Animale 1987

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Animale is an interesting fragrance to explain. It’s sort of a chypre, it has all the classical stylings of a chypre but with an extra added jolt of pure dirty, animal smell. Oh, don’t get me wrong here. It’s fantastic stuff.

Animale

In Bottle: Heavy, heady, powerful. Three words you’ll probably used to describe animale. Even in the bottle, this stuff is strong. I get civet immediately mixed with a blend of florals. It has that decidedly unique chypre scent to it as well.

Applied: Starts off with a big of bergamot. Barely enough to even detect as Animale develops the civet slowly and carefully but the civet is strong and the civet definitely makes this scent smell dirty and animalic. The animalic notes in this creep up rather than blast you full on right away like it does in the bottle but you’ll be smelling full-on animal before you know it. On skin, civet takes its time at first as the fragrance moves into a mid-stage that’s incredibly reminiscent of a chypre with jasmine making a loud proclamation as the civet creeps in more and more, amping up the volume. The rosewood, adds even more dirty with a little woodsiness in case you didn’t think civet was enough. This is a chypre but it’s a distinct dirty chypre that will march to its own beat if it wants to. As the fragrance dies down, there’s a smooth patch of oakmoss and vetiver layered over that civet note that I had been too distracted to notice. The civet’s used rather well here, but the dry down does bother me a bit with this slick, almost oily scent. I imagine that was the coconut making its way in. So opening and mid-stage are fascinating. End stage is great save for that weird slick scent I got. Still, Animale is fantastic if you like heavy, powerful, heady fragrances.

Extra: Animale, the brand began in 1987 which was also the time that original Animale (reviewed in this post) was created. In 1990 the company was sold, and in 2004 it was sold once again. Sometime during the 1990s, Animale shifted away from being a chypre and became more of a floral oriental. I liked it a lot more as a chypre.

Design: Very 80s! Brings back fond memories of elementary school, and TGIF shows. I’d huddle around this tiny TV with my cousins and we’d watch Family Matters, Full House, Fresh Prince, and a whole host of other family-friendly sitcoms. Long story short: This bottle reminds me of late 80s and early 90s aesthetics and fashion. I think the word I want here is ‘funky’. Not necessarily well-designed as I imagine people these days would consider this kind of aesthetic hideous. The bottle design hasn’t aged well, that’s for sure. As for me, I grew up in the late 80s and 90s so I’ll let someone else harsh on this bottle.

Fragrance Family: Chypre

Notes: Coriander, hyacinth, bergamot, neroli, carnation, honey, orris root, rosewood, jasmine, ylang-ylang, lily of the valley, rose, patchouli, coconut, oakmoss, vetiver, civet, musk.

Now that the review and nostalgia are all over, would I wear Animale? Probably not. The civet really turns me off on the fragrance. I’m a big baby when it comes to civet, almost always I find it too strong and I’m no where near confident enough to rock civet. That doesn’t mean Animale isn’t fantastic. I like it for what it is, but maybe that’s part of the nostalgia talking.

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

Calvin Klein CK One

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CK One brings back memories of the early 90s. Where people these days love their Viva la Juicys, the early 90s seemed to be marked with the citrus-y smell of CK One.

CK One

In Bottle: Opens on a rather tart but very crisp and dewy fruity citrus note. There’s a pineapple in there but it’s not your  run-of-the-mill fruity sweet and tropical pineapple. This is tart pineapple and I quite like it.

Applied: That clean, green and crisp opening with the tart pineapple and the citrus. CK One takes its citrus and leads into a clean floral mid-stage dominated by lily of the valley, iris and a very potent lemon note that works well to keep this fragrance fresh and clean. The best part of CK One for me is the dry down where the citrus is gone and whats left are florals clinging to clean and diving into a base of tame cedar and sandalwood. I don’t so much smell the oakmoss in this than I smell the green notes that were in the opening. The closer is a green, floral woods.

