Playboy Play It Rock

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Apparently Playboy didn’t stop at the last trilogy of “Play It” fragrances that included in Play It Sexy, Play It Lovely and Play It Spicy. Play It Rock is a new fragrance that’s built on the same concept as the previously mentioned three scents.

Play It Rock

Play It Rock

In Bottle: Citrus and fruit. Lots of fruitiness in this actually with a little bit of vanilla.

Applied: Citrus up top, rather loud and harsh at first and makes me think that’s where the rock is coming from. The sharpness goes away rather quickly though and I’m introduced to a fruity mid-stage that makes me think of apples and berries mixed together in a bizarro cupcake. The fruitiness is tempered a bit by a pretty benign layer of generic, but soft and yielding florals. As the fragrance ages the vanilla note arrives making Play It Rock smell more and more like a fruity cupcake. Nothing wrong with that. The fragrance is rather soft at this stage and doesn’t smash you in the face with its sweetness. It’s actually pretty decent when you get to the dry down. It’s not unique, but it’s perfectly wearable after the opening.

Extra: Play It Rock was released in 2011. I’m not sure where Playboy is going to take this line. A part of me wonders if they’re going to be releasing two more Play It fragrances or if they’re just going to leave it at Play It Rock. I just hope they get a bit more creative in the future.

Design: The design is essentially the same as the other Play It fragrances with a round bottle and a nozzle cap that features the Playboy Bunny. Play It Rock sets itself apart by having a red topper as opposed to a black top like the other Play It fragrances and does not have the little jewel on the bottle.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Oriental

Notes: Blood orange, apple, orange flower, saffron, frangipani, passion flower, ebony, patchouli, tonka bean.

Play It Rock doesn’t do what it’s meant to do badly. It’s not exciting, but it’s a good competent fragrance for a younger audience or for someone who wants a nice sweet fruity scent that isn’t too strong. Granted, if you wanted something light and sweet you could get the body spray version of this stuff.

Reviewed in This Post: Play It Rock, 2011, Eau de Toilette.

Parfums de Coeur Fireworks

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With a weather related headache, I had to question whether it was a good idea for me to test another Sexiest Fantasies fragrance from Parfums de Coeur considering the last fragrance I reviewed from them gave me a headache.

Fireworks

Fireworks

In Bottle: Very sweet, very peachy and fruity with an equal part vanilla and not a whole lot else.

Applied: Super sweet peach and vanilla. The vanilla gets even stronger as the fragrance ages until all you smell is pretty much synthetic vanilla with a fruity background. I’m not getting much else but fruity vanilla out of this which is a bit of a disappointment. In terms of individual notes, they’re all drowned out by the very strong vanilla. The dry down ends up as a plain old synthetic vanilla fragrance.

Extra: Fireworks and a lot of the other scents I have in this line are just body sprays. Fireworks, itself, is very strongly scented so don’t feel that a body spray won’t last as long or be as strong as a full on fragrance. This particular scent can hold its own in terms of longevity and power.

Design: Packaged in a simple black bottle. No frills or thrills here. It’s functional and tries to dress itself up a little, but it’s still essentially a body spray bottle.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Strawberry, peach, vanilla.

Not much to say about this one, it’s fruity and sweet and that’s about the start and end of it. It’s not my kind of thing as it’s too sweet and one-dimensional, but it will smell great to the right person.

Reviewed in This Post: Fireworks,  2009, Body Spray.

Christina Aguilera Royal Desire

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Royal Desire was apparently designed for women who feel like royalty. Though it’s an interesting thought the fragrance itself is less interesting than hoped.

In Bottle: Sugar and marshmallows, a little dusty but mostly candy-like with a little echo of flowers.

