Marc Jacobs Daisy Eau So Fresh

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Daisy Eau So Fresh is the 2011 released flanker to Marc Jacobs’ wildly popular Daisy. I was a little leery going into this one because I saw they had taken the fruity floral angle up a few notches. But Daisy Eau So Fresh is actually very nice.

Daisy Eau So Fresh

Daisy Eau So Fresh

In Bottle: Litchi seems dominant with a fresh grassy quality. It’s otherwise a very nicely done fruity scent that reminds me of a fruit smoothie on a hot summer day.

Applied: I’m smelling litchi and fruit punch. I’m able to separate the litchi since it’s pretty strong to my nose but the rest of the fragrance is mushed together in this amalgamation of fruits. It’s sweet, a faint echo of Daisy in the brief grassy glimpses I get in the opening as the scent evolves into a fruity floral with the fruits still being the dominant players. As Daisy Eau So Fresh ages it leads away from the fruity opening a bit and evolves into more of a clean floral with a slight powdered quality to it. The dry down is noted with a clean musk and a hint of cedar. Overall, a more pleasant experience than Daisy. And I already liked Daisy to begin with.

Extra: Seems like ‘boggling at the advertising’ should be a regular feature on this blog. The ad for Daisy Eau So Fresh said that it was a whimsical interpretation of the original fragrance. I don’t know about anyone else, but if someone had told me to describe Daisy, I probably would have used the word ‘whimsical’ to begin with. How else do you describe a scent that’s supposed to be the smellification (now a word) of a daisy?

Design: Daisy Eau So Fresh is bottled in a similar shape and style as the original Daisy. Just think of the original bottle for Daisy, then stretch it out a little so it’s a bit taller, introduce some light dusty pinks, a little pop of yellow and you got the bottle for Daisy Eau So Fresh. I have to admit those rubbery flowers grow on me. Just don’t leave them out for too long because they collect dust like crazy.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Grapefruit, green notes, raspberry, pear, jasmine, rose, violet, litchi, apple blossom, musk, cedar, plum.

Overall, I actually think Daisy Eau So Fresh did a good job being a flanker. It smells pleasant enough, easy enough, and if someone liked Daisy by Marc Jacobs they should probably give this a try to see if it jives with them too.

Reviewed in This Post: Daisy Eau So Fresh, 2011, Eau de Toilette.

Marc Jacobs Oh Lola!

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Oh Lola! is a recent flanker of the original Marc Jacobs Lola, that shampoo-y smelling, not unpleasant but not exciting, clean floral with the massive flower cap. Oh Lola! s presented as a pinker, more stylish version of the original. When someone describes a fragrance as ‘stylish’, I immediately cringe.

Oh Lola!

Oh Lola!

In Bottle: Fresh and berry-like with a layer of sheer florals underneath, a bit on the sweeter side but doesn’t overdo the sweetness to the point of cloying. Not very interesting but smells decent.

Applied: Clean and berry-like in the opening, reminds me a bit of a berry trifle or fruit juice. I swear I can smell a mango note and pineapple note in there. But essentially, the opening is generic fruit punch. It’s clean though and a little sweet as the fragrance ages, the fruitiness meshs more into the florals and lets in some of these flowers we’ve been hearing about. The florals themselves are unexciting, they’re blended well enough that they form this clean, unassuming and easygoing blend of flowery goodness that goes well with the fruity opening. As Oh Lola! heads into the base the scent takes on an extremely dull sandalwood vanilla scent that I haven’t smelled in a while but still remember rather well because every generic-smelling perfume uses a sandalwood vanilla base. “Oh Lola!” is shaping up to be more of an “Oh, Lola, It’s You Again”.

Extra: The buzz is already out for the ad campaign surrounding Oh Lola! Dakota Fanning has been chosen as the face for this fragrance and the questionable nature of the ad photo has already sparked something of a sensation around this perfume. I found Bang! and its ad campaign to be a humorous if somewhat lowbrow presentation. I find Oh Lola! to be of the similar vein. Or could we all just be overreacting because we’re used to Marc Jacobs pulling stunts like this? Whatever it is, the ad campaign made me raise a brow, the pink bottle made me grimace, and the description that Oh Lola! was ‘stylish’ made me cringe. Nothing about its presentation made me want to rush out and smell it or buy it.

