Hello Kitty

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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.

Harajuku Lovers G

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The Harajuku Lovers fragrances is one of those things I never really got into. The scents are okay–mostly. My favorite of the lot is G which was supposed to represent Gwen Stefani’s character. There’s been so many flankers over the years that I’ve pretty much lost count of them all. So this post is a review of the original G, the one released in 2008.

Harajuku Lovers G

In Bottle: Fruity and coconut. Very tropical. The fruitiness is more predominant in the opening.

Applied: Blast of very slight tart fruits followed by very sweet coconut that rushes in and steals the show. The coconut is huge in this fragrance and is clearly the main player. It hovers up top and casts this creamy coconutty sweetness over the rest of the fragrance. You get some florals in the mid-stage, mostly reined-in jasmine and freesia with this sparkly clean undertone. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about G, but it is a very, very, well done coconut, beachy, tropical scent. The dry down is markedly uninteresting with more coconut hovering over the sandalwood and clean laundry smell.

Extra: Okay, I think I’ve got most of the flankers down for G as of this post. With how popular the Harajuku Lovers fragrances are, I doubt the list of flankers is going to remain static. Anyway we’ve got G (2008), Sunshine Cuties G (2009), Wicked Style G (2010), and G of the Sea (2011). Then there’s the bottle redesign for the winter which further adds to the confusion with the Snow Bunny version of G. I’m sure I’m missing some other edition like Valentine’s Day G or Talk Like a Pirate Day G–Oh no, am I giving them more ideas? 🙁

Design: Okay, yeah, the bottles are really cute. But they’re not my thing. The perfume comes in a little glass stand that the plastic doll is propped on. You gain access to the perfume by either popping off the head of the doll or the entire doll body. I remember handling these bottles more than once but don’t remember if I removed only the head or the entire body but spraying the fragrance itself was not an unpleasant ordeal. I was honestly not that impressed with the design and would have rather seen these dolls as a part of some sort of dangling charm off of a better designed bottle similar to what Juicy Couture did. Think about it, cute little Harajuku Lovers cellphone charms that come with your perfume. As it is, it’s too gimmicky for me at the moment.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Mandarin, coconut, apple, jasmine sambac, freesia, magnolia, coconut cream, white sandalwood, cottonwoods.

The fragrance for this is one of the better iterations of tropical and coconut out there. I’m just not a fan for a variety of reasons. The coconut is just that, pure sweet coconut, nothing too interesting about this fragrance. And the packing does not hit home for me. So they missed me by two points. There is, however, a huge fanbase for these dolls and these perfumes so clearly it’s a successful gig.

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

Calvin Klein Euphoria

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I know Calvin Klein’s been curiously overlooked in this blog for a while and here’s why–I don’t really like anything in their line. Even the hallmarks of Calvin Klein fragrances; Obsession and CK One. But I kept seeing Euphoria around and I’ve smelled it a few times before and decided to just get a few reviews out there because I know a lot of people love CK.

Euphoria

In Bottle: Sweet synthetic apple and berries smelling up top. The sugar isn’t mixing well with the pomegranate or the berries to my nose and it’s turning things into a bit of a cough syrup factory.

Applied: Syrupy sweet berries and a really obnoxious synthetic apple note on the opening that digs into the middle with the same syrupy sweet quality. The middle stage is marked with a series of banal florals, all of which are sweet and clean and try to clean up the sugary mess in the opening but all I get is sugar florals, sugar violets particular, trying to do what they can with a dewy green and clean note supporting them. Peaking up in the mid-stage is also a woodsiness that makes the mid-stage even more appealing. I think I would have liked the mid-stage of Euphoria a lot more if it was just the florals. Cut out the fruity sweetness in the opening and see how things go from there. But since we’re playing up the sweet, Euphoria’s end stage heads into a floral, warm and woodsy closer. Rather nice closing on this fragrance, actually.

Extra: There, I know a lot of people really like Euphoria but it did nothing for me. While the sweetness did not get to cloying levels, I felt the sugar in this fragrance was largely unnecessary.

Design: Euphoria’s bottle always manages to get knocked over every time I go hear it. The bottle itself is a purple glass shaped into a sort of abstract leave. The cap is a tall metallic rectangle that sticks up from the leaf. The design is interesting but the cap and how tall it is really annoys me.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Apple, berries, green leaves, rose, lotus, orchid, violets, woods, amber.

