Prada Infusion D’Iris

Posted on by

Infusion D’Iris is a fragrance true to its name as the fragrance strength and longevity are pretty much as good as an infusion’s going to get. This is an incredibly light fragrance with a very sad, very short applied life. No wonder a 200ml of Eau de Parfum exists. Having thought it funny that a bottle (not counting fountains) so massive existed at the time, I have since seen the light. I will no longer laugh at your jug’s worth of fleeting beauty, Infusion D’Iris. Infusion D'Iris

In Bottle: Green with a slightly earthy quality to it. Dark citrus laid over breaths of earthy, woodsiness. There is a very beautiful,very clear floral in this that lands the fragrance in floral territory immediately. I love the play between the freshness and the earthiness here. The latter often used in a denser way.

Applied: There’s a very bitter opener in this that powers through and reserve thoughts you may have had of D’Iris possibly being fruity. Nothing at all fruity about this fragrance as it tells you up front that it means business. The floral is also very quick to come up along with the woods and resins that blend together to make this fragrance sing during the early application period. As Infusion D’Iris ages on the skin the bitterness eases off a little, letting the flower and the rest of the fragrance do its work as it smooths out into a light whitish-green interpretation.

Extra: The iris sprouts from a bulb and like most bulb sprouting flowers tend to lack a scent, or have very little scent. There are some iris species that do have fragrant flowers but by and large you’ll find scentless iris petals. So, how come you see some people claim they can smell irises and love iris notes? They probably can because iris absolute does exist. Naturally extracted iris absolute, like many naturally produced ingredients in perfumery, are prohibitively expensive. Iris notes are made from the rhizomes of the plant rather than from the petals like most people would think. It would surprise many to discover that a lot of flower petals lack a fragrance and ye olde iris is one of them. How do they get the fragrance out of iris rhizomes then? They irradiate  them then extract the goodness. Irradiation is done to accelerate the aging of the rhizomes to get irones out of them. Irradiation simply makes things faster. Far faster, as aging iris rhizome the natural way could take years, whereas nuking them takes only a week. For the hypochondriacs out there, you cannot get cancer or radiation poisoning from wearing the extract from nuked iris root. You also will not become a superhero. I know. I’m sorry.

Design: Presented in a tall rectangular glass bottle with the Prada logo embossed on a plate. The cap is a plastic and metal affair with a band of green textured paper running along its barrel. Simple, easy, nothing flashy or complicated. I’m a minimalist by nature so the bottle here suits my tastes. The sprayer is also very decent, even, fine mist, does not distribute too much perfume. Though in this case, it probably should have.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Mandarin, orange blossom, iris, incense, benzoin, vetiver, cedar.

Here’s another surprise feature about perfume and supposed expensive ingredients. While there are genuinely expensive ingredients still used in perfume the vast majority of money that a perfume costs to you, the consumer, doesn’t go into the materials to make the fragrance. According to Luca Turin in The Secret of Scent, approximately 3% of the money goes into the fragrance components and development. The other 97%? Packaging, margins and advertising. And so my rage at Burberry Brit’s brick of a bottle continues.

Reviewed in This Post: Infusion D’Iris, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Baobhan Sith

Posted on by

Baobhan Sith is one of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab‘s more veteran general catalog scents. Discontinued in 2005, it came roaring back the next year with its tart, grassy citrus and tea scent. This is a well-loved BPAL with excellent longevity and a great fresh, clean personality. Baobhan Sith

In Bottle: Tartness with the mild sting from citrus. I get the slightly astringent white tea as well. Baobhan Sith is a very white, very clean and fresh fragrance. Reminiscent of grassy knolls and ethereal mists. This is a fragrance that makes me think of teatime and, for some reason, cranberries.

Applied: Initial flair of citrus, a very normal thing for me as it seems, before the grapefruit says it’s had enough of me and decides to recede into the background. The white tea is the real star in this fragrance as it dominates for the better part of the scent’s wearable lifetime. There is a very, very mild bite of ginger in this as the fragrance ages, the white tea mellows out and the ginger gets its time in the sun. Fresh, citrus, clean with a really (I mean it) light touch of ginger to round it all out.

Extra: Baobhan Sith (pronounced, “Bow-Vahn Shee”), heralds from Scottish mythology where beautiful women in green dresses wander the mists as bloodsucking vampires.

Design: Similar in design to many other general catalog scents from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. The oils are stored in an amber bottle with a twist black cap. The label is printed with the house name and fragrance name.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Citrus

Notes: Grapefruit, white tea, apple blossom, ginger.

