Lancome Tresor

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I know I haven’t done any reviews of Lancôme’s fragrances because very few of their fragrances interest me. The scents are fine, of course, but they all seem to hit an off note on my skin.

Tresor

Tresor

In Bottle: Very strong but the notes are all blended together to form a rather generic perfume scent that isn’t very pleasing to me. It’s generic-smelling right from the get-go and that disturbs me a bit.

Applied: Goes on with a slightly fruity and sweet sheerness that’s rather pleasant. A powderiness approaches the opening turning the fruity sweetness into something akin to sugar dust. The florals amp up next taking the scent into the mid-stage with a sweet jasmine and rose combination. Now, jasmine and rose are two of the most common floral notes in perfumes and the result is a rather generic floral scent unless something else in the fragrance is helping it hold its own. So far Trésor’s sticking to a pretty generic scent as the jasmine and rose combination dominate the mid-stage with a few wafts of iris and that sweet sugar dusting wiggle in and out of the scent. The dry down is an unremarkable affair too with a sandalwood note layered over vanilla and a very subtle dirty amber note.

Extra: Trésor’s considered to be a classic smelling perfume amongst some circles. To me, she’s not so much a classic as she is a generic. I smell Trésor and I think generic floral mostly due to how strong the jasmine and rose notes were in the mid-stage for me.

Design: Trésor’s design is an interesting jewel-like bottle. It also bears a resemblance to a pyramid in a way and reminds me also of honeycomb. I don’t know why but the design is decent, not garish but not exactly to my tastes. I do think it is well done though.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Pineapple, peach, lilac, bergamot, apricot blossom, lily of the valley, rose, orris, heliotrope, jasmine, apricot, peach, musk, sandalwood, amber, vanilla.

What I think of Trésor I can pretty much apply to the other fragrances from Lancôme. At least for their recent releases anyway. I haven’t had the gumption to dig up a sample of Climat though I have it on good word that it’s a beautiful piece of classical perfumery.

Reviewed in This Post: Trésor, 2008, 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.

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.

Calgon Hawaiian Ginger

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Hawaiian Ginger really takes me back. It’s a blast from my past. A reminder of middle school hallways, the slummy lighting in the basement floor of the school, and English class where I sat behind a girl who reeked of this stuff.

Hawaiian Ginger

In Bottle: Sweet, juicy and tropical. A hint of tangy pineapple layered with sweet, ripened melon notes. Honeydew and cantaloupe together, maybe.

Applied: If you’re looking for spicy, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Hawaiian Ginger focuses more on the tropical aspect of its name than the gingery part. You’ll get a fruity opening that smells like fruit punch, a decent enough fruity scent that makes you think it could almost be edible. The opening is very juicy, I get mostly melon notes an indistinguishable blend of honeydew and cantaloupe with a few pieces of pineapple in there to cut a bit of the sweetness. The ginger seems to be almost an afterthought as I went into the mid-stage with a marked desire to find it. Instead, I found more tropical fruits and a mild bit of sweet florals layered with the weakest sugared up ginger ever. The dry down is almost markedly underplaying this mysterious ginger note with a very sweet ginger candy-like thing making an appearance during the mid-stage’s decline into the end phase.

Extra: I wore Hawaiian Ginger for a brief time when I was in middle school having just discovered what this “amazing smell” was. Then me and this fragrance grew apart as I realized every other girl in middle school was also wearing this and I was getting a bit tired of the fragrance. Revisiting it was a trip down memory lane. I still wouldn’t start wearing it again as it is a very young fragrance.

Design: Bottled like almost every other body mist is bottled like. Tall cylindrical plastic container, plastic sprayer nozzle, sticker label. Not a perfume, quite plain, a bit ugly, but very functional.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Pineapple, honeydew, watermelon, cantaloupe, orange flower, sugar, ginger.

Again, took a stab at the notes list as I didn’t fully believe the official ad copy which tried to pawn this fragrance off as a floral fragrance. I get almost no florals out of this.

Reviewed in This Post: Hawaiian Ginger, 1999, Body Mist.

Escada Marine Groove

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Marine Groove

Marine Groove

Ah, Escada, the masters of the simple fruity florals. Their fragrances are generally nice. The perfumes are certainly easy to wear, but I can’t help but notice how almost everything from Escada smells like the same fruity-floral dollop, up to and including Marine Groove.

In Bottle: Big pineapple opening. There’s a lot of pineapple in this. It’s sweet and fruity, very tropical. I’m trying to find the passionfruit that’s supposed to be here but all I get is pineapple.

Applied: Yeah, I don’t know who the notes list is trying to kid but there’s definitely pineapple in this and it’s very big. Marine Groove hits a tropical feel right away with its sweet, fruity opening. I’m not really seeing any other fruits but pineapple here and if there are other fruits, the pineapple’s pretty much got the top tier of the notes pyramid on this cornered. As Marine Groove ages into its mid-stage the pineapple settles down a bit and lets a benign set of jasmine and peony up. The mid-stage is marked with a light and airy floral quality with a coating of sweetness. This isn’t too sweet, just sweet enough to let you know you’re not supposed to take Marine Groove seriously. The dry down is a dull thud of clean, white musk. There’s not a long of longevity with this, or a lot of complexity. The projection on me was fantastic in the opening and then it just dissolves starting from the mid-stage and onward.

