Bath and Body Works Twilight Woods

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Despite all these things I have with the word Twilight or related to the hour of twilight, I really do not have any affection for the popular book/movie phenomenon. Really. Though I can’t help but think that this fragrance, in particular was a well-timed release by Bath and Body Works to capitalize on the Twilight craze at the time. Twilight Woods

In Bottle: Warmth is what Twilight Woods is. It’s warmth first, vanilla second, and woodsy last. And that’s just from the bottle. This smells clean, sweet, comforting and quite competent.

Applied: Opens as a fruity vanilla woodsy scent and starts moving into creamy vanilla woods scent with the frangipani. Twilight Woods lingers in that area for a bit before the fruitiness comes back for an encore and bows out with a nice watery, sweet woodsy vanilla scent that’s very pleasant. This smells like a really good fragrance to cozy up next to fire to. It’s nice, pleasant, very smooth and creamy and has excellent longevity and moderately good projection.

Extra: This is probably my favorite fragrance from Bath and Body Works. They talked about this and P.S. I Love You being two of their ventures into more abstract fragrance. Before, Bath and Body Works had fairly simple to decipher fragrances that were fairly linear. I was partial to their Pink Grapefruit body mist.

Design: Cute bottle with a nicely detailed image of a tree laid over the glass so when you’re looking at the bottle on the right side, you get a very pretty looking design. The cap is also quite nice. The entire design is slick and functional and most of Bath and Body Works’ eau de toilettes now come in bottles shaped like this one. The sprayer is functional and works just fine.

Fragrance Family: Woodsy Gourmand

Notes: Juicy berry, sparkling mandarin, coconut, creamy frangipani, soft mimosa, wet honeysuckle, wild freesia, apricot nectar, oud wood, skin musk captive, vanilla milk, and warm woods.

How do you like that notes list telling you what each  note is supposed to smell like? Frankly, I kind of like it but acknowledge its unnecessariness (it’s a word now).

Reviewed in This Post: Twilight Woods, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Prada Infusion d’Homme

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Infusion d’Homme is a part of Prada’s infusions series that includes one of my favorites, Infusion d’Iris. This series of sheer and light fragrances aren’t known much for their longevity or silage but are fantastic as clean and light fragrances. Infusion d'Homme

In Bottle: Infusion d’Homme smells fresh and clean, mildly aromatic but mostly  just fresh and clean–like a bar of soap. Generic, lovely smelling, soap.

Applied: Neroli and dryness for a moment then Infusion d’Homme sends the soap straight out at you. There’s a powderiness to this that lingers a bit with the soap, furthering that clean, fresh scent. Infusion d’Homme does one thing well and that is make you think you’re wearing a bar of soap around your neck. It’s a nice bar of soap though. During the middle development, this gets a little sharper and very, very slightly sweeter before it goes back to just soap. There’s a pyramid of notes presented for Infusion d’Homme that I think is just there for show since the only piece of that pyramid I saw was powder and neroli. The soap stays with you, never truly leaving–not even on the dry down when Infusion d’Homme gets a bit more powdery.

Extra: Although generally thought to be a masculine fragrance, Infusion d’Homme is more of a unisex. I don’t really see how a fragrance that smells like soap and cleanliness could have a gender anyway.

Design: Call me a sucker for uniform, but I love how these infusions are bottled the same way with varying colors and slightly different themes. Infusion d’Homme is bottled exactly the same way as Infusion d’Iris except it is a beige color instead of a light green. Simple, elegant, looks great on a shelf–if I kept my fragrances on a shelf, anyway.

Fragrance Family: Clean and Fresh

Notes: Mandarin, neroli, clean notes, iris, galbanum, cedar, vetiver, benzoin, frankincense, powdery notes.

Infusion d’Homme reminds me a bit of my childhood, French colonial style apartment buildings with clotheslines threading the distance between them. A day on the stone balcony playing with a bar of soap, that this fragrance invokes the smell of, while our downstairs neighbor simultaneously cooked dinner and yelled at her kids.

Reviewed in This Post: Infusion d’Homme, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Britney Spears Midnight Fantasy

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Everyone has that one fragrance in their collection that looks out of place. For me, it’s Britney Spears Midnight Fantasy. Having tried the original Fantasy and not really finding it all that special, Midnight Fantasy struck a nice balance between sweet, fruity, and creamy without being over-the-top about anything. “It’s a nice enough perfume.” Is probably the first thing I utter when someone finds the studded purple bottle. Midnight Fantasy

In Bottle: Sweet, candy-like berry, and green notes with a tart citrus that prevents the whole thing from falling apart.