Applied: Sugar high on application though Royal Desire is a very low sillage fragrance. It won’t go very far but you will smell like a fruity marshmallow at first before the fragrance introduces its equally light floral heart. I can get a bit of rose out of the mid-stage if I really wanted but Royal Design isn’t about the florals. It’s pretty obvious this stuff is capitalizing on its sweet mallowy goodness as there’s a tremendous amount of it along with a creeping vanilla. Though with how meek the fragrance is, you’ll have to concentrate to smell it. The dry down is pretty uninteresting, the marshmallow ends up smelling a bit more like sweet and powdery vanilla during the end game.

Extra: I should make a note to just stop reading the ads that go along with these fragrances. Royal Desire’s claim is that it’s for women who want to feel seductive. Marshmallows don’t make me think of seduction. They make me think of campfires and smores.

Design: I’m not wild about the bottle design but it could have been much worse. There’s a lace motif that seems to grace a lot of Christina Aguilera fragrances and this one isn’t much different. The shape is fine, the lace design is fine, the little charm is cute. Just something about the way it was all put together doesn’t inspire me.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Mandarin, blackberry, marshmallow, rose, honeysuckle, lily, cedar, musk, vanilla, sandalwood.

So another fragrance goes into the slush pile of celebuscents. Royal Desire would be great for a young woman or a teenager interested in smelling sweet, but don’t want something too overpowering.

Reviewed in This Post: Royal Desire,  2010, Eau de Parfum.

Parfums de Coeur Strawberries and Champagne

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Having found myself the recipient of a set of these Parfum de Coeur fragrances, I decided to give these a try. The fact that Parfum de Coeur’s last scent experience didn’t go over well with me doesn’t mean none of their other fragrances won’t.

Strawberries and Champagne

Strawberries and Champagne

In Bottle: Smells like really sweet strawberry hard candy with a weird floral blanket.

Applied: When I was a kid I had a doll that came with a tiny bottle of perfume. The doll was great, the perfume smelled exactly like this. It was overly sweet, it was some sort of berry and it had florals thrown into it in an attempt to make it smell a little more interesting than just extremely potent strawberry candy. But what the florals just end up doing is give me a headache and make the fragrance smell especially synthetic. There is not much of a progression to this. It starts sweet and strawberry, and it ends sweet and strawberry.

Extra: Apparently there’s a large number of fragrances that also belong to this line of Sexiest Fantasies. I have to admit this Strawberries and Champagne doesn’t remind me of sexy fantasies.

Design: Rather uninspiring design that reminds me a bit of the 90s in a retro nostalgia way. This isn’t a full on perfume–it is just a body spray so I don’t expect too much of its design. The design is functional. It works. It just looks very dated and a bit cheesy.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Florals, champagne, strawberry.

I had actually been looking forward to seeing if I would get their Skin Musk fragrance in my grab bag as it seemed to be pretty well received, but it was not to be.

Reviewed in This Post: Strawberries and Champagne,  2010, Body Spray.

P.S. And with this rather underwhelming fragrance, I hope you all have a great New Year!

Taylor Swift Wonderstruck

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So Taylor Swift’s name enters the world of celebrity fragrances. Did she do any better than the multitudes of celebrity fragrances that came before hers? Nope.

Wonderstruck

Wonderstruck

In Bottle: Sweet berries with a heavy sweet note that’s reminiscent of vanilla layered over a thin and sparse coating of flowers.

Applied: Smells like berry hard candy mixed with vanilla. Not particularly interesting and not particularly new or fascinating. I think I’ve officially burnt myself out on fruity florals now because Wonderstruck is actually striking me the wrong way. Again, it doesn’t smell bad. It’s just boring. Anyway the vanilla berry fragrance takes on a bit of juiciness from the peach or the apple or whatever the heck fruit smoothie concoction rolls in after the opening. This makes the thing smell like Hidden Fantasy by Britney Spears tripped and fell into a vat of Viva la Juicy. The midstage is marked with a hint of florals rising up like a horrible ocean of sweetness and girliness. The fragrance reminds me of any number of female celebrity perfumes and its identity really blends in with the rest of its competition. The dry down isn’t any more remarkable either, a dose of vanilla, a hint of warm amber, a bit of sandalwood and white musk to give the fragrance that clean, sweet, girly ending.

