Escada Tropical Punch

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

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

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

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

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

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

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

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

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

Chanel Chance Eau Tendre

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The Chanel Chance lineage of fragrances has always been marketed toward younger woman. And seems that with each flanker the age group gets bumped down even more. Chance was a good, easily worn fragrance for women in and around their thirties and younger. Eau Fraîche knocked it down to mid-twenties and younger. Now There’s Eau Tendre. Eau Tendre

In Bottle: Marc Jacobs Daisy. The resemblance has been noted before and I will confirm them. This smells like Daisy. The wet, green grassy, lightly floral top notes of Daisy.

Applied: Daisy’s still there, and I can’t get over this barrier of how much it smells like Daisy. It’s like I’ve sprayed Daisy on myself instead of a Chanel fragrance. I’m waiting this one out though, because Daisy does lose that wet green and grassy scent when it progresses into its mid-stage and I want to see if Eau Tendre does as well. So far, Eau Tendre hangs onto its top notes a little better and longer and I do like Daisy’s top notes but I want this smell in my bottle with the rubber flowers not in Chanel. As Eau Tendre dries down the mid-stage has moved on from its Daisy-like personality and has developed a rose and jasmine with a bite of citrus and a woody note sandwiching the flowers. The mid-stage is probably the least remarkable part of Eau Tendre. It smells rather generic and pedestrian and kind of dull. Normally, I’d just say this smells nice and young but Chanel’s built a reputation on a solid base of very respectable fragrances that Eau Tendre hits a sore spot because it’s like a trip in an otherwise rather smooth road. This doesn’t smell like a Chanel. While I could see the appeal of the original Chance, that was a well composed fragrance that had a lot of class. Eau Tendre smells like most other recent releases with none of the familiar Chanel soul in place. The dry down is not that much better as the cedarwood in this amps up and the florals grow a bit quieter. The one thing I can say for Eau Tendre is that like many Chanel fragrances it has good sillage and decent projection. I just don’t think it’s very creative or very reflective what Chanel fragrances have been for the past century.

Extra: Chanel Chance is a very popular fragrance line that targets younger women and tries to introduce them to the Chanel line of perfumes. It has, so far, two flankers. The first is Eau Fraîche and the second is Eau Tendre.

Design: Eau Tendre is bottled like its Chance sisters. Held in a round glass bottle with a square cap the juice inside is a light, very girly pink. The glass has a nice, light weight to it. The presentation is clean and fits well with other Chanel fragrance bottles. I do think of all the fragrance houses, Chanel’s one of the better ones in terms of packaging.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Grapefruit, hyacinth, jasmine, iris, white musk, amber, cedarwood.

Unremarkable as this is, I don’t doubt that it will sell well because it’s a really good reflection of where fragrance trends are headed now. So if you’re young and you want to own a Chanel perfume but you think many of them are too old or too sophisticated then Chance Eau Tendre deserves a sniff. Don’t let my disappointment color you away from this fragrance. It’s a Chanel and it’s well-done for what it is.

Reviewed in This Post: Chance Eau Tendre, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Burberry The Beat

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I’ve been wearing The Beat almost every day for about four months now and I think it’s time I finally gave her a review. She’s pretty, though more coveted on the shelves than on my skin because she’s a very typical scent in that ‘smells so fresh and clean’ type of way.  What I mean is, I wanted The Beat–badly–when I saw it on the shelves. It smelled excellent whenever I tried it. But now that I own 50ml of the stuff, it’s a forgettable scent in how ordinary it is. The Beat

In Bottle: Pink pepper with a mandarin kick and a cedar underbelly. The Beat uses a light handed approach to cedar so that I can smell it but it isn’t overpowering like other fragrances that tend to blast the cedar out like some sort of Deus ex Machina of the perfume world.

