Prada Candy

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Prada’s well-done and mostly well-received Infusions line was a big hit with me and its non-Infusions fragrances are fabulous too. So when Prada came out with Candy, I was a bit leery from the name on its own. But every fragrance gets a fair sniff.

Candy

Candy

In Bottle: Warm and musky with a sweet hit of benzoin and burnt caramel.

Applied: Sweet caramel and musk hello! The benzoin follows in afterward and the fragrance takes on a creamy, burnt quality. I hope you like that scent because the rest of the fragrance is pretty much that with a fading of the musk first, then the caramel, then the creamy vanilla for me. The caramel in Candy is a little bit better behaved than the burnt caramel notes in other fragrances like Flowerbomb or Pink Sugar. I still don’t know if I like it, but it isn’t too bad in this. What is too bad is how rather dull Prada Candy is. It wants to be a gourmand but the musk is holding it back. It wants to be an oriental but aside from being rich and deep and full of benzoin and warmth, I hesititate to give it that. In the end, it smells strong, it smells sweet, and while it’s not complex or interesting it does do caramel a lot better than any other caramel-based contender so far. Heck, at the very least, I’d pick Prada Candy over Flowerbomb despite Prada Candy being significantly simpler.

Extra: Prada Candy was released mid-year in 2011. It was composed by Daniela Andrier (Prada Infusion de Vetiver, Prada Infusion d’Homme).

Design: The bottle is a bit retro. Reminds a little of the 80s and I suppose that would be Prada Candy’s way of channeling the orientals of the 80s into its sweet caramel self. As for me, I’m not much of a fan of the bottle design. I don’t like the colors or the shape and would prefer something a little less retro.

Fragrance Family: Oriental Gourmand

Notes: Musk, benzoin, caramel.

As unimpressed as I was with this, I need to remind that this is a good fragrance. It’s several steps above Aquolina’s Pink Sugar and Viktor and Rolf’s Flowerbomb. If you want a high end fragrance with a focus on caramel and a little bit of grown-up personality (not much, just a little) then give Prada Candy a sniff.

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

Prada Infusion de Rose

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Ah, Prada and their infusions. Simple, light and usually easy to wear. Infusion d’Iris is still one of my favorite scents. And I absolutely love rose–if done right. So I gave her a try.

Infusion de Rose

Infusion de Rose

In Bottle: Big old Bulgarian rose right in my face with a splash of refreshing mint.

Applied: This smells like Bulgarian rose with a little squirt of mandarin. I don’t really detect much else aside from that until the mint comes up in the initial stages and gives Infusion de Rose this sort of crisp, watery quality to it. The fragrance keeps aging with the rose taking a dominant role and continuing to play a dominant role until the endstage. I get no wax or holly and have no idea how to detect the smell of beeswax anyway. All I know is, this is a very simple, very crisp and refreshing rose fragrance. Far from interesting or unique but still does a good job.

Extra: Infusion de Rose is a member of the Prada’s infusion series. There’s an entire series of this stuff where Prada takes a fragrance concept and runs with it. They’ve done Iris, Tuberose, Vetiver, and more.

Design: Infusion de Rose is designed in the same way as the other Infusion fragrances except it’s main color is a very girly pink. If lined up in a row, these bottles look absolutely beautiful. I’d love to collect them just to put them on display. The glass is clear, the bottles have a nice weight to them. The design is classic and simple but still very functional.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Mandarin, beeswax, holly, rose, mint.

I would buy this only so I can say I’ve got it for my collection. But as a fragrance, Infusion de Rose isn’t very interesting or new. You could get dewy modern rose in almost any modern rose-based fragrance. It’s just not unique but it does follow the style of Prada’s infusion series rather well.

Reviewed in This Post: Infusion de Rose, 2011, Eau de Toilette.

Prada Infusion de Vetiver

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Infusion de Vetiver is the latest in Prada’s infusion line of fragrances where two of my favorites (Infusion d’Iris and Infusion d’Homme) come from. The line itself is focused on simple formulas based upon one or two concepts, such as tuberose in Infusion de Tubereuse .

Infusion de Vetiver

In Bottle: Very light sweet vetiver with a bit of bitterness from the citrus top note.