Design: Maybe it was because I was overpinked as a child and have since grown something of a disdain for the color’s reputation as a “feminine” hallmark, but I don’t see why everyone thinks pink is so cute. Pink, when used right, can be cute. Sometimes it can even be sophisticated. If used wrong, it’s a bit burlesque and can even come off as cheesy and childish. So when they took Lola’s bottle, (a perfectly dynamic piece of work) and made it pink, I had to wonder what exactly there was to accomplish here. But I suppose they had to have a flanker look somewhat like the original. And I suppose–if nothing else–pink truly does suit the fragrance. I just find it tired that perfumes would constantly use pink for their fruitier, lighter, less serious flankers of original perfumes. You see a flanker that’s pink and can safely assume that it’ll either be sugary, weak, one dimensional, or a combination of the three.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Strawberry, raspberry, pear, peony, sandalwood, vanilla.

All right, so I admit I was chomping at the bit to get at the design of the Oh Lola! bottle. It just bothered me on a fundamental level that I can’t even begin to explain. Nothing on the juice, but the design of the bottle itself just turned me off immensely. Thankfully we’re here for the juice–most of the time.

Reviewed in This Post: Oh Lola!, 2011, Eau de Parfum.

Marc Jacobs Bang

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Marc Jacobs came out with Bang (raise your hands if you read that as ‘came out with a bang’) earlier this year to a fairly decent media frenzy that at first revolved around his statements about the fragrance, then about the advertising that came out with the fragrance in which some men begged to wonder, “if I were to choose a cologne, do I want it to be the one with a naked Marc Jacobs on the advertisement?” Query of the ages right there. Bang

In Bottle: Bang slaps me in the nose right away with a gigantic dose of peppers. Red, white, pink, black. You got the entire pepper rainbow in this thing. And hey, it’s off-putting but I actually like it.

Applied: Pepper, pepper, pepper. Like grinding peppercorns and spraying them into my nose. The initial reaction I had was to sneeze but it didn’t get to that point. I love pepper. I love how strong and blatant the initial pepper blast in this stuff is. If you want something to wake you up, Bang’s opening is it. But after the pepper blast, Bang heads into something a little more conventional as it veers into a leathery woods scent with a tickle of vetiver and a now very familiar cedar note. But all that is second fiddle to the pepper that just doesn’t go away. Thankfully Bang is light-handed with its used of cedar and has ended up with a competent woodsy mid-stage instead of a cedar mess that so many other cedar-based fragrances suffer from on my skin. The dry down is a decent play between bitter green notes, a lingering tickle of pepper, and a pleasant bit of earthy patchouli and woods.

Extra: The less said about the advertising campaign for Bang, the better. I thought they could have taken this in a few different directions but ultimately picked the obvious, which was disappointing to me. Well, if nothing else, the ad caught a lot of people’s attention.

Design: Bang’s bottle is not for me. It’s a little silly looking, if you ask me, and seems overly gimmicky. The bottle boasts a metallic exterior that looks like it would have once been a statement piece in the world of metal rectangles before someone punched it out of shape in a blind rage. Surprisingly enough, despite its non-traditional appearance and respectable weightiness, the bottle is fairly easy and comfortable to hold.

Fragrance Family: Spicy Woods

Notes: Black pepper, white pepper, pink pepper, woods, elemi resin, benzoin, vetiver, white moss, patchouli.

I’m not a fan of the reputation they built around this fragrance. I’m much less a fan of the silly-looking bottle. But the fragrance is a competent well-blended spicy woods gig.

Reviewed in This Post: Bang, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Marc Jacobs Lola

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Marc Jacobs Lola was supposed to be a more grown-up Daisy. And I had seen this fragrance touted so much that I had to go and find some just to see if all the hype was true. I left underwhelmed with the scent but pleased with it all the same. Lola

In Bottle: Bright grapefruit, clean spice, and fruity pear. This smells juicy and clean right off the bat. It’s almost like a Herbal Essences shampoo.

