Britney Spears Fantasy

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Watch a few perfume collection videos on YouTube and you’ll start to notice a pattern. Everyone owns relatively the same perfumes and one of the most commonly mentioned is Britney Spears Fantasy. That fragrance in the crazy rhinestone studded ball. So of course I went out to smell it. A scent this popular practically begs to be sniffed. Fantasy

In Bottle: Pink, sweet and candy-like. There’s a huge jolt of sugar. I’m thinking Couture Couture’s sugar mountain has a very likely adversary vying for first place in the tooth decay competition. This doesn’t mean that Fantasy smells bad. This stuff is sweet, but it’s not so sweet that it approaches the point of no return; cloying sweet.

Applied: Sweet fruits with a tiny bit of tartness on the opening. The tartness gives way to more sweetness as the gourmand notes come in for a jam. I don’t believe I could smell a big cupcake but I did smell vanilla and white chocolate that lends the fragrance a very nice creaminess. This is a pretty and edible smell that went from fruits to sugar and candy very quickly. The dry down takes a while as longevity in Fantasy was quite good for me. I get clean, sugary musk on dry down.

Extra: The advertising for this fragrance claims that it’s supposed to signify Britney’s more grown up personality. I don’t know what in Fantasy is supposed to represent that but I don’t have any of it. This stuff is extremely popular with young girls and younger women. I wouldn’t call it anything remotely approaching grown up. But it’s not a bad fragrance. It’s fun, it’s girly, it’s young. Just don’t try to take it seriously.

Design: The design, for me, is repellent. It looks like a number of things but none of those things are particularly attractive to me. I suppose the shape is sort of reminiscent of a fortune teller’s ball and the crystals…eh, I don’t know. Everything from the shape, to the crystals, to the detailing around the cap just isn’t doing it for me. Not me with my clean lines and ultra-minimalism. Interestingly enough the belted design around the sprayer featured in the picture above with the crystals is no longer being produced.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Red lychee, golden quince, kiwi, cupcake accord, jasmine petals, white chocolate orchid, creamy musk, enchanted orris root, and sensual woods.

Some of the verbs used for those notes are just silly. But it’s also fun and playful. I can’t take Fantasy seriously. This isn’t the kind of fragrance you wear to a board meeting. However, you could wear Fantasy to the beach, to a hoe down, or a cupcake festival. Basically, if it’s not whimsical and fun it’s not a place Fantasy would fit in.

Reviewed in This Post: Britney Spears, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

BPAL Miskatonic University

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Coffee has become something of an obsession of mine. Not in the drinking of it, but rather the smelling of coffee. That rich, dark, woody fragrance of coffee is the hallmark of a good morning to me. I suppose it helps that I’m not a coffee drinker so all the terrible mornings don’t sour this scent. But in my search for the perfect coffee fragrance, I’ve discovered one thing; The note does not last. Miskatonic University

In Bottle: Beautiful, creamy, rich coffee with a french vanilla twist in it. I smell a slightly fungal scent in this too that can probably be attributed to Black Phoenix’s dust note. It smells a bit like mushroom to me, but in the bottle, the mushroom is a good pairing to the coffee, making it just a little more complex than, “Here you go, your coffee smell” plunked down onto the table without ceremony.

Applied: Coffee, dense and rich and good enough to taste with creaminess and sweetness mixed into one. Miskatonic University is like a really good cup of coffee–for about thirty seconds. The coffee note in this fragrance is really fleeting on me and disappears in less than a minute. I can try layering all I want but it is not going to stick around on my skin. When that elusive coffee does evaporate it takes the vanilla and the sweetness with it. Remember that mushroom note? After  the coffee departs, the mushrooms absolutely bloom. Actually, I don’t think it’s mushroom I’m smelling but the leftover cream and the dust note mixing together to form this really bizarre tangent with the woodsy notes in Miskatonic University getting a scent that I can only attribute to mushrooms on wood polish. It’s not particularly interesting or nice. Well–that’s not true, it is interesting.

Extra: Miskatonic University is a fictional post-secondary institute located in Arkham which appears in the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

Design: Miskatonic University is bottled much in the same way all other Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfumes are. It has a different label to denote its place in the Picnic in Arkham series.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Irish coffee, dust, oak.

As much as I wanted to find that one true coffee scent in this fragrance, Miskatonic University and I were just not meant to be. The coffee note is so fleeting, and I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. It is a top note for me. I just hoped it’d be one of those top notes that defied all logic and reason and hung around a bit.

Reviewed in This Post: Miskatonic University, 2009, 5ml Bottle.

