Creed Angelique Encens

I’m rather sad that so many fragrances that are both beautiful and complex are discontinued. This includes Creed’s classic, Angelique Encens.

Angelique Encens

In Bottle: Creamy tuberose as a minor note–a bit of a surprise for me since tuberose tends to be big with my nose. There’s a lovely heady layer of incense hovering all over this fragrance.

Applied: Tuberose and soft florals with a touch of vanilla and amber. The oriental portion of this fragrance is very noticeable at first but the scent ages into its mid-stage with a lovely incense note coming up and flooding the fragrance. The incense in this is so pure and beautiful that if you enjoy incense, you should definitely look this one up. It’s heady and full and blends beautifully with the amber and vanilla opening. There’s a bit of tuberose still lingering around with a perfumy jasmine note trying to make an appearance but only manages a minor cameo. Though you don’t get much of the opening as soon as Angelique Encens gets started, you do feel that they’re still there. The dry down is more incense with a complete fade of any florals that may have managed to peek through. Angelique Encens is just a pretty classic.

Extra: All right, I got my sample of Angelique Encens dated to approximately 1970s but I can’t be sure as to how old it is. My contact also has no idea how old it is so we agreed on a very vague date for this stuff. The problem with Angelique Encens is that it’s no longer available. Creed discontinued her at some point and are now releasing her on a limited basis. Incredibly frustrating, but I suppose that’s how the exclusivity game works.

Design: Angellique Encens is bottled in Creed’s signature flacon. I’ve held exactly one of these in my life and the feel was very nice. It was heavy and looked beautiful. The price gets me a little but Creed makes up for the price in packaging and, in the case of Angelique Encens, the juice is fabulous as well.

Fragrance Family: Incense Oriental

Notes: Angelica, tuberose, rose, jasmine, amber, vanilla, incense.

I wish they’d bring this one back from discontinuation. I think she’s deeper, more complex and far better than most of the Creeds out now.

Reviewed in This Post: Angelique Encens, ~1970, Eau de Parfum.


Wear What You Like

Maybe you’ve been around a bit and heard a few things surrounding the dos and don’ts of perfume. Maybe these things were pieces of well-meaning advice such as: “Men should wear cologne, perfume is for women”, or “This perfume is too old for your age”, or even “This perfume is too young for your age”. Some pieces of well-meaning advice but here’s the thing–there aren’t any hard fast rules about what you should or shouldn’t like when it comes to perfume.

I’ve seen a lot of men shy away from buying or wearing something labelled as “perfume” because they’re a man and men ought to be wearing cologne. There’s a funny bit of terminology twisting going on with regards to men cologne vs. women perfume. The truth is, if you look at this post, you’ll notice something. Cologne is less of a term used to describe a gender’s fragrance and more of a term used to describe the concentration of a fragrance. So it is with popular culture, I presume, that would insist people call men’s fragrances colognes and women’s fragrances perfumes. A bit of a dangerous tango because it makes people think that just because they’re a man, it’s inappropriate for them to enjoy something that isn’t labelled “pour homme” or “cologne”. I’ve also seen the opposite with women who were worried about wearing men’s cologne just because it wasn’t called perfume.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter. If something’s a “men’s cologne” and you’re a woman who happens to enjoy it, wear it and enjoy it. If you’re a man who enjoys “women’s perfume” then wear it and enjoy it too. By the way, you should not be ashamed of buying women’s perfume or men’s cologne if you happen to be the opposite gender. You like what you like, there’s no shame in enjoying a cologne or a perfume. It’s all about you and what makes you happy. That’s the whole point of fragrances, introducing this “men only” or “women only” garbage just muddles up something that should be fun and enjoyable.

I know I tend to indicate in my reviews if a perfume smells young, but don’t let something that smells young hinder you from enjoying or wearing it. “Young” is a label I personally use to describe a section of perfumes often enjoyed by teenagers. That doesn’t mean an adult couldn’t enjoy and wear them either. This also works in reverse with fragrances typically thought to be “too old” for someone.

