Annick Goutal Un Matin d’Orage

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I don’t know why I keep chasing fragrances with that dreaded lemon note that goes all sharp and dominates fragrances all the time. It’s like I’ll hope that one day, my views will shift and all of a sudden the note will work on me or smell good to me. For now, Un Matin d’Orage is a lost cause thanks to the lemon that hates me. Un Matin d'Orage

In Bottle: Very nice, light and airy citrus-based fragrance with a pretty white floral bed and a touch of dry spiciness added in. Beautiful in the bottle, very easy to wear and quite nice on the nose. Especially given my recent brush with Sécrétions Magnifiques.

Applied: A fantastic dewy floral immediately rushes up. For a few seconds, this is one of the nicest and most pleasant florals I’ve ever smelled. So clean and clear and crisp and beautiful. The florals are accompanied by a series of green leafy notes. Then the lemon has to come in and ruin my day. It amps up like it usually does, flooding the entire fragrance field with its too sharp citrus that it destroys all other smells and I end up with something reminiscent of lemon cleaning solution once again. It’s very sad as the beautiful floral opener would have made a fantastic every day scent. The dry down sees the typical mellowing out of the lemon but it clings on until the bitter end when that gorgeous floral opening has gone to parts unknown and all that remains is this irritating lemon and a faint ozone note.

Extra: Un Matin d’Orage means Stormy Morning in French. It’s a fragrance made to invoke the crisp and fresh feel of a garden after the rain. Unfortunately for me and my arch nemisis, that stupid lemon note, this is less a garden after a rainstorm and more like a sharp crack of lightning.

Design: Un Matin d’Orage is packaged much the same way as other Annick Goutal fragrances. it is available in a ribbed bottle with gold lace that bears a paper sign with the fragrance’s name on it.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Magnolia, jasmine sambac, Sicilian lemon, champac, perilla leaves, ginger.

While Un Matin d’Orage’s opener is one of the most pleasant florals I’ve encountered yet, this fragrance doesn’t separate itself much from Annick Goutal’s other offerings. It’s nice, to be sure, but it’s not so unique as I would mourn the lemon ruining this fragrance on me.

Reviewed in This Post: Un Matin d’Orage, 2005, Eau de Toilette.

Etat Libre d’Orange Secretions Magnifiques

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In a time when fragrances are pushed out the door at alarming rates, where the same themes are repeated over and over again, Etat Libre d’Orange takes a conceptual approach to perfumery and challenges people’s notion of what a perfume is and could be. Sécrétions Magnifiques is, to me, well–I could wax poetic about it all day but when it comes down to it, this stuff smells gross. Fascinating. But mostly gross. Secretions Magnifiques

In Bottle: Airy and light, slightly floral layered over something sticky and sinister. I read up on this stuff before I tracked down a tiny amount of it to try for myself and I know full well that its in bottle impressions are not to be trusted. In a way, it’s funny. Sécrétions Magnifiques almost lures the person in with this innocent smelling lightly flowery top with a slight dark under note.

Applied: Then you put it on, thinking that perhaps you’re the one person that might actually work on. That maybe you’re scent blind to whatever disgusting accord everyone else has been raving about. You poor soul. My first impression of this stuff was a rather innocent fresh and light floral fragrance with a bit of slick coconut. Then the top notes fly away and what you’re left with is a miasma of unfolding perplexity. My first and immediate impression after initial spray went a little something like, “This isn’t so bad.Smells like a very synthetic coconut, floral and citrus mixture. Kind of tropical. What’s that weird thing I’m smelling that’s kind of metallic? Oh. Ew!” Sécrétions Magnifiques continues to mount its assault from there as the blood accord floods right up with a a sharp bleach note. This isn’t the blood scent that’s essentially a sticky metallic twang present in some BPAL fragrances, or the coppery-like scent of real blood. This is old, dried, rotted blood that’s been left baking in the sun and fermenting in a puddle of bleach. Then it was run over a few times by some cars. And finally, someone took a congealed scoop of this rancid mixture and rubbed it under their sweaty unwashed armpit. Just because they could. This is a bizarre mixture of citrus, white florals, sharp bleach, salt, rotten blood, old fish and armpit.  I toughed it out for the dry down to discover that after hours and hours of you and those around you have suffered, the fragrance takes a turn (quite amusingly) for a  soapy dry down with a slight hint of lingering salty armpit–just a touch. Enough to make you nervous about whether or not you’ll get a second wave of that special mid-stage. This is not to mention this stuff is stubborn and lasts a very, very, very long time. Truly Sécrétions Magnifiques commands your loyalty.

