Cacharel Scarlett

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Cacharel Scarlett happened upon my cluttered desk a while ago, it was a little sample knocking around from some of the circles I used to frequent back when perfumes were I hobby where I had time to indulge. I really miss it–the perfumes, I mean. So I gave Scarlett and a few others a whiff to see how things stacked up. And to dust off that long neglected notebook.

Scarlett

Scarlett

In Bottle: A light floral, a little pungent upon first whiff but I fear I may have smelled it a little “too hard”. Nothing really fancy about it yet.

Applied:  Bright and floral, a little juicy upon first application. There’s a sharp citrus to this at first that smells into a more rounded white florals style of scent. It’s very classically flowery and pleasant enough to wear. Scarlett isn’t really light, and nothing in it really reminds me of Scarlet O’Hara. But then, my vision of her doesn’t paint her in a dainty, floral at all and I expected something headier if it was to truly represent her. After a while of the white florals, the scent mellows into a mild warmed amber, honey and floral scent.

Extra: Scarlett was dedicated to the famous Scarletts in past and present including O’Hara and Johansson.

Design: I was actually surprised to see the bottle when I looked it up. It’s definitely not your typical curvy flacon and I actually kind of like it, though it clashes with my usual tastes. It’s different, and I guess that’s plenty to lend it credit to me.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Lemon, pear, jasmine, orange blossom, honeysuckle, amber, sandalwood, honey, white musk.

So I mentioned this didn’t really remind me of Scarlet O’Hara, it’s close and I understand where they’re trying to take it. To me, O’Hara is a heady, dark floral with a distinctive tuberose and a flash of something sharper and tangier like a cedar. I don’t know much about Johansson. In the end Scarlett is a nice, grown-up scent. It’s not groundbreaking enough to really set it apart from many of the other florals I’ve experienced, unfortunately.

Reviewed in This Post: Scarlett, 2015, Eau de Toilette.

Juicy Couture Viva la Juicy la Fleur

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Maybe I’m not being fair. Or maybe I felt like I’ve been spoiling myself with niche and independent fragrances lately, but I went on a department store perfume bender and have a book full of notes that I have only just now gotten around to starting. There’s still more niche to come, but these mass market scents seem fun to me–some less fun than others.

Viva la Juicy la Fleur

Viva la Juicy la Fleur

In Bottle: A big pile of sugar and flowers. Smells a lot like the original, with a weird cloying burnt sugar smell that I didn’t get from the original.

Applied: So Viva la Juicy la Fleur is one of those less fun fragrances I mentioned above. In the past, I’ve been pleasantly surprised and amused by a lot of mass market offerings, but this one hits the ordinary right on the head. The original Viva La Juicy, I had to give props to. Despite myself, I actually liked it on occasion. Granted, I was younger then and had more opportunities to wear hot pink. I’m not sure the original would strike my fancy as much these days, because la Fleur isn’t doing anything for me. If you thought Viva la Juicy was just too strong and didn’t have enough of that burnt sugar smell, then la Fleur might be worth it. For me, the original was better, but these two smell very similar. Same sugary candy opening, same sweet florals, same hint of fruits throughout, and same achingly sweet persona. This is the smell teen girls in high schools and colleges might like and wear. It would only smell ridiculous on me now.

Extra: I still pull out the original Viva la Juicy now and then, take off the cap, spray and smell and then promptly go to wash it off. I really outgrew the fragrance and making it lighter didn’t make it any more grown up.

Design: Someone refreshed design. I had thought the original Viva la Juicy was absurdly girly, but apparently all they had to do to top it off was slap some graphical flowers on the bottle, use a cheaper bow, throw in a script typeface and here we are. Not ugly. The form actually still looks nice. It is just very, very girly.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Orange, berries, water lily, honeysuckle, gardenia, jasmine, caramel, vanilla, sandalwood.

Couldn’t remember the last time I had smelled a generic fruity floral like this. It was actually somewhat nostalgic. Long story short, though, don’t buy this if you have and like the original Viva La Juicy. Unless you just want something weaker and sweeter.

Reviewed in This Post: Viva la Juicy la Fleur, 2012, Eau de Toilette.

Jovan White Musk

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Jovan White Musk is like the quintessential fragrance for those who just enjoy smelling clean.

White Musk

White Musk

In Bottle: Musky in that clean and crisp way that only synthetic white musk can provide. This can smell like anything from freshly washed skin, to soap, to detergent. It just smells good and pure.

Applied: White Musk is largely a one trick pony. It has a good trick though. The cleanliness that White Musk provides can be attributed to various things by different people. I like to compare White Musk to a soft floral soap that’s been run through a lot of focus groups. Others have likened it to laundry detergent, lotion, powder, and any number of other smells that generally project the idea of clean. And there’s nothing more I can say about White Musk aside from the fact that if you want to smell soft, fresh, a little flowery and clean then this is the stuff to go with. Make sure you test it out before you buy it though because while white musk can work on most people, some have reported it to smell chemical or even plasticy. The best way to avoid a regretful purchase is to test first.