Extra: I remember being a little girl and first smelling CK One. It was at a department store and we had little money at that time for things like this. But I always tried to sneak a smell. I don’t remember if I liked it or not, I only knew that Calvin Klein–at the time–was some fancy brand and one of the girls in my class bragged about wearing this perfume.

Design: Very simple bottle. Flat and rectangular with frosted glass. The sprayer is quite uniform-looking too but it’s still an extremely recognizable design. There’s something very utilitarian about this that I love. Maybe it’s the lack of fanciful shapes and colors. I actually like the design, but I think it might be a bit on the plain side.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: Pineapple, green notes, mandarin orange, papaya, bergamot, cardamom, lemon, nutmeg, violet, orris root, jasmine, lily-of-the-valley, rose, sandalwood, amber, musk, cedar, oakmoss.

CK One isn’t anywhere near as big a deal for me now as it was back then. Still, there’s moments when I smell this and remember sneaking sprays at the makeup counter while my mother and the sales associate gabbed about sunblock.

Reviewed in This Post: CK One, 2002, Eau de Toilette.

Calvin Klein Obsession for Women

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Call me crazy, but I don’t like Obsession for Women. I like the men’s version a bit better but both of them fell off my radar and into ‘Eh, don’t like it and can’t get myself to’ territory. Much like how Poison by Dior ended up there.

Obsession for Women

In Bottle: Warm and spicy, very reminiscent of Opium but not as smooth or as smoky. I smell the animalic in this up front too.

Applied: Obsession opens with a slight spray of green citrus which is quickly joined by the civet note. Civet is used well in most perfumes, often as a touch of sensuality and Obsession is no exception. Anyway, after the light citrus and civet open up, the fragrance digs a bit into a fruity jasmine and rose blend dolled up with a lot of spiciness. There must be cloves or cinnamon in there somewhere. Obsession’s projection, by the way, is very good as is its longevity. You’ll be waiting a rather long time for it to dry down but the fragrance dries so naturally into a deeper woodsy floral amping up the civet a little and mingling those spices with a very warm amber quality to it and a slight smokiness that eeks itself into the scene at the very end.

Extra: Obsession was released in 1985 during the crazy trend with oriental perfumes.

Design: Obsession’s bottled in a oval glass with a golden liquid inside. The cap is a rich brown shade. The packing looks nice enough and a bottle of Obsession is definitely easy to ID. It’s clean, it’s simple, it’s pretty good.

Fragrance Family: Oriental

Notes: Green notes, mandarin orange, vanilla, peach, basil, bergamot, lemon, spices, coriander, sandalwood, orange blossom, jasmine, oakmoss, cedar and rose, amber, amber, musk, civet, vanilla, vetiver, incense.

Obsession is a well done perfume. I just want to get that out there, I just don’t like it because I believe it’s very similar to Opium and Opium did this concept better which makes Obsession seem rather unnecessary to me. But then, Opium is stronger, so if you liked it but thought it came on way too much, try out Obsession and see if this will work better for you.

Reviewed in This Post: Obsession for Women, 2004, 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.

Sonoma Scent Studio Incense Pure

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Sonoma Scent Studio is one of those awesome independent houses with an excellent selection of fragrances that are magnificently well-blended. I’m a big fan of independent perfume houses, and am happy to see them doing things their own way. The mass market and even the niche market can sometimes be restrictive. So independent is the way to go.

In Bottle: Incense Pure is like a sniff of incense heaven. It’s heady, it’s sophisticated, it’s sensual and deep. The first smell out of the bottle or vial is like an invitation you can’t refuse.

