Ineke Sweet William

Posted on by

I was wowed into trying Sweet William from seeing its packaging. There are two things I can’t resist (okay, there’s actually  a lot of things I can resist, but these are the two I can think of right now) 1) perfume, 2) books. You slap those two things together and you might as well just take my money right now.

Sweet William

Sweet William

In Bottle: Sweet William opens with a sweet and spicy peach with a smooth application of clove.

Applied: The fragrance goes on so light and sweet and pretty that I feel like putting on a flowery dress and frolicking in some random fields. The peach is so uncandy-like (thank goodness!) that it almost verges on a spicy orange opening. Sweet William is girly with a dose of spice to make sure it’s not all silliness and has a little bit of sophistication as well. The mid-stage is a sweet carnation with a soft beautifully done sandalwood and vanilla waft. Its dry down marks no sharp notes, no stray and misused cedar or patchouli at all. It’s a lovely, soft, warm spicy woods. Just lovely!

Extra: Sweet William by Ineke is a part of a limited edition collection of scents called Floral Curiosities. The packaging is adorable, and I was delighted to find that the sampler collection comes in what appears to be a book.

Design: The bottle itself is fairly similar to other Ineke 75mls, packaged in a lovely box and looking very nice. I have to shamefully admit that I would rather get the travel spray just because it’s packaged in another adorable book box. I’m a little obsessed with this packaging, you see.

Fragrance Family: Woodsy Spicy Floral

Notes: Peach, cinnamon, clove, carnation, sandalwood, cedar, patchouli, vanilla.

At the time of this writing, I haven’t yet tried the other fragrances that come with the sampler (I highly recommend giving this a try, especially if you’re looking for something outside of the standard department store fare for someone extra special), but I’m already delighted enough with Sweet William that I wonder what the others will be like. If nothing else, the beautifully done Sweet William has my vote.

Reviewed in This Post: Sweet William, 2013, Eau de Parfum.

Dior Dolce Vita

Posted on by

Dolce Vita is a vibrant little number that I kind of wish I had more of. It’s bright, peppy and classical all at the same time.

Dolce Vita

Dolce Vita

In Bottle: Sweet, almost pastry-like with a strong peach/apricot and cardamom showing initially.

Applied: Dolce Vita goes on reminding me of a peach pastry. It’s got to be the–well–peach, and the spices that make me think of the jammy fruit filling in a danish. The pastry feel doesn’t last for too long before I get a hit of sandalwood with a pretty strong sweetness. Dolce Vita is sugar and woods with a tablespoon of cinnamon sprinkled over it. The sandalwood is quick to settle down but the sweet cinnamon fruity floral thing has bigger plans and sticks around on the fragrance for quite some time. Dolce Vita has good staying power on me, I barely noticed when it slipped from its sweet fruity floral middle and nestled between a nice tame cedar and a soft, lilting sweet vanilla base.

Extra: Dolce Vita was released in 1994 and was composed by Pierre Bourdon of Cool Water fame.

Design: I really like the bottle. It looks like it came from an earlier time than the 90s and it has a nice feel to it too. It’s a good looking piece that has 90s elements to it, but at times can feel like it came from an earlier era. Hard to describe, but overall, I like it.

Fragrance Family: Oriental

Notes: Grapefruit, bergamot, lily, peach, rose, cardamom, cinnamon, apricot, magnolia, heliotrope, rosewood, sandalwood, cedar, coconut, vanilla.

I had to take a couple of tries to figure out if I truly liked Dolce Vita or if it was just a fad I was going through. I do really like it, it’s nice and well-composed and thankfully still available to boot.

Reviewed in This Post: Dolce Vita, ~2004, Eau de Toilette.

Histoires de Parfums 1804

Posted on by

Okay, no more silly celebrity stuff for the time being. I went a little crazy for Histoires de Parfums. Gimmicky as the concept might seem sometimes, I can’t deny for a minute that it hooked me. So I went and got a few more years from the line.

1804

1804

In Bottle: I really didn’t expect the pineapple to be quite so prominent, but it’s just about the only thing there on first sniff.

Applied: Yep, pineapple. Very tropical, quite sweet with a juiciness to it that I want to attribute to the peach. The pineapple note is very strong and quite loud. I rather like it as it screams holidays and summer at me. Strange because I expected something entirely more subdued from 1804, still feminine, still fruity but not screaming fun and sun like it is right now. All confusion and expectations aside, 1804’s pineapple opening is pretty delightful. It’s sweet and girly and fun. It rolls into a mild floral bouquet with a sweet and clean finish at the end. I was looking for the spices the whole time, but they never made themselves known. Not elegant, but not at all bad. I quite like it.

Extra: 1804 was inspired by Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin, who might be more recognizable by her pen name, George Sand.