Extra: Interestingly enough, most consumers believe musk–all musks smell awful or–“musky”. In actuality, white musks tend to be the pinnacles of clean smelling.

Design: The bottle looks like it was designed for function rather than form. It looks a bit outdated, but it’s serviceable and not garish even if it’s somewhat plain.

Fragrance Family: Clean Floral

Notes: Honeysuckle, jasmine, ylang-ylang, amber, musk.

Probably one of the best things about White Musk is the fact that it’s incredibly easy to find and very affordable for what you get. It’s an excellent fragrance that won’t burn a hole through your wallet.

Reviewed in This Post: White Musk, 2012, Eau de Parfum.

Wiggle Perfume Honeysuckle Sweet Tea

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If you’re a Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab fan then also consider taking a look at Wiggle Perfume and what they have to offer. Honeysuckle Sweet Tea is an impressive, minimalist fragrance that, to me, captures the essence of a warm day.

In Bottle: A nice sweet, flowery fragrance that reminds me of warmth and green grass.

Applied: Something about the opening reminds me of grass. Maybe there’s a green quality to this fragrance that helps temper its sweetness. Honeysuckle Sweet Tea, being very faithful to its name plays up the sweet notes and has a good tempering green and floral note to tone itself down a little. The tea note is present too, in a small amount to me, lending the fragrance a delicate dryness that mixes very well with the rest of the fragrance. As the scent ages, the tea evaporates along with the florals leaving the heavy honey note behind on dry down. Progression on this perfume isn’t too distinct because it’s a relatively simple construct, but if you’re just looking for a simple perfume that doesn’t try to be more than it advertises then this one’s a good candidate to try.

Extra: Wiggle Perfume can be found on Etsy and is operated by a lovely lady known as Nani.

Design: Wiggle’s visual identity borrows from equal parts Film Noire and Burlesque. The bottles are presented with nicely designed labels and the photography used to present the fragrances in the store gives everything a very soft, sensual feel. The bottles themselves aren’t constructed in any spectacular fashion. You get functional glass bottles and vials, presented nicely with a pretty label and cap.

Fragrance Family: Sweet Floral

Notes: Black tea, honeysuckle, honey.

Lovers of indy perfumers might want to check out Wiggle for their simple, well-presented stock with a nice variety of fun and pretty fragrances.

Reviewed in This Post: Honeysuckle Sweet Tea,  2011, Oil.

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.

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.

Vera Wang Preppy Princess

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Am I alone in asking myself, “What? Another one?” when I saw Preppy Princess on the shelves? How many princesses does the Vera Wang line have now? I think we get the theme, especially seeing as most of the Princess fragrances tended to smell really similar so that if you owned the original Princess, there really wasn’t much point in owning most of the others. But hey, Preppy Princess is another smelly adventure.

Preppy Princess

Preppy Princess

In Bottle: Sweet red berry-like scent. There seems to be a lot of berry openings in my reviews lately, what is up with that? In either case, the fact that Preppy Princess opened with a sweet berry scent doesn’t set it apart from the other berry scents I’ve reviewed lately.

Applied: Berries with a splash of citrus up top. Everything is sweet and girly and rather dull at the moment. Not exactly a good first impressions of Preppy Princess but it isn’t an unpleasant experience. I just feel like I’ve done this a hundred times already. So as the fragrances ages further and heads toward its midstage, I get a little bit of a floral kick only there’s jasmine in this and some equally non-descript florals. So all I get in the end is a generic flowery smell that doesn’t help Preppy either. The dry down smells like a mild coconut note mixed with sandalwood and amber  or something.

Extra: So we’ve got five princesses now, I think. I can only hope things stop here. I can’t imagine what other princesses there could be that would inspire someone to compose another generic fragrance and slap it into a heart-shaped bottle.

Design: Preppy Princess, aside from the stripey lines on the glass and blue cap, is pretty much the same design as the other Princess fragrances from Vera Wang. It’s, once again, aimed at a younger audience than me and I can’t see the aesthetic appeal of the bottle. But at least you can use the cap as a very pointy ring.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Tangerine, apple, berries, jasmine, honeysuckle, woods, coconut.

Hooray, I survived another Princess fragrance. It’s as generic as it can get. The opening smelled generic. The midstage smelled generic, and even the coconut in the base couldn’t help this one out. If you already own one of the other Princess fragrances–and unless you just love collecting the bottles–then I’d say skip this one. There’s far better fragrances out there.

Reviewed in This Post: Preppy Princess, 2011, Eau de Toilette.

Annick Goutal Le Chevrefeuille

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Le Chevrefeuille, like most of the Annick Goutal’s I’ve tried focus on a light, floral, pretty composition that captures the beauty of light and airy florals as a form of fragrance.

Le Chevrefeuille

Le Chevrefeuille

In Bottle: Soft honeysuckle with a green citrus composition backing it and a layering of deeper florals that remain mostly in the background.