Applied: The initial citrus opening is expected in most modern perfume, it’s quick to dissipate leaving you with the vetiver to contend with. This is like vetiver light, sweet, hay-like, a little bit grassy and there’s a hint of pepper lingering around in the background and layered over it all is this herb-like scent I can’t convince myself to stop smelling because it’s not helping the bland situation at all. As Infusion de Vetiver ages into its end stage. Yes, you read that right, it’s in end stage mode already. The fragrance goes into this sheer, barely there sweet vetiver sort of thing that doesn’t do the scent much justice before it drops off completely. The entire episode was in and out in about an hour. In terms of overall smell, the opening was all right, the mid-stage was pretty on par with the opening, and the end stage was a barely there ghost of what a fragrance like this could be. I just don’t see the point of this, it’s light, it’s easy to wear, yes, but it’s nothing interesting.

Extra: So here we are with Infusion de Vetiver. While I enjoyed two of Prada’s Infusions line, they at least had something of a personality and were more interesting than this. Iris had that nice powdery, bitterness to it. D’Homme reminded me of my childhood. Vetiver just smells like sweet wet herbal hay.

Design: Infusion de Vetiver is a limited edition with its designs that are more in line with Infusion de Tubereuse. There’s interesting shapes on the box and bottle cap, done in light green, dark grey, and black this time instead of purple. The bottle shape is the same as the other Infusions so if you were trying to collect them all, you will have a nice uniform set.

Fragrance Family: Aromatic

Notes: Citrus, tarragon, ginger, vetiver, white musk, pepper.

Once again, another fragrance I don’t see the point of. This time from a fragrance house that hasn’t been doing too badly with its offerings. Only, I don’t think it was a good idea for Prada to tackle vetiver. Especially not when so many other houses have done tons of vetiver scents in far better ways.

Reviewed in This Post: Infusion de Vetiver, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Prada Infusion de Tubereuse

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Being a big fan of a couple of Prada’s other infusions (d’Iris and d’Homme), I went out looking for the newest releases. Infusion de Tubereuse looking forward to a light, airy tuberose treatment and Prada delivers yet again.  Infusion de Tubereuse

In Bottle: Very faint, light tuberose, green and almost fresh and clean like tuberose that’s been run under some water and scrubbed for presentation’s sake.

Applied: The infusion of this tuberose are a bit heavier and more literal than what I experienced in d’Iris. Infusion de Tubereuse puts a very gentle, very mild note in there that’s hard not to like. It’s an easy tuberose to wear, as it’s very clean and soft. It’s practically the polar opposite of most tuberose scents that tend to capitalize on the flower’s ability to dominate a perfume. There’s a slight sweetness and crispness lingering around in this scent to further clean it up as Infusion de Tubereuse rounds itself off with a dry down that’s green and only a touch bitter.

Extra: Tuberose is a perennial flower with a juicy, sweet, heady floral scent that some people equate to smelling like rubber. Tuberose is most often used as a middle note in perfumery.

Design: Infusion de Tubereuse is bottled similarly to d’Iris and d’Homme. There’s a little more detail going into the packaging with a design focusing on the purple fragrance rather than just solid colors. The simplicity of the Infusions’ packaging is fantastic and I’d love to line them all up in a row.

Fragrance Family: Soliflore

Notes: Indian tuberose, petitgrain bigarade, blood orange, dynamone.

Petitgrain bigarade’s an interesting note because it’s one of the most prominent scents in this fragrance. It is, essentially, the green leaves of a bitter orange tree. I guess that explains it.

Reviewed in This Post: Infusion de Tubereuse, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Prada Infusion d’Homme

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Infusion d’Homme is a part of Prada’s infusions series that includes one of my favorites, Infusion d’Iris. This series of sheer and light fragrances aren’t known much for their longevity or silage but are fantastic as clean and light fragrances. Infusion d'Homme

In Bottle: Infusion d’Homme smells fresh and clean, mildly aromatic but mostly  just fresh and clean–like a bar of soap. Generic, lovely smelling, soap.

Applied: Neroli and dryness for a moment then Infusion d’Homme sends the soap straight out at you. There’s a powderiness to this that lingers a bit with the soap, furthering that clean, fresh scent. Infusion d’Homme does one thing well and that is make you think you’re wearing a bar of soap around your neck. It’s a nice bar of soap though. During the middle development, this gets a little sharper and very, very slightly sweeter before it goes back to just soap. There’s a pyramid of notes presented for Infusion d’Homme that I think is just there for show since the only piece of that pyramid I saw was powder and neroli. The soap stays with you, never truly leaving–not even on the dry down when Infusion d’Homme gets a bit more powdery.