Baobhan Sith is great as a wearable fragrance but also a good room scent if you feel like diluting it a bit in water and letting an oil diffuser do its work. BPAL  fragrances are perfume oils, meaning they are not set in an alcohol base and are therefore unsuitable to be sprayed. Should one attempt to spray perfume oils, they will be met with a drooling, uncooperative stream, and a broken sprayer nozzle. To use BPALs as a spray perfume, you’ll have to find an alcohol base to dilute the perfume in first. You can find perfumer’s alcohol in specialty stores online.

Reviewed in This Post: Baobhan Sith, 2009, 5ml Bottle.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Aglaea

Posted on by

Here’s the thing with Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (BPAL). It’s got a fragrance library that numbers into the thousands and is still growing to this day. It’s got a huge following with a huge set of fragrances spanning every single fragrance family you can think of and everyone reacts and has a slightly differing opinion of every fragrance because the oils smell different on everybody. This entire blog could be dedicated to just smelling and seeking out the entire BPAL library. But that’s a monumental task. What better place to start than with a very simple, very well-loved bottle of Aglaea?

Aglaea is a fruity, peachy, crystal clear and unfettered scent that brings simple joy to the table and all it expects back is the admission that, yes, it does smell like peaches. Aglaea

In Bottle: Sweet peaches with a very golden base and that slightly resinous scent mixed together. The musks must be very clear in this because I just can’t detect them at all. Myrtle seems like a lost cause because all I can detect in this is a very golden peach scent.

Applied: The peaches flare up as fruit notes tend to do and then promptly take a backseat (quite characteristically) to the golden amber that takes center stage. If you’re looking for a complex peach scent that melds into woods and morphs into a bouquet of florals or fruits, Alaea will sneer. It’s simple, and it asks to be kept that way to the point where I don’t even care to look for the musk, though there is something very slightly “real” about this. Real as in, it’s trying to tell me I’m smelling white musk. Something clean and complimentary.

Extra: Aglaea was the youngest of the three graces. Married to Hephaestus and spent most of her days prancing in green fields and being in famous sculptures and paintings such as Primavera by Sandro Botticelli.

Design: I can’t say much for most BPAL bottles as they do tend to look the same with varying labels. You can see in the photo that it’s a very unassuming amber bottle with a plastic cap and a gothic-esque printed label. That’s really all it needs.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Peach, myrtle, amber, musk.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is a young fragrance house that I can’t exactly file in the niche category. It sort of defies explanation in some ways so I prefer to call them a small and independent operation. Most of Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs’ fragrances are available on their website for $17.00 a bottle. Aglaea is a part of BPAL’s general catalog scents and is, therefore, generally expected to stick around in the foreseeable future. BPAL also comes out with limited edition scents.

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

Guerlain L’Heure Bleue

Posted on by

Another Guerlain Classic, L’Heure Bleue was created in 1912 with a little story about the inspiration behind L’Heure Bleue. Even though the story came to be a while after the fragrance did.

L’Heure Bleue, being an old classic of the Guerlain classics family finds its niche in such greats as Shalimar, Jicky, and Mitsouko. It has that definitive Guerlain base to it that makes fragrance lovers–well, anyone who’s smelled more than one classic Guerlain–instantly know where it’s coming from and what levels of history they can expect. L'Heure Bleue

In Bottle: That Guerlain signature scent is present in pretty much every classic they’ve put out. Though the base is a bit masked in the newer creations, it is the base that sets the stage for the old perfumes. L’Heure Bleue is no different. I get the base immediately, followed by neroli’s powerful presence, and the spiciness of carnation.

Applied: The base is the first to fade to the background but it never goes away. Neroli is up front and center followed by the spiciness of carnation. It’s strange how a fragrance can make one feel warm or cold. L’Heure Bleue feels cold. It’s a reflection of its namesake, the twilight hour when the land is coated in blue. The name itself is a dead giveaway, L’Heure Bleue translated to “Blue Hour”. And like most classic fragrances, I often have a hard time deconstructing them because they’re blended to discourage deconstruction. I can only get the feeling and have this mental block telling me that’s silly to try to describe it beyond that. So what I can say of this experience is that this starts off as a chilly citrus. It maintains the chilliness as the citrus melts away into a very classic fragrance with dominant notes of neroli, carnation, and a vanilla base that’s barely detectable.

