BnBW P.S. I Love You

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P.S. I Love You was released in 2009 from Bath and Body Works. A time when I had just gotten my first Bath and Body Works lotion after hearing about them for years. I was all right with the lotion but I was more curious about the perfume they were introducing in their promotional postcard. Turns out, it’s a competent rose.

P.S. I Love You

In Bottle: Bright and pretty, I smell citrus more than I smell florals but the roses are in there, mingling about with a slightly sweet thickness to it that gives P.S. I Love You surprising body.

Applied: Citrus to start that launches into a mild sweetness with a waft of peony before it evolves rather quickly into its rose stage. In the mid-stage is there P.S. I Love You  shines. The roses come up, light and airy at first before they get deeper and turn into a surprisingly lovable smooth and spicy, utterly feminine, rose scent. Make no mistake, P.S. I Love You will deliver perfume’s most beloved flower with a dash of lightly dusted peonies and a hint of sharp musk. Near the end of the mid-stage I get an interesting amber note, it gives this scent a pleasant warming quality. This is a surprisingly well done rose that took me by surprise. It’s young, definitely, but it’s very likable. The dry down is marked with a rather predictable sandalwood accompanied by a bit more fleeting rose and full-bodied  sweet amber to warm the fragrance.

Extra: Something interesting to note is the perfumer of P.S. I Love You who is known for composing fragrances for Ralph Lauren, Bond No.9 and Tom Ford.

Design: P.S. I Love You comes in a couple of concentrations–eau de toilette and eau de parfum. I was testing the eau de parfum version that comes in a cute little bottle that you see pictured above. Unfortunately, the eau de parfum was a limited edition item (as far as I understand it) and is no longer available. Bath and Body Works still carries P.S. I Love You in the eau de toilette version which looks pretty much like every other Bath and Body Works perfume bottle. Both designs are rather tasteful though I vastly preferred the eau de parfum design.  P.S. I Love You’s design reminds me of brush strokes, love letters and flower petals.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Citrus, lychee, peony, yellow rose, riesling, scarlet velvet rose, orchid, lilies, jasmine, incense, creamy sandalwood, patchouli, amber, and musk.

I know a lot of people are afraid of rose. I find rose beautiful but many are understandably wary of it. It is often associated with “old fashioned perfume” but P.S. I Love You is a very youthful an interpretation and  there are still people who find it difficult to love. Though the majority of people who try it, still like it well enough.

Reviewed in This Post: P.S. I Love You, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Yves Saint Laurent Parisienne

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Parisienne is a weird fragrance. Weird because it’s very famous, sometimes maligned, vinyl accord note is a deal breaker for a lot of people. And can you really blame them? The vinyl has been accused of smelling like, “cat pee”, “vomit”, “rubber”, “plastic”, and the ever popular, “yuck!”

Yves Saint Laurent Parisienne

In Bottle: Bright berry note with a really nice sweet rose up front. This reminds me a bit of Paris, it’s the rose doing most of it though and the shape of the bottle.

Applied: Starts off on a good sweet berry and pink rose note but the rose is gone in an instant. Replacing it is the vinyl accord. They were pretty upfront about this, I guess. Now vinyl accord is–well, I’m not sure what YSL was intending for this fragrance and this vinyl note but it makes the whole thing smell like fruity plastic. This smells like I rubbed a bowl of berries on a tire. The vinyl is a trickster too. It’ll fade out upon midstage where the fruitiness is toned down and you’re left with a faintly plastic smelling rosy floral concoction of confusion and wariness. Then when you think you’ve made it past Parisienne, vinyl comes roaring back in the end stage though it is more behaved there, playing rather nicely with the patchouli and woods waiting there.

Extra: Parisienne echoes the design sensibility of Paris but aside from a fleeting rose note, the two are different monsters. Paris is a light, fun-filled floral on a sunny day. Parisienne is paint fumes and fruit arrangements.

Design: Parisienne’s bottle is similar to that of Paris. It’s an egg-shaped glass that reminds me a bit of the bottle for Flowerbomb–only girlier, with more glam. The bottle’s kind of a miss for me, not because it’s ugly or anything. I just don’t think it looks like anything special.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Damascus rose, violet, peony, vinyl accord, lacquer, cranberry, patchouli, vetiver, musk, sandalwood.

I’m not going wild over Parisienne here. There’s moments where going full on synthetic is forgivable and fun. But this perfume just doesn’t smell right to me.

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

Marc Jacobs Lola

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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.

Bond No.9 Chelsea Flowers

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There aren’t a whole lot of things I can say for Bond No.9 as a perfume house or as a business. However, I can attest to how well-sealed their fragrance samples are. Getting that little stopper off the vial should be classified as an Olympic Sport only to be played by the most determined of fragrance junkies.  Chelsea Flowers

In Bottle: Light, airy flowers, slightly sweet and very floral. Entirely pleasant but not very original. Chelsea Flowers is rather nice for an inoffensive wear to the office.

Applied: Light and green, small and subdued white floral opener with a nice mist of sweet peony. Its mid-stage is a pleasant bouquet of rose and peony with that same mist of green freshness. This smells like freshly picked flowers, or flowers that just bloomed on a hopeful spring. A gorgeous fragrance by all accounts and purposes even if she isn’t all that exciting, she’s very well done. Dry down is a nice enough floral with a very faint woodsiness lent by a tame sandalwood note.

