Jean Paul Gaultier Ma Dame

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Ma Dame has one of the most addictive and fun commercials I’ve seen as of date. It features international It Girl, Agyness Deyn, with a snappy song and a great dynamic series of cuts showing the rejection of order and embrace of rebel and style. But like all fragrances, I advocate smelling the actual juice. The fragrance itself doesn’t really follow its marketing image. Ma Dame

In Bottle: Fruity, sweet and candy-like. This is floral too and has a strangely clean cotton candy scent to it. Now that’s just a bit odd as when I think cotton candy, the last thing I think is clean but hey, Ma Dame.

Applied: Flowers, sugar and citrus, big chunks of sugar and a ripe orange thrown in for good measure. At the heart of this fragrance is a lovely floral mixed in with the sweetness, like candied flowers covered in citrus clean. There something lemony to this because I can smell a very strong, sharp citrus trying to overcome the other notes. Ma Dame is a strong scent with lots of sillage. It’s projection will reach an impressive distance so use it sparingly if you’re going to be in an enclosed space with others. She’s a nice fragrance though with a bright and spicy little kick to her. The dry down is a sweet woodsy affair.

Extra: Ma Dame is by Jean Paul Gaultier, a French fashion designer well known for his haute couture and conceptual fashion items. You may recognize some of his work adorning the likes of Marilyn Manson.

Design: Ma Dame is bottled in glass with a female figure recessed into it. The figure is a throwback to Gaultier’s usual bottle style in the shape of a woman. The glass has a nice orange pink sheen to it. This one is pleasant to look at but I’ve always found the body shape bottles to be a bit too much.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Orange zest, rose, musk, cedar wood.

I wouldn’t refer to Ma Dame as an order rejecting fragrance. It’s a nice tweak from the usual fruity floral fare but it has a long way to go before it rejects anything. The sweet floral is pleasant though it can be a bit much–especially if someone mistakes this fragrance for a wilting lily and bathes themselves in it, thus causing a 100 mile radius cloud of pink scent to perpetually swirl about them like a sugary tornado.

Reviewed in This Post: Ma Dame, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Marc Jacobs Daisy (in the Air)

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Daisy is one of the most popular modern fragrances that is widely available through many different stores. You can find this thing sitting in department stores, drugstores, boutiques, you name it. And it’s not hard to see why. Daisy is a light, playful, fresh and clean scent that was made to appeal. Like the Acqua di Gio of the 2000s. Daisy

In Bottle: Green and grassy with a light violet leaf giving it that green grassiness. The fruits in this are detectable but they’re watery–not sweet and honestly, they don’t need to be.

Applied: Fruit is the first thing I smell, diluted and tamed fruit. Most of you time you would think of fruit notes as being sweet and loud but the ones at play in Daisy are much more subdued. The mid-stage is characterized with a blend of fresh and clean smelling flowers and the persistent edge of green grass. I smell the gardenia most of all in the mid-stage which is a really addition. The dry down is a pretty and sheer musky vanilla. Daisy is the representation of a beautiful green meadow, a light breeze, and a happy frolic. It’s care-free, girly, clean and fresh. It’s also very, very light as I find myself having to use more Daisy than I would any other fragrance to catch my scent in the morning. The fact still remains though that this is a great modern fragrance that truly earns its badge as one of the most popular available fragrances.

Extra: Daisies do not actually have a scent. Marc Jacobs’ Daisy invokes the concept of what a daisy would smell like instead. It should be noted that you may find Daisy and Daisy in the Air available in stores. Daisy in the Air is the exact same fragrance in a limited edition bottle with blue flowers. Unless you are in the market for a new bottle of Daisy, do not drop the cash on Daisy in the Air because it is not a flanker, just a redesign for the bottle.

Design: Cute little curved glass bottle with an equally adorable topper covered in white (or blue in the case of Daisy in the Air) flowers. I had originally thought the design for this fragrance was a little hokey but those flowers get to you so that even the most minimalist of us are swayed by those infectious little flowers. I gotta admit now, I like the bottle design. It’s cute and playful and effective. The rubber flowers are what cinched the deal.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Strawberry, violet leaves, ruby red grapefruit, gardenia, violet petals, jasmine petals, musk, vanilla, white woods.

