Paris Hilton Passport Tokyo

As I’m looking at the couple of drops I have of this thing, I’m currently contemplating the amazing fact I just read on Perfume Posse. Paris Hilton–she of the Reality TV, zany antics, and Hilton Empire stardom–has sold $1.5 Billiondollars of perfume. That makes me just a little bit sad.

Passport Tokyo

Passport Tokyo

In Bottle: Light and citrus with a  bit of cedar and a little touch of sweet flowers. Whoo hoo.

Applied: Forgive my lack of enthusiasm for this one. I’m still reeling (two days after the fact) over the sum of money Hilton’s made on stuff like this. It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but in the same vein, it’s not good either. In fact, it’s only not bad because it strikes a dull chord in my nose and tells me it’s all right, but if I want to be wooed and I’m not already swooning then I ought to get out of its way. Passport Tokyo’s mild and sheer citrus layer is joined by a sweet apple-like scent that blends into a really limp sweet floral woodsy fragrance that smells like it’s been diluted a couple of times. On the one hand, I’m glad the cedar isn’t assaulting my nostrils. On the other hand, I’m really disappointed by how toothless this is. Don’t let the repetition of the word ‘sweet’ fool you into thinking this is going to give you amazing amounts of sweetness. The whole affair is really light and mild.

Extra: Passport Tokyo was released in 2010 as a part of the Passport series of fragrances. The other two in this line were Paris and South Beach.

Design: Kind of garish and seems to be marketed at a much younger crowd. The bottle is clearly not aiming for luxury, but rather for fun. However, I just don’t think an EDT should ever look like that as it’s much more of a body spray packaging choice than something for an actual perfume.

Fragrance Family: Citrus Floral

Notes: Lemon, apple, frangipani, orange flower, jasmine, iris, sandalwood, cedar,musk.

Passport Tokyo’s a bit forgettable and I wouldn’t even really recommend it to anyone interested in a light citrus scent. It just smells watered down. And, come on! $1.5 Billion! Sorry, still can’t get over that.

Reviewed in This Post: Passport Tokyo, 2010, Eau de Toilette.


Heidi Klum Me

If I were ever in the position to have a fragrance made for me, I’d probably be unimaginative enough to just call it, “Me”. It’s really too bad Heidi Klum already beat me to it.

Me

Me

In Bottle: Fresh is probably the one and only word I’ve got for Me. The melon is pretty prominent to my nose along with the clean florals in the middle.

Applied: It’s got a nice blast of fruitiness that mellows into this juicy, clean melon scent which does a nice job eventually moving into an also pleasant and clean floral mid-stage that’s marked with a bit of sparkle and shine. There’s nothing so bold as an aldehyde in this, but the musk couldn’t be anything but white and the woods and vanilla couldn’t be anything but scrubbed with all impurities removed before being bottled. Me is quintessentially young, clean, and fresh. It’s a nice, mild-mannered scent for everyday wear.

Extra: Me was released in 2006 and hasn’t really garnered as much success as some celebrity perfumes. It seems to occupy that dark corner of celebrity fragrances where the lesser known perfumes with celebrity names hang out.

Design: Me isn’t very pretty. It’s actually rather bland in aesthetic and a little bit clunky too. It’s bottled in this roundish container with a standard baby pink cap that doesn’t do much for it’s appeal. It’s not ugly, not pretty, and ultimately not very memorable.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Fruity

Notes: Blackcurrant, apple, melon, pepper, violet, water lily, jasmine, plum, woods, sandalwood, vanilla, musk.

If you want a well done fresh melon and floral scent, then Me is your stuff. You can actually buy this stuff on the Heidi Klum website. Enjoy.

Reviewed in This Post: Me, 2006, Eau de Parfum.


Christina Aguilera Royal Desire

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.


Taylor Swift Wonderstruck

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

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.