Applied: Incense Pure starts off with an airy but very detectable blend of–well, incense. The myrrh really gets me. Makes me grin from ear to ear even. Incense Pure isn’t like most incense fragrances I’ve tried. This one is tempered, easier to wear, still absolutely lovely with that oh so distinctive incense fragrance but it’s tempered a bit by a woodsiness that digs itself up and bunkers down. There’s a lovely sense of sensuality about this fragrance too and a hint of ambery musk infused with a gorgeous vanilla. This isn’t your sweet, synthetic vanilla either. The incense seems to do wonderful things to vanilla, bringing out its spicy personality instead of relying on vanilla’s surface sweetness. There’s even, to my delight, oak moss in this! And the oak moss does wonders to give the fragrance a beautiful mossy green undertone. As if the incense wasn’t enough, it gets me twice with the oak moss too.

Extra: Sonoma Scent Studio offers Incense Pure in a variety of sizes and for some very reasonable prices considering the quality of the ingredients. You can read up about Incense Pure on their website.

Design: I have a sample of this fragrance, but the bottling looks quite nice. The shape of the bottle is clean and neat. A tall squarish bottle with a gold cap. Keeping it simple is always a plus in my books.

Fragrance Family: Woodsy Incense

Notes: Frankincense, myrrh, labdanum, cistus, oakmoss, Indian patchouli, sandalwood, cedar, ambergris, orris, angelica, elemi, vanilla absolute.

If you’re a fan of incense, you really should try this. Even if you’re not sure whether or not you’re a fan of incense, you should try this. It’s quite the excellent experience.

Reviewed in This Post: Incense Pure, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Balenciaga Paris

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Perhaps you’ve heard of Balenciaga before, no, not their handbags that seem to be gaining in popularity these days. I’m talking about Le Dix, the street, the clothes, and the perfume. Mostly the perfume though. It’s a classic aldehyde, beautiful, but that’s not who we’re talking about today. Let’s jam it up with Balenciaga Paris.

Balenciaga Paris

In Bottle: Paris opens with a sheer, undetected level of sophistication and elegance. It’s violets and sun dew floating in the air.

Applied: Paris is incredibly light, it clings close to the skin and stays close for hours upon hours but what it won’ do is shout. This is a scent that’s meant to stay personal. I smell violets first of all, sweet little powdery violets drenched in dew. The mid-stage sees more violets, the dewy quality evaporating leaving me with a little bit of spice a nice hint of woods and a quiet little whisper of patchouli on the dry down. You shouldn’t expect projection with this fragrance. Paris’ angle is subtle and sleek. Get them while they’re close and keep them there with that violet softness.

Extra: Balenciaga is a fashion house with its headquarters in Paris, France. It was established in 1914. Other popular fragrances by house Balenciaga include Cristobal, Rumba and Le Dix.

Design: I love the bottle. I love its cap, love its shape, love the heft of it. It’s got nice weight, nice aesthetics and even though it’s a bit busier than the usual things I like, the business is well-designed, well-proportioned and very balanced.

Fragrance Family: Modern Chypre

Notes: Bergamot, spices, pepper, violet, carnation, oakmoss, cedar, vetiver, labdanum, patchouli.

Yes, believe it or not, this is a modern chypre. It’s got the right build though.

Reviewed in This Post: Balenciaga Paris, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Molinard Habanita

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You may have heard of Habanita’s original purpose by now. Yes, it was a product introduced initially for people to scent their cigarette smoke. Yeah, you heard that right. Scenting cigarette smoke in 1921 was probably not as weird or as novel a notion as it is now. Habanita evolved into a regular perfume just three years after its introduction in 1924. Habanita

In Bottle: Dry green and woodsy fragrance. Like leaves clinging to a branch and scorching in the sun.

Applied: Initial flare of dry woods that doesn’t evolve much for a little while and by the time the flowers hit you, you were probably wondering when that happened and why no one gave you the memo. Habanita is a dusty, woodsy, mildly floral fragrance with a slightly grassy note in between its opening and middle stages. It’s strange–but very interesting when compared to most other recent perfume offerings. One of the best things about this fragrance for me is the dry down that reaches a warm, leathery, amber note at the bottom with a hint of sweetness and a lingering dusting of the dry woods. It’s fascinating to smell. Even more fascinating to contemplate cigarette smoke that was supposed to smell like this.