Another thing to note of Daisy in the Air, aside from the blue flowers, it also comes with a garland that you can spritz with scent and hang in the room so that it disperses fragrance throughout the place. I think it’s a cute gimmick but again, this isn’t a flanker, it is just the exact same smell as the regular Daisy packaged differently.

Reviewed in This Post: Daisy & Daisy in the Air, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Guerlain Samsara

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Samsara is a lovely Guerlain from 1989. I often think it’s one of the last of the old Guerlain style before the fragrance house underwent their “modernification” and subsequent sale to LVMH. There’s a familiar Guerlainess to Samsara that’s been very toned down for the mass marketed recent fragrances. Samsara

In Bottle: Clear, dense, and woodsy. I can smell a hint of Guerlainess (if it wasn’t before, it is now a word) in this that reminds me of Mitsouko. Strange how so many things Guerlain makes either reminds me of Mitsouko or L’Heure Bleue. They were doing something right, I guess.

Applied: Initial scent reminds me of–and don’t laugh–pickled kumquat. Yes, salty, tart, citrusy pickled kumquat. Strange connection but there you have it. It was made and cannot be taken back now. Anyway, after my awkward experience with the opener, which honestly lasts a couple of seconds, Samsara turns into a smooth, spicy, sandalwood fragrance with a clove underneath. Samsara continues on its woodsy clovey journey picking up faint notes of jasmine here and there and discarding them just as quickly. The iris does make a brief and masked appearance lending the fragrance a sharpness too. The final dry down is a powdery, dry vanilla woodsy fragrance with the clove lingering until everything else is gone.

Extra: The one really great thing about Samsara is its projection. Put some of this on and you will project like crazy. Not quite as far as Shalimar but a pretty respectable distance for sure.

Design: I know some people hate the way this bottle looks. I think it’s okay. Not my favorite, but certainly not my least favorite. It’s got a nice deep redness to it that really reflects well on what kind of fragrance it holds. I like the shape too, easy to hold and easy to spray. flimsy plastic cap though. I really wish Guerlain wouldn’t use those so often these days.

Fragrance Family: Woodsy Oriental

Notes: Jasmine, ylang-ylang, jasmine, sandalwood, narcissus, tonka, iris, vanilla.

Apparently, once upon a time, Samsara used to include real Mysore Sandalwood. Sandalwood being a lovely smelling tree that’s been harvested so much that it’s now endangered. The sandalwood you encounter in perfumes? Most likely a synthetic from one of two very popular sandalwood synthetics.

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

Clinique Happy

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You have to throw props at a fragrance that doesn’t even try to pretend that it has any ounce of natural to it. Clinique Happy is the big red balloon of the fragrance world. It smells fake, it smells perky, and it doesn’t even bother to hide it. Happy

In Bottle: I don’t know where the notes listing got the idea that this was supposed to be fruity and floral. The only thing this smells like is powdered makeup. Ever hovered near the Clinique counter at the department store? Ever bought any of their cosmetics? That scent you get is what Clinique Happy smells like in the bottle.

Applied: Juicy green citrus followed by a powdery green floral and dry citrus rind mid-stage that has this synthetic heart to it. That synthetic heart smells like a child’s red balloon. It smells like Clinique cosmetics. I swear this scent is what they imbue in their products because, to me as someone who knows and hangs out with several people who wear Clinique cosmetics, this fragrance is  extremely familiar. It’s not unpleasant by any means, it’s just familiar and frustrating because I cannot dissect it and cannot separate it from the products I know it smells like. I can only go so far as to suggest it smells like citrus at first, then green florals, ivy, and dry citrus notes and when it dries down it has a dusky green powder tail that drifts off leaving a hint of freshness. Fresh, clean and synthetic.

Extra: Clinique is well known for their line of hypo-allergenic cosmetics. So I’m guessing that all the people who say this fragrance makes them happy are either smelling the red balloon and remembering the circus or just really, really like Clinique products. Maybe I’m just not understanding the floral this is supposed to be. I didn’t find myself any happier having smelled this or put it on. I didn’t find myself any sadder either so there’s that.