Applied: Pink pepper, sharp citrus and cedar immediately on application with the citrus sticking it out for a respectable amount before fading as it lets the cedar settle in close to the skin. This cedar that sticks to my skin plays a major part in not  overwhelming me with the cedar-y goodness. As The Beat ages, it grows softer, a little more floral with a brush of tea and a gentle smudge of iris layered over bluebell. It makes The Beat smells very fresh, very spring and summer with how bright and cute and vibrant it is. The dry down is a typical affair, with that close to your skin cedar blended in with an earthy cleaned-up vetiver.

Extra: The Beat is perhaps most well-known for having fashion’s “It Girl”, Agyness Deyn, be the face for the fragrance. It’s supposed to evoke an edgy, hip, alternative young audience. They got one out of three right so that’s okay. There’s nothing edgy or alternative about The Beat. It’s very pedestrian. Lovely, well-behaved, but ultimately pedestrian.

Design: The Beat’s bottle design does much better than Burberry Brit (that tartan brick of a thing I can’t seem to stop complaining about). The bottle is a nice clear glass with the Burberry tartan. The juice inside is a very lightly toned pink and the cap is a pretty metal affair with a dangly bit hanging off the side of the bottle with a metal plate that reads “Burberry” on it. Cute, lovely little bottle. Definitely not something I’d be tempted to build a wall  out of like Burberry’s other design.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Bergamot, mandarin, pink pepper, Ceylon tea, cardamom, bluebell, iris, white musk, vetiver, cedar.

Funny that the tea came through so lightly in this fragrance because if it had been a little heavier, I would have been a little more in love with The Beat. But as it is, it’s a good “standing in the elevator” fragrance with a well-behaved cedar note.

Reviewed in This Post: The Beat, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Kenzo Flower

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Kenzo Flower is the fragrance that spawned many flankers. Though it’s not quite at the excess of Shalimar, it can be a bit difficult to navigate the Flower maze. This review focuses on the original Flower, inspired by the concept of what a poppy would smell like and released in 2000. Flower

In Bottle: Bright and green. Smells fresh with a predominant sweet rose and violet fragrance. This smells a bit dewy and definitely smells clean.

Applied: The bright green of Flower is a fleeting little thing. Upon initial spray, you still detect it. You can even still smell it for a few seconds on the skin but as soon as it starts to dry, Flower loses that brightness and greenness and takes on a more floral and powdery scent. It still smells clean but it’s less of a screaming fresh scent now. It’s more of a classy, powdery, rose affair with a nice sprinkling of sweet violets to further write it into the floral powder category. Flower smells very familiar to me because of the predominant powder and violet. After mulling it over a bit, I realized why it smelled familiar and cracked open my tin of Guerlain’s Meteorites (the makeup not the fragrance). Instant familiarity. These two smell similar due to the powder and violets. They are not the same scent and Flower is obviously much more complex. As it dries down the powder takes the rose with it while the violets hang about and stay sweet until completely disappearing.

Extra: Kenzo is a fragrance, skincare and fashion brand founded by Kenzo Takada. It was bought out by LVMH in 1993.

Design: Flower’s bottle has a modern and rather recognizable look. It’s tall, curved, clear glass with a flower drawn on it. The stem of the flower runs up the middle of the bottle and the flower is drawn onto the cap. There are three different versions for the three sizes. Each of them represent the different life stages of the poppy. Very cute, rather chic, lovely bottle. A bit difficult to hold but I can sacrifice function for something that looks this good.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Bulgarian rose, wild hawthorn, cassie, violets, opopanax, white musk, hedione, cyclosal.

You may have seen hedione mentioned a couple of times. It is a fragrance enhancing component, usually coupled with jasmine but can be used with a wide variety of other notes too.

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

The Body Shop White Musk

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White Musk, if you were around in the 80s and early 90s, was one of the predominant forces in the fragrance world. Similar to what Bath and Body Works fragrances are doing now with their young, fun, simple and affordable appeal, White Musk was doing in 1981 when it released. White Musk TBS

In Bottle: Clean and scrubbed. This is an aldehyde and floral mixture that evokes the big hair of the 80s. It’s soapy, it’s sharp and it’s effective in its simplicity.

