Bath and Body Works Carried Away

Posted on by

Carried away, released recently by Bath and Body Works is a fragrance meant to invoke springtime. And considering the snow dumps and the cold air that’s been blowing about here lately, I welcome spring’s arrival any moment now.

Carried Away

In Bottle: Bright, green citrus with a soft floral undernote. Not entirely interesting but doesn’t smell bad. This is fairly on bar with other Bath and Body Works fragrances. It’s not unique, it’s not daring, but it’s definitely functional.

Applied: I get a sharp hit of citrus right away with the lemon and mandarin mixing together up front. There’s a slight tartness from the raspberry note that carries the sweet little pear note a little further and when you start digging into the mid-stage, the sweet and light florals waft in to distract you while the citrus note sin the opening bow out. There’s nothing to phone home about in the mid-stage as it’s a mild floral, easy to wear, easy to like, not the least bit offensive. Though I will give Carried Away points for taking its springtime theme and running with it. This smells fresh, clean, femininely floral. The dry down is uninspired, the vanilla is sweet, comes up during the mid-stage and accompanies sandalwood on the way out.

Extra: Carried Away, like almost every other Bath and Body Works scent comes in a line of bath and body products such as body mists, lotion, body butter, and shower gel.

Design: Same shape and general design premise as the other eau de toilettes from Bath and Body Works. Glass rectangle with designs on it. Plastic cap. The designs for Carried Away are colorful turquoise and pink ribbons wrapping around the glass. Pretty, generic, but works very well.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Bergamot, meyer lemon, mandarin, pear, raspberry, freesia, tuberose, jasmine, violet, sandalwood, vanilla, musk.

I’m not jumping on this fragrance mostly because I’ve smelled similar stuff that I like better from Bath and Body Works. For freshness, I go with White Citrus. For florals, I prefer the roses in P.S. I Love You. And if I want clean, I’ve got Cotton Blossom.

Reviewed in This Post: Carried Away, 2011, Eau de Toilette.

Jean Patou Joy

Posted on by

Joy by Jean Patou, released in 1930, was busy being the most expensive perfume in the world during a time when a lot of people didn’t have much. It intrigued individuals for years who wondered what was in this magical juice that made it cost so much. These days, Joy is still pricey but no where even close to the most expensive perfume in the world anymore. Thank goodness. Joy

In Bottle: Roses. ROSES in all caps even. Joy starts out with a huge blend of roses layered heavily on top so that barely anything else can be discerned past this rose force field.

Applied: Roses still in the forefront but let it age a bit and I can smell the jasmine. It’s a gorgeous, full, heady jasmine that intermingles so well with Joy’s rose bouquet that the entire mixture has this bright, happy, scent to it. As the rose continues to calm down tuberose comes up to join the party. The florals remind me of a big bouquet, resting in a vase on a sunny day. Joy is what a perfectly paced perfume smells like as it evolves and morphs into this pretty flowery thing. This smells like optimism. Glorious, well-blended and well-made optimism that dries down eventually into a dusty sandalwood with a surprising presence of indole (our friend civet!) at the very end.

Extra: A part of me still wishes Joy held its title as the most expensive perfume in the world. It’s name is Joy after all. Instead, if you ask someone what the most expensive perfume in the world is, they’ll tell you it’s Clive Christian’s Imperial Majesty. A baccarat cased perfume that’s supposed to push for $215,000.  I doubt that’s worth the price of admission.

Design: Classic, elegant, simple bottle design. Joy has a nice weight to it and its simple, clear glass, plain label look reminds me of Chanel’s bottle design, but no where near as minimalist. It works and it will continue to work for many years. You simply can’t go out of style with a bottle that looks this classic.

Fragrance Family: Floral Classic

Notes: Rose, ylang-ylang, aldehydes, pear,  tuberose, jasmine, orris root, musk,  sandalwood, civet.

I think the question that remains is whether or not Joy was worth the hefty price tag it once sported. My answer? Well, not the juice, certainly the novelty of owning and using the most expensive fragrance in the world would be worth it for some people but I’m a bit more practical and think Joy’s present price point suits it well for the kind of scent that it is. As for that $215,000 thing we’ve got now? I’m curious but mostly apathetic. What juice could possibly be that good? Besides, most of the price tag has to do with packaging the thing.