Design: Designed in the same way as most other Histoires de Parfums bottles. I would love to have a full set of these, lined up in a neat row. I would finally be able to pretend I’m some sort of chemist with impeccable taste.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Pineapple, peach, gardenia, jasmine, rose, lily-of-the-valley, cloves, nutmeg, sandalwood, patchouli, benzoin, vanilla, white musk.

Probably not an instance where I’m dying to throw money at it, but 1804 remains a very pleasant, very feminine fragrance. If I had a hankering for pineapple, I think it would be the first thing I go for.

Reviewed in This Post: 1802, 2012, Eau de Parfum.

Badgley Mischka Fleurs de Nuit

Posted on by

Fleurs de Nuit is Badgley Mischka’s second offering to the fragrance world and I’m a little embarrassed to admit that it only came into my radar because of the over-decorated bottle. I’m a sucker for packaging.

Fleurs de Nuit

Fleurs de Nuit

In Bottle: Citrus up top with a layer of fresh jasmine. Clean and easy.

Applied: I get the initial sweetness of the quince, fruits, and bergamot then it’s a nosedive into the jasmine mid-stage where a cleaned up, groomed, and pampered jasmine note makes the scene. Fleurs de Nuit–which I’m guessing is a homage to night-blooming jasmine, takes a fresh, clean approach to the note. It’s fruitiness remains in the background, giving jasmine most of the space as some flimsy orange blossoms try to temper the scent. The dry down gets a bit of an amber edge, warming the scent up to be a fading jasmine creamy amber scent. If there were woods in this, I didn’t get any.

Extra: Fleurs de Nuit was released in 2007 by the perfumer, Rodrigo Flores-Roux who lent his talents to Peace, Love and Juicy Couture, True Religion, and Clinique Happy.

Design: Slap a floral pattern on something and you probably have my attention. The bottle itself is kind of cute, has a nice weight to it and generally looks good sitting out–too bad I don’t leave my perfumes sitting out on my vanity. It’s a little more overdressed than I usually like my bottles, but it’s a good kind of overdressed.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Bergamot, quince, magnolia, peach, orange blossom, jasmine, amber, woods.

Overall, I wasn’t that impressed with Fleurs de Nuit. It does fruity, fresh jasmine very well but smells somewhat generic and safe. If I want a more exciting jasmine, I’m better off elsewhere. If I want safe, I could do worse!

Reviewed in This Post: Fleurs de Nuit, 2012, Eau de Parfum.

Calypso St Barth Bellini

Posted on by

I love a good fruity floral sometimes. A well composed one that has all the hallmarks of a fruity floral fragrance without being way too popular or way too complex.

Bellini

Bellini

In Bottle: Fresh, clean and fruity. It’s sweet, but doesn’t overdo it on the sugar.

Applied: Bellini opens with a lush tropical scent that embodies the idea of a bellini cocktail. It’s lush, it’s juicy and very fruity. It reminds me of summer in the middle of November and has this hint of faux coconut and pineapple that does that, “Summer! The beach! Tropical paradise!” Chant to me. There’s a lighter layer of florals that rolls in after the first stage and settles into this gentle, refreshing midstage that makes me feel like I just stepped out of the shower to a waiting cocktail in the midst of a tropical island. The dry down is a clean sandalwood and white musk with a hint of cool amber.

Extra: I feel a little like I missed the summertime and these days I’m playing catch-up with Bellini here. Maybe some day I’ll actually vacation on a tropical island and I’d be tempted to wear this. Bellini is quite the embodiment of a tropical vacation.

Design: The cap is a bit uninspired, but the fragrance is what it is. The packaging for the bottle itself is quite minimalist, with a bell-shaped bottle, featuring the house name and fragrance name on it. The cap is your standard tall, gold metal. The box, on the other hand, has a rather cute bow adorning it. Something about me and bows, I suppose. Overall, not bad, not very exciting but it does the trick.

Fragrance Family:  Fruity Floral

Notes: Citrus, peach, coconut, pineapple, , frangipani, freesia, jasmine, orange flower, amber, musk, sandalwood.

Bellini is neither interesting or exciting. It is very safe, and it’s one of the better composed fruity floral fragrances out there. I quite like it. And if you like it too, but can’t see yourself wearing it, it comes in a candle form.

Reviewed in This Post: Bellini, 2012, Eau de Toilette.

M. Micallef Vanille Fleur

Posted on by

M. Micallef‘s Vanille Fleur blends a fruity peach opening with a feminine rose and vanilla. I was particularly excited about this one because Vanille Orient and Vanille Marine worked out pretty well on me.

Vanille Fleur

Vanille Fleur

In Bottle: Vanille Fleur opens up with a fruity floral beginning that reminds me quite  a bit of something that I hadn’t put my finger on yet.