Extra: Wonderstruck was released this year to a happy audience of Taylor Swift fans who will be equally  happy to note that the perfume smells good if you’re into fruity floral fragrances. Heck, if you liked the Britney Spears Fantasy line then you’ll probably enjoy this. Or even if you just like Taylor Swift and want to collect things with her name on it. As a fragrance though, it’s not accomplished or unique. So serious fragrance lovers would get better wear out of a more competent fruity floral.

Design: It’s a bit cheesy but I have to admit that it isn’t poorly designed. There’s something Renaissance about it. Maybe it’s the carvings on the cap that remind me of the intricate stonework that would be present in a lovingly built church. Aside from the cap, I find the charms kind of garish and random and the bottle functional and unobtrusive at best. It’s not a bad design overall.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Blackberry, raspberry, peach, apple blossom, freesia, tea, hibiscus, honeysuckle, vanilla, musk, amber, sandalwood.

Saw a “teaser” on YouTube for this perfume where Taylor was wearing one of her trademark fancy dresses and looking ethereal as she wandered around while title text faded in to introduce the fragrance. I’m not sure how to feel about the whole thing except mildly perplexed. Why does a perfume need a teaser? Is Taylor doing something else that I’m missing? I don’t know anything about music and suspect that I’m tone deaf so why am I musing about any of this? I may never know the answers to these barely valid questions, but I do know that I loved Taylor’s dress.

Reviewed in This Post: Wonderstruck, 2011, Eau de Parfum.

Britney Spears Cosmic Radiance

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Cosmic Radiance is a flanker from Britney Spears’ Radiance fragrance. It is supposed to be inspired by stars and jewels and other things that made Radiance a fairly benign fragrance.

Cosmic Radiance

Cosmic Radiance

In Bottle: I had to double check that I was holding the right bottle because this smells exactly like Radiance.

Applied: Goes on with a sweet tuberose fragrance with a minor difference from the original Radiance in that I don’t get any tartness in the opening. I get a face full of litchi but otherwise, the tuberose and the sweet treatment of the fragrance is very reminiscent of Radiance. The scent heads into a midstage in the same type of construction too with a tuberose and jasmine treatment and eventually nosedives into the end stage as a clean white musk with a hint of vanilla. My impressions of this stuff don’t differ much between Cosmic Radiance and regular Radiance. It is quite disappointing of a flanker.

Extra: Unless you don’t already own Radiance, I would suggest skipping this iteration. There’s not much different to it unless the tartness in the opening of the original Radiance was particularly bothersome. Otherwise, the two fragrances are remarkably similar and if you own one, there really isn’t a point in having both unless you’re a collector or like the bottle design.

Design: Same basic design as the original Radiance and I’m still put off by it. It’s got those jewel things on the glass making the bottle look disproportionate and lumpy. The black and clear motif just makes the lumpy look more pronounced. The colors are garish to me too and I just can’t get on board with the look of this thing.

Fragrance Family: Sweet Floral

Notes: Mandarin, pear, litchi, peony, jasmine, gardenia, tuberose, musk, sandalwood, vanilla, amber.

I have to give Cosmic Radiance a thumbs down for not being at all different from the original Radiance. It should be reiterated that Radiance was–while a bit pedestrian–a decent fragrance. I just didn’t think there needed to be two versions of it that smell almost exactly alike.

Reviewed in This Post: Cosmic Radiance, 2011, Eau de Parfum.

Bath and Body Works Orange Sapphire

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I had smelled Orange Sapphire a few months ago and thought it would be a part of Bath and Body Work’s regular collection. When I went back recently to freshen my memory of this scent, I found that it had been discontinued. That’s the thing with Bath and Body Works, they come out with some nice, wearable, easy fragrances that smell all right. Then when you go back looking for it again, it’s been discontinued. Talk about frustrating.