Extra: Although generally thought to be a masculine fragrance, Infusion d’Homme is more of a unisex. I don’t really see how a fragrance that smells like soap and cleanliness could have a gender anyway.

Design: Call me a sucker for uniform, but I love how these infusions are bottled the same way with varying colors and slightly different themes. Infusion d’Homme is bottled exactly the same way as Infusion d’Iris except it is a beige color instead of a light green. Simple, elegant, looks great on a shelf–if I kept my fragrances on a shelf, anyway.

Fragrance Family: Clean and Fresh

Notes: Mandarin, neroli, clean notes, iris, galbanum, cedar, vetiver, benzoin, frankincense, powdery notes.

Infusion d’Homme reminds me a bit of my childhood, French colonial style apartment buildings with clotheslines threading the distance between them. A day on the stone balcony playing with a bar of soap, that this fragrance invokes the smell of, while our downstairs neighbor simultaneously cooked dinner and yelled at her kids.

Reviewed in This Post: Infusion d’Homme, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Prada Infusion D’Iris

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Infusion D’Iris is a fragrance true to its name as the fragrance strength and longevity are pretty much as good as an infusion’s going to get. This is an incredibly light fragrance with a very sad, very short applied life. No wonder a 200ml of Eau de Parfum exists. Having thought it funny that a bottle (not counting fountains) so massive existed at the time, I have since seen the light. I will no longer laugh at your jug’s worth of fleeting beauty, Infusion D’Iris. Infusion D'Iris

In Bottle: Green with a slightly earthy quality to it. Dark citrus laid over breaths of earthy, woodsiness. There is a very beautiful,very clear floral in this that lands the fragrance in floral territory immediately. I love the play between the freshness and the earthiness here. The latter often used in a denser way.

Applied: There’s a very bitter opener in this that powers through and reserve thoughts you may have had of D’Iris possibly being fruity. Nothing at all fruity about this fragrance as it tells you up front that it means business. The floral is also very quick to come up along with the woods and resins that blend together to make this fragrance sing during the early application period. As Infusion D’Iris ages on the skin the bitterness eases off a little, letting the flower and the rest of the fragrance do its work as it smooths out into a light whitish-green interpretation.

Extra: The iris sprouts from a bulb and like most bulb sprouting flowers tend to lack a scent, or have very little scent. There are some iris species that do have fragrant flowers but by and large you’ll find scentless iris petals. So, how come you see some people claim they can smell irises and love iris notes? They probably can because iris absolute does exist. Naturally extracted iris absolute, like many naturally produced ingredients in perfumery, are prohibitively expensive. Iris notes are made from the rhizomes of the plant rather than from the petals like most people would think. It would surprise many to discover that a lot of flower petals lack a fragrance and ye olde iris is one of them. How do they get the fragrance out of iris rhizomes then? They irradiate  them then extract the goodness. Irradiation is done to accelerate the aging of the rhizomes to get irones out of them. Irradiation simply makes things faster. Far faster, as aging iris rhizome the natural way could take years, whereas nuking them takes only a week. For the hypochondriacs out there, you cannot get cancer or radiation poisoning from wearing the extract from nuked iris root. You also will not become a superhero. I know. I’m sorry.

Design: Presented in a tall rectangular glass bottle with the Prada logo embossed on a plate. The cap is a plastic and metal affair with a band of green textured paper running along its barrel. Simple, easy, nothing flashy or complicated. I’m a minimalist by nature so the bottle here suits my tastes. The sprayer is also very decent, even, fine mist, does not distribute too much perfume. Though in this case, it probably should have.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Mandarin, orange blossom, iris, incense, benzoin, vetiver, cedar.

Here’s another surprise feature about perfume and supposed expensive ingredients. While there are genuinely expensive ingredients still used in perfume the vast majority of money that a perfume costs to you, the consumer, doesn’t go into the materials to make the fragrance. According to Luca Turin in The Secret of Scent, approximately 3% of the money goes into the fragrance components and development. The other 97%? Packaging, margins and advertising. And so my rage at Burberry Brit’s brick of a bottle continues.

Reviewed in This Post: Infusion D’Iris, 2010, Eau de Parfum.