Euphoria’s not bad when you consider its mid-stage elements and dry down. It’s a pretty good scent if you can ignore the sugar. I just found the sugar particularly irritating in this fragrance because it really didn’t need to be in this. Or maybe I’m just bitter because this didn’t work as well on me as I had hoped.

Reviewed in This Post: Euphoria, 2007, Eau de Parfum.

Calgon Morning Glory

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Last of my original Calgon four-pack of body mists that Calgon referred to as the “Take Me Away” series. Morning Glory was a another fresh floral in the line. Unlike its very familiar sister, Turquoise Seas, Morning Glory opts for green fresh rather than blue marine fresh.

Morning Glory

In Bottle: Green sharp opening with a floral backing. I get lily and green, very clean and sharp.

Applied: The green freshness in this isn’t the normal grassy green, you can tell this is an unabashed and unapologetic synthetic element being used to give the fragrance that clean and crisp feel. If you look past the green opening there’s a very thick layer of florals in the mid-stage that’s marked, once again, with a prominent lily note that’s intermingled with varying degrees of florals. However, there’s something a bit sweet and licorice like about Morning Glory that’s very appealing. It makes this fragrance seem a bit more grown up than the other three body mists I reviewed. I love that little licorice nip in the mid-stage and it sticks around for a bit as we round off near the end where the fragrance ends on a floral woodsy affair.

Extra: Morning Glory flowers don’t really smell like this but this is a nice interpretation of it anyway. I don’t mind Morning Glory though I doubt many of the notes in its notes list (see below) were really present or they were their heavily synthetic elements.

Design: Last time you get to hear this for a while but, Morning Glory is a blue liquid bottled in a tall plastic cylinder with a plastic spray nozzle. Once again, functional if somewhat plain in form.

Fragrance Family: Clean Floral

Notes: Green notes, galbanum, anise, apple, peach, pineapple, jasmine, lily of the valley, clove, oakmoss, musk, sandalwood.

So that about wraps it up for my trip down memory lane. These four body mists were far from the first perfume I ever wore but they were the first four I wore on a regular basis. I’m sure many of us can attest to trying on mom’s perfume when we were younger. I don’t quite remember what my first actual brush with perfume was, I want to say it was a Givenchy or maybe even Chanel No.5. What about you?

Reviewed in This Post: Morning Glory, 1999, Body Mist.

Ed Hardy Hearts and Daggers

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So what do you do when you get a hankering for a fruity perfume? Book it over to Hearts and Daggers and experience the fragrance the least smells like hearts and daggers! This perfume is well-loved amongst the mass market and I can see why, it’s fun, it’s fruity. It’s so painfully easy though.

Ed Hardy Hearts and Daggers

In Bottle: Fruit punch. Yeah. Even in the bottle Hearts and Daggers smells extremely sweet, like you’re taking a whiff of someone’s fruit punch containing as many fruits as they can cram in.

Applied: There’s an initial flare of sweet grape and what I swear smells like canned pineapple and mandarins. Then as the fragrance continues to age it throws more fruits into the mix. Berries, apples, mangos, what have you got? We’ll add it in. What’s that? A passionfruit? Why not? Basically Hearts and Daggers crams a bunch of fruit notes into itself so that the progression is so hard to define simply because all the fruit notes end up floating up to the top of the notes pyramid. As a result, this scent suffers hugely from longevity issues. Almost every note it uses is a delicate top note so they’ll fly away rather quickly. When Hearts and Daggers settles down into its dry down phase, you realize there’s something else mixed in with the fruits that you hadn’t realized was there until now. Some sort of sweet floral that I can’t quite put my finger on. I’m going out on a limb here and saying it’s probably the sugar-dipped jasmine missing all its indolic bite to usher out this scent.

Extra: Ed Hardy Hearts and Daggers is actually by Christian Audigier which refers to Ed Hardy as the line of perfumes. Well, if there had to be a defining perfume for teenage girls these days, Hearts and Daggers is probably it. It’s fun, it’s easy to wear, it’s way too sweet for me but probably perfect for anyone who enjoys these sweet scents. Just keep in mind that you will smell like fruit punch.

Design: Not a fan of the bottle design. Hearts and Daggers is a hot pink glass bottle with those signature Ed Hardy designed tatoo-esque elements. The bottle has a cap that you put over about 80% of the bottle–sort of like an all body hat for the bottle.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Blood orange, violet, apple, mango, apple blossom, jasmine, musk, amber, benzoin, blond wood.