Cher Uninhibited

Hey, remember when Cher came out with that perfume? It was the late 80s, the oriental fragrance era was just starting to peter out and out came Uninhibited–clearly uninhibited by the timeline of its release because not only did it break away from the oriental fragrance fad of the time, it was also a sparkling floral aldehyde.

Uninhibited

Uninhibited

In Bottle: I think the sampler I got may have come from a bottle that’s gone off. I get strong floral aldehydes but there’s this faint and unpleasant whiff of alcohol lingering around too. You know that sweet, cloying, sickening smell of rot and alcohol? I’m getting that.

Applied: Floral aldehydes nice and big and that unfortunate smell of off-perfume is also pretty big too. I’m not going to blame the fragrance for this as I’m pretty darn sure the age of the sample is probably what’s doing it. Anyway, the aldehydes are still sparkling and the florals with a dominant jasmine and rose scent are still going strong. As the fragrance ages, there’s a bit of rose, jasmine and woodsiness heading through the aldehydes though this fragrance remains mostly soapy and powdery. It dries down with a pleasant dry woodsiness with a distinct cedar note that’s been calmed down with age. I probably would have really liked this fragrance if it hadn’t been for that bizarre off-perfume smell. But again, this was a pretty old sample and I don’t think the quality of a sample from a fragrance this old could ever be guaranteed and I did gamble a little bit on an obscure celebrity fragrance being kept up like a vintage Guerlain Mitsouko would be. From what I did smell, I could tell I rather liked it. It has a classical air about it thanks to those aldehydes and there were several layers of complexity that still shone through in the fragrance despite its age.

Extra: I’m really sad having read the notes list for this because most of the fragrance was an amalgamation of scents and all I got were jasmine, rose, aldehydes and cedar.

Design: There’s almost something Art Deco about this bottle that makes me really like it. It’s got clean lines with a little bit of whimsy. If you were to take a gander at it, you wouldn’t have guessed it was a celebrity perfume until someone told you. The bottle just seems so classy like it’s from a much earlier time than it actually is.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Heliotrope, aldehydes, ylang-ylang, geranium, rose, jasmine, tobacco, cedar, musk, sandalwood, vanilla, vetiver.

Uninhibited has been discontinued for quite some time, though tracking down this stuff isn’t too hard. There’s a lot of secondhand sellers but I would advise caution when you go to buy this stuff as my sample had gone off. I’m unsure as to when exactly Uninhibited was discontinued so watch out for that also if you plan to track down your own bottle.

Reviewed in This Post: Uninhibited, ~1989, Eau de Parfum.


Jennifer Aniston Lolavie

Jennifer Aniston’s perfume has been received with what I think is an odd sort of popularity in the fragrance world. Why am I perplexed? Well, it’s not that the stuff doesn’t smell good. It’s not even because I think it’s generic. It’s just that I had no idea Jennifer Aniston was still a very popular celebrity. Granted, the last time I watched a movie, a television show, or paid any attention to celebrities was about ten years ago.

Lolavie

Lolavie

In Bottle: Clean and soft floral with a kick of citrus at the top and a bunch of white musk.

Applied: Citrus opens up Lolavie and quickly makes way for the scrubbed clean florals. The scent is very light and refreshing. I can definitely see this being worn in the spring when the flowers have just started to come up. There’s no–or very little–sweetness to this thankfully as the predominant floral note seems to be lily according to my nose. There’s very little in the way of interesting progression as its dry down, I’ve noted, smells like sandalwood and white musk. All in all lolavie doesn’t leave a huge impression on me. It’s clean, it’s light, it’s fresh and it’s definitely a floral. Outside of those very basic facts there just isn’t a lot to comment on. Her longevity stinks due to how light she is but if you’ve been searching for a light, easy, floral perfume then Lolavie is a very good choice.