Applied: After spraying Vanille Fleur the fruity peach opening blends rather well with the florals. It took me a couple of minutes before I realized what this reminded me of: Gucci Flora. The opening for the two of these are extremely similar with Vanille Fleur being a little smoother around the edges. It takes away the slight sharpness that Flora had in the beginning with the citrus. The peach note does a better job at rolling the rest of the scent into its midstage than Flora’s citrus opening. The fragrance as a whole is very reminiscent of Flora but has a nice smoothness to it and a slightly more prominent rose note. Overall, the similarity is there to me, but Vanille Fleur smells more refined. The vanilla does a great job sweetening the scent and providing a nice base for Vanille Fleur. It’s a very simple fragrance, and its similarity to Gucci Flora starts disappearing near the end of its midstage where the vanilla becomes more prominent and the rose starts to give way. At the end, the vanilla takes on this faint lilting quality that’s very nice to smell close to the skin.

Extra: As with all the other vanilla-based fragrances in this collection, you can find Vanille Fleur available on Luckyscent in either 50ml EdP or 100ml EdP.

Design: Vanille Fleur is packaged much like the other vanilla fragrances in this series. The defining differences are the shapes on the bottles, where Vanille Fleur features a flower cut out of hemp.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Peach, rose, vanilla.

Due to its similarity to Gucci Flora, I’m less impressed with Vanille Fleur compared to Orient and Marine. It is still a perfectly lovely scent, and I really like Flora, but the initial similarity underwhelmed me a bit.

Reviewed in This Post: Vanille Fleur, 2012, Eau de Parfum.

Disclaimer: The fragrance sampler spray reviewed in this post was provided to me for free for the purposes of review. In no other way am I receiving pay or compensation for this review. This review was written based upon my personal experiences and opinions of the product.

Yves Rocher Ming Shu

Posted on by

Sadly I’m running low on the classics department for fragrances earlier than the 80s. When I first started doing these reviews, I was skeptical about how good the old classics could really be. And sure enough, I fell in love with the old perfumes. Ming Shu, on the other hand, isn’t even that old of a fragrance, but even it has been toned down.

Ming Shu

Ming Shu

In Bottle: Very floral, the water lilies are making quite a loud entrance.

Applied: Funny that the peach doesn’t factor into this at all because I immediately get water lily. Lots and lots of water lilies. They’re slick and floral and fresh. In fact, they’re a bit too fresh and a bit too loud. It’s like I can hardly focus on anything else because Ming Shu is cramming water lilies into my nose. The cedar note comes in a bit later, but cedar to me as always been a bit heavy-handed and it only serves to add to the loudness of the water lilies here. I’m not a fan of this, unfortunately. There’s only about two notes to my nose and neither of them are getting along with me. They end up too overwhelming to me, and too basic at the same time.

Extra: Ming Shu was released in the late 90s. This version and it’s other iterations are a little tricky to find, but not impossible.

Design: Bottle in a pagoda inspired style. I’m not sure how much I embrace this kind of design as the bottle on the one hand looks like a pagoda, and on the other it looks like a pylon or traffic cone. Perhap’s it’s both. I’m not a bit fan of the design.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Peach, water lily, cedar, musk.

Another fragrance casualty of the toning down movement. Ming Shu in the 90s was reportedly a much nicer, much more complex, much more likable a fragrance than it is now.

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

Parfums de Coeur Fireworks

Posted on by

With a weather related headache, I had to question whether it was a good idea for me to test another Sexiest Fantasies fragrance from Parfums de Coeur considering the last fragrance I reviewed from them gave me a headache.

Fireworks

Fireworks

In Bottle: Very sweet, very peachy and fruity with an equal part vanilla and not a whole lot else.

Applied: Super sweet peach and vanilla. The vanilla gets even stronger as the fragrance ages until all you smell is pretty much synthetic vanilla with a fruity background. I’m not getting much else but fruity vanilla out of this which is a bit of a disappointment. In terms of individual notes, they’re all drowned out by the very strong vanilla. The dry down ends up as a plain old synthetic vanilla fragrance.

Extra: Fireworks and a lot of the other scents I have in this line are just body sprays. Fireworks, itself, is very strongly scented so don’t feel that a body spray won’t last as long or be as strong as a full on fragrance. This particular scent can hold its own in terms of longevity and power.

Design: Packaged in a simple black bottle. No frills or thrills here. It’s functional and tries to dress itself up a little, but it’s still essentially a body spray bottle.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Strawberry, peach, vanilla.

Not much to say about this one, it’s fruity and sweet and that’s about the start and end of it. It’s not my kind of thing as it’s too sweet and one-dimensional, but it will smell great to the right person.

Reviewed in This Post: Fireworks,  2009, Body Spray.