Extra: One thing I’ve noticed with most people’s reactions to L’Heure Bleue is the aversion to a particular note. L’Heure Bleue, more so than other classics, is referred to as an “old lady perfume”. There’s a correlation there, I think. In particular, the neroli note derived from the bitter orange tree. To me, it smells extremely similar to the more acceptable, bergamot. By the way, wondering how to pronounce this? Here you go:  L’Heure Bleue (Lehr Bloo).

Design: The bottle of L’Heure Bleue I own is nearly as small as Mitsouko but I do own more of this juice. I find it more wearable than Mitsouko, personally. Even though some people would try to tell me I smell like an old lady. The bottle really is very similar and quite frankly, there’s not a whole lot to say beyond that. Mitsouko is a slightly greener, cooler color whereas, L’Heure Bleue (funny enough) is a warmer color. I find the bottle design to be more fitting for Mitsouko but I still appreciate the elements of it.

Fragrance Family: Floral Oriental

Notes: Bergamot, neroli, clove, jasmine, carnation, cedar, musk, vanilla.

Slowly working my way up to Shalimar whose initial burst still puts me off and it is the initial burst in that one that does it. I’m sure she’s beautiful once she settles down. In the mean time, I’ve got L’Heure Bleue, a fun fragrance to say and a beautiful, grown-up classic.

Reviewed in This Post: L’Heure Bleue, 2007, Eau de Toilette.

Balmain Ambre Gris

Posted on by

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.

Hugo Boss Deep Red

Posted on by

Hugo Boss has never really grabbed my attention in the fragrance department probably because their marketing is so geared towards men that I kind of gloss over them. They’re something of an invisible entity to me as I neither see their brand around nor smell it. But Deep Red is a fragrance worth investigating because it is a lovely perfume. Deep Red

In Bottle: Sharp and astringent. I detect some woodsy notes with a smooth vanilla coating. There’s definitely a large floral element here, sweet and light and just a touch of powder. In the bottle, it reminds me of black vanilla tea. It’s that sharpness and astringent quality doing it, I think.

Applied: Sweetness amps immediately upon contact as the florals and vanilla get sweeter and sweeter, eventually overcoming the powder as the fragrance begins its dry down. I get sweet vanilla flowers and blond woodsy notes with a really light and easygoing citrus topper. The citrus is battling with something a little musky in this scent and I wish it wouldn’t. It gives Deep Red a bit of a personality complex because it can’t decide between being sharply clean or musky. The fragrance eventually disappears, entirely too soon I might add, into a sweet vanilla before fading away completely.

Extra: Vanilla is derived from an orchid. More specifically the vanilla plant that’s a pretty flowering type of orchid whose fruit is harvested and cured into the dried vanilla pods we see in little jars at the supermarket. Outstanding.

Design: The bottle is presented in dark red glass in a tapered flask shape. The cap is a very nice weight that pops off very easily to reveal the sprayer. The design elements on the glass are simple but effective, which by looking at Hugo Boss’ other fragrance offerings, is on par with their design course. The one problem, and it’s a pretty major one, is the sprayer on my bottle. Perhaps it’s just me but my sprayer distributes a ridiculous amount of product. One spray visibly reduces the amount of perfume I have left in the bottle. The mist also gets everywhere because of this and liberally coats anything in its way. It’s a nice fine mist, it’s just that I wish the spraying mechanism would be a little more frugal.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Pear, blood orange, clementine, freesia, ginger flower, woods, musk, vanilla.

I slotted Deep Red in the floral department because of the dominance of sweet flowers in this scent. Evidently, I was supposed to smell fruits too but wherever those were I couldn’t find them. Sorry, pear, you’ll have to hide somewhere less obscure next time.

Reviewed in This Post: Deep Red, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

Yves Saint Laurent Elle

Posted on by

Light, sweet, and fruity. Elle is Yves Saint Laurent (YSL)’s attempt at attracting a younger female audience. While there has been some discussion about Elle smelling like tea, I have to differ. It’s a bright fruity, clean, woodsy scent and that is pretty much where the buck stops. Elle

In Bottle: Immediate smell of citrus and fruits. Elle comes on strong and sweet with a burst of lychee and berries after the citrus carries it up to the nose. The fruits don’t quit when this stuff is in the bottle and they make it difficult to detect anything beneath them. Yet, I get this clean feeling from the scent with a touch of steady base that I attribute to the woods.

