Prada Infusion de Tubereuse

Being a big fan of a couple of Prada’s other infusions (d’Iris and d’Homme), I went out looking for the newest releases. Infusion de Tubereuse looking forward to a light, airy tuberose treatment and Prada delivers yet again.  Infusion de Tubereuse

In Bottle: Very faint, light tuberose, green and almost fresh and clean like tuberose that’s been run under some water and scrubbed for presentation’s sake.

Applied: The infusion of this tuberose are a bit heavier and more literal than what I experienced in d’Iris. Infusion de Tubereuse puts a very gentle, very mild note in there that’s hard not to like. It’s an easy tuberose to wear, as it’s very clean and soft. It’s practically the polar opposite of most tuberose scents that tend to capitalize on the flower’s ability to dominate a perfume. There’s a slight sweetness and crispness lingering around in this scent to further clean it up as Infusion de Tubereuse rounds itself off with a dry down that’s green and only a touch bitter.

Extra: Tuberose is a perennial flower with a juicy, sweet, heady floral scent that some people equate to smelling like rubber. Tuberose is most often used as a middle note in perfumery.

Design: Infusion de Tubereuse is bottled similarly to d’Iris and d’Homme. There’s a little more detail going into the packaging with a design focusing on the purple fragrance rather than just solid colors. The simplicity of the Infusions’ packaging is fantastic and I’d love to line them all up in a row.

Fragrance Family: Soliflore

Notes: Indian tuberose, petitgrain bigarade, blood orange, dynamone.

Petitgrain bigarade’s an interesting note because it’s one of the most prominent scents in this fragrance. It is, essentially, the green leaves of a bitter orange tree. I guess that explains it.

Reviewed in This Post: Infusion de Tubereuse, 2010, Eau de Parfum.


Demeter My Melody

My Melody was released in Demeter Fragrance Library’s Hello Kitty series alon with the Hello Kitty scent and the Little Twin Stars fragrance. My Melody is the foodiest one of the three. My Melody

In Bottle: Smooth vanilla and almond. Demeter tends to do simple fragrances anyway and My Melody is a pleasant enough blend of two very gourmand notes that creates an almost edible scent in the bottle.

Applied: Delicious vanilla almond and cake. My Melody smells like cupcakes and cute, happy, tasty things. Everyone needs a little pick-me-up, especially lately and this fragrance is a delightful reminder that–if nothing else–we still have cake. The fragrance doesn’t do any morphing or changing for a while and the scent is fairly fleeting. Being an eau de cologne and all. As the dry down sees a fade in the almond note making the vanilla note more prominent.

Extra: My Melody reminds me an awful lot of many Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab fragrances. The foodies, in particular. I want to say this reminds me a little bit of Dana O’Shee and Boo from BPAL.

Design: The bottle I came across was a small, very typical glass rectangle bottle that Demeter’s fragrances often come in. It’s got a very simple, plain level of packaging that seems a little clinical to me so there’s very little to the design for these fragrances.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Almond, cake, vanilla.

My Melody should be a big hit for its target audience but it’s not really for me. I got Black Phoenix for gourmands like this that I really don’t see a need for something like this in my collection.

Reviewed in This Post: My Melody, 2010, Eau de Cologne.


DKNY Delicious Night

Delicious Night is one of the flankers from Donna Karan’s very popular Be Delicious line which centers around the apple note. Despite its shape and its heritage, Delicious Night does not contain a single apple. Delicious Night

In Bottle: Sweet, citrus and berries that verge on being cloying even as it’s sitting in the bottle. This is a fact that troubles me. It’s like a warning.

