Ajne Fleur Blanche

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Gardenia is hard to get right and if you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know I’ve been on the search for a really competent gardenia scent. My search is over!

In Bottle: Lush, white, creamy and sweet gardenia! This is actually gardenia and not tuberose trying on a mask. I am elated that I’ve finally found this.

Applied: A just mildly sweet, green floral gardenia scent. Has a slightly wilted quality to it, something I found just a bit strange but Fleur Blanche is quick to evolve into a heady, full-bodied giant white gardenia flower with a milky, woody backdrop. It’s smooth woods and soft creaminess, with just a bit of honeyed sweetness. This fragrance is not too sweet or silly or stilted or trying to pass off tuberose as gardenia. I can’t imagine a gardenia fragrance I’ve tried yet to surpass Fleur Blanche. It is simply a beautifully done soliflore and cannot recommend it enough if you want a glorious gardenia scent.

Extra: Ajne is an independent fragrance house headed by perfumer, Jane Hendler. They focus on 100% natural fragrances and avoid the usage of synthetics in their scents.

Design: Ajne‘s bottle design is beautiful. It reminds me of ornate temple designs in India and on expensive silk cloths. The filigree bottles are fantastic, they look luxurious, are easy to hold and use, and that’s not to mention the juice inside. I usually aim for the philosophy that simpler is better. But ornate, when done well, is absolutely precious.

Fragrance Family: Soliflore

Notes: Fruits, florals, woods.

Sorry about the notes but there wasn’t a whole lot to work with. Regardless, this fragrance is beautiful and well worth the effort to get. It is expensive, but keep in mind that these are 100% naturals we’re working with here which are expensive in and of themselves. Fleur Blanche has fantastic longevity, a great level of projection, and a beautifully complex character.

Reviewed in This Post: Fleur Blanche, 2009, Oil.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Stinky

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Stinky is the scent whose name invokes the spirit of dogs everywhere. At one point in almost every dog’s life he or she has been stinky but Stinky by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab smells like everything but dogs. Stinky

In Bottle: Sweet and stinky honey layered over soap and powder. Smells a lot better than I make it sound. For one thing, the honey is a well blended matter as if it’s a honeyed bar of soap resting next to a pot of fluffy white powder.

Applied: The honey is the first thing that I smell, it gets a bit sharp on the initial application before it mellows out a little as the scent ages on me. But for the first hour or so, it smells like warm, sticky honey with a clean background. As Stinky ages, the clean background of soap and powder comes up a bit more and the honey takes a few steps back. It will remain present as the fragrance continues to age and starts to fade with the soapy smell going away the quickest, leaving a powdered, warm and sticky honey type of scent lingering until it all dissolves into nothing. Think honey-scented powder and you’ve got Stinky.

Extra: Stinky was released in 2009 in and around the summer months as a celebration of mud-covered and mischievous dogs. In particular, the dog featured on the label.

Design: Stinky is bottled in much the same way as other Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab fragrances. Held in an amber apothecary bottle, Stinky sports a cute Limited Edition label with a photograph of the dog which inspired this scent.

Fragrance Family: Clean Gourmand

Notes: milk, white honey, baby powder.

Leave it to Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab to come up with a fragrance that pretty much defies any sort of fragrance family.

Reviewed in This Post: Stinky, 2009, 5ml Bottle.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Dana O’Shee

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Dana O’Shee is one of the lightest fragrances I own. A little doesn’t do it for this one simply because it’s so translucent. One look at the notes should tell you enough and make you wonder how a grain scent is supposed to be isolated. It’s not like milk and honey help much either. So when it comes down to it, Dana O’Shee requires slathering. Dana O'Shee

In Bottle: Honeyed almonds. Very simple, quite the gourmand. It’s extremely simple though and I can’t help but draw the similarity between Dana O’Shee and the almond extract in my cupboard. When it all comes down to it, had Dana O’Shee not been bottled and labeled as perfume, I might have mistaken it for a baking ingredient.

Applied: Upon application the almond fragrance starts to evaporate first and within a few moments that sweet almond extract fragrance is gone. What I’m left with is a flat, milky very slightly sweet scent. The middle stage of Dana O’Shee reminds of dusty kitchens and creamy milk. The simplicity is what helps it along. If I’m not expecting a complex garden of florals and incense, I can dig it. Dana O’Shee dries down to practically nothing within a few hours. Short lived, stays close to the skin, smells fabulously like almond extract at first then fades into creamy dust before disappearing.

Extra: From Irish folklore, the Dana O’Shee are small, beautiful, eternal little creatures that kidnap people.

Design: Presented in an amber bottle and a black twist cap with 5ml of perfume oil.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Almond, milk, honey, grain.

Upon visiting the kitchen and unscrewing the ol’ bottle of almond extract in my baking cupboard, I wasn’t too far off. Dana O’Shee’s almond is a touch more complex than the stuff I add to cookies but it bears an extremely close resemblance.

Reviewed in This Post: Dana O’Shee, 2009, 5ml Bottle.

L’Instant de Guerlain

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L’Instant’s one of those weird anomalies that give me a hard time when it comes to finding and purchasing it. Eventually I broke down, having looked for months with it eluding me, and dropped full price on a bottle. It felt ridiculous at the time that a very recent, rather popular fragrance like this, could be out or not stocked everywhere I looked.

I can see what some Guerlain fans can love about L’Instant. For one, it’s not the dreaded mix of fruits and florals in a bottle. Heaven forbid. L'Instant

In Bottle: Rich, sweet honey with a resiny background. It is almost a gourmand but the floral note in this is preventing it from getting there. The magnolia lends it a bit of powder to prevent the honey and amber from turning into a honeyed cream scent which would land it in gourmand territory for me.

Applied: Honey amps up immediately with this slightly sharp sting of citrus. The magnolias are creating this very fine sweetened floral fragrance a few moments later. The floral aspect does a good job working with the sweetness. I’m no longer detecting powder and there’s less and less of it as the magnolia fades away and the amber gets stronger. Once again L’Instant is skirting the gourmand line as it warms up from the initial blast of citrus. In the end, L’Instant goes out smelling like warm, sweet, golden amber.

Extra: Resins and resinous notes can include amber, labdanum, ambergris, frankincense, myrrh, benzoin, etc.

Design: Nicely shaped rounded corner bottle with slightly purple tinged clear glass showing off the light amber juice inside. The cap on the bottle I have has a nice weight to it unlike the flighty, flimsy clear plastic deals on the other Guerlains I own. I wish they would go with this denser feeling cap more often. It looks better, feels better, and helps class up the project.

Fragrance Family: Oriental

Notes: Citrus, honey, magnolia, golden amber.

It was a bit difficult choosing which way to go on this fragrance. To me, it is really close to being a gourmand despite having only one gourmand-esq note in it. Had the amber been vanilla this wouldn’t have been so hard. In the end I stuck to the safe bet as L’Instant does have the amber necessary and does have that thick, resinous golden base to it that could label it as an oriental even though it doesn’t truly slot itself neatly there either. See, people say oriental and I think resins and dark musky scents.  There’s no dark musk in L’Instant. In the end, I hate agonizing over something that’s essentially my opinion anyway so you get oriental.

Reviewed in This Post: L’Instant, 2010, Eau de Parfum.