Orange Sapphire

Orange Sapphire

In Bottle: Clean, sweet citrus that reminds me immediately of summer and the tropics. Nicely done citrus-based fragrance that’s more interesting than White Citrus. Orange Sapphire is like White Citrus if the latter would loosen its shirt collar a little bit.

Applied: It’s like a sweet citrus party upon application as all the citrus notes flood up top and vie over each other for dominance. There’s definitely a distinct sweet mandarin scent amongst the various citruses. As the fragrance wears on, it gets a bit more floral and a lot more generic. Orange Sapphire’s citrus notes try to hold on in the midstage but the fragrance develops into a floral near the end of its midstage and when Orange Sapphire hits the endstage, it still smells like a sweet floral generic fragrance, the base notes don’t add much to the fragrance, as is usually the case.

Extra: Orange Sapphire was discontinued sometime in 2011. The last time I saw this on the shelves at a Bath and Body Works store was in 2010. You can still buy this on eBay and Amazon from third party vendors. But given the history of BnBW discontinuing scents then bringing them back under different names, I wouldn’t be surprised if Orange Sapphire resurfaced with a different name.

Design: All Bath and Body Works perfumes are pretty much designed the same way. I suppose the uniform design approach works for them. I mean, the design itself is easy enough to like and easy enough to rebrand for other fragrances. Orange Sapphire, appropriately enough, features an orange glass bottle with some sapphire blue elements on the design.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Blood orange, orange, grapefruit, bergamot, mandarin, cassis, raspberry, peach, jasmine, orange flower, freesia, lily of the valley, magnolia, orchid, vetiver, musk, patchouli.

It’s too bad this was discontinued because I think it did fill a niche in that it’s more playful than White Citrus but is still refreshing without being a full out gourmand. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if they brought this back at some point.

Reviewed in This Post: Orange Sapphire, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

L’Occitane 4 Reines

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L’Occitane’s fragrances are surprisingly good for a bath and body company. But L’Occitane’s offerings tend to be a bit more complex than stuff at Bath and Body Works. 4 Reines was one of the first fragrances I tried from L’Occitane and it was a very nice, modern rose composition.

4 Reines

4 Reines

In Bottle: Rose, rose, and more rose. There’s a bit of classic rose in this but 4 Reines mostly represents a very competent modern, clean rose.

Applied: Clean, bright, dewy rose that’s very young and very modern. There’s a big difference between a classic rose scent and a modern one. I suppose a review of 4 Reines is as good a place as any. A classic rose to me (or old fashioned rose) has more depth and more density to it. There’s this sense of complexity to it that tends toward a bit of powderiness. A modern rose–like this fragrance–is usually clean, crisp and fresh. It’s youthful and easier to like and a bit watered down but that helps make it easier to wear. I smell modern rose in almost everything these days and classic rose in increasingly smaller and smaller amounts. Anyway, 4 Reines smells like a full on modern rose. A very well done one too.

Extra: 4 Reines, true to its name as a fragrance that contains four rose scents was composed by Karine Dubreuil who also composed Gucci Envy Me and Just Cavalli Her.

Design: A nicely designed square glass bottle that looks pretty unassuming. It has a pretty 80s-esque label on it. The rest of the bottle looks just as unassuming with very frills or thrills. It’s just functional.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Rose, Turkish rose, Moroccan rose, Bulgarian rose.

It’s light, it’s clean, it’s dewy and if you love rose then you’ll love this. There’s little else in the fragrance for it to progress much. If you love a more classical rose, then 4 Reines might not be for you and I may suggest something a bit older like Guerlain’s Nahema.

Reviewed in This Post: 4 Reines, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

BnBW Paris Amour

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Another new-ish release from Bath and Body Works, Paris Amour is supposed to be a sophisticated, romantic fruity floral scent. I already have my doubts.

Paris Amour

Paris Amour

In Bottle: Very fruity, the strawberry is really present along with this peach and apple combination. Everything is also very sweet.