Reviewed in This Post: Joy, ~1980, Eau de  Parfum.

Marc Jacobs Lola

Posted on by

Marc Jacobs Lola was supposed to be a more grown-up Daisy. And I had seen this fragrance touted so much that I had to go and find some just to see if all the hype was true. I left underwhelmed with the scent but pleased with it all the same. Lola

In Bottle: Bright grapefruit, clean spice, and fruity pear. This smells juicy and clean right off the bat. It’s almost like a Herbal Essences shampoo.

Applied: Fruity off the bat with a pile of flowers rolling in like a scrubbed clean tide of–uh–fresh flowers. I’m tired. Cut me some slack. That shampoo smell lingers for a bit in Lola as the opening stage gives way to the mid-stage where the flowers rise up a bit more and the fruity, juicy opening dies down to hold Lola at “Smells like shampoo”. This is a really nice, clean and feminine scent and I can definitely see where people would say this is a grown up Daisy. It doesn’t smell like Daisy but it does smell a little more mature. Not mature in the sense of a classic sophisticated perfume but if we were to assume Daisy is meant for the teen crowd, then Lola would be good for the college kids. She lacks the bright, grassy freshness and youth of Daisy but she makes up for it by being a clean pretty floral with a hovering sweet rose. Sweet rose being a good alternative to classic rose that tends to infuse a bit of youth into perfume’s most popular and, strangely enough, polarizing note. The dry down is a typical affair of sandalwood and vanilla with lingering traces of nice shampoo. Lola reminds me a bit of Gucci Flora with a less sweet mid-stage.

Extra: Lola’s spawned a number of offshoot products. One of the ones I see most often is the solid perfume ring adorned with its iconic vinyl flower.

Design: A big bright, red, purple, blue and green vinyl flower adorns the cap of Lola. The glass bottle itself is a purple color while the circumference of the cap is a textured gold-colored metal. There’s two bottle designs for Lola. The smaller (50ml) is a tall bottle. The 100ml is a squat, wide bottle. The design for Lola took a few pages from Daisy’s bottle design and it’s cute as a button. I didn’t think I would like the bottle design as much as I did but heck, it’s adorable. Not sophisticated at all, a little silly but not the least bit pretentious.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Pink pepper, pear, red grapefruit, peony, rose, geranium, vanilla, creamy musk, tonka.

If nothing else, Lola is an eye catcher for its bottle design. Subtle is not this lady’s business. The 100ml bottle in particular is huge and comes packaged in an equally huge box due to the giant vinyl flower cap.

Reviewed in This Post: Lola, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Escada Tropical Punch

Posted on by

Escada’s mostly known for their very nicely done line of fruity floral fragrances. I was never that interested in Escada’s stuff because there’s a wealth of fruity florals in the market. But if you wanted a good fruity floral, that’s reminiscent of the tropics then Escada’s got you covered.  Tropical Punch

In Bottle: Wet and sweet fruit juice. Like a blended tropical smoothie consisting of pears and pomegranates and peaches. It smells delicious.

Applied: Burst of that fruit smoothie scent with the pears overtaking the pomegranate until both of them fade into the background and let the florals up. Of the flowers in this scent, I smell the lily of the valley the most followed by the combined powers of hibiscus and freesia making the mid-stage of Tropical Punch a lush bed of florals. The peach note in this lends a bit of fruitiness to it but by and large Tropical Punch’s mid-stage is very reminiscent of an Herbal Essences shampoo. And I like how Herbal Essence shampoos smell so if you’re into that kind of thing, this stuff delivers. The dry down is rather unremarkable but so is the rest of this fragrance as it warms up a bit but fades with a clean fruity floral sweet amber scent.

Extra: Escada is a women’s luxury clothing group founded in 1976. They have a ton of other similarly built fruity floral fragrances in addition to Tropical Punch. Of which one of the most popular is Marine Groove.

Design: I don’t much like Escada’s fragrance bottles. They’re nice and colorful and fun looking but I’m not a big fan of the shape which is reminiscent of a stretched out heart. Actually, I think the design of these bottles is lacking and makes them look more like body mists instead of perfumes. Tropical Punch is a mostly pink glass affair with a gradient that fades into a pinkish orange. It’s easy to hold though, and the sprayer works great.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Papaya, pomegranate, pear, hibiscus, freesia, lily of the valley, white peach, white musk, amber.