Applied: Sweet blackberry and citrus fruits. Or should I say, SWEET BLACKBERRY and CITRUS INFUSION 9000!!! Because Delicious Night goes on loud. Very loud. Also very sweet and that cloying sweetness I got in the bottle is full throttle on my skin. This stuff is like blackberry and lemon syrup, dumped into a vat of sugar and then rolled into a giant candy ball. I had thought Miss Dior Cherie was a cloying headache inducer but Delicious Night really takes the cake as I wait out the top notes amidst this bizarre combination of scents that remind me uncomfortably of children’s flavored and sweetened cough syrup. Much to my chagrin the mid-stage echos the same level of syrupy sweetness as the opener except with a bland mix of flowers that are trying to swim out of the Sweet’n’Low sea but they can’t quite make it under the merciless sugar baron’s iron-fisted rule. If you think you can get away from the sugar baron on the dry down you’ve got another thing coming. The sweetness is miles long, and it won’t stop until you do. It invades the base notes as well, sugaring up the sheer clean patchouli and if it’s one thing I don’t think patchouli should ever have to do, it’s be both clean and sugary sweet.

Extra: Be Delicious was the original DKNY apple scent that a lot of people really like. And it’s a pretty decent apple scent that inspired Victoria Secret’s Appletini.

Design: Bottled in the same shape and concept as DKNY Be Delicious and DKNY Red Delicious. Delicious Night is a dark purple affair with an apple-like shape. The black plastic cap also hides the sprayer that makes a distinctly plastic sound as it splodges the fragrance out onto you like a hooked fish would regurgitate the last of its water. I wasn’t impressed by the lackluster function of the sprayer nozzle–in other words. Maybe I just hit a bad bottle. I will admit that it’s a pretty cute shape and a rather clever way of hiding the sprayer.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Pomelo, ginger, blackberry, pink freesia, martini, night orchid, jasmine, pink iris, amber, frankincense, myrrh extract, patchouli, vetiver.

Delicious Night was supposed to be sexy and modern. All it made me was kind of nauseous. Sorry, Delicious Night.

Reviewed in This Post: DKNY Delicious Night, 2010, Eau de Parfum.


Vera Wang Glam Princess

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.


Susanne Lang Vanilla Coconut

Vanilla? Coconut? You’d have to get a vice to keep me away. Two of the things I like most combined into one fragrance should be a winner. Unfortunately a lot of fragrances that tote vanilla and coconut together tend to cheese out of the race by using the sour coconut note along with the plastic vanilla note, thus making themselves smell exactly like their competition. Susanne Lang‘s Vanilla Coconut does not suffer from this plastic and sour combination.  Vanilla Coconut SL

In Bottle: Pretty and fresh coconut flesh set in a lovely sweet pineapple mix and a touch of vanilla. Smells delicious, tropical and like a young coconut should!

Applied: Lovely green flare of coconut and pineapple. This smells like a drink right off the bat and as it starts to dry and head into the mid-stage, the coconut takes on a milky, creamy quality while losing the pineapple that was in the opening but retains its drinkable scent. There’s no mistaking the tropical nature of this fragrance as it stays well away from that common and heartbreaking sour coconut note that a lot of fragrances try to pass off as coconut. This is a rich, clean, crisp coconut that’s the embodiment of what a coconut scent should be like. It’s miles ahead of any other coconut scent I’ve tried and as a coconut lover, I’m just delighted. The relative simplicity of this fragrance doesn’t bother me much because it does what it needs to do so very well. The dry down gets a bit more vanilla-like with the coconut fading into a simple creamy vanilla scent.

Extra: Susanne Lang is a perfumer with a flagship store based in Toronto, Canada. There is a retailer that carries her products close to where I live. A rarity that I’m more than happy to accept. She offers bespoke fragrances and ready to wear scents. Vanilla Coconut is a member of her ready to wear scent line.

Design: Vanilla Coconut is bottled in a square glass bottle with a nice metal cap to protect the sprayer.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Vanilla, coconut, pineapple, fig leaf, ginger.

You get only 30ml of  this stuff in a bottle but a lot of people underestimate just how long a 30ml bottle of perfume lasts. If you do use it every day you might have a hard time stretching the bottle for a year. If you spray it once in a while as you work on other fragrances too, a 30ml bottle will last for years–in terms of quantity anyway.

Reviewed in This Post: Vanilla Coconut, 2005, Eau de Parfum.