As stated above, despite this fragrance being an Eau de Parfum its longevity is severely lacking due to how most of the notes it’s composed of being delicate fruity top notes.

Reviewed in This Post: Hearts and Daggers, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Katy Perry Purr

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Lovely. I get a little splodge of the most anticipated Purr by pin-up girl by day and pop star by night, Katy Perry, but I can’t get my hands on a vintage Chypre de Coty? Slap a sad face on me and let’s review Purr by Katy Perry.  Purr

In Bottle: Sweet peaches and a mix of florals that I’ve smelled pretty much everywhere by now. It’s a celebrity fragrance so I didn’t expect genius.

Applied: Initial flair of fruitiness up top. I get mostly peaches, sweet and ripe and big with a vaguely familiar synthetic apple note tossed in there with a tiny dash of tartness slathered with a thin coating of sweetness and dipped in a hint of creaminess. That creaminess sticks with the fragrance throughout its cycle. Now the peach in Purr isn’t grown up peach like Mitsouko. Actually, I can’t imagine why anyone would think they’d get any sort of Mitsouko out of Purr so I’m not even sure why I bothered to mention this in order to discern that no, you aren’t wearing this to meet the Queen. The peach in Purr is this is fuzzy peaches candy thing. Fun and girly and not at all serious. After a few minutes the fragrance takes its fruity opening and shifts into the midstage where you’re greeted by a banal blend of jasmine and gardenia. The sweetness is still lingering there. It’s a light sweetness though, not heavy and obnoxious but nothing to phone home about either. The mid-stage blandly shuffles along, smelling pleasant enough, and hits a rose note near the end of the mid-stage’s lifespan, falling headfirst into the very predictable sandalwood and vanilla base with traces of the mid-stage florals hanging about.

Extra: I don’t think Purr is anything to jump up for joy about as I didn’t expect much else from Katy Perry. Nothing to her as a person or a singer, this is just your run of the mill fruity floral celebuscent that hasn’t changed its formula since every other recent celebuscent. It’s an average fruity floral at best, with a variety of other fruity florals doing this tired fragrance genre much better justice. And as much as it pains me to say it, you’d probably get a better reaction scent from the Paris Hilton line. Me? I’ll wait and see what Lady Gaga does.

Design: Purr hasn’t been released where I live  yet so I haven’t handled the bottle, but I have seen photos of the bottle and I have to say it’s not my style. It really, really isn’t. The bottle  is in the shape of a purple cat with a heart hanging from its collar and jeweled eyes. You take the cat’s head off to gain access to the spraying mechanism as far as I can tell. I mean, it’s cute, but way beyond my demographic.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Peach, bamboo, apple, gardenia, jasmine, freesia, Bulgarian rose, vanilla orchid, white amber, sandalwood, skin musk, coconut.

Purr smells like so many different generic fragrances that I don’t think anyone should really bother with it if they’re looking for that sweet fruity floral. Unless you love Katy Perry’s work, her perfume is passable but highly uninteresting, and you are better off looking elsewhere for a fruity floral fragrance.

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

Avril Lavigne Forbidden Rose

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Forbidden Rose is the second fragrance the people in charge of slapping Avril Lavigne’s name on things have come out with. Forbidden Rose’s tagline is, “Dare to discover”. Which I’m assuming is related to trying to unearth where rose comes into play in this fragrance. Forbidden Rose

In Bottle: I’ll give you guys a hint; there’s no rose note in Forbidden Rose. Probably where the ‘forbidden’ part comes into play is when it’s making it obvious that you’re not getting a rose out of this thing. This fragrance is more content being a fresh aquatic floral and not a whole lot else.

Applied: Funny enough there’s a brief blast of sweet vanilla and florals. After about five seconds, Forbidden Rose heads into its longest and blandest phase. The florals ramp up their game into sharp, clean scent that made my nose immediately fire off a screaming message in my brain that read, “This smells like Turquoise Seas by Calgon!” Upon smelling my twelve year–rather well-preserved–bottle of Turquoise Seas, I’m likely to agree with my nose. Then I smelled Calgon’s Morning Glory sitting next to it and Forbidden Rose seems to have borrowed from that as well. I don’t know if it’s the banality of the fragrance that makes it smell like a amalgamation of at least two Calgon body mists but Forbidden Rose isn’t daring me to discover anything except where it borrowed its notes from. It’s not an offensive fragrance by any means, in fact, being compared to a couple of body mists is a testament to how inoffensive this fragrance is. It smells like cleaned up flowers that have been scrubbed extra well. It’s easy to wear, but highly unexciting. And if you let it dry down, the sharpness goes away and you get a faint whiff of a typical sandalwood vanilla base with the ghost of that Amalgamation of Calgon Body Mist lingering in the back.