I’m not interested enough in Tropical Punch to really get a bottle. The top notes on this stuff are fantastic. But as soon as it dries down, it heads into all too familiar territory. Then there’s the price and for the amount of an Escada fragrance, I would much rather get a mainstream Guerlain or a mainstream Chanel–even.

Reviewed in This Post:Tropical Punch, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Armani Code for Women

Posted on by

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.

Vera Wang Glam Princess

Posted on by

Glam Princess is the latest in what’s becoming a long line of sweet and floral designer perfume royalty. It’s about as competent as the other princess fragrances but at the same time suffers from a rather glaring problem. It smells really, really, really generic. Glam Princess

In Bottle: Indistinct sugar floral, a bit of a toasted sticky marshmallow note in the bottle. Weird because the marshmallow is supposed to be a base note but Glam Princess isn’t the kind of gal to go by steps I guess.

Applied: Super sweet and fruity top notes with a hint of florals. As the scent ages it digs deeper into the floral territory and the old familiar sweet foody floral from original Princess surfaces. The scent is smooth, creamy, very sweet fruity floral in the mid-stage. Not at all special or unique but it’s a pleasant enough fragrance. Glam Princess smells like a lightly flowery foody scent that, like the original, is reminiscent of cake batter. Only there’s a notable lack of the dark chocolate note in the original here. You get white cake batter in this time instead of dark chocolate cake batter. We also get sticky marshmallow that injects itself right into the teeth to save some time on the whole cavity-inducing thing. The dry down isn’t much more exciting as we get sweet floweriness until it disappears entirely.

Extra: If you liked the original Princess fragrance, you’ll probably like this one because the two are built on the same very familiar formula and they do sort of resemble each other in that they’re both sweet gourmand florals. If you loved that dark chocolate note in the original Princess, though, you might want to sit this one out. I really liked that chocolate note in the original. The lack of it in this flanker just makes it smell really generic.

Design: Bottled in the same heart-shaped thing as the rest of the Princess line, Glam Princess is adorned by a string of star designs on the glass. The bottle itself is a golden-yellow, the crown cap is gold with multi-colored jewels set into it. I’m still not a fan of the bottle design. I don’t think there’s anything you can do to a big glass heart to make it appeal to a woman in her mid-twenties with a penchant for simple aesthetics.

Fragrance Family: Sweet Floral

Notes: red berries, guava, pear, orange blossom, vanilla orchid, ambrette, marshmallow, cashmere wood.

Maybe this line of princess fragrances just doesn’t appeal to me. I can see how it’s cute and girly and stuff but the bottles just don’t speak to me and neither do the fragrances.

Reviewed in This Post: Glam Princess, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Annick Goutal Petite Cherie

Posted on by

Petite Cherie is one of the most popular offerings from Annick Goutal. It’s sweetness, it’s pink, it’s girly and feminine and young. And at the end of the day you’ll want to smell Petite Cherie to remind yourself that there’s still plenty of time and plenty of joy left in this world. Petite Cherie

In Bottle: Lovely sweet and clean. Petite Cherie is the classiest of the sugary scents. It’s a beautiful light pink sugar scent that’s reminiscent of other sweet fragrances such as Envy Me and Touch of Pink. What sets Petite Cherie apart from the other sweet scents is its clarity and quality.

Applied: Initial burst of pear and other sweet fruits followed quickly by a sugar sweet mid-stage that is very fast to usher in. Petite Cherie lays down the law in sugar clean territory. A territory I really wish makers of sugary sweet fragrances would explore more often. What if you want to smell like a candy and a bar of soap? Usually with sweet fragrances that are billed as clean, I get sweet, sticky and sharp. Petite Cherie is sweet, airy and freshly clean in a green and pink sort of way. It’s like a fruit juice, or a sparkling water with fruity flavors. The dry down is a pleasant pink rose with its lingering sweetness.

Extra: Annick Goutal fragrances tend to have a relatively shorter shelf life than other fragrance lines. Some might attribute this to the higher percentage of natural oils used in the fragrances. Others might venture to suggest that it’s sprayer mechanism not doing a good enough job at sealing the perfume in. Whatever the reason, if you’re going to get an Annick Goutal, be aware that it may not keep as well as other perfumes. This does not mean that it’s inferior, however, just composed a different way.