If you’re a teenager who loves the scent of Joy by Jean Patou then go ahead and rock it. It just means you have good taste in classic perfumery. If you’re an older person who enjoys the smell of Flowerbomb by Viktor & Rolf then by all means, wear it and have fun. It probably just means you find the scent pleasing and there’s nothing wrong with that.

If you like it then rock it. 😀


Whoops and Egoiste Commercial

There was a brief five minute period where those of you viewing the blog may have noticed entries from July and August 2011 showing up. Those weren’t supposed to be published yet but due to my itchy fingers, were sent up before their time. Please ignore that little foible! I’ll be more careful in the future. In the mean time, let’s enjoy this fabulous fragrance commercial for Chanel’s Egoiste:

Hooray for my foibles!


Sarah Jessica Parker Lovely

Lovely is like one of the few fleeting breaths of fresh air in between the intoxicating aftermath of a fruit and candy explosion at the celebirty perfume factory. That is to say, this fragrance can stand up on its own even without SJP’s name on it.

Lovely

In Bottle: A mix of lavender, woods, and clean amber. Not at all what I was expecting from a celebrity perfume but word has it that Sarah Jessica Parker’s fragrances are usually a cut above the other contenders.

Applied: Lavender on the opening with a hit of citrus. The lavender here is used rather well though it’s definitely not some of the best quality lavender. Still, I can applaud Lovely for having the guts to use the note. Some lavenders wind up too strong, tending to smell medicinal if not used right. I actually like Lovely’s interpretation as it’s a woodsy, clean scent with a twist of herbal. The lavender seeps into the mid-stage as the fragrance introduces a hint of amber and woods as Lovely warms up quite a bit. There’s a certain soapiness to this that keeps things clean and accessible, which only impresses me further. The fragrance is so far being rather risque for a celebuscent but it manages to skirt the territory between highbrow smell experiment and department store safe. The fragrance ages down to a woodsy lavender musk. I dare say this stuff smells almost elegant.

Extra: Funny enough, my first experience with Lovely was in a book. A tester strip of this stuff was wedged into the back of Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent. The strip the fragrance was squished onto also makes a great bookmark.

Design: Egg-shaped, pink, easy to hold and use bottle. I don’t know what else I can say about this stuff. The shape is pretty generic and the bottle looks very unassuming. I neither love it nor hate it.

Fragrance Family: Aromatic Woodsy

Notes: Lavender, mandarin, bergamot, rosewood, orchid, patchouli, amber, cedar, musk.

Score another one for the celebuscent team. I try to maintain an open mind about fragrances no matter whose name is on it and I feel like the more I smell, the less impressed I get with celebrity perfumes. It’s because the great majority of them smell generic and synthetic. But once in a while something like Lovely or Cumming proves me wrong and I’ll happily accept that.

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


Victoria’s Secret Dream Angels Heavenly

Dream Angels Heavenly is one of the staples of the mass market perfume industry aimed at younger women and teenagers. It’s a painfully easy to love and simple fragrance.

Dream Angels Heavenly

In Bottle: Cleaned up florals with a hint of scrubbed vanilla settling in the background.

Applied: I’ll commend Dream Angels Heavenly for introducing the powdery element that seems to mingle in with the sandalwood. It gives this fragrance a bit of a boost in terms of sophistication. The fragrance itself is a clean floral opener with a sweet streak. The scent heads into powder territory shortly after the top notes as it settles into a clean flowering mid-stage that isn’t complex, unique or special. But it works for how simple it is. There’s wafts of that crazy little vanilla to my nose, an the vanilla becomes more evident when the scent starts to dry down as sandalwood and vanilla take over the show and Dream Angels Heavenly ends up drying down like most fragrances geared toward the young women fragrance lovers of the world.