Extra: Sécrétions Magnifiques is Etat Libre d’Orange’s prank on the perfumery world. There are people who love how it smells. But the vast majority of individuals who’ve come across this thing can only appreciate what it’s trying to do at best. It takes guts to purposefully create a fragrance that’s such a challenge to perfumery and what “smells good”. While I’ll probably never wear this fragrance, I can appreciate the fact that it’s unique and very brave. Funny enough, for a fragrance that smells awful, Sécrétions Magnifiques sells rather decently. People want to smell and own this stuff simply because of how novel it is. I wonder if anyone’s adopted Sécrétions Magnifiques as their signature scent?

Design: Bottled in an unassuming rectangular bottle with the house name and fragrance name and very assuming fragrance design on it.

Fragrance Family: Dirty.

Notes: Iode accord, adrenaline accord, blood accord, milk accord, iris, coconut, sandalwood, opoponax.

Sécrétions Magnifiques is not a perfume to be worn out to work, to a party, to go on a cruise, to go grocery shopping, and please for the love of all that is good in this world don’t wear it onto an airplane. This is a fragrance for fragrance lovers and the fragrance curious. It’s a piece of unwearable art that dares you to put it on and go out in public. And you can certainly do that if you are brave enough but please, no airplanes.

Reviewed in This Post: Sécrétions Magnifiques, 2008, Sample Vial.

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Hugo Boss Hugo

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Hugo is your run of the mill fresh aquatic that doesn’t bring much to the table and doesn’t leave with much either. The tide of aquatics has petered out in the latest years as the incoming flood of fruity florals starts dominating the scenes. Some of these are works of olfactory art in their own respect while others are forgettable. And some even regrettable. Unfortunately for Hugo, it was one of the less notable aquatics of its time. Hugo

In Bottle: Green and blue aquatic. Fresh, sharp, and a little bit spicy. The herbal notes up front are paired with pine and citrus.

Applied: The green flare, just a touch sweet before it settles into its spicy woodsiness where the pine is predominant on me. I smell kind of like one of those pine-shaped air fresheners you use for your car. Not unpleasant, I just have a strange association with anything pine scented. Well, perhaps not strange, just persistent. The scent stays with pine as it introduces a few spicy herbal notes into the mix. Hugo takes a turn for the interesting near the complete dry down stage as it leaves its fresh pine-scented herb garden and veers toward a darker, murkier, funnier funky note that’s reminiscent of the blast of aquatics upon application. It’s fleeting though, a one or two second moment that could just be me. Hugo dries down to a benign woodsy, spicy, fresh accord that doesn’t make any presumptions and doesn’t even want to think about standing out.

Extra: Hugo Boss fragrances have largely been a miss for me. The only one I can say I actually like is Deep Red. Even then, I don’t particularly like it that much. I can say nice things about it though. But this fragrance, it’s the generic men’s scent with the all too familiar aquatic citrus opening, the woodsy spicy middle, and the miasma of leftover freshness at the base.

Design: I could give or take with this design. It’s clean and simple and functional. Holding it is easy. Spraying it is easy. Kind of looks like a water bottle which is a bit cheesy but overall, not bad.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Woodsy

Notes: Grapefruit, green apple, pine needles, thyme, spearmint, basil, cedar, rum, jasmine, sage, geranium, clove, lavender, cedarwood, moss, fir balsam, sandalwood, vetiver, suede.

Yeah, I definitely cannot get past the predominant evergreen scent in this. Too much pine, maybe, or maybe I’m just not the kind of person who likes that in a scent.

Reviewed in This Post: Hugo, 2000, Eau de Toilette.

Susanne Lang Vanilla Coconut

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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.

Bond No.9 Chelsea Flowers

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There aren’t a whole lot of things I can say for Bond No.9 as a perfume house or as a business. However, I can attest to how well-sealed their fragrance samples are. Getting that little stopper off the vial should be classified as an Olympic Sport only to be played by the most determined of fragrance junkies.  Chelsea Flowers

In Bottle: Light, airy flowers, slightly sweet and very floral. Entirely pleasant but not very original. Chelsea Flowers is rather nice for an inoffensive wear to the office.

Applied: Light and green, small and subdued white floral opener with a nice mist of sweet peony. Its mid-stage is a pleasant bouquet of rose and peony with that same mist of green freshness. This smells like freshly picked flowers, or flowers that just bloomed on a hopeful spring. A gorgeous fragrance by all accounts and purposes even if she isn’t all that exciting, she’s very well done. Dry down is a nice enough floral with a very faint woodsiness lent by a tame sandalwood note.

Extra: There is a lot of talk about Bond No.9’s more recent business antics in relation to them disallowing decants from selling decants of their fragrances online. To get a Bond No.9 fragrance sample on the up and up these days you will have to visit a Bond No.9 counter and hope the people working there like you enough to hand you some of the candy-like wrapped vials of perfumy goodness. Further adding to my distaste of this company’s policies is the legal wrestling they did with Liz Zorn of Soivohle over her use of the word “Peace” in one of her fragrances.