Extra: Lolavie was Jennifer Aniston’s first fragrance release and I think she’s been trying to table a deal to make another one. Before this fragrance was even released there was a bunch of media buzz about how Aniston didn’t want a normal celebrity perfume and that she wanted something daring and new and different. I will hand it to her that Lolavie is different from the sugar piles of other celebuscents. But it’s not daring or new and hardly different if you compare it to mainstream offerings. It’s a good attempt though and Aniston manages to avoid the Britney Spears segment of celebuscents and is so far cruising along with Sarah Jessica Parker.

Design: The one bone I have to pick with Lolavie is its packaging. The bottle is incredibly unwieldy. I have no idea why they designed the thing to be so big and–well, it’s just big and clunky. It’s a lovely shape. It’s an interesting twist on the standard classic perfume bottle look. But why does the thing have to be so enormous? The size of the bottle makes it difficult to hold and spray and is just unnecessary. Another thing that makes me cringe about the packaging is the typeface they chose. Reminds me a little too much of Times New Roman. Times being the typeface people associate with textbooks, technical manuals, and book reports they were forced to write in school. None of these things paints a particularly fascinating image of the scent within. Other than that, it’s a lovely simple design.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Citrus, rose, jasmine, violet, lily, musk, amber, sandalwood.

I modified the description of the notes list a little because I thought calling a blended citrus accord a “citrus grove accord” was pretty ridiculous wordage. Unless I’m to believe they crammed the citrus, the trees, the dirt, and farm tools into that accord I think calling it just a plain old ‘citrus accord’ is the way to go. What is it with these celebrity releases that they have to come up with the most bizarre ways to describe their notes? Do consumers really buy a perfume because they think they’re getting the smell of an entire citrus grove? No wonder perfume is so misunderstood and confusing. There’s so little consistency in the marketing.

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


Justin Bieber Someday

Okay, let’s get a few ground rules down before I get into the meat of this fragrance review. 1) Justin Bieber does not know how to compose a fragrance and did not personally compose this fragrance. He may have been given some samplers and told to pick his favorite. 2) Justin Bieber is probably the last person who would know what a woman wants to smell like anyway. 3) This stuff doesn’t smell bad, it just smells like generic celebrity perfume chaff.

Someday

Someday

In Bottle: Sweet fruity floral. It’s very light and easy to wear, but also smells really generic because there’s nothing that sets this fruity floral sweet and clean deal apart from any other fragrance like it.

Applied: Soft, slightly sweet, and clean fruity opening with a clear floral heart. There’s jasmine in this for sure, a little bit of lily of the valley I think and probably some sweet and unassuming little flower like heliotrope or freesia. As the fragrance ages, the florals come up a bit more but the scent never really goes anywhere exciting nor does it get any stronger. I don’t think I should even go into complexity because there’s not a whole lot of that going on in this fragrance either. This stuff is light and you may find yourself having to apply a lot of it. I can’t say much for it aside from the fact that it’s got a focus on light and clean florals. The dry down is unexciting with a very sheer blend of white musk and light vanilla flowers.

Extra: You’ve probably heard by now how similar the bottle design for Someday is compared to Marc Jacobs Lola. Well, the similarities are there but at the very least the bottle for Someday isn’t an almost identical rip-off of Lola like a certain other perfume.

Design: I’m not wild about the design of the bottle. Even the commercial for this fragrance couldn’t really make it look good. The design is amateurish to be honest and comparing it to Lola seems a little insulting. Lola’s a well-balanced, if a little bit loud, of a design. Someday looks like a wobbly child’s art experiment. Maybe I just don’t see the appeal of the bulbous bottle design and the weird flower/heart cap thing. Maybe I’m just too old to think this looks good? Who knows. I just don’t like it.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Mandarin, pear, wild berries, jasmine, creamy flowers, vanilla, musk.

So bottom line is Someday is an easy to wear, easygoing light floral scent and you aren’t going to stink if you decide to go out and throw down some cash for this stuff. It’s not special, it’s not unique, but it isn’t bad either.

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


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.


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.