Applied: Like a big bowl of ripe blueberries, layered with vanilla frosting and presented on a cool spring day in a flowering garden. Midnight Fantasy (despite the  PR) is not trying to be anything else but what it is; a simple, young, fun fragrance that isn’t meant to be taken seriously. It’s hilariously fruity, very sweet, and absolutely offers no explanation or apologies for it. I like its zing. Starts off with a clean, fresh spray of tartness followed by a sweet blueberry and blackberry middle that hangs out with a creamy vanilla note until it dries down into a sheer vanilla fragrance. There isn’t a whole lot of complexity here and Midnight Fantasy doesn’t even try to pretend it’s anything but a synthetic.In fact, I find I have to take breaks in between smelling this because two days in a row and the synthetic quality of it just gets to me. But hey, I can enjoy a good synthetic now and then, you don’t go out wearing Midnight Fantasy for the complexity.

Extra: Midnight Fantasy is a flanker to the original Fantasy. While these two smell very different, they do have thematic similarities in the treatment of the sweet notes. And, don’t worry, Britney didn’t concoct this on her own. It was created by Caroline Sabas. A real life nose who composed Midnight Fantasy for the Elizabeth Arden company.

Design: Packaged similarly to the original Fantasy, Midnight Fantasy is a deep bluish-purple with purple crystals set into the bottle’s glass. It remains as unappealing in terms of aesthetics as ever to me.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Black cherry, framboise, plum, night blooming orchid, iris, freesia, amber, musk, vanilla.

Notice a lot of musks in fragrances? Modern musks aren’t what you would normally think of when you think about musk. Modern musks are mostly synthetics that are used in fragrances to stabilize the scent. There are thousands upon thousands of different types of musks and they are in almost everything scented.

Reviewed in This Post: Midnight Fantasy, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

Montale Chypre Vanille

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Shameful as it is, I do not remember how Montale’s Oud based fragrance line smells like. Not a single one. I’m working my way back in that direction though. Along the way, I’m picking up some others first. Notably, the cleaner, whiter Montale fragrances that catch that part of me that just wants to smell clean and fresh. Chypre Vanille

In Bottle: Light and green, very pleasant and clean fragrance. Think fresh out of the shower scent with a nice, light, floral mist.

Applied: Beautifully light floral fragrance that’s very quintessentially white and airy. There’s a soapiness to this that opens the fragrance and stays with it as the scent starts to age. The incense used in Chypre Vanille isn’t your typical fair. It’s been cleaned up to the point where it’s hard to recognize as it helps to dry out the vanilla, presenting this concept of vanilla that is unfamiliar but very likable. Chypre Vanille takes the sweetness out of vanilla and makes it sharp and clean, something I wouldn’t expect the note would be capable of. But it wouldn’t be the first or last time I’m wrong. There’s a powderiness to this fragrance too that lingers in the back and reminds you once every so often that it’s still there. The dry down is a nice clean and dry woodsy scent with a very heavy reminder of the vanilla that this was based on. The dry down actually reminds me a little bit  of how the classic Guerlains smell.

Extra: Montale is popular for their many different oud-based fragrances that run the gamut of colors, styles and scents.

Design: Bottled in much the same way as other Montale scents, Chypre Vanille is presented in a lovely dark blue bottle with a metal cap and sprayer.

Fragrance Family: Chypre

Notes: Vanilla, rose, amber, incense, sandalwood, iris, vetiver, tonka bean.

An interesting take on what some people cringe to refer to as a “modern chypre”. I don’t know if I like it enough for a bottle but it’s still pleasant nonetheless. Something very clean about it. Almost soapy but very nice.

Reviewed in This Post: Chypre Vanille, 2009, Sample Vial.

Comme des Garcons Nomad Tea

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Continuing on my quest to find the perfect tea scent, Nomad Tea by Comme des Garcons popped up as a potential candidate. As far as I understand it, Nomad Tea is a part of Comme des Garcon’s Series 7: Sweet. It, and the fragrances in the collection, are a less complex homage to varying notes. Nomad Tea

In Bottle: Bitter, dark, herbal tea that has a very distinct bright mint note to it. This reminds me a lot of another mint based fragrance that I did particularly care for. Mint has this repellent quality to me that tends to hover between nicely spicy and rather plastic. I love real mint, but smelling it in fragrances is a real downer for some reason.

Applied: Artemesia gives the very powerful mint note a nice mellowing but you can tell the mint is very strong as it fights off the evaporation for a good while before finally giving in. The rest of Nomad Tea is headed by a very nice green tea scent with a smoked quality to it. There’s a very mild sweetness to this followed by the herbal, floral treatment that gives Nomad Tea a very aromatic feel to it. The dry down is a nice smoky and woodsy scent.

Extra: Comme des Garcons is a fashion house focusing on avant guard concepts. They branched into fragrances in the early to mid 90s.