Design: Very simple bottle design. Clinique does simple packaging very well with their signature light green color on their cosmetics. I was surprised Happy didn’t feature the light green in some way but I’m not complaining about what it currently is. Easy to hold, not unpleasant to look at. Just a bit too plain though.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: Bergamot, boysenberry, honeysuckle, bushflower, grapefruit, moss, freesia, lemon, Hawaiian wedding flower.

Nothing really sweet in this either. It was just a light, powdery, fresh scent. Not at all offensive, quite amusing in that it smelled like Clinique cosmetics too. This is nice if you need an office fragrance or a scent for everyday wear.

Reviewed in This Post: Happy, 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.

Pronouncing Fragrance House Names

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If you’re like me and you lack any sort of French language skills, you’ll probably find yourself at one point struggling to figure out how to pronounce some of the fragrance house names. If you’re also like me, you’ll go through the majority of your young life saying it wrong and liberally confusing everyone you try to communicate with as you tell them the fragrance you’re wearing is by “Theory Muggler”.

Here’s a guide on how to pronounce some of the fragrance house names. Please understand that I am not a French speaker and how I pronounce these names is as close an interpretation as I can get to the actual pronunciations. If you have a better suggestion or have a correction, please let me know.

Annick Goutal: “An-neek Goo-Tahl”, (Aneek Gootahl).

Chanel: “Shan-elle”, (Shannel).

Givenchy: “Jee-Vohn-Shee”, (Jeevohnshee).

Guerlain: “Gyehr-Lan”, (Gyerlan).

Hermès: “Air-Mez”, (Air Mez).

Houbigant: “Oo-Bee-Gahn” (Oobeegan).

Jean Paul Gaultier: “Zohn Pall Go-Tee-Ahy”, (Zohn Pall Goteeay). “Zohn” (like zone with emphasis on the “oh”), Pall, Goteeay (like goate then “eh”).

Thierry Mugler: “Tea-arry Mew-Glehyr”, (Teearry Mewglehyr).

Yves Saint Laurent: “Eve San Lor-rohn”, (Eve San Lorron).

Got any corrections? Suggestions? Leave a comment.

For more (and in audio) pronunciations check out Frag Name of the Day.

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.

Prada Infusion d’Homme

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Infusion d’Homme is a part of Prada’s infusions series that includes one of my favorites, Infusion d’Iris. This series of sheer and light fragrances aren’t known much for their longevity or silage but are fantastic as clean and light fragrances. Infusion d'Homme

In Bottle: Infusion d’Homme smells fresh and clean, mildly aromatic but mostly  just fresh and clean–like a bar of soap. Generic, lovely smelling, soap.

Applied: Neroli and dryness for a moment then Infusion d’Homme sends the soap straight out at you. There’s a powderiness to this that lingers a bit with the soap, furthering that clean, fresh scent. Infusion d’Homme does one thing well and that is make you think you’re wearing a bar of soap around your neck. It’s a nice bar of soap though. During the middle development, this gets a little sharper and very, very slightly sweeter before it goes back to just soap. There’s a pyramid of notes presented for Infusion d’Homme that I think is just there for show since the only piece of that pyramid I saw was powder and neroli. The soap stays with you, never truly leaving–not even on the dry down when Infusion d’Homme gets a bit more powdery.

Extra: Although generally thought to be a masculine fragrance, Infusion d’Homme is more of a unisex. I don’t really see how a fragrance that smells like soap and cleanliness could have a gender anyway.

Design: Call me a sucker for uniform, but I love how these infusions are bottled the same way with varying colors and slightly different themes. Infusion d’Homme is bottled exactly the same way as Infusion d’Iris except it is a beige color instead of a light green. Simple, elegant, looks great on a shelf–if I kept my fragrances on a shelf, anyway.

Fragrance Family: Clean and Fresh

Notes: Mandarin, neroli, clean notes, iris, galbanum, cedar, vetiver, benzoin, frankincense, powdery notes.

Infusion d’Homme reminds me a bit of my childhood, French colonial style apartment buildings with clotheslines threading the distance between them. A day on the stone balcony playing with a bar of soap, that this fragrance invokes the smell of, while our downstairs neighbor simultaneously cooked dinner and yelled at her kids.