Annick Goutal Petite Cherie

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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.

Juicy Couture Couture Couture

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No, you didn’t read that title wrong. The fragrance name is Couture Couture, making the entire thing seem like an excessive exercise to test your ability to avoid spitting all over yourself and the poor sap standing in front of you. Couture Couture is the young 2009 release from Juicy Couture followings its two wildly popular fragrances, Juice Couture and Viva la Juicy. Couture Couture

In Bottle: Sweet, sweet, fruit. One only has to take a sniff of this to realize that there’s at least a few degrees of sweetness in there. That something sweet is being layered over something sweet, and those two sweet things are being coated in a thick layer of sweetness and on top they’ve drizzled some fruit, added a drop of vanilla and called it a day.

Applied: Sweetness. But that’s okay, it’s not done yet. Couture Couture still has a ways to go and evolve before the day is done. The fruits start to come up as well as the vanilla, which I had thought would remain behind everything else for a while longer but it’s a more eager vanilla, I guess. I’m smelling grape punch, the kind that you buy frozen and then mix with water at home.  There’s florals in there though. Don’t think Couture Couture is a fruit and sugar only gal. The sweet honeysuckle note makes an appearance here along with its jasmine friend, hovering around the miasma of sugared fruit. The dry down of Couture Couture is a bit friendlier to me. The rest of the fragrance is so sugary sweet that when the dry down arrives, I get a hint of light sandalwood and realize that things are going to be okay. But that’s after the hours of tumbling down fruit and sugar mountain.

Extra: Juicy Couture, the company, started in 1994. Their velour tracksuits were all the rage when I was younger. I never did catch onto Juicy Couture’s line of clothing though.

Design: Nice interesting bottle design. Not rectangular, but also not in a bizarre shape that takes up too much horizontal room. The cap has an interesting topper on it, giving the bottle an exotic look. There’s a pink ribbon tied to the bottle to give it an extra cute little detail. The topper kind of reminds me of the Betsey Johnson bottle–except done a thousand times better.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Mandarin, grape, plum, orange blossom, jasmine, honeysuckle, vanilla, sandalwood, amber.

In a way Couture Couture reminds me of a mix of original Juicy Couture and Viva la Juicy with a huge smack of sugar thrown in. But that familiarity with the other two Juicy fragrances might also have something to do with the fact that they’re all fruity florals, come from the same company, and are made to appeal to the same kind of people.

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

Miss Dior Cherie

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Sometimes, you come across a fragrance that just isn’t to your taste. Miss Dior Cherie is not to my taste. While I do tend toward the fruity and the sweet, Miss Dior Cherie is like a candy strawberry syrup attack that goes straight up my nose and into my head. Congratulations are in order, I suppose. No. 5, Shalimar, Brut, and all the powerhouses of the 80s combined could not induce a perfume headache. Today, Miss Dior Cherie took that prize home. Miss Dior Cherie

In Bottle: Sweet, sweet, synthetic strawberry layered over a lovely slather of caramel. There’s so much sweetness and sugary fruitiness in this that it’s crossed the line between edible, wearable sweet and cloying sweet. I tend to think of myself as having a high tolerance to sweetness. After all, I didn’t mind the tooth numbing sweetness in Love of Pink by Lacoste or Pink Sugar by Aquolina. But that combination of sugar, candy and strawberry in Miss Dior Cherie takes it a notch above just sweet into shrill sweet. So sweet you can feel your blood turn to high-fructose corn syrup.

Applied: Initial minor burst of sweet citrus aside, Miss Dior Cherie wastes no time letting you know what she’s up to. She’s going to turn you into a walking strawberry lollipop. I immediately got hit with the sugar and caramel and whatever else is sweetening this so much. It’s cloying upon first application and several hours later, it’s still cloying and I can still smell it. It being the initial notes upon application. I was really surprised to find this fragrance hadn’t moved or evolved on me at all. If nothing else, Miss Dior Cherie deserves applause for longevity. The strawberry candy fragrance is a strong one. The projection isn’t bad. It’s neither far nor short. It’s just right. I just don’t think this one works for me. And as I wait a few more hours, it starts to turn for the cleaner, melting down from strawberry lollipop to jaded strawberry and sweet, fresh florals. I can only assume that slight and freshness is the patchouli trying its hardest to come up. The dry down is rather pleasant, though surviving that powerful longevity to get to the clean last act is too much of a challenge. Really, the initial burst and the workings of those middle notes just reminds me of cough syrup. Sorry, Miss Dior Cherie.