Applied: Don’t expect anything from white musk. It is what it is–a white musk evoking fragrance. I can sit here and stretch out on how it smells predominantly like a well trained soap that isn’t too soapy or too sharp and that it has some companion white florals that add a touch of girliness to it. But at the end of the day, this is just plain old White Musk. A very familiar fragrance that used to be much more popular than it is now. I can only assume people have gotten tired of smelling like this stuff. But White Musk has its place in the world as a simple, very well-blended, well-done fragrance that’s still appropriate to wear and wear anywhere. The opener is as a soapy and sharp aldehyde floral. The mid-stage is much of the same business with the soapiness calming down, giving those sharp corners a rounded feel. The dry down is a light faded scrubbed white floral and musk scent.

Extra: Aldehydes are popular components in fragrances like Chanel No.  5. Aldehydes are hard to describe. In general they are clean and sharp. They’re like the sparkle you add to a grin when you want to reinforce perfection.

Design: White musk is bottled in a cute little glass affair with a purple gradient slapped onto the glass. It has a metal cap to protect the sprayer with the fragrance’s name and The Body Shop’s logo on the bottle itself. There’s not a whole lot else to it than that.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Musk, lily, ylang ylang, galbanum, basil, jasmine, rose, iris, vanilla, amber, patchouli, oakmoss, vetiver, peach.

To be honest, I’m tired of White Musk too. I smelled this stuff everywhere when I was younger and once in a while, I’ll still catch a whiff of it. It’s good to know that such a relatively simple-smelling fragrance with a decent price tag is still selling like hot cakes. The Body Shop has several spin-off products with the White Musk scent.

Reviewed in This Post: White Musk, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Balmain Ambre Gris

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I don’t hate ambergris despite how often I make fun of it. I just find a lot of ingredients (or former ingredients seeing as many of them are now synthetics for very good reasons) to be amusing. Who thought up extracting musk to make fragrances? And how did they come to that conclusion anyway? Similarly, the story of the first chunks of ambergris discovery must have been simultaneously awesome and hilarious at the same time.

Er, anyway, Balmain’s Ambre Gris captures the essence of the note and it did it a little too well. wnqwqf45

In Bottle: Sweet with a musky, spicy, woodsy base that goes into the back of my throat and gets caught there. I get golden, warm and cinnamon in this but it’s definitely not gourmand. I don’t want to eat this at all. The musk is distinctly telling me not to and I’m going to oblige. It just smells fascinating.

Applied: Sweet, spicy and powerful. Ambre Gris packs a big punch as it throws itself in all directs around application spot. This stuff is potent and you do not need a whole lot of it to project yourself. The musks in this fragrance and the sweetness are trying really hard to convince me that this is what real-life ambergris sitting on a beach smells like. There is a very, very minor saltiness to this but I had to work for that one. Ambre Gris is golden, warm, and a bit racy. It’ll also last, and last, and last, and just when you’ve outlasted it, you’ll get a whiff or two and think again.

Extra: Ambergris comes from whales. More specifically, it’s a regurgitated waxy, greyish lump of substance mostly used in perfumery after appropriate aging. Most ambergris in fragrances these days are synthetic, in that they’ve had various compounds mixed together to simulate real ambergris due to a wide barrage of ethical, legal, rarity and expense issues.

Design: Presented in a grey tinted glass bottle, Ambre Gris is topped with a golden, ball-like cap. The cap reminds me of a golden inverse golf ball. I’m fairly indifferent from the look of the fragrance itself. It’s easy, functional, the golf ball cap is a pleasant element.

Fragrance Family: Oriental

Notes: Pink pepper, cinnamon, tuberose,i mmortelle, myrrh, smokey woods , benzoin, white musk, ambergris.

Interesting how I couldn’t pick up on the tuberose but now that I know it’s in there, I did get that slick, slightly floral up-your-nose-and-around-the-corner tuberose kick. Or I could just be making it all up.

Reviewed in This Post: Ambre Gris, 2009, Sample vial.