Extra: Settling itself into the very comfortable demographic that it did, Dream Angels Heavenly carves a nice spot for itself in the market. It’s a mid to low-range fragrance with a 1 oz. bottle running you for $42 USD. Not bad for generic-smelling stuff.

Design: The bottle I’m not a fan of. It’s just a glass bottle with a feminine silhouette. I see the bottle for this stuff and the first thing I think of is shampoo. It’s a well-designed bottle that’s easy to hold and use but I just can’t convince myself that this looks good or interesting.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Peony, sandalwood, vanilla, white musk.

It should be noted that if you don’t like this version of Dream Angels, Victoria’s Secret has several iterations that come out every year with many being discontinued. So if you find a Dream Angels you like, snap it up with the knowledge that it may get discontinued.

Reviewed in This Post: Dream Angels Heavenly, 2010, Eau de Parfum.


Frederic Malle Carnal Flower

Carnal Flower is like a homage to the distinctive, seductive heady tuberose. I’ve always encountered tuberose and approached it with a semi-satirical love. I don’t actually like tuberose that much but I smell it so strongly in fragrances that it converted me over to the tuberose side some time last year.

Carnal Flower

In Bottle: Big old tuberose. Though the tuberose used in Carnal Flower has a cleaner, clearer presence than what I would normally get. Carnal Flower is made of higher quality materials than most perfumes, and the aroma of the tuberose with this crystal clear, heady but tempered scent is the reward.

Applied: There’s a very brief moment upon application where the tuberose hasn’t hit my nose yet where I can smell a sheer pretty base of clean gentle citrus and flowers. Then tuberose makes its entrance and it is all I get from then on. But as stated above, the tuberose in Carnal Flower has this crystalline and pure quality to it. It’s a natural aroma, smells very complex and is not too strong or sour. it’s perfectly full, dense, and heady. White florals all the way on this one as the tuberose heads the way from the top to the middle to the bottom where you’re greeted by the bolstering of the scent. Soliflores are fascinating in how they manage to smell so complex for a perfume focused around a single flower. Carnal Flower is one of these beautifully complex soliflores. The fragrance is elegant, powerful, and is an extremely good example of how beautiful a high-quality tuberose scent can smell.

Extra: Carnal Flower’s got a lot of selling points but one of the more famous is its boast that its smell is that of the most natural tuberose. I’m inclined to agree.  This stuff is very good.

Design: Bottled in much the same way as other Frederic Malle scents. A cylindrical glass bottle with a cylindrical cap. It doesn’t look flashy, garish, nor does the shape of the bottle hinder the purpose of the bottle in the first place. The packaging is a bit plain, I admit, but the stuff inside the bottle is what you’re really looking for when you buy a Frederic Malle fragrance.

Fragrance Family: Soliflore

Notes: Bergamot, melon, eucalyptus, ylang-ylang, jasmine, tuberose, Salicylates, tuberose absolute, orange blossom absolute, coconut, musk.

Since winning me over, tuberose has since convinced me that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have it sitting around on the off chance that I get the urge to smell like a big white floral. Hey came around to liking tuberose from a year ago. Who knows what might happen a year from now? Maybe I’ll be so crazy for tuberose that it would be all I ever wanted to smell.

Reviewed in This Post: Carnal Flower, 2008, Eau de Parfum.


By Kilian Rose Oud

By Kilian hits a weird spot on my wallet. I love their fragrances. Love that they have a more detailed than usual list of fragrance notes with their perfumes. But I’m not loving the price tag and I doubt very much that I would ever purchase a By Kilian fragrance. I just have yet to find one that I really like.

Rose Oud

In Bottle: Rose Oud is pretty much what it sounds like. I get a big rose and oud presence in the bottle and I can’t complain. This stuff delivers what it promises.