Applied: Again, citrus and sweet fruits up front and center as the fragrance pulls no punches in making itself well known. Elle has a veneer of simplicity though because as the fragrances ages on the skin the fruits are slowly complimented by the wood notes giving this fragrance a sharper quality. There are elements of florals in this fragrance but the fruits are difficult to get past. I can barely detect the jasmine hanging out. As for the two earth notes (vetiver and patchouli) that are supposed to be in this? They’re there but they compliment the fruits so well that I didn’t really notice them. Overall, Elle is a well incorporated fragrance though the fruits in here are very prominent but they are kept well in line by the woods. The rest of the notes seem to be content with just hanging out.

Extra: With perfumers Olivier Cresp and Jacques Cavallier behind the creation of Elle, it’s really no surprise how we came to arrive at this woodsy fruity mix. Cresp and Cavallier are known (to me) as the men behind Nina Ricci’s Nina (2006), a sweet citrus fruity fragrance. My first “grown up” perfume.

Design: I can’t say I’m wild about the bottle for Elle. On paper it looks bold and interesting. In person, the bottle fails to impress me. With its hard sharp edges, Elle is built like a skyscraper with a plastic hot pink detachable cube to protect the sprayer. The design looks girly and metropolitan at the same time but the shape and the feel of it just seems lacking to me like there’s something missing in the design that would make it stand out a bit more.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Chypre

Notes: Citrus, lychee, berries, jasmine, woods, vetiver, and patchouli.

Pleasant, pleasing and inoffensive. Elle’s got it all if you’re looking for an easy to wear, fruity chypre. I wouldn’t say it’d be my first pick for a fruity perfume but the woods definitely give it a bit of uniqueness when compared to the other fruity fragrances it has to compete with. As for that tea thing? I don’t smell no tea.

Reviewed in This Post: Elle, 2010, Eau de Parfum Tester.

L’Instant de Guerlain

Posted on by

L’Instant’s one of those weird anomalies that give me a hard time when it comes to finding and purchasing it. Eventually I broke down, having looked for months with it eluding me, and dropped full price on a bottle. It felt ridiculous at the time that a very recent, rather popular fragrance like this, could be out or not stocked everywhere I looked.

I can see what some Guerlain fans can love about L’Instant. For one, it’s not the dreaded mix of fruits and florals in a bottle. Heaven forbid. L'Instant

In Bottle: Rich, sweet honey with a resiny background. It is almost a gourmand but the floral note in this is preventing it from getting there. The magnolia lends it a bit of powder to prevent the honey and amber from turning into a honeyed cream scent which would land it in gourmand territory for me.

Applied: Honey amps up immediately with this slightly sharp sting of citrus. The magnolias are creating this very fine sweetened floral fragrance a few moments later. The floral aspect does a good job working with the sweetness. I’m no longer detecting powder and there’s less and less of it as the magnolia fades away and the amber gets stronger. Once again L’Instant is skirting the gourmand line as it warms up from the initial blast of citrus. In the end, L’Instant goes out smelling like warm, sweet, golden amber.

Extra: Resins and resinous notes can include amber, labdanum, ambergris, frankincense, myrrh, benzoin, etc.

Design: Nicely shaped rounded corner bottle with slightly purple tinged clear glass showing off the light amber juice inside. The cap on the bottle I have has a nice weight to it unlike the flighty, flimsy clear plastic deals on the other Guerlains I own. I wish they would go with this denser feeling cap more often. It looks better, feels better, and helps class up the project.

Fragrance Family: Oriental

Notes: Citrus, honey, magnolia, golden amber.

It was a bit difficult choosing which way to go on this fragrance. To me, it is really close to being a gourmand despite having only one gourmand-esq note in it. Had the amber been vanilla this wouldn’t have been so hard. In the end I stuck to the safe bet as L’Instant does have the amber necessary and does have that thick, resinous golden base to it that could label it as an oriental even though it doesn’t truly slot itself neatly there either. See, people say oriental and I think resins and dark musky scents.  There’s no dark musk in L’Instant. In the end, I hate agonizing over something that’s essentially my opinion anyway so you get oriental.

Reviewed in This Post: L’Instant, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Versace Versense

Posted on by

If scents could scream, Versense just might be the one who goes so high that only dogs can hear it. This fragrance is clean and fresh, fresh, more fresh, and sharp like the tip of a needle. Not altogether exciting or mysterious, Versense does the one thing really well; and that’s being fresh (in case you haven’t quite gotten that yet). This is an unrelenting freshness that pummeled me over the head with a giant lime and then squeezed the juice into my eye. So overall, not a bad experience.Versense

In Bottle: There’s something a little smooth and sweet in this fragrance that’s holding back what I can only describe as an overwhelming army of angry limes and lemons. It holds the blend together and lends it a very pretty and calming note making Versense smell a lot smoother than she really is. But first impressions in the bottle or on paper are sly. They’ll often smell significantly different on the skin as it mixes and morphs with skin chemistry. And as I waft Versense up to my nose from a slip of paper I’m cursing that deceptive little fruit note. I like it. I wish it would stick around because it’s whipping those unruly citrus notes into a comprehensive shape.