Bath & Body Works Warm Vanilla Sugar

Warm Vanilla Sugar is one of the lead selling fragrances from Bath & Body Works. This, along with Japanese Cherry Blossom, aretwo of the most predominant fragrances I smell on younger women. It’s easy to wear, it’s affordable and it’s a pleasant enough foody vanilla fragrance. Warm Vanilla Sugar

In Bottle: Someone loaded this up with a mountain of sugar and vanilla because that is all I can smell. It’s a big dollop of that, now very familiar to me, faux vanilla scent.

Applied: Extremely sweet, almost cloyingly so, upon application as the very delicate floral notes in this evaporate almost immediately. What I get with the rest of the scent is a hugely predominant sweet vanilla that just won’t quit. If you have smelled a vanilla based fragrance, you’ll have smelled the vanilla in Warm Vanilla Sugar. It is the same sweet, foody, vanilla that you’ve likely experienced before. It’s reminiscent of a lot of vanilla based scents that I can recognize in Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab vanillas and Comptoir sud Pacifique vanillas. It’s the same vanillas that tend to have that slightly plastic feel to it. Warm Vanilla Sugar, nevertheless, is a great little gourmand with a nice tasty edge to it. Like you’re drinking vanilla milk and smelling a puffy vanilla pastry. This is yummy smelling stuff and let’s face it, you don’t wear Warm Vanilla Sugar to get several layers of complexity in the ingredients. This goes on smelling like vanilla milk, it arrives mid-stage with vanilla milk, and it’ll dry down with vanilla milk and a bit of clean dry musk to keep things a little interesting.

Extra: This stuff smells great on the right person so don’t take my aversion to it the wrong way. It’s a really great baked vanilla goods fragrance to it and is one of the nicest, most pleasant and versatile gourmands I’ve smelled.

Design: Warm Vanilla Sugar is bottled in a similar way as other Bath and Body Works eau de toilettes. A nice, classic looking glass bottle with the fragrance’s name on the glass and a plastic cap to protect the sprayer. Nothing too fancy. It just plain old works.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Florals, vanilla absolute, basmati rice, coconut, heliotrope, musk, veltol, sandalwood.

You might be wondering to yourself what in the world ‘veltol’ is. It’s a food additive meant to give things a freshly baked scent. So in this case, if you think you’re smelling a vanilla pastry, that’s the vanilla absolute mixed with the veltol talking.

Reviewed in This Post: Warm Vanilla Sugar, 2010, Eau de Toilette.


Aquolina Pink Sugar

Pink Sugar is as simple as its name. It’s a sweet fragrance made for younger perfume consumers that’s not ashamed of admitting that it’s just a candy-like confection for people who like to smell sweet. And that’s about it. I can respect that. Pink Sugar

In Bottle: Sugar, caramel, and strawberry. Very reminiscent of Miss Dior Cherie but much more tolerable due to the lack of patchouli and the toning down of the strawberry note. This smells like the pink cotton candy you buy at carnivals and little strawberry hard candies.

Applied: Dominating the opener is the cotton candy and strawberry hard candies. If Pink Sugar were a food–it’d be aptly named. As the scent ages, it stays the same but for a caramel note coming up. The caramel note has been toasted a bit too much, smelling burnt. I have a suspicion there’s really only one caramel note shared between this fragrance, Miss Dior Cherie and Flowerbomb and it’s Burnt Caramel #2990. A pox on you, Burnt Caramel #2990! I’m convinced that due to this mysterious caramel note that these three fragrances are related in some smelly conspiracy. But they aren’t the same, Pink Sugar lacks the extreme sweetness and harshness of the patchouli and strawberry. The burnt caramel in Pink Sugar is more muted than in Flowerbomb. Pink Sugar has a not bad licorice note that makes brief appearances in the mid-stage. When Pink Sugar dries down, it’s a bit of vanilla and slap of clean woodsiness and then it’s gone.