Extra: Don’t rush out and blind buy a bunch of body mists because of me. Like every fragrance reviewer–I don’t care who they are–their experience with the perfume may different from yours. So if you are going to do some rushing, rush to smell Forbidden Rose then try to seek out the two Calgons and see if they’re similar to you or not. Like most fragrances, you can never get an exact duplicate and there are differences between the three fragrances I mentioned but they are also similar enough to my nose that you could conceivably spend $8 on a bottle of body mist instead of $60 on a eau de parfum.

Design: Forbidden Rose has a cute presentation. The juice is a fun purple color. The glass portion of the bottle’s shape is reminiscent of the tall Thierry Mugler Angel bottle with the silver cap. While at the same time it gives a nice little homage to the other Avril Lavigne fragrance; Black Star. Forbidden Rose has a cute little black plastic rose as a cap. It is nice and pleasant to hold. Easy to spray. No complaints here.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Apple, peach, bourbon pepper, lotus flower, apple blossom, heliotrope, pomegranate, vanilla, chocolate, sandalwood.

It seems that those of you looking for a daring fragrance is going to have to keep looking when it comes to stuff with Avril’s name on it. I want to reiterate that Forbidden Rose does not smell bad. It simply smells pedestrian, which is not always a bad thing.

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

Dolce & Gabanna Light Blue

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Dolce & Gabanna are like the masters of the inoffensive scent. Light Blue is considered to be one of the most popular most inoffensive and easily wearable fragrances available. I used to smell this stuff everywhere when everyone had a bottle. Back then it seemed like one in every tenth person was rocking Light Blue, but that phase seems to have passed and people have moved onto fruitier things. Light Blue

In Bottle: Fresh, citrus scent with a note of cedar. I can smell the apple, tart and crisp. The in-bottle scent is a bit aqueous too. This is clean, fresh, like a very nice shower gel or shampoo. Or a well made alcoholic drink.

Applied: Mojitos. It smells like mojitos! The apple and lime just combine nicely into tricking my nose. So what I get is apple, lime, mint and rum. Very slightly tart and very slightly sweet. I don’t know why I’m so happy about that but Light Blue’s alcohol base is doing its work with the citrus and aqueous notes in this. It’s like I spilled a mojito on me and decided I was too busy to wash it off. But after that initial burst of mojito, Light Blue turns toward the woodsy side of its personality. Cedar comes up, and the citrus side of Light Blue gets together very well with it. Then disaster strikes as the lemon notes comes in and bulldozes everything. I’m starting to see a trend here as lemon tends to be the obliterator of perfumes on my skin. I cannot for the life of me, smell anything but this stupid lemon now.  Once in a while that green apple scent will flair up like it’s trying to make itself known. Upon dry down there is a soft woodsy and musky quality to Light Blue that fades in and out of the loud and obnoxious lemon that eventually dies but when it does, there’s nothing else left to appreciate.

Extra: At one point I owned a deodorant stick in Light Blue scent. It smelled much more like a mojito than the fragrance. It was also a highly pleasant wake up in the mornings thanks to the sheer freshness of this. Not to mention the looks I’d get as people would think I drank before I went to work.

Design: Light Blue is bottled in a big glass rectangle with frosted glass. The cap is is an equally rectangular blue plastic affair. The bottle is a little strange to hold but it is manageable. Nothing exiting going on with the design of this bottle. There are hundreds of different fragrances that employ the big rectangle bottle out there.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: Granny smith apple, sicilian cedar, lemon, lime, bluebells, jasmine, rose, bamboo, cedarwood, amber, musk.

You shouldn’t wear Light Blue if you’re looking for something that smells unique or interesting. The time for Light Blue to be interesting ended the day everybody decided to wear it. But it is not at all a bad scent. It is highly versatile, very inoffensive and extremely appropriate for wear in an office.