Applied: Heads in with rose, crisp and dewy like you dipped a rose in a cup of water. The fragrance wafts in a bit of oud, giving the scent that dark slightly sticky but very complex and very sophisticated feel and smell. As the fragrance ages, the rose turns into a creamier version of itself, combining with the oud to form a very grown up, very dense scent that speaks quite well for the powerful aura this fragrance seems to project. As the scent dries down, the oud gets a bit more woodsy and the fragrance warms up a bit with a hint of spices layering in with the rose.

Extra: Rose Oud was composed by Calice Becker, who has also composed such fragrances as J’Adore, Marc Jacobs Lola, and Tommy Girl.

Design: Rose Oud is bottled in much the same way as other By Kilians. A glass bottle with lacquered sides and sold in a box complete with lock and key. For the price they’re asking for it, you should expect nothing less than over-the-top luxury when it comes to the packaging.

Fragrance Family: Floral Woodsy

Notes: Rose, saffron, guaiac wood, agarwood.

So like I said before, I have a hard time justifying the price tag of a By Kilian because while the fragrances and the packaging is nice, the truth is the scents could be had elsewhere for less. Or if I wanted to go full-out expensive, there are other niche houses that I prefer.

Reviewed in This Post: Rose Oud, 2010, Eau de Parfum.


Hello Kitty

I don’t know why I expected anything else but sugar and sweet from a fragrance put out with Hello Kitty’s name on it. Or expect anything from a perfume that comes out of a cartoon cat’s head. But hey, it’s just fun.

Hello Kitty

In Bottle: Sweet, candy, and quite synthetic smelling. There’s not much to this perfume aside from candy-like with a little touch of apple and other fruits to cut the tedium a little.

Applied: Initial flare of sweet fruit with an apple note that’s very synthetic. This is the apple that I smell in DKNY Be Delicious. Too sweet, a little plastic, not very attractive but it does its job as a fruity opener. The fragrance heads into its mid-stage with an equally sweet showing, amping up the sugar even more while it takes on a bit of a vanilla and fruity flowers mix. There’s no really good florals in this, just vague perfumery flower scent that smells as nondescript as the rest of the fragrance. The dry down is a typical sweet vanilla with a cleaned up white musk finisher.

Extra: Hello Kitty’s had a few perfumes named after her over the years but I believe this one is a part of the Hello Kitty beauty line that’s now available at Sephora. I never quite understood the Hello Kitty craze, though I do own a few pieces of Sanrio merchandise and remember a vague time in my tween years when I thought some of the characters were cute. I can appreciate this for the fun factor at least.

Design: The bottle is essentially Hello Kitty’s head with a balloon pump coming up the top. It’s cute at first glance but when you settle down and think about it, it’s a bit macabre. Here you have Hello Kitty, with a sprayer nozzle coming out of her head, and then you squeeze a balloon pump to get the cartoon happiness out of the bottle. The balloon pump, being what it is, is not as good as a standard push atomizer but it is functional. I would be concerned about how the balloon pump continues to function as the user uses the perfume more and more as it’s a pretty delicate piece of hardware.

Fragrance Family: Sweet Fruity

Notes: Cassis sorbet, mandarin, apple, magnolia blossom, freesia, orange flower, tonka bean, vanilla, musk.

And now I know what Hello Kitty is supposed to smell like. This fragrance lived up to my expectations of it smelling like a candy confection. If you’re looking for complex and interesting, you’d have better luck elsewhere.

Reviewed in This Post: Hello Kitty, 2011, Eau de Parfum.


Thierry Mugler Mugler Cologne

Mugler Cologne is one of the easiest to wear fragrances for a very good reason. It smells clean, smells like good soap, and when it comes down to it, Mugler Cologne just smells good.

Mugler Cologne

In Bottle: Clean soap. Like you just stepped into the shower and grabbed a bar of soap. It’s comforting, it’s classy, and it’s definitely easy to wear.