Extra: Pink Sugar is consistently one of the most popular and well-loved fragrances among its target audience. If you were ever wondering what young people like these days, Pink Sugar is probably a good guess.

Design: Pink Sugar is bottled in a tall glass cylinder with pink crisscrossing lines on the glass. The presentation itself makes me think of cake. The lettering is playful, a bit messy for my tastes, but I’m not the target audience for the fragrance or–I assume–the design of the bottle.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Bergamot, sicilian orange, raspberry, fig leaves, lily of the valley, licorice, strawberry, red fruit, cotton candy, vanilla, caramel, musk, wood, powder.

From a choice of Miss Dior Cherie, Pink Sugar, or Flowerbomb, I will have to give props to Pink Sugar. It’s the most wearable, the least cloying and at least it’s upfront about what it is.

Reviewed in This Post: Pink Sugar, 2008, Eau de Parfum.


Victoria’s Secret Appletini

Appletini is a part of Victoria’s Secret Double Body Mist Beauty Rush line. The product itself is a fun little thing with a layer of color and scent resting over a layer of moisturizing oil. You use it by shaking it up, combining the separated components and spray it on yourself. Appletini

In Bottle: Appletini smells like apple Jolly Ranchers. Remember those hard candies that taste like fake fruit flavoring? The green one in those candies is Appletini’s very close cousin.

Applied: Straight up apple candy with an added jolt of sugar. Appletini is simple and painfully sweet. There’s nothing else to this fragrance but a huge apple Jolly Rancher scent and probably some sugar added in just so you get the full effect but the big, lush, brick of candy. Unlike Plumdrop, I find Appletini to be a far simpler construction with very little in the way of complexity. It is what it is and it won’t ever be anything more. I get tired of straight up fruits. As I smell more and more things, I find the fruity florals to still be pleasant–when they’re done right–while the straight up fruit scents outlive their novelty and I move on. Appletini is one of those straight up fruits that’s outlived its novelty to me.

Extra: Appletini is a perfectly fine fragrance, for sure, if you like scents in the same skein as DKNY Be Delicious or Nina Ricci Nina. But in the case of those two perfumes, they had other notes propping up the apple. Appletini smells like one note and if you don’t like that one note enough then you probably don’t want to go for this. Otherwise, this is great for people who want to smell like apple candy.

Design: Appletini and Plumdrop are bottled and packaged the same way except for the color of the liquid. Appletini has a vibrant green color. You get a sturdy plastic spray bottle with a metal sprayer and a plastic cap to protect the sprayer. Not a glass perfume bottle but it is a very nice and very competent presentation for what is, essentially, a body mist. One thing to note is that, unlike most other body mists, the Beauty Rush Double Body Mists line have their sprayer nozzles factory sealed onto the bottles so you cannot remove the sprayer (very easily anyway) and reuse the bottle when the fragrance is all done.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Green apple, sugar.

I find myself able to tolerate this fragrance but I don’t like it much. It’s just too simple for my tastes. Each full size Beauty Rush Double Body mist has approximately 250ml.

Reviewed in This Post: Appletini, 2009, Oil and Body Mist.


Victoria’s Secret Plumdrop

When people ask me to name my top three favorite fragrances at the moment, I tell them this: #1. Spirituese Double Vanille. #2. Plumdrop. #3 Chanel Allure.  Which then prompts them to say, “What was that about number two?” I love Plumdrop by Victoria’s Secret. It’s a competent, wearable, likable, well-done fragrance and I am not afraid to admit it. Plumdrop

In Bottle: Creamy, soft fruit. Fairly non-descript on the fruit part. It’s like a vanilla bean milkshake with a heap of whipping cream a sprinkle of icing sugar, mixed with plums, a little coconut and topped with jasmine.