Applied: Strawberry all up in my face. There’s the apple blossom kind of waffling about with the peach note as the big fruity opening starts drying off in the mid-stage where the floral notes start to come up. We got a little bit of something green but there is a lot of frangipani to my nose and an equal amount of cleaned up lotus mixed with a tiny hint of cleaned up jasmine. The dry down is not too much more interesting as the floral midstage gives way to a vanilla sandalwood scent that’s been bathed in white musk.

Extra: Paris Amour, like pretty much all other Bath and Body Works fragrances comes in a variety of different products. You can get a lotion, body mist, body cream, shower gel. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a candle version of this scent.

Design: Designed in much the same way as other Bath and Body Works fragrances. Essentially, you’ve got a square bottle with some cute pastel colors and the Eiffel Tower. Nothing too exciting though the design of this particular fragrance is a little unbalanced with the tower standing out a little too much in my opinion.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Mandarin, strawberry, cassis, freesia, apple blossom, peach, jasmine, lotus, frangipani, tulip, musk, sandalwood, amber, vanilla, coconut.

Paris Amour is pretty generic for what it is. I don’t know, Bath and Body Works seems to have one hit fragrance and that was Japanese Cherry Blossom. Everything else is kind of like this, “It smells all right” kind of affair with no real sense of the dramatic or the unique. As for whether or not Paris Amour is the sophisticated and romantic scent it was toted as being–eh, not really. This makes me think, “fun”, “girly”, “happy”. Romance and sophistication don’t come into the picture.

Reviewed in This Post: Paris Amour, 2011, Eau de Toilette.

Playboy Play It Sexy

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What classy digs I’ve found myself in today with one of the (surprisingly) many Playboy fragrances. It’s Play It Sexy, a fragrance for women that I guess women can use to seduce men. I’m not sure this will work the way it claims it’ll work but let’s give it a sniff and go from there.

Play It Sexy

Play It Sexy

In Bottle: Sweet citrus that doesn’t hit the right notes and ends up smelling a little synthetic right off the bat. I kind of get some of the licorice note up front too which doesn’t help the synthetic smell of this at all.

Applied: Citrus on opening with a sweetness to it that’s a little bothersome. That synthetic feel of the fragrance isn’t any better on the skin. The fragrance is rather quick to evolve as well as the citrus moshes itself into the florals where I get jasmine and what’s clearly a rose note. The sweetness mingling with the rose is a tad disturbing and is reminding me a bit of how Danielle by Danielle Steel smelled and I did not like that one bit. The licorice note–hilariously enough–is also present throughout this entire fragrance taking this to the next level of unappealing because it’s mingling with everything and in a really poor way. It’s kind of like you’re not really enjoying a discordant juice blend that you decided to make yourself one day and tried to add some random element to it in the hopes of improving upon your wayward culinary attempts. Only said random element only made things worse. The fragrance dries down into a pretty generic vanilla sandalwood which I actually liked seeing as the rest of the fragrance didn’t hit it off with me. I will give Play It Sexy one thing, it doesn’t reach cloying sweetness and it isn’t crazy strong. So while I didn’t like the fragrance, I didn’t feel like I had to run to the bathroom and scrub it off.

Extra: So I don’t think Playboy will be joining the hallowed halls of mainstream designer perfumes any time soon. But if you’re looking for some cheap thrills in perfumery, these Playboy scents are very affordable. They’ll run you a few bucks over an Axe bodyspray but they do smell better.

Design: I really can’t speak for the bottle design for this stuff. It’s like an amalgamation of things I don’t like. Weird animal motif, random gem, pink, bowtie. It’s cute, I suppose. The only thing it’s missing is Comic Sans font and a fairy. The aesthetic just isn’t sitting well with me.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Grapefruit, mandarin, pink pepper, jasmine, florals, licorice, vanilla, patchouli, sandalwood, tonka.

So these fragrances come in a three pack, which is a pretty good deal, but supposedly they are supposed to represent the stages of a woman’s seduction game. The other two fragrances I’ve got are called “Play It Spicy” and “Play It Lovely”.

Reviewed in This Post: Play It Sexy, 2010, Eau de Parfum.