Extra: Dior’s had a lot of hits in the past. The original Miss Dior, Diorella, Poison. All of them to be respected. And a lot of people really love Miss Dior Cherie. I can see why. It’s a very sweet, very fun, extremely girly fragrance. But to me, it overdid the sweetness and the strawberry note was too candy-like. The fragrance itself didn’t dry down fast enough for my tastes and the dry down is really where I start to appreciate Miss Dior Cherie. Otherwise, she sits right at the start with that syrupy strawberry and remains one-dimensional for hours. Overall, Dior has had a lot of hits, a lot of great fragrances and Miss Dior Cherie, while popular and peppy and cute, is probably not one of my favorites.

Design: Lovely and simple bottle glass bottle with a metal bow attached to further add to the youth of this fragrance. It is overall, very nice, youthful, and trendy packaging. The sprayer works fine, the packaging is adorable. And the French commercial is one of the most fun-loving, uplifting perfume commercials I’ve seen. A very recognizable, in branding, fragrance.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Gourmand

Notes: Green tangerine, strawberry leaves, violet, pink jasmine, caramel popcorn, strawberry sorbet, patchouli, musk.

I admit, I’m probably not the target group for this. It seems like Miss Dior Cherie was made for women around my age or younger but they kind of missed me I suppose. I wanted to love this fragrance. Really, I did. But I think I’d like a more understated fragrance. Nevertheless, Miss Dior Cherie would be a wonderful hit for a teenager or younger woman who absolutely loves sweet scents.

Reviewed in This Post: Miss Dior Cherie, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Tommy Hilfiger Tommy Girl

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“All-American girl” is pretty much out an of reach image for me but it doesn’t mean I can’t smell like one. Tommy Girl is marketed as a fragrance all about the modern American girl with her clean, trendy, urban, and wholesome persona. I don’t know if those are the words I’d use to describe Tommy Girl but then, I’ve never really felt like an All-American girl–being a Canadian, you see. Tommy Girl

In Bottle: Sweet and tart, watery blackcurrant with bundle of fresh grassiness and citrus backing it up. It’s layered with a mild dusting of florals and gives off this prancing in the fields in a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt, kind of feel. Though that feel can be attributed to the marketing.

Applied: Burst of very tart, very strong blackcurrant. I can’t really get past that battle between sweet and tart here while the blackcurrant is practically jumping up and down shouting, “Look at me! Smell me!” I get where Luca Turin was going with this, saying it smelled like tea. That watery quality from the blackcurrant is helping and that mixture of sweet and citrus-y sour really does it. As the dry down starts, the tartness goes away and the sweetness chills out a bit letting those florals in. Blackcurrant is still working its magic as the fragrance heads for the fresh and clean direction. Mid-stage, Tommy Girl is a sweetly presented flowers on soft fruit affair. Further dry down reveals a lovely smelling base of clean, fresh, sandalwood, and sweet flowers.

Extra: Tommy Girl was released in 1996. Back then, Tommy Hilfiger was all the rage in school. The cool kids wore the shirts and the jeans. I never really “got” the Hilfiger craze until I grew up and did a little reading.

Design: Tommy Girl is presented in a triangular prism shaped glass bottle with a metallic cap bearing the Tommy Hilfiger brand on the top. The sprayer works just fine and I was pleased that the bottle shape was so easy to hold in my hand. The design itself is sort of skirting that weird area between so simple it’s aesthetically pleasing and so simple it’s boring. But the fact that it feels so comfortable to hold nets it a lot of points in this arena.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Camellia Flowers, apple blossoms, blackcurrant, mandarin, tangerine, grapefruit, citrus, green notes, honeysuckle, butterfly violets, desert jasmin, cherokee rose, magnolia petals, dakota lilies, cedar, sandalwood, wild heather.

Tommy Girl has an interesting mixed background. While the fragrance itself is billed as an American mixture, the concoction was brewed up in Europe. Had it not been marketed so well, Tommy Girl could be any number of modern fragrance releases. Just goes to show you the power of marketing.

Reviewed in This Post: Tommy Girl, 2010, Eau de Cologne.

Fruits & Passion Orchid

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Evidently, many of Fruits & Passion’s eau de toilettes remain largely undiscovered. I have a hard time finding a complete database of their outputted fragrances though perhaps some of my difficulty has to do more with ignorance rather than Fruits & Passion’s tiny footprint in fragrance territory. Orchid is a sweet, floral, ambery fragrance, simple and fruit and just plain fun. Orchid

In Bottle: Sweet florals. The florals are a bit drowned by the amber in this fragrance and the perfume itself reminds me of L’Instant de Guerlain. Notice that this is now two fragrances that remind of L’Instant. Orchid’s amber note is a strong one and the blending to get the florals and ambers to work together favored the latter and this treatment shows in the bottle and will probably be the same story on skin.