Extra: I imagine with its initial purpose, Habanita might have mingled a bit with the smoke which would have altered the fragrance just a little bit possibly tempering or at least masking how dry this scent can be.

Design: Black bottle with Molinard’s signature water nymph design on the glass. The nymph design is very reminiscent of the 1920s’ sensibilities in design. The bottle features a gold metal cap and sprayer nozzle.

Fragrance Family: Woodsy Classic

Notes: Bergamot, peach, orange blossom, galbanum, oakmoss, jasmine, rose, ylang ylang, heliotrope, patchouli, amber, leather, vetiver, cedar, sandalwood, benzoin, vanilla.

Habanita is surprisingly cheap for a fragrance that’s been around for so long and is, by all accounts and purposes, a rather pleasant and unique take (well, unique when you consider the other stuff being put out these days). Online discounters often carry Habanita’s  Eau de Toilette version for $20-40.

Reviewed in This Post: Habanita, ~2000, Eau de Toilette.

Annick Goutal Eau de Sud

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Eau de Sud is a true, well done, citrus centered fragrance with a beautiful and interesting dry down. It was released in 1995 and is–unjustly–underrated. But if you do happen to be looking for a competent fresh citrus, look past the Light Blues and Versences and get yourself a bit of this stuff.  Eau de Sud

In Bottle: Herbal and grapefruity with fresh green notes. It’s a (refreshing and much needed) far cry from the citrus explosion of other perfumes based in this category.

Applied: Opens with a beautiful bouquet of herbal grapefruit greenness. The grapefruit used in this fragrance is a tart one, similar to Guerlain’s Aqua Allegoria Pamplelune. The mid-stage is punctuated with an odd but entirely pleasant saltiness as the grapefruit lingers back behind a pleasant mix of spicy peppermint, basil, thyme and lemon verbena. Eau de Sud’s relatively masculine composition might turn away a few more scent gender conscious ladies but it is a lovely fragrance that I think anyone can use because before it is masculine, it is fresh and classic smelling. You get the classic scent of this on the dry down where the fragrance takes a woodsy and herbal turn before falling off completely.

Extra: Eau de Sud’s more popular older sister, Eau d’Hadrien is a lighter more citrus-based fragrance.

Design: Eau de Sud is bottled in Annick Goutal’s iconic ribbed glass bottle with the lovely gold metal cap and an adorable gold ribbon that carries the fragrance’s name tag. It should be noted, if you happen to be interested in this kind of thing, that all of Annick Goutal’s ribbed glass bottles have removable sprayers. Though I would advise that you keep the sprayer on so long as there’s juice in the bottle as Annick Goutals are known to fade a bit quicker than other fragrances.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Aromatic

Notes: Bergamot, tangerine, grapefruit, key lime, verbena, peppermint, basil, patchouli, oakmoss, jasmine, vetiver.

You can get Annick Goutal fragrances in three different types of bottles. Not all of them are available in all bottle types but there is the square variety, the ribbed variety (shown above), and the butterfly bottle variety.

Reviewed in This Post: Eau de Sud, 2000, Eau de Toilette.

Chypre de Coty

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I have a small (very small) half ml of Chypre de Coty that stands upright in a plugged tester vial that holds another tester vial that holds my trace amount of Chypre de Coty that I would love to own more of. Unfortunately, it is a rare scent and it goes for quite a pretty penny. It is also very, very beautiful. Chypre de Coty

In Bottle: This isn’t just a chypre. And certainly not the diluted, heavily modified modern chypres of today. Chypre de Coty is the chypre. It’s a genre definer and it smells the part. Green, lush, and somehow personal. This reminds me of a multitude of fragrances that were built around this one concept. Chypre de Coty is at once familiar, generic, classic, and unique.