Applied: Green floral and a bit of honeysuckle floating up at the beginning with a really lovely sweet and light floral treatment. This seems like a very nice fragrance to spray on and go about your day confident that your scent will enhance your natural scent as opposed to covering it up or overwhelming it. The honeysuckle and green fades a bit with a jasmine note floating up a bit. The jasmine and honeysuckle work very well together to form this really gorgeous green, sweet, light floral. The dry down is not much different from the midstage with a stronger jasmine note and a fading honeysuckle scent.

Extra: Le Chevrefeuille was released in 2002 and was composed by Isaelle Doyen (Annick Goutal’s Le Mimosa and Songes) and Camille Goutal (Annick Goutal’s Mandragore and Vanille Exquise).

Design: Designed in much the same way as other Annick Goutal fragrances. You’re looking at the feminine bottle above with the ribbed glass design and the gold cap with the cute ribbon and paper label. Cute, classic Annick Goutal design. Also one of the lesser seen perfume bottle designs where you can unscrew the nozzle and either refill the fragrance or use the bottle for something else.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Lemon, petit grain, honeysuckle, narcissus, green notes, jasmine.

I love Le Chevrefueille, it’s just the right amount of light, sweet, and floral that can work very well for all manner of situations and can even be an every day scent.

Reviewed in This Post: Le Chevrefeuille, 2005, Eau de Toilette.

Givenchy Organza

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My mother owns a bottle of Organza that she’s been slowly whittling down for a number of years. I wouldn’t be surprised if her bottle was approaching its tenth birthday she’s had this for a while. Organza is sensual, classic-smelling, and a bit difficult to like at times for me. But it is beautiful.

Organza

In Bottle: Amber-like. Warm and sensual with a little bit of dirtiness in there. Organza is spicy, sophisticated, and a touch sweet layered with woods.

Applied: Citrus on the opening with a rather sudden dirty note showing up earlier in the fragrance. This smells rather personable while at the same time it projects the fact that it’s a fragrance as put on as anything else. The citrus dries off rather quickly leaving me a spicy amber coating a bouquet of jasmine, tuberose, and earthy iris. The mid-stage is where Organza’s dirty note amps up a bit more, taking this fragrance away from what normally would be a simple clean perfume to a dense, rich amber-like fragrance with florals to temper the warmth a bit. The dry down is an interesting affair. Amber is the star of the show here and the drydown is no different. It play on the amber is a powdery woodsy scent, a bit like wood dust in a way.

Extra: Sometimes I associate my mother with this fragrance but she wore No.5 before she ever knew about Organza.

Design: It’s pretty obvious what the bottle is trying to reflect here. The curve of a woman wearing a dress. There’s elements of column structure here too. I rather like Organza’s design. It’s elegant and like the fragrance itself. The soft, gentle curves and line work on the bottle remind me of Art Nouveau.

Fragrance Family: Oriental

Notes: Bergamot, orange flower, gardenia, nutmeg, tuberose, honeysuckle, jasmine, iris, peony, walnut, cedar, amber, vanilla, guaiac wood.

It’s funny how tastes change over the years. When my mother first got this perfume I couldn’t stand it. It was too strong. Smelled weird. Now I can see why she liked this.

Reviewed in This Post: Organza, ~2003, Eau de Parfum.

Beyonce Heat

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Today we’ve got Beyonce’s Heat perfume. This fragrance, along with J-Lo Glow, are extremely popular and are often asked about. So I’m finally crawling out of the wood works and digging up my notes on it.

Heat

In Bottle: Ah peach up front. Big, synthetic, sweet peach. You know I used to like peach but now that I’m smelling it everywhere, I kind of wish these celebuscents would move onto a more obscure fruit. How about the beloved durian? Noble, spiky, tastes like custard and smells like sewage . . . What?

Applied: All right, so we got sweet peach up front blasting the opening wide open with a big fruity announcement. The background to the peach that digs itself into the mid-stage is a series of barely detectable florals. The fluffy opener leads rather well into a warm cleaned up amber and fruity flowers mid-stage with the sweetness still lingering about even now after the peach is all gone. Heat dries down in a rather expected fashion, keeping that warm amber scent and adding vanilla and soft woods. Heat’s nothing new, it’s nothing groundbreaking, but like all celebrity scents it is a good, decently constructed, wearable fragrance.

Extra: So Beyonce’s first perfume release was a big smash hit. Though most of Heat’s popularity probably has less to do with the juice and more to do with Beyonce’s  name on the bottle. This stuff sells, and it’s okay with me so long as the stuff they sell is at least decently composed–which Heat is. Smell away. Heat has already spawned a few flankers so if the original doesn’t float your boat, there’s Heat Rush and the elixir version of Heat.

Design: The bottle’s shape reminds me a bit of Hugo Boss Deep Red with a few interesting curves  and a few neat little colors added in. I’m okay with the design. It is what it is, though, which is a flashy celebrity bottle. One of the better ones out there.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Oriental

Notes: Red vanilla orchid, magnolia, neroli and peach, honeysuckle, almond, creamy musk, sequoia wood, tonka, amber.

I don’t know if I’m going to be up to smelling those two Heat flankers. I expected a bit more out of this fragrance than what I got. In the end, it’s a celebrity perfume that’s fairly predictable in how it was built and how it plays itself out.

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