Applied: Big and floral with the flowers disappearing on me sooner than I’d like. This is less orchid and more amber and something is trying to convince me that I’m smelling peach. A ripe, pink, very sweet peach. This fragrance ages and drys down very fast as its mid stage is characterized by that fading peach note while the amber gets a bit stronger. The dry down at the end has amber and a slight powdery note hanging out until all that’s left is the amber base.

Extra: Orchid belongs in a floral eau de toilette collection from Fruits & Passion. There are two other fragrances in the collection as Fruits & Passion tend to like going in threes. The other two are Rose, which smells very much of roses and Jasmine which I have not yet smelled.

Design: Orchid comes in a tall, thin rectangular bottle with designs embossed onto the glass. There is a cap for this fragrance. A matching plastic rectangular shape that I found nearly impossible to take off. As a result my bottle of Orchid is lacking a cap. The sprayer can be a little flaky, sometimes distributing so much scent that it drools but I have only had that happen a handful of times. By and large the bottle and sprayer work fine. The cap for my bottle was just awful though and I have opted not to use it.

Fragrance Family: Soft Oriental

Notes: Orchid, amber, musk.

Orchid is a hard fragrance to keep on the skin. Amber, to me, is one of those ethereal meant to blend into the background notes. That’s partly the reason why it’s used so often as a base because its purpose is enhance the natural scent of the skin. Now, I hesitate to even lump this fragrance in with the orientals. I mean, it’s amber dominant but that’s pretty much all.

Reviewed in This Post: Orchid, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Guerlain Champs-Elysees 1996

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Champs-Elysees 1996, not to be confused with the classic Parfum des Champs-Elysees from 1904, is one of Guerlain’s more controversial moderns. There are people who love it and people who loathe it. I can’t help but think that those who loathe it, hate it because they expected 1904’s Champs-Elysees to make a comeback and instead got something completely different. Champs-Elysees

In Bottle: Sharp, sweet mimosa. Faintly powdery with a white floral background. I don’t mean background as in base note. I mean background as in, imagine this fragrance is a stage. The actors are the sweet mimosa. The background is this thick, lush wall of white florals. That is Champs-Elysees, clean, sweet, sharp, powdery and utterly, unapologetically floral.

Applied: Mimosa is a major player but it’s battling it out for that lush curtain of florals. I get a bit more almond on application than off. Champs-Elysees reminds me of soap. It’s clean and bright and sweet like a lush bar of luxury soap and a bathtub filled with flowers floating on the surface. This is a white, light, delicate wall of florals fifty feet high. There is little change on dry down for me. The one thing I noticed was an increase in that powdery feel.

Extra: Word on the street has it that Champs-Elysees 1904’s notes may have looked something like this: Bergamot, violet, rose, iris, leather, oakmoss, benzoin, wood. And knowing Guerlain, it was probably laid over that iconic base. I can almost smell it in my mind but that is a pretty silly notion. The original was bottled in a beautiful turtle-like design. It’s really too bad the 1904 version and its re-issue is super rare and also super expensive (almost $14,000!). I want to have a sniff.

Design: Champs-Elysees 1996 is bottled in a pleasing, rather geometric bottle. What takes away from it most is the square wedge at the base of the bottle used to keep it standing. Otherwise, it is an interesting shape and would have been better had its physics allowed it to stand without that jerry-rigged bit at the bottom. Nevertheless, the bottle is easy to hold. The cap is plastic. The sprayer works just fine.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Mimosa, almond blossom, rose, buddleia, hibiscus, almond wood.

Poor Champs-Elysees 1996. I feel bad for it. It’s truly a very nice, modern, powdery white floral with sweet notes making it ultra-feminine. I wish more people liked it but I certainly understand the frustration. I do wonder if Champs-Elysees went by any other name it would catch less flack. It wouldn’t please those who currently dislike it but at least it wouldn’t disappoint in addition to being displeasing.

Reviewed in This Post: Champs-Elysees, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Chanel Allure

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Chanel has a fairly consistent fragrance sector as many of their creations have become classics, or just have that classic and sophisticated smell. Talk to anyone with some sense of the perfume industry and ask them if they know about Chanel No.5. Their eyes should light up. If they don’t, it’s a sad day in fragrance history.

