black Star and Love Etc. is the underlying notes. Love Etc. was more tart. Black Star has this very sweet, smooth vanilla-like note warming up the fragrance and cutting the tartness. Black Star dries down to a nice, soft fruity scent.

Extra: One of the things you start to realize as you get more and more into fragrances is that the press releases are often full of flowery language that doesn’t mean anything. Black Star for instance is supposed to be unique and individual much like Avril Lavigne tries to be (on the outside anyway). But there’s nothing really new going on with this fragrance at all.

Design: The bottle is a bit silly looking to me, but I’m not the target audience for it. It’s contained in an interestingly shaped glass bottle with a plastic top that has spikes running the rim of the cap. You can take the spikes off and wear it was a ring. An uncomfortable ring. The sprayer I tried was fantastic. One of the nicest, most even distribution I’ve ever seen. I know the sprayers on every bottle tends to differ a little and I probably sound like a lunatic for raving over a sprayer nozzle but that’s just how I roll.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Plum, apple, lemon, hibiscus, honeysuckle, dark chocolate, vanilla.

The PR for this fragrance was pretty sparse with the notes, only disclosing three things. Hibiscus, plum, and dark chocolate. There’s obviously more at work in this than they’re letting on so I slapped some of what I think I’m smelling up there. By no means go with my list and honestly, who cares, form your own notes list. Be a rebel. Anyway, despite the advertising campaign insisting this is an edgy fragrance, it’s really not. It’s about as tame as it can get. You say edgy and I think of the nasal assault that is Secretions Magnifique, not Black Star. Black Star is just a very pretty, girly, young, fruity fragrance that bears a pretty striking resemblance to Love Etc.

Reviewed in This Post: Black Star, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Danielle Steel Danielle

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Yeah, go ahead and laugh. I saw a bottle of this sitting on a counter today next to some mangled looking boxes of Britney Spears Fantasy and J-Lo Glow. Having heard of Danielle Steel and seeing the literal wall of romance novels all with her name on them at the used bookstore, I decided to put my pledge–to smell all there is to smell–where my money is. Danielle

In Bottle: Powerful alcohol in this one, it’s hard for me to get past it. Though I do wonder if that’s a fault of this particular bottle having gone off or what. Still the opener is a citrus–mandarin, I think–bright and green and fresh. There’s rose in this too and something very sweet. Like toffee or apple. Maybe it’s candy apple. It’s hovering around the sticky, syrupy section where a fragrance goes from pleasantly sweet to cloying.

Applied: Rose and citrus up front, very nice on spray and initial application. It’s a bit reminiscent of Nina by Nina Ricci at first but then the apple and the rose wear off, leaving citrus to do the rest of the work. And the citrus mixes with that strange candy scent I mentioned earlier. The two of them end up battling back and forth creating this sharp green fragrance before Danielle goes from bearably bright to burnt sugar with a heavy dose of miscellaneous florals. And that burnt sugary floral is what I get for the next million years as Danielle has some of the most impressive longevity I’ve ever witnessed in a perfume. Really, I don’t think that spot of skin on the back of my right hand will ever smell normal again. After several scrubbings, it is still there, except the burnt sugar is just burnt now and the florals are shadows of their former selves swimming in a sharp green note that just won’t go away.

Extra: Danielle Steel is the quintessential romance novel writer. I’ve never read any of her books but I’ve held a couple and wasn’t really compelled to read any. It is impressive, though, to see an entire wall’s worth of books, all with her name on the spine. Danielle, the fragrance, falls under Elizabeth Arden Inc.’s massive umbrella. other fragrances by Elizabeth Arden attributed to celebrities include the Britney Spears line and the Hilary Duff line.

Design: Tame design. Squarish glass or crystal bottle with a plastic cap that covers the sprayer. Sprayer distributes an even and fine mist. There’s some production value put into this but the design isn’t really inspiring or new. I mean, it’s a Danielle Steel inspired perfume, I shouldn’t really expect anything postmodern.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Mandarin, jasmine, orchid, rose, amber, vetiver, musk.

Danielle Steel herself admitted that she had nothing to do with the creation of the fragrance. At least the woman is honest about it. I still don’t like this perfume though. It’s like a mixture of everything I don’t like. Too strong florals. Too sharp citrus. Too cloying base note that won’t go away. The syrupy sweetness in this reminds me of Miss Dior Cherie but with apple and rose instead of strawberry.

Reviewed in This Post: Danielle, 2007, Eau de Parfum.