Design: Bottled in that same lovely iconic Annick Goutal ribbed glass bottle, Petite Cherie shares the same gold ribbon label look as other fragrances in this line. Petite Cherie is also available in an adorable butterfly-style bottle.

Fragrance Family: Sweet Fruit

Notes: Pear, peach, rose musk, cut grass, vanilla.

I find this fragrance to be a very nice sweet clean scent. But I am still looking out for perfumes that aren’t at all sweet. I think my sweet tooth has finally had enough and wants something sweet with more complexity. This is just a beautifully done but rather simple scent that I would pick over any mainstream sweet fragrance.

Reviewed in This Post: Petite Cherie, 2008, Eau de Parfum.

Victoria’s Secret Sexy Little Things Noir

Posted on by

Victoria’s Secret, known mostly for their underwear brand, also has a fairly lucrative line of beauty products and fragrances. It’s fragrance side is a well-loved establishment that releases mostly fruity floral fragrances that are wearable, girly, light and happy. Sexy Little Things Noir

In Bottle: Fantastic burst of fruits. It’s like I just sprayed a bowl of fruit punch on myself. There’s a slight sourness that really compliments and helps tame this very sweet fragrance. Something about this is really juicy, like biting into a crisp piece of fruit, juicy. And behind it all, I smell the faint waft of the very enigmatic jasmine supported by the spicy creaminess of tonka bean.

Applied: Fruit punch and creamy vanilla is what Sexy Little Things Noir is to me. For its massive list of notes, it does a great job projecting a fruity almost gourmand fragrance. Also due to its massive list of notes, I can’t separate nectarine from apple. However, I can pick out jasmine in this as well as the tonka beans. Sexy Little Things Noir lacks anything that I would really consider to be “noir”. In that a fragrance that’s marketed as “noir”, to me, should have some element of deepness or darkness. Sexy Little Things Noir is just a sparkling, juicy, fruit salad with a sprinkling of white flowers on top. There’s no deepness or darkness, which betrays its name but hey, I’m all right with that. It has fantastic projection but the longevity on me is a bit weak, fading within four hours into light vanilla and jasmine.

Extra: Tonka beans are said to smell like vanilla. A while ago, they could have been eaten in addition to being used in perfumes before someone discovered they contained a potentially lethal anticoagulant. Thanks for the kicks, nature.

Design: I’ll admit it, I was drawn to this perfume like many others for the bottle. The glass is a very dark purple in a pleasing, beautiful shape. The winning feature for me? That pump atomizer. That pump that’s so iconic of Hollywood Noir where the women were glamorous and the movies were in black and white. Though fragrances in pump atomizers back in those days tended to be from fragrance families that people these days refer to as “old lady” perfumes.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Nectarine, apple, citrus, pineapple, guanabana, pear, red fruits, bergamot, cattelaya orchid, muget, cyclamen, jasmine, plum, vanilla, dewberry, cassis, amber, musk, woods, tonka bean.

Sexy Little Things Noir is a part of Victoria’s Secret’s fine fragrance line. Meaning, it’s an Eau de Parfum as opposed to the body mists that Victoria’s Secret sells. Sexy Little Things Noir also has a counterpart body mist, shower gel, and perfumed body powder.

Reviewed in This Post: Sexy Little Things Noir, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Hugo Boss Deep Red

Posted on by

Hugo Boss has never really grabbed my attention in the fragrance department probably because their marketing is so geared towards men that I kind of gloss over them. They’re something of an invisible entity to me as I neither see their brand around nor smell it. But Deep Red is a fragrance worth investigating because it is a lovely perfume. Deep Red

In Bottle: Sharp and astringent. I detect some woodsy notes with a smooth vanilla coating. There’s definitely a large floral element here, sweet and light and just a touch of powder. In the bottle, it reminds me of black vanilla tea. It’s that sharpness and astringent quality doing it, I think.

Applied: Sweetness amps immediately upon contact as the florals and vanilla get sweeter and sweeter, eventually overcoming the powder as the fragrance begins its dry down. I get sweet vanilla flowers and blond woodsy notes with a really light and easygoing citrus topper. The citrus is battling with something a little musky in this scent and I wish it wouldn’t. It gives Deep Red a bit of a personality complex because it can’t decide between being sharply clean or musky. The fragrance eventually disappears, entirely too soon I might add, into a sweet vanilla before fading away completely.