Gucci Envy Me

Posted on by

What struck me the most about Gucci Envy Me was the fact that the ad actually said it was supposed to appeal to “the egocentric and bold young woman”. I wasn’t aware being called egocentric was a good thing, but it’s evidenced in how well Envy Me did as a fragrance that people either don’t care, didn’t know, or actually found it  appealing to be called egocentric. Color me confused.

Envy Me

Envy Me

In Bottle: Sweet and clean fruity florals. Just about as standard a fruity floral as you can get. Smells good though.

Applied: Pink pepper adds a bit of clean spice the fruity opening of this where I get a mixture of peach and mango that reminds me of an Herbal Essences shampoo. The fragrance evolves into this litchi note that dominates the beginning stages of the mid notes arena. Litchi tends to enjoy taking control of the show and I find the fruit note to be a bit unbearably sweet and pink and girly at times. Envy Me does a good job taming its litchi for the most part but it is still quite strong in the fragrance for a little while. As the scent continues to age, there’s a bit of perfumey woods going on as it blends in with the clean fruity opening while imparting this refreshing sense to it that I can only assume is the white tea at work. As Envy Me keeps going into its base, there’s a clear amping up of the soapy clean fragrance was present throughout the whole thing as the white musk takes hold of the pretty tame teak and sandalwood mix. At the base the fruits a little weak but I didn’t expect them to do anything else but fade as the fragrance ages on the skin. Overall, Envy Me was a pleasant ride. Starts off like a Herbal Essences shampoo and ends with a scented sandalwood fan fragrance.

Extra: Not sure where they got the idea that this fragrance is bold and egocentric. It just smells like shampoo and cleanliness to me. It’s one of the better done fresh out of the shower smells in that it doesn’t abuse the florals but it’s still pretty generic.

Design: Gucci Envy Me is bottled in a tall rectangular flacon with the signature Gucci pattern on the glass running all the way up the four sides of the flacon in pink. It’s a little ridiculous for my aesthetic but I can definitely see the type of image this fragrance is trying to project in its design choices. The bottle is a bit awkward to hold because it–like Givenchy’s Very Irresistible–is a tall and slender bottle that’s made of heavier material.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Fruity

Notes: Peony, pink pepper, cassia, peach, mango, litchi, pomegranate, pineapple, sandalwood, white tea, teak, white musk.

In a pinch, I’d reach for Envy Me to spritz on when I want to smell refreshed and clean. It’s a great out of the shower fragrance for if you want to hold onto that Herbal Essences smell for just a little longer. Otherwise, there’s nothing remotely bold about it. It sure is fun though.

Reviewed in This Post: Envy Me, 2006, Eau de Toilette.

Karl Lagerfield Sun Moon Stars

Posted on by

I saw the bottle, said, ‘No way!’ and decided it had to be tried. I don’t actually have a bottle or held a bottle of this but I do have a somewhat aged sampler vial.

Sun Moon Stars

Sun Moon Stars

In Bottle: Strong fruitiness up top. That’s pretty much all I get.

Applied: Very strong and sweet fruits up top in this fragrance. It’s the candy version of fruit and it’s a bit nauseating. I read some of the reviews on this one before I tried it and many people report a synthetic quality to the fragrance. I almost want to explain that particular problem on the over eager fruit opening. The sweetness does settle down in the mid-stage where the soft florals roll in with a spicy carnation making a pretty big impression to me. The  fragrance ends on a very nicely done vanilla with sandalwood. Normally I’d loathe the standard sandalwood vanilla mixture but the fragrance does it so well that I can’t fault it for taking a trope and doing it justice.

Extra: Sun Moon Stars was released in 1994 as a fabulous floral oriental. The Karl Lagerfield brand is primarily focused on fashion and headed by the iconic man of the same name. Presently the brand is owned by the parent company, Tommy Hilfiger.

Design: I saw the bottle and immediately thought of the Britney Spears Fantasy line. The shapes are so familiar that I couldn’t help but seek this one out. The bottle reportedly contains designs of a sun, a star and a moon as per its name. While I still think the shape is unappealing the blue glass used in the design is quite nice. At the very least, the design is much better put together than anything in the Fantasy line. It’s quite a bit more elegant, actually.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral Oriental

Notes: Bergamot, pineapple, orange blossom, lotus, rice, peach, heliotrope, freesia, jasmine, orange blossom, daffodil, lily of the valley, orchid, carnation, iris, sandalwood, cedar, amber, musk, vanilla.

Apparently there was a reformulation of this fragrance at some point. I’m not sure which version of the fragrance I have, but judging from the general disappointment in the reformulation, perhaps I have the old formula.

Reviewed in This Post: Sun Moon Stars,  ~1998 Eau de Toilette.