Applied: That instant burst of fleeting fruit, a very smooth and juicy scent that smooths things over before the citrus lands for the take. The smoothness of Versense is fleeting, fading within seconds as the lime shoots straight up into the air and up my nose. There’s an overwhelming green and huge burst of freshness on the initial assault like I had just taken a big too-close-for-comfort whiff of lime scented cleaner. But give Versense the time and in a couple of hours it mellows out into something less fresh and more complex. That’s when the citrus decides its had its fill and lets the woodsier notes come out. Things are still sharp but they no longer scream sharp (or fresh) as the woods help cut a little out of the clean and add some fullness and body to the fragrance.

Extra: Apparently Versense was supposed to take the wearer on a glamorous and sophisticated trip. Unfortunately, I didn’t get glamor or sophistication from Versense. It is very clean though.

Design: Held in a rectangular glass bottle with the seal of Versace on it, Versense boasts a light innocently green color to its juice. The cap is not standard fare clear plastic as I’m happy to note and the entire package as a whole looks very nice. Versense is similar in design to its big sister, Versace’s Versace.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Citrus

Notes: Lime, lemon, mandarin, bergamot, pear, jasmine, sandalwood, cedar, musk.

If you’re looking to smell ultra fresh and love citrus, Versense cannot possibly fit the bill any better. This fragrance is so fresh I think it scoured my brain, sweeping over my grey matter with an avenging citrus coated brush. Powerful is a good word I’m willing to hand to Versense. The real reward is waiting for the drydown as Versense eases off on the power a little and takes in a bit of mellow woodsy calmness. But, boy, brace yourself for the initial impact first.

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

Bergamot, Mandarin, Prickly Pear, Sea Daffodil, Cardamom, Jasmine, Cedarwood, Sandalwood, Olive Tree, Musk.

Beyond Love By Kilian

Posted on by

Green seems to be the color of the day when it comes to Beyond Love. It’s a gentle, high-pitched tuberose fragrance that, if skimmed, seems like a relatively simplistic blend of green tuberose and light balancing florals. But a closer inspection yields a fragrance with a bit more depth and charge.Beyond Love

In Bottle: Green, clean, and floral fragrance. It’s got that special slick bite that tuberose has to my nose with a definitively green aura of fragrance that makes me think of green and white flowers, bitter leaves and rain. There’s something a little musky hiding in the backdrop and what I think is the fabled ambergris rearing its whale upchuck head to sweeten and add complex appeal to Beyond Love’s so far pretty green tuberose petals.

Applied: Instant payoff on the tuberose part as an entire bouquet of them blooms upon application with this bitter green note that sticks around for a few minutes before dissolving into the ambergris induced sweetness. I’ve lost any coconut that may have been present in the bottle and all I get now is tuberose with a gentle breeze of jasmine here and there. This is a bit of an interesting experience as the tuberose in Beyond Love is trying to convince me it’s a new, science fiction born tuberose that’s a cut above the rest and if misunderstood will go on a rampage to devour its enemies before it dies at the end of the day.

Extra: By Kilian is a fragrance collection by the grandson of the founder of LVMH (Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton), Kilian Hennessy. LVMH being famous for its luxury items.

Design: As I don’t actually have a bottle I can’t personally give details on the feel of the design. I will say, however, that no expense was spared to make sure By Kilian’s packaging was top notch. For what you pay for it (approx. $220USD for 50ml of Beyond Love) the money has to go somewhere into the packaging. I see dark covered boxes, carved designs on the sides of bottles, travel holders that look more intricate than any travel holder has the right to be. These things have a look that tries its best to make you feel like the $220 you dropped was not in vain.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Coconut, tuberose, jasmine, ambergris, musk.

Despite all this, Beyond Love faded in a record two hours on my skin. The shortest wear time of any fragrance I’ve ever tried. But then I also only had a sample tube and that may have had something to do with it. Still, for how much it costs, I am leery to pick up a full size bottle unless I know I’ll get $220 worth of longevity. Again, this could be the fault of the sample vial I have and it may very well have excellent lasting power in a bottle.

Reviewed in This Post: Beyond Love, 2009, Sample Tube.