Extra: Marine Groove was released in 2009 as a limited edition summer scent. There’s very little to set this fragrance apart from other pineapple dominant scents and if I had to pick between the sweet fruity pineapple in this and the sweet boozy pineapple in Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs’ Rangoon Riptide, Rangoon Riptide would win every time.

Design: Marine Groove’s bottle has the same design as most of Escada’s other bottles. That elongated heart glass bottle with the gradient colors on it. In Marine Groove’s case, we got reddish-purple gradiating into bluish-purple near the base. I still don’t like the way it looks and still think it makes the packaging look like a bottle of shampoo.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Passionfruit, peony, jasmine, musk.

Sheer, easy to wear, young, fun, nothing at all to judge in terms of complexity. Marine Groove is a summer scent through and through.

Reviewed in This Post: Marine Groove, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Lollipop Bling Honey

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Reviewing Lollipop Bling after last week’s classic perfume review-a-thon is like attending an opera then going home and watching reality TV. There’s really no graceful way to segue from one to the other but I review what I have in my notes as I smell things. Some days I might go through five or six perfumes. Some days none. Then there are weeks like this and the Chanel week earlier this month where I yaw between the sensual, dirty romance of Jicky and Mariah Carey sitting on a pink cloud. Lollipop Bling Honey

In Bottle: I don’t know why they called this “Honey” because it smells like pineapples. Maybe it’s Honey as in, “Honey, why does your arm smell like pineapples?”

Applied: After the pineapple hello, Honey evolves into a warmed up honey pineapple treat that makes me think of the tropics. The tropics being an interesting muse for recent perfume releases. I’m happy to see there is actually honey in this but I find myself having to focus on finding it as it is buried under the giant fruity  balloon that rubbed itself onto a field of unsuspecting flowers before it floated off. I don’t think much of Honey. I don’t like it much. It’s far too simple, lacking in imagination and I can’t even enjoy it for its sheer fun factor because this has been done before and so much better. If you were going to go for Honey, go for the better version of this concept in G from Harajuku Lovers. Unless you hate coconut, then you might as well go Independent and score yourself a bottle of Rangoon Riptide from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. I know it was a limited edition but at least you get more than this. This is just too simple to be any good. It makes me beg the question why I should care about it when there’s better stuff out there for the same price point. I smell three notes (pineapple, honey, flowers) for a period of an hour and then it devolves into that watered down, miasma of florals, “something sweet used to be here but died”, perfume scent that I hate so much.

Extra: Honey is a part of Mariah Carey’s (read: Elizabeth Arden’s) Lollipop Bling perfume collection. The collection is notably styled after M by Mariah Carey, only simplified to the barest essentials.

Design: There are three perfumes right now in the Lollipop Bling collection and Honey is identified as the yellow one. It’s a yellow glass bottle with a butterfly cap on top. Reminds me a bit of the butterfly bottles from Annick Goutal, only much clunkier and obviously designed to appeal to a much younger audience.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Pineapple, white florals, honey.

I can’t say Honey brings anything new to the table when it comes to tropical scents as we already had Desire Me by Baby Phat, G from the Harajuku Lovers collection, and Bath and Body Works’ Pineapple Orchid that doesn’t come in perfume form but if it did, I’m sure it’d be popular. After all that, do you really need another perfume that makes you smell like pineapples?

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

Anna Sui Secret Wish

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Secret Wish makes me feel a little bit silly. It’s probably because I’m not a big fan of fairies so the fairy sitting on the cap tips this typical fruity fragrance right into the “no thanks” pile. It smells nice, sure. It’s pretty generic though and then there’s that fairy. Secret Wish

In Bottle: Big, sharp, citrus with a hint of fruitiness. Similar to Dolce and Gabanna’s Light Blue but with a melon helping out the citrus instead of an apple.

Applied: That big flood of citrus again, the lemon in this is behaving. After the nice sharp blast of lemon and citrus, Secret Wish washes into the fruity ocean with a big sweet pile of melons and currants adding to the fresh lemon opener. I’m getting a weird sticky sweet scent with citrus now which isn’t all together unpleasant but at this point, I’m thinking Light Blue pulled this idea off a little bit better as Light Blue had a tartness that I really liked. The tartness is a lacking factor in this making this seem almost syrupy sweet. The dry down is a similarly sweet fruity affair with a clean warmth to it. I have to say, despite the lemon being tame in this fragrance, I preferred Light Blue. It was more refined.

Extra: Anna Sui is a fashion designer from Detroit who has several very popular lines of clothing including a children’s line. She several well-known fragrances aside from Secret Wish. One of the most popular is Dolly Girl.

Design: Bottled in a green-blue glass container, Secret Wish has a  cap that has a fairy sitting on top. This is a really nice fragrance for a younger audience and for people who like girliness, fruity scents, and pretty bottles with fairies on it. It just misses the mark with me though.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Fruity

Notes: Lemon, melon, currants, pineapple, amber, cedarwood, musk.

