Armani Code for Women

Armani Code for Women is the feminine version of Armani’s very popular men’s fragrance, Armani Code. Armani fragrances usually don’t do much for me in terms of scent but Code for Women is a crowd pleaser in the same vein and competence as Gucci Flora. It’s not a show-stopper with the perfumista crowd but it’s a nice enough fragrance. Code for Women

In Bottle: Pleasant light florals swirling around an equally light, clean citrus topper. Nothing spectacular to see here, folks.

Applied: Bright and clean citrus followed by light and airy florals. Easy to wear and sticks rather close to the skin. This fragrance can be sprayed a few times as it goes on really lightly and wears equally as light. After the top notes go away, it smells remarkably like really good shampoo. Clean, fresh, scrubbed sweet and powdery florals make up the mid-stage with no real depth or fanfare. If Armani Code for Women was a shampoo, it’d be a pretty popular–albeit generic smelling–brand. And I think that works for Code for Women. It’s not going to wow anyone into saying, “I’ve never smelled anything like it!” It’ll probably encourage compliments and pats on the back about how nice you smell though and that’s enough for a lot of perfume shoppers. I like Code for Women for its simplicity and cleanness. I like how quiet and well-behaved it is and particularly enjoy the shampoo smell of it too. The dry down is barely detectable and rather predictable as a vanilla woodsy scent.

Extra: Armani Code for Women caught my eye sooner than it caught my nose. It was the first readily available perfume bottle I’d seen in a while that could come with a balloon pump atomizer. I thought it was the bees knees but to get the balloon atomizer, you would need to get the Elixir concentration. Given how light and skin close this scent is, that might not be a bad idea.

Design: I love the bottle. it’s a beautiful glass bottle with gradients and girly floral designs. It’s a nice marriage between simple and decorative. The whole thing just goes so well together as a package. The sprayer is very good on all of the Code for Women bottles I’ve tried.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Blood orange, ginger, pear, jasmine, orange bossom, seringa flower, lavender honey, precious woods complex, vanilla.

I’ve had my eye on Code for Women for a while. A big bottle of it, actually, but I never quite got that extra nudge to actually purchase the thing. It’s nice, it’s easy to wear, but if I already have Gucci Flora, I don’t see the point in owning this. They smell different. They just serve the same purpose which is to be a young, airy, easy to wear scent.

Reviewed in This Post: Code for Women, 2010, Eau de Parfum.


Armani Acqua di Gio pour Homme

Acqua di Gio pour Homme, like Dolce & Gabanna’s Light Blue, was one of those extremely popular fragrances that everybody seemed to wear a few years back. And to my understanding, it is still popular though not to the extent that it once was. And people can easily understand why this one and Light Blue are popular. They’re highly easy to wear and are appropriate for most places the average person would tend to go. Acqua di Gio

In Bottle: While one would have to wonder what exactly a marine note is and how you’re supposed to be able to smell water. Aqua notes, to me, have this sharp blue quality to them. And Acqua di Gio pour Homme does, indeed, have that sharp blue quality from out of the bottle. It also contains something sweet and pleasantly nice to tame that sharpness a bit as pure aqua, to my nose, is very sharp.

Applied: Blue aqua notes, sharp and fresh with a sweetness to add a less abrasive dimension to smelling pure water. Smelling aqua is akin to going swimming and accidentally getting some pool water in your nose. That stinging, horrible pain is akin to a too strong, too pure aqua note to me. But Acqua di Gio pour Homme (am I using the word “aqua” enough?_ does a nice job mixing in other notes so it’s not pool water up your nose strong. There is a clear cedarness to this as well as sweetness coming from a rose and persimmon angle. The scent also does a fantastic job incorporating rosemary into the opening and in the mid-stage. The dry down is a nicely sweet, clear patchouli and clean musk.

Extra: Acqua di Gio is sometimes referred to as the trailblazer fragrance that ushered in a fad of fruity fresh fragrances that where Acqua di Gio pour Homme is a part of.

Design: In a rather plain shaped bottle with a slight curve in the body. The bottle is a pleasant and easy enough thing to hold though grasping the thing in my girly hands is a bit difficult due to its width. It has a metallic cap that slides very nicely into place. Something about the font face or the design of Acqua di Gio pour Homme really slots it very nicely into the Giorgio Armani line of fragrances as the designs do tend to look similar.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: Jasmine, rosemary, citrus, persimmon, marine notes, cedar, patchouli, white musk, rock rose.

I like Acqua di Gio. I like how normal and completely unexciting it smells. These typical rather normal and inoffensive fragrances are popular for a reason. It’s because they always tend to smell pleasant and easygoing. It also has the benefit of being fairly unisex.

Reviewed in This Post: Acqua di Gio pour Homme, 2009, Eau de Toilette.