Design: I’m not wild about the design of the bottle as it seems less polished than a fragrance like this deserves. Held in a textured glass bottle, Nomad Tea has the series name, fragrance name, and house name written in black ink on the glass. Very simple, really boring. Kind of messy which reflects the house’s aim a bit but doesn’t quite make it there. I expected better from Comme des Garcons, to be honest.

Fragrance Family: Aromatic

Notes: Artemisia, wild mint, Burmese green tea, geranium leaf, white sugar loaf, smoked woods.

That mint note that opens this is pretty distracting for me. So while the rest of the fragrance’s treatment of green tea is rather interesting with the sweet smokiness creating this nice atmosphere, I still have to get past the dreaded mint. I love mint–when I eat it. I don’t like it in my perfumes for some reason. It just has this watery, spicy, plasticness to it that turns me away.

Reviewed in This Post: Nomad Tea, 2009, Sample Vial.

Creative Universe Te

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I have a weakness for tea scents. I love tea. I can’t drink it very much so I would at least like to smell like it. Unfortunately for tea, the notes that tend to make up its chemistry are fragile little things that are fleeting at best. Te

In Bottle: Spicy, bergamot and green tea. Te is a very nice pleasant and easily deciphered fragrance. It’s nicely blended but isn’t one-dimensional. There’s something herbal in this too.

Applied: Bergamot and grapefruit followed by a watery green tea fragrance. The clove gives this a bit of spiciness that takes it away from just plain green tea and ushers it into a slightly more interesting scent. Celery helps lend this fragrance a more watery feel too while also making it smell just a slight bit vegetal. Fortunately the vegetal note is quick to fade along with the rest of the scent. Te is very light and very fleeting. The green tea and clove are the longest lasting notes as the rest of the fragrance seems to fade to very small proportions. After the opener, Te takes on a light, distant green tea scent that’s very faithful to how a cup of green tea would smell if you were to hover your nose above it.

Extra: Creative Universe is headed by Beth Terry. Te was released in 1997.

Design: Much like other niche or independent houses, Creative Universe keeps their packaging simple. Bottled in a big rectangular glass bottle, Te has a label on the glass identifying the fragrance name and the fragrance house’s name.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Aromatic

Notes: Bergamot , grapefruit, green tea, celery, ylang-ylang, clove.

Te is one of the very few tea fragrances that actually has good staying power. But, green tea notes do seem to be more robust than their black tea cousins. My quest for the perfect, long-lasting tea fragrance continues.

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

Guerlain My Insolence

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Seems the Insolence family is working up to its name, or something because everyone seems to have a polarized opinion of each of them. My Insolence is Insolence’s less confused daughter. She knows she’s typical, mass marketed, a little confused, and not one bit special. And she’s just okay with that. My Insolence

In Bottle: Fruity, sweet raspberry top note with a very typical jasmine wafting up from the regions of mid-stage fragrance world. My Insolence, unlike the original that it flanks is a clearly defined fruity floral fragrance that could pretty much smell like any other recent release out there. So you’re at least guaranteed that she smells nice.

Applied: Sweet and fruity raspberry with a nice almond note thrown in there to give the blend some more sweetness and a little bit of nuttiness. I do detect a little early entry of the patchouli in this giving My Insolence a nice sharp, clean quality. There’s the jasmine coming up after the opener to give this a nice white floral edge as the fragrance settles on a pleasant and warm raspberry, almond near-gourmand fragrance. The dry down is equally pleasant with a touch more complexity than one would expect with patchouli cleaning up the joint and giving it a slight bitterness as vanilla ushers out My Insolence on a creamy, mild note.

Extra: Nothing much I can really say for or against My Insolence except that it’s highly wearable, very inoffensive and kind of typical. Not at all what I expected of the house that made Jicky and Mitsouko. But then as Guerlain themselves admitted, they needed to appeal to the younger market and My Insolence is about as appealing as a modern fragrance needs to be. I just wonder if the target audience is wearing it.

Design: My Insolence is packaged in much the same way as Insolence was. In that hard to hold, interesting to look at flower and flower pot bottle. At least that flower and flower pot concept is what I got from this.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Raspberry, almond blossom, jasmine, patchouli, vanilla, tonka bean.

I’m somewhat sad that Insolence itself hit it off badly with me but My Insolence is a nice enough contender with an almost gourmand reach with that vanilla and almond treatment. If you tried Insolence looking for a young Guerlain and didn’t like it, give My Insolence a chance.

Reviewed in This Post: My Insolence, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

Guerlain Insolence

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Insolence is one of those modern Guerlains that was a hit or a miss. It seems to have more hits than misses than say–Champs-Elysees–but it has more interesting character to it taking it beyond the safe zone that Guerlain seems to have been skirting since its purchase by LVMH. Insolence

In Bottle: Yeah, definitely unique. The violet in this is a strange, uncertain floral that’s sweet for sure but lacks anything else to it. There’s something spicy in this too like anise or cinnamon along with the weird sugary, raisin scent in the back.