Applied: Fruity off the bat with a pile of flowers rolling in like a scrubbed clean tide of–uh–fresh flowers. I’m tired. Cut me some slack. That shampoo smell lingers for a bit in Lola as the opening stage gives way to the mid-stage where the flowers rise up a bit more and the fruity, juicy opening dies down to hold Lola at “Smells like shampoo”. This is a really nice, clean and feminine scent and I can definitely see where people would say this is a grown up Daisy. It doesn’t smell like Daisy but it does smell a little more mature. Not mature in the sense of a classic sophisticated perfume but if we were to assume Daisy is meant for the teen crowd, then Lola would be good for the college kids. She lacks the bright, grassy freshness and youth of Daisy but she makes up for it by being a clean pretty floral with a hovering sweet rose. Sweet rose being a good alternative to classic rose that tends to infuse a bit of youth into perfume’s most popular and, strangely enough, polarizing note. The dry down is a typical affair of sandalwood and vanilla with lingering traces of nice shampoo. Lola reminds me a bit of Gucci Flora with a less sweet mid-stage.

Extra: Lola’s spawned a number of offshoot products. One of the ones I see most often is the solid perfume ring adorned with its iconic vinyl flower.

Design: A big bright, red, purple, blue and green vinyl flower adorns the cap of Lola. The glass bottle itself is a purple color while the circumference of the cap is a textured gold-colored metal. There’s two bottle designs for Lola. The smaller (50ml) is a tall bottle. The 100ml is a squat, wide bottle. The design for Lola took a few pages from Daisy’s bottle design and it’s cute as a button. I didn’t think I would like the bottle design as much as I did but heck, it’s adorable. Not sophisticated at all, a little silly but not the least bit pretentious.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Pink pepper, pear, red grapefruit, peony, rose, geranium, vanilla, creamy musk, tonka.

If nothing else, Lola is an eye catcher for its bottle design. Subtle is not this lady’s business. The 100ml bottle in particular is huge and comes packaged in an equally huge box due to the giant vinyl flower cap.

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

Marc Jacobs Daisy (in the Air)

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Daisy is one of the most popular modern fragrances that is widely available through many different stores. You can find this thing sitting in department stores, drugstores, boutiques, you name it. And it’s not hard to see why. Daisy is a light, playful, fresh and clean scent that was made to appeal. Like the Acqua di Gio of the 2000s. Daisy

In Bottle: Green and grassy with a light violet leaf giving it that green grassiness. The fruits in this are detectable but they’re watery–not sweet and honestly, they don’t need to be.

Applied: Fruit is the first thing I smell, diluted and tamed fruit. Most of you time you would think of fruit notes as being sweet and loud but the ones at play in Daisy are much more subdued. The mid-stage is characterized with a blend of fresh and clean smelling flowers and the persistent edge of green grass. I smell the gardenia most of all in the mid-stage which is a really addition. The dry down is a pretty and sheer musky vanilla. Daisy is the representation of a beautiful green meadow, a light breeze, and a happy frolic. It’s care-free, girly, clean and fresh. It’s also very, very light as I find myself having to use more Daisy than I would any other fragrance to catch my scent in the morning. The fact still remains though that this is a great modern fragrance that truly earns its badge as one of the most popular available fragrances.

Extra: Daisies do not actually have a scent. Marc Jacobs’ Daisy invokes the concept of what a daisy would smell like instead. It should be noted that you may find Daisy and Daisy in the Air available in stores. Daisy in the Air is the exact same fragrance in a limited edition bottle with blue flowers. Unless you are in the market for a new bottle of Daisy, do not drop the cash on Daisy in the Air because it is not a flanker, just a redesign for the bottle.

Design: Cute little curved glass bottle with an equally adorable topper covered in white (or blue in the case of Daisy in the Air) flowers. I had originally thought the design for this fragrance was a little hokey but those flowers get to you so that even the most minimalist of us are swayed by those infectious little flowers. I gotta admit now, I like the bottle design. It’s cute and playful and effective. The rubber flowers are what cinched the deal.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Strawberry, violet leaves, ruby red grapefruit, gardenia, violet petals, jasmine petals, musk, vanilla, white woods.

Another thing to note of Daisy in the Air, aside from the blue flowers, it also comes with a garland that you can spritz with scent and hang in the room so that it disperses fragrance throughout the place. I think it’s a cute gimmick but again, this isn’t a flanker, it is just the exact same smell as the regular Daisy packaged differently.

Reviewed in This Post: Daisy & Daisy in the Air, 2010, Eau de Toilette.