Much like most things House Chanel puts out, Allure has that classic and sophisticated feel. It’s a modern fragrance, to be sure, but it also has this sense about it. This unspoken aura that proclaims loudly and proudly that it is a perfume and it is not going anywhere, anytime soon. er1sintf

In Bottle: Slightly powdery, sweet feminine fragrance. I’m thinking of sweet florals, a warm field of flowers set in vanilla with the lingering threads of alcohol. Allure is a modern fragrance, claimed to be built in a special way so the wearer can enjoy a unique experience atypical of other perfumes. But then, so many new perfumes also have that claim. Right now, Allure is a nice strong but welcoming warm vanilla floral. Let’s see how she does applied.

Applied: Immediately I smell the vanilla coming up on the sweetness and the florals. There’s a creamy quality to this that replaces that powder I smelled off-skin. This mixture of warmth and sweetness makes Allure a golden fragrance to my nose.It reminds me of L’Instant de Guerlain in color and sweetness but L’Instant had a distinct amber and honey feel that Allure doesn’t possess. Allure instead is backed by a fine mist of soft florals as it trails off into sweet, creamy vanilla.

Extra: While Chanel has enjoyed success as a major fragrance house. Particularly thanks to the ever present and ever iconic, No.5, it has also garnered some reputation of making “old lady” perfumes. The powdery scent in these might be doing it but I also think it’s in part due to the brand’s reputation. I smell Allure and get nothing but sophisticated and modern. “Old lady”, of course, has different connotations to different people but it’s hard for me to associate Allure to an old woman. Allure is simply a sweet, vanilla floral.

Design: Allure’s bottle design, much like most of Chanel’s other fragrances, is minimalistic but functional and beautiful at the same time. Presented in a tall, clear rectangular bottle, the name of the fragrance is embossed near the top while the fragrance house, other vital information is embossed on the bottom. While the design itself does look similar to that of Burberry Brit, you can literally feel the better quality that was put into Chanel Allure. It’s simple but refined whereas Brit’s bottle just looks like a mishmash of poor design decisions. Yes, I am still harping on Burberry Brit’s bottle. The bottle cap is metal with a ring running its perimeter with CHANEL written on it. Simple but elegant. A great design for those with minimalist tastes.

Fragrance Family: Floral Oriental

Notes: Lily of the valley, magnolia, honeysuckle, citrus, passion fruit, mandarin, jasmine, rose, vanilla.

One of the best things about trying different fragrances is finding out what I like. In L’Instant and Allure, I’ve discovered a love for golden, warm and sweet creamy fragrances. Something that doesn’t quite touch the shores of gourmand but skirts the outer edge.

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

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Dirty

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Dirty, from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is a purposefully ironic interpretation. Dirty, supposedly smells like soap and general cleanliness. Miles away from the gritty undertones of its name, Dirty is a flowery bar of soap sitting on the windowsill wafting in the cool breeze of a manicured garden. Dirty

In Bottle: Something very sweet in this. Sweet and floral this can’t be a single clean linen scent because it also contains what I swear is white floral and sweet herbs. It makes me think of fresh, white sheets blowing in the breeze and an opened window.

Applied: Definitely something sweetly floral in this. It reminds me of Bath and Body Works‘ Sweetpea and Cotton Blossom mixed into one. There’s a great sense of imagery in this fragrance though. I mentioned the clean laundry, the window, how about a little house in the Maritimes with the rolling sea crashing against a cliff edge’s jagged skirt hem? Yeah, that’s it. Dirty starts off with that sweet floral aroma and eventually dries down to subtle soap and clean cotton. It’s like a bath and a change of clothes during midday.

Extra: There’s been some speculation abound about whether or not BPAL uses all natural ingredients or if there’s some synthetics mixed in there. I would suggest you ask the company yourself if this concerns you. As far as my nose goes, BPALs are fun and simple fragrances. If they’re safe to use then whether they’re all natural or synthetic is of no consequence to me.

Design: Presented in an amber bottle and a black twist cap with 5ml of perfume oil.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: Sweet herbs, white florals, cotton.

Dirty has an interesting case study. It delivers everything it needs to. I find myself conjuring up more vivid images in association with natural perfumes than constructed ones. That isn’t to say I don’t love the constructed ones or they’re somehow less effective. What tends to happen is natural perfumes make me think of scenes, landscapes, sounds and events. Constructed perfumes make me think of people and the cultures that they reflect.

Reviewed in This Post: Dirty, 2009, 5ml Bottle.