Applied: Sweet and bright with the red raspberry note coming up first and fading first leaving me with a dense, syrupy raisin-like fragrance with that persistent anise note that I wish I didn’t feel crazy for smelling.  Something in this reminds me of the classic Guerlains. I’m thinking it’s that anise or clove or whatever the heck that is which reminds me a bit of one of L’Huere Bleue’s many layers. But at the same time it’s clear Insolence is an updated fragrance meant for a young consumer as it’s trying to pull in a fresher audience. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if they really hit the mark as Insolence is not clearly defined as anything and at the end of the day, does smell like a bit of a fruity, floral, spicy and sweet mess to me. I’m sure a lot of women can love this fragrance but it is very polarized in terms of taste. You can either love it or hate it. Once Insolence does calm down, which takes quite a while, the fragrance is less sweet but it does retain some of that syrupy treatment all the way into the dry down where it gets darker, creamier, and more vanillic with a very nice red raspberry note to it. I had thought the raspberry had disappeared but it was just hiding behind the spicy flowers. As for whether I hate or love this? I could go either way but I feel like Insolence is a bit too loud and sweet and a little too clingy.

Extra: Word has it that this smells a bit like Apres L’Ondee, one of the Guerlains I have yet to try. I do get the familiarity of this to L’Huere Bleue so something in here is working that classic machine. I just think this is a bit removed from that era though.

Design: Insolence’s half-circle, flower and flower pot type design was by Serge Mansau a man famous for creating bottles for some of the most well known fashion and fragrance houses since the 60s. I gotta give the man credit for making this a nice looking bottle that’s interesting to look at. I just can’t get on board with how hard it is to hold this thing. It’s an awkward shape, making you have to hold it awkwardly, pinched between your fingers as you hope to avoid dropping it. Nice idea, interesting shape. I just can’t get on board with how hard it is to hold.

Fragrance Family: Spicy Sweet Oriental

Notes: Violet, raspberry, rose, orange blossom, raisins, balsam, iris, tonka bean.

You’re probably wondering what kind of fragrance family cop-out I’m doing with that spicy sweet thing. Well, it’s the only way I can really describe Insolence because, to my nose, it’s like a candy rolled in anise. It tries to be fruity, it tries to be gourmand, but it lands in the middle where it’s neither and the only place it even fits is in two vague categories.

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

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.

Armani Acqua di Gio pour Homme

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Acqua di Gio pour Homme, like Dolce & Gabanna’s Light Blue, was one of those extremely popular fragrances that everybody seemed to wear a few years back. And to my understanding, it is still popular though not to the extent that it once was. And people can easily understand why this one and Light Blue are popular. They’re highly easy to wear and are appropriate for most places the average person would tend to go. Acqua di Gio

In Bottle: While one would have to wonder what exactly a marine note is and how you’re supposed to be able to smell water. Aqua notes, to me, have this sharp blue quality to them. And Acqua di Gio pour Homme does, indeed, have that sharp blue quality from out of the bottle. It also contains something sweet and pleasantly nice to tame that sharpness a bit as pure aqua, to my nose, is very sharp.

Applied: Blue aqua notes, sharp and fresh with a sweetness to add a less abrasive dimension to smelling pure water. Smelling aqua is akin to going swimming and accidentally getting some pool water in your nose. That stinging, horrible pain is akin to a too strong, too pure aqua note to me. But Acqua di Gio pour Homme (am I using the word “aqua” enough?_ does a nice job mixing in other notes so it’s not pool water up your nose strong. There is a clear cedarness to this as well as sweetness coming from a rose and persimmon angle. The scent also does a fantastic job incorporating rosemary into the opening and in the mid-stage. The dry down is a nicely sweet, clear patchouli and clean musk.

Extra: Acqua di Gio is sometimes referred to as the trailblazer fragrance that ushered in a fad of fruity fresh fragrances that where Acqua di Gio pour Homme is a part of.

Design: In a rather plain shaped bottle with a slight curve in the body. The bottle is a pleasant and easy enough thing to hold though grasping the thing in my girly hands is a bit difficult due to its width. It has a metallic cap that slides very nicely into place. Something about the font face or the design of Acqua di Gio pour Homme really slots it very nicely into the Giorgio Armani line of fragrances as the designs do tend to look similar.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: Jasmine, rosemary, citrus, persimmon, marine notes, cedar, patchouli, white musk, rock rose.

I like Acqua di Gio. I like how normal and completely unexciting it smells. These typical rather normal and inoffensive fragrances are popular for a reason. It’s because they always tend to smell pleasant and easygoing. It also has the benefit of being fairly unisex.

Reviewed in This Post: Acqua di Gio pour Homme, 2009, Eau de Toilette.