Design: I’ve always found Bond No.9’s bottling to be a bit silly looking. I see these things and all I see are stars. Which reminds me of the Hollywood Walk of Fame decorated in pop-art designs. Not highly unpleasant but not my first choice for perfume design. Holding one of these bottles, I’ll admit, feels luxurious and they are an interesting shape and have nicely done colors. I just can’t say a minimalist like me would be swayed much by the design decisions, nice and bold as they are.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Peonies, tulips, hyacinth, magnolia, rose, musk, sandalwood, vetiver, tree moss.

Don’t let my distaste for Bond No.9’s business antics to turn you away from Chelsea Flowers as a fragrance. This is a very competent and versatile white floral.

Reviewed in This Post: Chelsea Flowers, 2008, Sample Vial.

Ajne Fleur Blanche

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Gardenia is hard to get right and if you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know I’ve been on the search for a really competent gardenia scent. My search is over!

In Bottle: Lush, white, creamy and sweet gardenia! This is actually gardenia and not tuberose trying on a mask. I am elated that I’ve finally found this.

Applied: A just mildly sweet, green floral gardenia scent. Has a slightly wilted quality to it, something I found just a bit strange but Fleur Blanche is quick to evolve into a heady, full-bodied giant white gardenia flower with a milky, woody backdrop. It’s smooth woods and soft creaminess, with just a bit of honeyed sweetness. This fragrance is not too sweet or silly or stilted or trying to pass off tuberose as gardenia. I can’t imagine a gardenia fragrance I’ve tried yet to surpass Fleur Blanche. It is simply a beautifully done soliflore and cannot recommend it enough if you want a glorious gardenia scent.

Extra: Ajne is an independent fragrance house headed by perfumer, Jane Hendler. They focus on 100% natural fragrances and avoid the usage of synthetics in their scents.

Design: Ajne‘s bottle design is beautiful. It reminds me of ornate temple designs in India and on expensive silk cloths. The filigree bottles are fantastic, they look luxurious, are easy to hold and use, and that’s not to mention the juice inside. I usually aim for the philosophy that simpler is better. But ornate, when done well, is absolutely precious.

Fragrance Family: Soliflore

Notes: Fruits, florals, woods.

Sorry about the notes but there wasn’t a whole lot to work with. Regardless, this fragrance is beautiful and well worth the effort to get. It is expensive, but keep in mind that these are 100% naturals we’re working with here which are expensive in and of themselves. Fleur Blanche has fantastic longevity, a great level of projection, and a beautifully complex character.

Reviewed in This Post: Fleur Blanche, 2009, Oil.

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.

Bath & Body Works Japanese Cherry Blossom

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Japanese Cherry Blossom, to me, holds the prestigious title of most wearable powdery oriental floral. It’s a very well-made and well-loved clean, powder floral fragrance that almost anyone can pull off. It’s extremely versatile which makes it a fantastic work or school fragrance. Japanese Cherry Blossom

In Bottle: Powdery white floral with an airy quality that gives of a clean aroma with a slight dewy fruity note hovering beneath the floating powdered flowers.

Applied: Clean burst of florals and dewy fruits. The fruits are not at all heavy and are very quick to burn off. What’s left is a lovely, light powdered and clean floral fragrance that’s smooth and surprisingly complex. Japanese Cherry Blossom is the floral for people who don’t like florals. It’s got enough flowers in it to please those who enjoy flowers and it goes on light enough to be all right for those who  hate flowers. This fragrance is like a big soft bag of cherry blossom petals. Your dry down ushers in a bit of muskiness and amber to it as the fragrance transitions to a very well thought out base of floral sandalwood.

Extra: Over the years the Japanese Cherry Blossom scent has spawned a huge line of bath and body products including perfumes, body mists, shower gels, dry oil sprays, lotions, candles, and so on.

Design: Japanese Cherry Blossom’s bottle is the same shape as other Bath and Body Works eau de toilette bottles. It has black and white cherry blossom designs on the glass. Bath and Body Works tends to redesign their product lines once every few years so the bottle you’re looking at now may not look the same three or four years down the road.

Fragrance Family: Oriental Floral

Notes: Asian pear, fuji apple, ume plum, japanese cherry blossom, butterfly lily, Kyoto rose, mimosa, hedione, vanilla rice, amber, silk musk, cinnamon incense, Himalayan cedarwood, sandalwood.

I’ll give it to Japanese Cherry Blossom to be an oriental. But it’s not rich and deep and heady like what you would normally associate with an oriental. It’s a very cleaned up, very light version.

Reviewed in This Post: Japanese Cherry Blossom, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Bath & Body Works Warm Vanilla Sugar

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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.