Yves Saint Laurent L’Homme

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A friend of mine raves about L’Homme and how much he loves it and gets compliments whenever he wears it. I have to admit that hype kind of puts a damper on things for me. Hype it just enough and I’ll be interested. Hype it a bit too much and I find myself avoiding it.

L'Homme

L’Homme

In Bottle: Bam. Familiar. Familiar in a rather good way. Takes it back to my early childhood where I remember lights, noises and of course the smell.

Applied: Citrus with a tempering ginger note a hint of sweet florals and woods. All of the notes are very well blended. I definitely get the citrus first, but then it molds together into a nice even fragrance that hits a memory nerve. The scent has a nice mild spiciness to it with an underlayer of woods with an inoffensive cedar note that provides a base for the sweet floral notes that are really the stars here. L’Homme is rather soft and yielding. It’s like the whole fragrance is composed of very delicate amounts of ingredients. And it really shows because L’Homme is a quick fader and is gone within a manner of a few hours. The smell takes me back to my childhood, reminds me of one of the houses I lived in as a toddler. It’s hot days, street noise, and the ever-present banging of Vietnam’s less than safe metalworking shops. I think L’Homme is taking me back because it smells like a laundry soap my mother used on our clothes back then and we always ended up smelling like it. In either case, my association with L’Homme makes me instantly like it. On a more objective note, it is a good fragrance. If it didn’t jive any memories in me, I would say there’s nothing too particularly special about it except for the fact that it’s a fairly well blended scent that’s accessible and easy to pull off.

Extra: L’Homme was released in 2006 and has a mixed reception. Some love it, some hate it. Most think it’s a pretty easy going fragrance that will work for the office.

Design: L’Homme’s bottle is really recognizable for me. Mainly because I see it everywhere I go. It’s one of those standard fragrances that isn’t very difficult to find and up until now, I never had the urge to actually walk up to it and spray some on because it was so unassuming a bottle. It’s simple, compact and would blend right in with the rest of your bottles.

Fragrance Family: Floral Woodsy

Notes: Ginger, bergamot, lemon, basil, ozone, pepper, spices, violet leaf, tonka bean, vetiver, cedar.

L’Homme does run a bit more sweet than most fragrances marketed to men. But it’s one of those scents that skirts the unisex to masculine line. So if you wanted a full on “man fragrance” then maybe this isn’t for you. L’Homme also doesn’t have the greatest longevity. What it does do well is provide a nice, inoffensive, easy to wear clean and floral scent. So I do so happen to like L’Homme–mostly because it reminded me of something good. Or at least, something familiar. Odd thing to do for a fragrance that was released long after I had those memories. But then, that’s what makes scents and memories fascinating.

Reviewed in This Post: L’Homme, 2011, Eau de Toilette.

Demeter Thunderstorm

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Whenever I hear about Demeter, I end up hearing about a few select pieces from their collection. A few that always tend to come up include Playdoh, Dirt, and Thunderstorm.

Thunderstorm

Thunderstorm

In Bottle: Ozone and dirt. I don’t think I can expect to get anything else out of it than that.

Applied: To be honest, I always feel a little silly reviewing Demeter fragrances. Because aside from noting whether or not they smell like the thing they were named after, I can’t elevate it beyond that. Thunderstorm is a very convincing composition of ozone with a layer of wet earth. You’ll get blasted with the ozone first, making it feel like someone turned the dial up on the humidity. Then you get the wet dirt. This stuff could be convincing even on a bright, sunny day like today. Thunderstorm reminds me of how much I used to love stormy weather when I was younger. When life was a little more vibrant and time wasn’t such a precious commodity. So in terms of stirring up a scent memory then congratulations to you, Thunderstorm, you did it.

Extra: Poor projection and longevity but Demeter’s fragrances weren’t composed to last on the skin or evolve. They were meant to be fun trysts that you could enjoy in under an hour. I can’t justify owning a big bottle of any of these fragrances, but imagine the amount of business they could drum up if they sold this stuff in smaller containers and marketed it as a collectable. Heck, they’d have me hooked.

Design: Bottle in the same way as other Demeter fragrances. You can either get a small rectangular bottle of this stuff or a large cylindrical bottle. Both designs are pretty utilitarian but they, they work.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: Ozone, dirt.

There, knocking off another Demeter fragrance from the wall of scent. Though I really did like Thunderstorm because as a scent memory, it actually worked. I wonder what Playdoh will remind me of?

Reviewed in This Post: Thunderstorm, 2010, Cologne Spray.