Extra: Vanilla is derived from an orchid. More specifically the vanilla plant that’s a pretty flowering type of orchid whose fruit is harvested and cured into the dried vanilla pods we see in little jars at the supermarket. Outstanding.

Design: The bottle is presented in dark red glass in a tapered flask shape. The cap is a very nice weight that pops off very easily to reveal the sprayer. The design elements on the glass are simple but effective, which by looking at Hugo Boss’ other fragrance offerings, is on par with their design course. The one problem, and it’s a pretty major one, is the sprayer on my bottle. Perhaps it’s just me but my sprayer distributes a ridiculous amount of product. One spray visibly reduces the amount of perfume I have left in the bottle. The mist also gets everywhere because of this and liberally coats anything in its way. It’s a nice fine mist, it’s just that I wish the spraying mechanism would be a little more frugal.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Pear, blood orange, clementine, freesia, ginger flower, woods, musk, vanilla.

I slotted Deep Red in the floral department because of the dominance of sweet flowers in this scent. Evidently, I was supposed to smell fruits too but wherever those were I couldn’t find them. Sorry, pear, you’ll have to hide somewhere less obscure next time.

Reviewed in This Post: Deep Red, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

Versace Versense

Posted on by

If scents could scream, Versense just might be the one who goes so high that only dogs can hear it. This fragrance is clean and fresh, fresh, more fresh, and sharp like the tip of a needle. Not altogether exciting or mysterious, Versense does the one thing really well; and that’s being fresh (in case you haven’t quite gotten that yet). This is an unrelenting freshness that pummeled me over the head with a giant lime and then squeezed the juice into my eye. So overall, not a bad experience.Versense

In Bottle: There’s something a little smooth and sweet in this fragrance that’s holding back what I can only describe as an overwhelming army of angry limes and lemons. It holds the blend together and lends it a very pretty and calming note making Versense smell a lot smoother than she really is. But first impressions in the bottle or on paper are sly. They’ll often smell significantly different on the skin as it mixes and morphs with skin chemistry. And as I waft Versense up to my nose from a slip of paper I’m cursing that deceptive little fruit note. I like it. I wish it would stick around because it’s whipping those unruly citrus notes into a comprehensive shape.

Applied: That instant burst of fleeting fruit, a very smooth and juicy scent that smooths things over before the citrus lands for the take. The smoothness of Versense is fleeting, fading within seconds as the lime shoots straight up into the air and up my nose. There’s an overwhelming green and huge burst of freshness on the initial assault like I had just taken a big too-close-for-comfort whiff of lime scented cleaner. But give Versense the time and in a couple of hours it mellows out into something less fresh and more complex. That’s when the citrus decides its had its fill and lets the woodsier notes come out. Things are still sharp but they no longer scream sharp (or fresh) as the woods help cut a little out of the clean and add some fullness and body to the fragrance.

Extra: Apparently Versense was supposed to take the wearer on a glamorous and sophisticated trip. Unfortunately, I didn’t get glamor or sophistication from Versense. It is very clean though.

Design: Held in a rectangular glass bottle with the seal of Versace on it, Versense boasts a light innocently green color to its juice. The cap is not standard fare clear plastic as I’m happy to note and the entire package as a whole looks very nice. Versense is similar in design to its big sister, Versace’s Versace.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Citrus

Notes: Lime, lemon, mandarin, bergamot, pear, jasmine, sandalwood, cedar, musk.

If you’re looking to smell ultra fresh and love citrus, Versense cannot possibly fit the bill any better. This fragrance is so fresh I think it scoured my brain, sweeping over my grey matter with an avenging citrus coated brush. Powerful is a good word I’m willing to hand to Versense. The real reward is waiting for the drydown as Versense eases off on the power a little and takes in a bit of mellow woodsy calmness. But, boy, brace yourself for the initial impact first.

Reviewed in This Post: Versense, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Bergamot, Mandarin, Prickly Pear, Sea Daffodil, Cardamom, Jasmine, Cedarwood, Sandalwood, Olive Tree, Musk.