Applied: This smells like perfume history. Like Mitsouko, with a rich, dry, beautiful soul. I own a new formulation of Mitsouko and it wasn’t until now that I realized how sharp she was, how she’s missing a certain gentleness and refine elegance that Chypre de Coty possesses and, I assume and will soon find out, vintage Mitsouko must have as well. Now I can be frustrated with the rest of the perfumistas! Yay! I mean–why, world? Why? Chypre de Coty goes on bitter and dry and green with a hint of barely there citrus and slowly changes and gets more and more personal on the skin as it introduces dense, clean florals and a fantastic powdered mossy base. It’s a classic chypre all right. I wasn’t kidding when I said this smells like history. And it makes me sad because this is from a fragrance era that no longer exists. And nothing made these days is going to come close due to reformulations and ingredient restrictions. I’m sad to be wearing some of this because it reminds me that none of this exists anymore and nothing like this will exist again.

Extra: Chypre de Coty died sometime in the 1980s. It’s a faint reminder of a time when fragrances like these were statements and masterpieces. These days Chypre de Coty–if someone were to even catch a whiff of it–is “old lady perfume”, a term I really wish people would stop using for things they don’t understand. I hear someone call something an “old lady’s perfume” and I think of people going into a minimalist art exhibition and complaining about how a bunch of lines on a white canvas could be considered art when their child could do better with their eyes closed.

Design: The bottle I’m familiar with is a simple, oval-cylinder glass container with a couple of embellishments on the glass body and a glass stopper. I wish I could say I’ve held a bottle of this vintage stuff but nope. The bottle looks beautiful though. The image pictured in this post is a vintage ad for Chypre de Coty and is not the bottle I describe here.

Fragrance Family: Chypre

Notes: Bergamot, jasmine, rose, patchouli, labdanum, oakmoss.

I’ll happily trade most of Coty’s present day offerings if only they could bring this back in the same formulation as the 1917 juice. There is truly nothing made these days that smells like this.

Reviewed in This Post: Chypre de Coty, circa 1940, Eau de Toilette.

Hermes Eau d’Orange Verte

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Eau d’Orange Verte is a fresh little number that doesn’t smell like the year it was released. In 1979, the House of Hermès unleashed this simply constructed, but beautiful little idea. Eau d'Orange Verte

In Bottle: Fresh lemon and mandarin combine to make a really nice, juicy orange-like scent. This smells like orange trees, it smells like someone taking the skin of an orange and squeezing out a spray.

Applied: Orange and lemon, very pretty, a little sweet but mostly sharp citrus. But not that annoying too-sharpness that I get in other fragrances with a lemon note. Methinks this lemon is a bit more tame and I like that. this smells like a pleasant airy citrus, fresh fragrance. There’s a brief  introduction in the equally brief mid-stage where a slight fruitiness peaks through and then dissolves into a beautiful very close and intimate green scent with patchouli. There’s not a whole lot of surprise or complexity in Eau d’Orange Verte but some simple fragrances get it just right and the fragrance is excellent no matter how simple it is.

Extra: Hermès dates back to the late 1800s as a French high fashion house with its headquarters currently in Paris. You might know them better, in the fragrance world anyway, from their very popular Terre d’Hermès scent.

Design: Eau d’Orange Verte comes in a beautiful and very thick textured orange box that you open much like a shoebox. There’s no silly flaps to get in the way here. This is one of the better packaged fragrances with the bottle inside being a green tinted glass with a rounded plastic cap. It was particularly delightful to note that Eau d’Orange Verte’s bottle is refillable. Meaning, once you’re done with the juice, you can easily unscrew the sprayer and refill the bottle with more Eau d’Orange Verte or use the bottle for another fragrance.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: Lemon, mandarin, papaya, mango, oakmoss, patchouli.

Being an Eau de Cologne, Eau d’Orange Verte is a very light fragrance that you’ll need to layer or go heavy on the trigger for. I go through this stuff like crazy, which is probably why the scent comes in soap and other flanker product forms as well as a gargantuan 200ml bottle.

Reviewed in This Post: Eau d’Orange Verte, 2009, Eau de Cologne .