Calgon Moon Petal Musk 1999

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I remember a long time ago when I got my first set of body mists. They came in four. They were body mists, and they were Calgon. They started my long sordid decline into the perfume obsession I find myself in today. Now, Calgon’s never really gotten any better with these fragrances but I can’t help but feel that little sting of nostalgia whenever I smell one of these.

Moon Petal Musk

In Bottle: Sharp floral twang with a bit of fresh greenness up top. The greenness is very fleeting because it’s easily overpowered by the floral bite.

Applied: Strong flowers floating in ozone notes. Moon Petal Musk might as well be standing ontop of a mountain and shouting, “OZONE!” for the whole world to hear because that ozone note is what lends to the sharpness and powerful fresh smell in this. And fresh, in this case, is defined as overly clean and very sharp. The ozone does fade, however, leaving you with a rather pleasant bouquet of white florals. The most prominent notes being lillies and roses. Mix lily and rose together in equal parts and you will get this vague feel of white, powdery flowers. As Moon Petal Musk dries down, the florals devolve into a very vague floral fragrance where you can’t really tell what flower it is you’re smelling, but you’re sure it’s at least a flower. The florals are mingled with a sharp white musk to usher out the fragrance completely.

Extra: It should be noted that Calgon re-imagined and reformulated Moon Petal Musk since my bottle’s time. The new Moon Petal Musk smells nothing like this and one glance at its new notes list should tell you that. So, if we were going to be ridiculous, I’d venture to say my bottle of watery perfume is a vintage–but we’re not feeling ridiculous right now. I will say that compared to the new Moon Petal Musk, the original is far more competent.

Design: All body sprays tend to be bottled in the same way. Tall cylindrical plastic container with plastic sprayer nozzle. It’s not fancy, it’s not exciting and it’s not meant to be any of those things. This is simply functional, with a little bit of plain and ugly thrown in.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Ozone, orchid, rose, freesia, muguet, white musk.

I took a stab at the notes list with what rarity of information I could find online regarding the original Moon Petal Musk’s notes. I refused to believe the one place I found a notes list that “airy green expression” was a serious thing I was supposed to smell. It’s like when you’re playing Pictionary and some smarty pants decides to make you illustrate the concept of humility. My thanks to LittleGnome on Makeupalley for the notes list I referenced. I believe her list might be the official word on this fragrance, so take mine with a grain of salt.

Reviewed in This Post: Moon Petal Musk, 1999, Body Mist.

BPAL: Sea of Glass

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Having been knocked out of the game by a cold for a while, I was sad not to be able to do very many reviews of Black Phoenix’s fragrances. I always go back to BPAL for a simple smell adventure. The fragrances might not be complex in make and mode, but they are lovely things to test and train a nose. Useless said nose is congested. So I was happy to get over this blasted virus and get back to smelling. Nothing quite like the sinus clearing Sea of Glass to harken me back to health. Sea of Glass

In Bottle: Sea of Glass is just what its name implies. It is an aquatic, sharp and strong and slightly stinging as it rockets up the nose like taking in a breath just as your head goes underwater. It settles in the nostrils and declares itself aquatic queen of the land but the queen’s got some tricks up her sleeve too.

Applied: Blast of aquatics that will remain a steady theme throughout the fragrance’s lifespan. As Sea of Glass ages on the skin some more notes come up out of the foam and I get a faint whiff of light white florals dancing on the water with a gentle blend of sweet mandarin citrus and a kick of green. Sea of Glass reminds me of the color emerald and what that should smell like. Crisp, clear, and sharply clean. It has an aquatic edge to it with a subtle floral interpretation in the mid-stage. The dry down sees the fading of the aquatics and a bit more white floral representation with a sweetness that helps to smooth out the fragrance a little bit.

Extra: I’ve had people liken Sea of Glass to a number of other aquatics based fragrances before. It’s been compared to Acqua di Gio on more than one occasion of which I have to disagree. Acqua di Gio has more of a sweetness to it as well as a more predominant woodsy quality. Sea of Glass is a clearer aquatic with a floral heart.

Design: Bottled in the same way as other Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab general catalog scents. It is presented in an amber colored glass bottle with a screw on cap that holds approximately 5ml of perfume oil.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: Aqua, mandarin, white florals, green notes.

No notes listed with this one so I took my best guess at it. Sea of Glass is a nicely interesting aquatic based scent such as Bleu de Chanel. If you love that kind of stuff, give this one a try.

Reviewed in This Post: Sea of Glass, 2009, 5ml Bottle.