Reviewed in This Post: Secret Wish, 2008, Eau de Toilette .

Susanne Lang Vanilla Coconut

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Vanilla? Coconut? You’d have to get a vice to keep me away. Two of the things I like most combined into one fragrance should be a winner. Unfortunately a lot of fragrances that tote vanilla and coconut together tend to cheese out of the race by using the sour coconut note along with the plastic vanilla note, thus making themselves smell exactly like their competition. Susanne Lang‘s Vanilla Coconut does not suffer from this plastic and sour combination.  Vanilla Coconut SL

In Bottle: Pretty and fresh coconut flesh set in a lovely sweet pineapple mix and a touch of vanilla. Smells delicious, tropical and like a young coconut should!

Applied: Lovely green flare of coconut and pineapple. This smells like a drink right off the bat and as it starts to dry and head into the mid-stage, the coconut takes on a milky, creamy quality while losing the pineapple that was in the opening but retains its drinkable scent. There’s no mistaking the tropical nature of this fragrance as it stays well away from that common and heartbreaking sour coconut note that a lot of fragrances try to pass off as coconut. This is a rich, clean, crisp coconut that’s the embodiment of what a coconut scent should be like. It’s miles ahead of any other coconut scent I’ve tried and as a coconut lover, I’m just delighted. The relative simplicity of this fragrance doesn’t bother me much because it does what it needs to do so very well. The dry down gets a bit more vanilla-like with the coconut fading into a simple creamy vanilla scent.

Extra: Susanne Lang is a perfumer with a flagship store based in Toronto, Canada. There is a retailer that carries her products close to where I live. A rarity that I’m more than happy to accept. She offers bespoke fragrances and ready to wear scents. Vanilla Coconut is a member of her ready to wear scent line.

Design: Vanilla Coconut is bottled in a square glass bottle with a nice metal cap to protect the sprayer.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Vanilla, coconut, pineapple, fig leaf, ginger.

You get only 30ml of  this stuff in a bottle but a lot of people underestimate just how long a 30ml bottle of perfume lasts. If you do use it every day you might have a hard time stretching the bottle for a year. If you spray it once in a while as you work on other fragrances too, a 30ml bottle will last for years–in terms of quantity anyway.

Reviewed in This Post: Vanilla Coconut, 2005, Eau de Parfum.

Victoria’s Secret Sexy Little Things Noir

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Victoria’s Secret, known mostly for their underwear brand, also has a fairly lucrative line of beauty products and fragrances. It’s fragrance side is a well-loved establishment that releases mostly fruity floral fragrances that are wearable, girly, light and happy. Sexy Little Things Noir

In Bottle: Fantastic burst of fruits. It’s like I just sprayed a bowl of fruit punch on myself. There’s a slight sourness that really compliments and helps tame this very sweet fragrance. Something about this is really juicy, like biting into a crisp piece of fruit, juicy. And behind it all, I smell the faint waft of the very enigmatic jasmine supported by the spicy creaminess of tonka bean.

Applied: Fruit punch and creamy vanilla is what Sexy Little Things Noir is to me. For its massive list of notes, it does a great job projecting a fruity almost gourmand fragrance. Also due to its massive list of notes, I can’t separate nectarine from apple. However, I can pick out jasmine in this as well as the tonka beans. Sexy Little Things Noir lacks anything that I would really consider to be “noir”. In that a fragrance that’s marketed as “noir”, to me, should have some element of deepness or darkness. Sexy Little Things Noir is just a sparkling, juicy, fruit salad with a sprinkling of white flowers on top. There’s no deepness or darkness, which betrays its name but hey, I’m all right with that. It has fantastic projection but the longevity on me is a bit weak, fading within four hours into light vanilla and jasmine.

Extra: Tonka beans are said to smell like vanilla. A while ago, they could have been eaten in addition to being used in perfumes before someone discovered they contained a potentially lethal anticoagulant. Thanks for the kicks, nature.

Design: I’ll admit it, I was drawn to this perfume like many others for the bottle. The glass is a very dark purple in a pleasing, beautiful shape. The winning feature for me? That pump atomizer. That pump that’s so iconic of Hollywood Noir where the women were glamorous and the movies were in black and white. Though fragrances in pump atomizers back in those days tended to be from fragrance families that people these days refer to as “old lady” perfumes.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Nectarine, apple, citrus, pineapple, guanabana, pear, red fruits, bergamot, cattelaya orchid, muget, cyclamen, jasmine, plum, vanilla, dewberry, cassis, amber, musk, woods, tonka bean.

Sexy Little Things Noir is a part of Victoria’s Secret’s fine fragrance line. Meaning, it’s an Eau de Parfum as opposed to the body mists that Victoria’s Secret sells. Sexy Little Things Noir also has a counterpart body mist, shower gel, and perfumed body powder.

Reviewed in This Post: Sexy Little Things Noir, 2010, Eau de Parfum.