Applied: I love my clean fragrances. I love smelling like soap and smelling fresh so Mugler Cologne is right up my alley. It’s strange that a fragrance that would otherwise be slotted in the ‘boring’ category can pull itself out of that arena and into a more sophisticated area. Mugler Cologne isn’t just ‘smells like soap’ to me. It’s a rich, complex soap scent that does very well on my skin. It’s like holding onto that freshly showered feeling for a little while longer. There’s not a whole lot I can say to separate the notes of this into a traditional fragrance pyramid. Mugler Cologne simply smells good and I’ll happily slather it on for that clean feeling. The longevity of this stuff is a bit lackluster but I expected that from a fragrance like this. I love this stuff though and even if the longevity leaves something to be desired I’ll still love this because it just smells good.

Extra: Thierry Mugler apparently based this fragrance on a soap that he purchased once. I’m not sure what soap he bought but he definitely captured the essence of what soap smells like.

Design: I’m just not a fan of most of Thierry Mugler bottle designs. Cologne’s bottle reminds me of a Dawn dish soap bottle. It comes with a sprayer that you can install yourself and for all intents and purposes, the bottle is easy to hold and the sprayer works fine.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: Bergamot, petit grain, neroli, orange flower, white musk.

This stuff the middle road between Prada’s Infusion de Homme and Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs’ Wensleydale. It’s soapy but not too weak and not too strong. I just wish the longevity was better.

Reviewed in This Post: Mugler Cologne, 2009, Eau de Toilette.


V&R Flowerbomb La Vie en Rose 2011

I decided to give Flowerbomb, or rather its flanker line, a chance hoping that after the very un-floral like contraption that was the original Flowerbomb, they would add some actual flowers to the perfume so it smelled a bit less like a very expensive Pink Sugar.

Flowerbomb La Vie en Rose

In Bottle: Still smells foody though the caramel note in this one is significantly more tame than in the original Flowerbomb. I’m noticing a smooth almond note mingled with that same scent that I got from Flowerbomb. That sweet, nothing-else-but-candy scent that I wasn’t too sold on in the original.

Applied: A flare up of bergamot with sweet tangerine leading the way. It’s typical of perfumes and this citrus opener didn’t happen with the original Flowerbomb that veered right into sweet territory. After the citrus digs itself out, the original Flowerbomb scent comes through with a milder caramel note riding on the waves of an almond scent that adds a bit more foodiness to the fragrance. The florals are still largely absent behind the huge wall of obnoxiously sweet candy-like accords that add nothing to this flanker’s originality. It is, essentially, Flowerbomb with some bergamot and almond. I’m not impressed. The dry down is a similar affair as Flowerbomb. La Vie en Rose is hanging on to some sweet candy scent dotted with a scrubbed clean patchouli until it has faded completely.

Extra: So this version of Flowerbomb’s La Vie en Rose flanker was released in 2011 and toted as being the same floral fragrance everybody’s already loved. I really wish the fine folks who keep producing this stuff would stop kidding themselves and admit that there’s very few flowers in Flowerbomb. I haven’t tried any of the other Flowerbomb flankers yet so hey, maybe they managed a floral one somewhere in there.

Design: Designed much in the same way as the original Flowerbomb. Same shape. Same basic premise. La Vie en Rose has a notable deeper pink though with smaller geometric squares on the flacon’s surface. I like the design. I think it’s cute and clever. I just wish this stuff actually smelled like flowers or at least admit that it doesn’t smell like flowers at all.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Bergamot, pink pepper, tangerine, freesia, lily of the valley, almond, raspberry, red berries, cashmere wood, patchouli, amber.

Flowerbomb La Vie en Rose  irritates me a little bit. It’s like the convenience store I go to sometimes that gouges me for instant noodles. So Flowerbomb La Vie en Rose is the instant noodles. I know it’s not gourmet, I know it’s got very little nutritional value but the convenience store will still gouge me for it anyway.

Reviewed in This Post: Flowerbomb La Vie en Rose, 2011, Eau de Toilette.

PS. For all my geeky perfume lovers out there, happy Captain Picard Day!