Reviewed in This Post: Infusion d’Homme, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

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.

A Guide for BPAL Newbies

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As Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (BPAL) fragrances get more and more popular, some people might be interested in finding out just what all this hubbub is about. They’ll inevitably discover The Lab’s website address and look for themselves. Upon which they are bombarded by the general catalog fragrances of which there are hundreds of and decide that it is, really, quite too much to sort through.

And the site is intimidating with hundreds in the general catalogue and literally thousands if you include former general catalogue fragrances and limited editions that are no longer available. How is someone new to BPAL supposed to get around and figure out what they want to try? Or what’s supposed to smell good?

While this cursory guide is not an in-depth document meant to school you in every fragrance available from BPAL, it will list a few common, popular, general catalog fragrances that you may want to try out when you’re looking to order your first pack of samples.

How do samples work at BPAL?

BPAL’s sample vials are typically around 1ml and are referred to as imp’s ears. You can buy one imp ear for $4.00 or get a pack of six for $22.00. The prices have been adjusted recently as of this posting which is why on your travels around the internet, you may get conflicting price quotes. The best rule of thumb is to trust what The Lab says on its website. If you discover the secondhand market for BPAL sample vials, you can typically get these for much cheaper, though you may not be able to pick and choose which scents you want to get as a sample seller will usually not carry all the fragrances you are looking for. Imps

What should I include in my sample pack order?

Usually people will think that what you want to include in your sample pack are fragrances they’d like. This is a good safe practice. But I also recommend that people go out of their way to try fragrances they wouldn’t normally think they’d like because all scents can smell different on different people and all scents are composed differently too, this goes for mainstream, niche and BPAL alike. With a catalog of readily available perfumes ranging into the hundreds, why restrict yourself?

Now, let’s get into the meat of this post. You have on the website a few hundred general catalogue scents that can be ordered as samples (pay attention to that page on The Lab’s site about imps and what fragrance lines cannot be ordered as samples too). You have a general idea of what scents you like but don’t want to fiddle around wondering what would work on you since browsing the site could take hours and hours. The following is a handy little list of popular general catalog BPALs that I recommend, ordered to fit a few fragrance types to help you pick and choose:


Citrus: Cheshire Cat (Mad Tea Party), Whitechapel (Wanderlust), Night Gaunt (Picnic in Arkham).
Clean: Dirty (Sin & Salvation), Lilium Inter Spinas (Ars Amatoria), The Lady of Shalott (Ars Amatoria).
 Fresh: Embalming Fluid (Ars Moriendi), Kumiho (Diabolus), Phantom Queen (Diabolus).
Floral: Glasgow (Wanderlust), The Unicorn (Mad Tea Party), Amsterdam (Wanderlust).
Fruity: Aglaea (Excolo), Baobhan Sith (Diabolus), Yemaya (Excolo).
Gourmand: Dorian (Sin & Salvation),  Eat Me (Mad Tea Party), Gluttony (Sin & Salvation).
Herbal: Villain (Diabolus), Lear (Illyria).
Musky: Bien Loin d’Ici (Ars Amatoria), Snake Oil (Ars Amatoria), Penitence (Sin & Salvation).
Smoky: Anne Bonny (Bewitching Brews), Djinn (Diabolus).
Spicy: Queen of Sheba (Ars Amatoria), Scherezade (Bewitching Brews), Plunder (Bewitching Brews).
Sweet: Aunt Caroline’s Joy Mojo (Bewitching Brews), The Dodo (Mad Tea Party).
Woodsy: Sri Lanka (Wanderlust), The Coiled Serpent (Bewitching Brews), Arkham (Picnic in Arkham).

It should be noted that these are just recommendations based upon my tastes. What you like or dislike may be different so feel free to look at these as suggestions only. If you have any suggestions to add to this list, please feel free to comment.

Also keep in mind that BPAL may have to discontinue some of the fragrances listed in this post at a later date due to component issues so some of these recommendations may not be available when you go to order your samples. Always double check the site to ensure the fragrance you want is still available before you send in an order. If a fragrance you wanted a sample of is not available or was discontinued, BPAL will substitute it with an available fragrance.