Reviewed in This Post: Light Blue, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Lolita Lempicka

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Something about apples just draws me in, I guess. One would think an apple bottle would a bit silly but Lolita Lempicka’s designs have always had these fascinating shapes with interesting textures and line work on them. The bottle for Lolita Lempicka drew me in, the fragrance kept me around. Lolita Lempicka

In Bottle: Sweet and spicy, almost woodsy quality in a way. I can smell the licorice in this along with a very fresh, almost fruity note right up top.

Applied: I smell apple opening this fragrance. I swear I do. I don’t care that the notes don’t list it, it’s right up there to my nose. Big inertial apple. Then it disappears within seconds to be replaced with this green sweet spice scent that is anise. As the fragrance ages, Lolita Lempicka turns into a vanilla spice fragrance with that faint sweetness of licorice. Despite all the gourmand notes in this one, the scent as a whole doesn’t strike me as a gourmand immediately. It needs to settle into its heart notes before you really start to see where it’s coming from. The fragrance dries down to a soft sweet vanilla scent.

Extra: Lolita Lempicka is a fashion house by Josiane Maryse Pividal who adopted Lolita Lempicka as her pseudonym.

Design: More truly apple shaped than the Nina by Nina Ricci bottle. Lolita Lempicka’s bottle is a purple apple with leaf and swirl linework in gold and muted colors. The design is whimsical, young, fairytale-like with a nice final touch of the sprayer that resembles the thin and delicate stem of the apple. I would have preferred the sprayer to be made of more sturdy material since it is so thin and delicate but it works just fine for what it is.

Fragrance Family: Spicy Gourmand

Notes: Ivy, anise, violet, amarise, licorice, amarena, vetiver, tonka, vanilla, musk.

I don’t much like licorice, or how it smells. But Lolita Lempicka makes it acceptable for me by mixing it in with other notes. It is one of the better done gourmands out there. Sometimes compared to Angel by Thierry Mugler. I personally don’t see the connection as Lolita Lempicka is drier and less sweet to my nose.

Reviewed in This Post: Lolita Lempicka, 2008, Eau de Parfum.

Nina Ricci Nina 2006

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Nina by Nina Ricci was my first perfume. At the time, I was still growing out of my body mist and lotion phase and was still wearing fruity fragrances. That was four years ago, before I gave florals, musks, woods, ambers, and all manner of things a try. Nina is a young fragrance, filled with apples and sweetness and sugary sparkle. I remember when it was new, when I had wandered into the perfume section by accident and thought the bottle was just adorable. Nina

In Bottle: Vibrant lemon and lime with a note of apple and sugar. Nina prior to application smells like a lemonade stand. A lemonade stand with a very popular, very aromatic product though. Smell a couple more times and I start to notice this sticky, sweet vanilla toffee too.

Applied: Lemonade followed by the apple note. The apple in Nina is a big, red juicy one that’s been covered in a vanilla toffee mixture. There’s a lot of sweet notes in this fragrance but thankfully that lemonade and lime scent at the beginning doesn’t fade immediately. It sticks around and adds a tartness to Nina so that the sweetness of the fragrance doesn’t turn cloying. There’s a bit of taming going on too from the very light florals as Nina settles down into a fresh scent reminiscent of a cool, refreshing drink. The dry down takes a while to approach because Nina has excellent longevity. Hours after application and the citrus notes fade first, with the apple and sugar holding on strong until those too start to give. It’s on the very last leg of the fragrance’s stages where some of the wood notes show up for a very brief time before completely disappearing.

Extra: Nina Ricci was founded by Maria Ricci and her son in 1932. They started out as a fashion house in Paris. The Nina Ricci brand’s best known fragrance is L’Air du Temps.

Design: Contained in an adorable apple shaped bottle, Nina has a metal cap that protects the sprayer that is also used as the apple’s stem. The leaves have the house’s name engraved into them and the entire bottle is one seamless, beautiful piece of fun decorative art. Even if you don’t like the fragrance for some reason, the bottle makes for very cute decor. As noted in an earlier review, the makers of the Twilight perfume used Nina’s bottle for their fragrance, sparking a lawsuit.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Lemon, lime, apple, toffee, peony, moonflower, vanilla, cedar, applewood.

I don’t wear Nina much anymore. Sure, once in a while I’ll dig it out and give it a sniff, maybe a spritz, but I’ve since moved on. Moved on but not forgotten. I wouldn’t get rid of Nina. It was my first real perfume, a stepping stone into the rest of my obsession. To get rid of my first bottle of perfume just wouldn’t make sense to me.

Reviewed in This Post: Nina, 2007, Eau de Toilette.