Extra: There is a lot of talk about Bond No.9’s more recent business antics in relation to them disallowing decants from selling decants of their fragrances online. To get a Bond No.9 fragrance sample on the up and up these days you will have to visit a Bond No.9 counter and hope the people working there like you enough to hand you some of the candy-like wrapped vials of perfumy goodness. Further adding to my distaste of this company’s policies is the legal wrestling they did with Liz Zorn of Soivohle over her use of the word “Peace” in one of her fragrances.

Design: I’ve always found Bond No.9’s bottling to be a bit silly looking. I see these things and all I see are stars. Which reminds me of the Hollywood Walk of Fame decorated in pop-art designs. Not highly unpleasant but not my first choice for perfume design. Holding one of these bottles, I’ll admit, feels luxurious and they are an interesting shape and have nicely done colors. I just can’t say a minimalist like me would be swayed much by the design decisions, nice and bold as they are.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Peonies, tulips, hyacinth, magnolia, rose, musk, sandalwood, vetiver, tree moss.

Don’t let my distaste for Bond No.9’s business antics to turn you away from Chelsea Flowers as a fragrance. This is a very competent and versatile white floral.

Reviewed in This Post: Chelsea Flowers, 2008, Sample Vial.

Gucci Flora

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There’s nothing very special about Gucci Flora that you couldn’t get anywhere else. It has a nice scent, an inoffensive and pleasant aroma perfect for office or school wear. Something about its squeaky cleanness just slots it in generic category. Generic, boring, common but ultimately very pretty. Flora

In Bottle: Light, sheer, clean peony with citrus and a mixture of discriminatory florals. Nothing stands out too much in Flora.

Applied: Citrus opener that has a nice clean kick to wipe the palette before it calls in the peony and its entourage of florals as the scent prances in a field wearing a cotton dress into the mid-stage. Rose is used to bolster the scent in Flora as I can’t smell rose, exactly, except for its presence. That sweet pinkish feel that builds up the power of the other flowers must be those mysterious fruity notes that Flora alludes to while rose is happy to just settle in the background. I was looking forward to a few other notes in this but they never actually make an appearance. It’s all just lumped into one big bouquet of fresh and clean. If someone asks me what I smell in Flora, they’re likely to see my eyes bug out as I chirp, “Flowers!” Flora lasts a decent time, often getting hours of wear before approaching its dry down which is a clean patchouli, vaguely flowery, and sandalwood mix.

Extra: I like Flora. I really do. Don’t let my comments about how pedestrian it is turn you away. This is a very nice fragrance with a classy, clean aroma that’s pretty set to be widely worn and commented upon. Mostly you’ll get things of the, “Hmm, you smell nice” category. Then you get the pleasure of telling them what it is and it’ll be a great time.

Design: Cute squat bottle in a geometric shape with a little black ribbon on the bottle. The design is pleasant, the bottle isn’t too awkward to hold and everything works as it should. One thing I will note is that I love the floral pattern detail on the inside of the box. Reminiscent of botany texts and old woodcut floral patterns. I am a big sucker for that kind of thing.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Citrus, peony, osmanthus, rose, fruity notes, sandalwood, patchouli.

I own a small 30ml bottle of this stuff that I spray on whenever I want to smell clean and fresh but more interesting than one of my clean musk scents. I always find myself smiling a little whenever Flora wafts up to my nose, so something in this stuff is doing good work.

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

Chloe 2008

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Chloe 2008 like Nina and Champs-Elysees is a moniker borrower. It is not a release of the original in different packaging. And along with this new formulation is a wave of disappointed fragrance lovers who expected 1975 Chloe but got 2008 instead. Chloe

In Bottle: It would be good practice to never approach a name borrowed fragrance or even a re-released fragrance with the expectations that it would even come close to smelling like the original. Nothing but disappointment can result. So I approached the new Chloe with as much open mindedness as I could. And you know what? It was pretty good. The new Chloe mashes together the light sweet peony with clean freesia and other mild, inoffensive and easy to love florals getting a nice, pleasant easy to wear flowery amber perfume.

Applied: Chloe goes on sweet and clean the peony and freesia doing its work immediately. There is a touch of sweet fruitiness but the focus of this fragrance is on the flowers. Rose comes in with magnolia tailing behind melding together with the opening notes as the entire scent turns airy and pretty. Chloe is a light yellow dress kind of scent with its sunny, cheerfulness and youthful sweetness. The dry down is a bit understated but still retains magnolia even as the sweet, warm amber heralds Chloe’s departure.

Extra: A little known fact about me is that I can never associate peony as smelling like anything else but air freshener. When I was a kid we had some off-brand air freshener kicking around the house. It was some concoction of berries and peonies but the strongest note was peony. If there was any sort of odor or blast of mustiness, out came the peony. One day, after frying a fish, the peony air freshener came out. The rank that erupted. I remember and loathe it to this day. It was a mix of fish, saltiness, burnt oil and sweet cloying peony. Emphasis on the sweetness and the fish. After that little incident we bounced around air fresheners that smelled like rain.

Design: Chloe is bottled in a cute glass rectangular affair with a plastic cap and an adorable little brown bow. The simplicity of this is very nice but in its simplicity the minor details like the textured glass and the little brown bow are pleasant bonuses.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Peony, lychee, freesia, rose, magnolia, muguet, amber, cedar.

The new Chloe is all right. At the very least, it is a highly wearable and easy to love scent. The best thing about the new Chloe for me is the bottle. I didn’t much like the old one but I prefer the original Chloe’s scent.

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