Applied: The linearity of this fragrance makes it hard to really review its fragrance life as it pretty much has one smell that it sticks to and does fairly well. So is it a top note, middle note, or base note? I don’t know, guys. I don’t think it matters. It has one smell. Pretty much what you smell in the bottle is what you get on skin. On paper, it’s a fruity floral with an added dollop of creaminess. That creamy, milky feel this fragrance has is what sets it apart from the generic fruity floral that tends to focus on the sweetness. Plumdrop is sweet, but it’s main priority is smelling like a really good milkshake. Plumdrop has a fairly decent life on skin as its creamy fruity floral scent is a nice captured essence for a spring day, or even a hot summer day. It’s lovely, girly, highly versatile. It would be hard to offend someone smelling like this because you just end up smelling like a fruity milkshake anyway. And sometimes, you just want to smell like a fruity milkshake without having to think about it. Fun, easy, and a little bit different.

Extra: Plumdrop is a member of Victoria’s Secret’s Beauty Rush line. To call it a perfume wouldn’t be exactly right. It’s not even really a body mist. It’s one of these new fangled innovations called moisturizing body mists. Victoria’s Secret calls Plumdrop and its concept similar brothers and sisters, Double Body Mists. You have an oil layer and a watery colored layer that contains the fragrance. Before using, you shake the stuff up to combine the two layers and spray it on for moisturizing properties and scent. I am a lazy person and I can get behind this 2 in 1 routine.

Design: Plumdrop comes in a plastic cylinder with two layers of product; an oil layer and a colored water and fragrance layer. Plumdrop is a light, pastel purple color. Prior to use you should shake this up because as experiments have revealed, the oil only layer does not smell good. The sprayer nozzle is a nice metallic material with a plastic cap. For a body mist/spray moisturizer the packaging is pretty good.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Plum, milk, sugar, honeysuckle, violets, vanilla.

Those notes are approximations only. I was actually wrestling with whether or not this counts as a fragrance, and for a fragrance review blog. But hey, it’s got a scent, so why not?

Reviewed in This Post: Plumdrop, 2009, Oil and Body Mist.


Thierry Mugler Angel

Angel is one of the most widely imitated fragrances. It’s introduction in 1992 changed the fragrance world. It became incredibly popular and still remains popular as people still rock this scent up and down high school hallways, fashionable city streets, and unfortunately for the rest of us , on the elevator. Angel

In Bottle: Beware of your first smell of Angel as your first impression will likely be something to the tune of, “Oh God! What is that horrible smell? Get it out of my nose! Aaaah!” Your second smell will yield an intriguing, jarring mix of bitter, spicy patchouli blended with rich, warm chocolate and some fruit.

Applied: Angel starts off with a typical citrus burst that disappears to lead you in on a roller coaster ride of gourmand thrill. The patchouli wastes no time on me to get straight to the point. It comes out of the gates, announces itself and drags the rest of the fragrance in. What I get is a mish-mash of sugary fruit. The chocolate is quick to come up with its creamy, warmth. The candy-like sweetness of the caramel mixed with vanilla is always present in Angel. Like a syrup cloud hovering over an outdoor chocolate fashion show. What? Too weird? How about the idea of dipping your chocolate bar in caramel and vanilla extract and then dropping it on the lawn? The dry down doesn’t come in until hours later when you’ve had just about all you can of the chocolate and sweetness. Where upon drying down you get more chocolate, sugar and patchouli. Hope you liked the ride.

Extra: Angel is strong. Mercilessly strong that its introduction in the 1990s could have been pushed up a few years into the Powerhouse Era and people would still say it’s strong. Go easy on this one, folks. You will be smelled from a mile away. And if you do happen to put too much on, avoid crowded elevators.

Design: Angel comes in a variety of bottles, concentrations, flankers and other products. The most iconic and instantly recognizable is the slanted star bottle design shown above. If you don’t like that one, there are many more. Most Angel bottles have the added bonus of being refillable too.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Bergamot, patchouli, chocolate, vanilla, caramel, red berries.

I wrestled with whether or not this fragrance could be considered a classic. Considering its iconic rise to fame and its still firm grip on popularity, I decided to just hand the label over. Not to mention the fact that it’s so instantly recognizable to so many people.

Reviewed in This Post: Angel, 2008, Eau de Parfum.