Juliette Has a Gun Lady Vengeance

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Lady Vengeance triggered something bright and flowery in my head. I dabbed it on, aimed my nose at the back of my hand to sniff, and as it wafted into my nose and hit my smell receptors, my voice decided it couldn’t wait to form a good sentence as I proclaimed in a high-pitched voice, “It’s so pretty!” Lady Vengeance

In Bottle: Fresh and rosy and really pretty. Lady Vengeance is a young, bright, happy smelling rose scent that puts a smile on my face the instant I smell it.

Applied: Feminine and clean and speaks to the springtime. I had wholly expected Lady Vengeance to contain a note of darkness, of depth and dense rosiness but she’s a bright and happy character instead. A bit funny for the name but I can’t stay mad at something this peppy. Lady Vengeance starts off with a brilliantly bright and new bloomed rose. It reminds me of a freshly watered rose bush glistening with dew on a brand new spring day. It’s like soft rose soap cut with real petals. There’s a powderiness to Lady Vengeance but there’s very little of it and it works so well in this fragrance that you just end up smelling like a really good rose powder. There’s a slightly sweet and gentle hint of vanilla but it is predominantly a very well done rose. This is a sweetened rose, not a sugar rose–I might add. The latter is the staple of modern rose-based scents that rely on sugaring up the note. Lady Vengeance has excellent longevity, it clung to me all day and lent that gorgeous clean rose for hours and hours until the dry down approached where the powderiness gives way and I smell a couple of whiffs of smooth patchouli under all the awesome rose soap.

Extra: Juliette Has a Gun is a niche perfume line inspired by Shakespeare. It has ties to Nina Ricci. Mainly, the line was founded by Ricci’s grandson.

Design: Set in a very cute black bottle, Lady Vengeance’s packaging would hint at a dark rose. But there’s no darkness in this as far as I’m concerned. The bottle has lovely little etchings in it that conjure up images of tattoos and goths.

Fragrance Family: Soliflore

Notes: Italian rose, vanilla, patchouli.

Who would have thought a simple fragrance could be so well done? I am a big fan of Lady Vengeance and her pretty rose treatment. For $80 per 50ml and $110 per 100ml bottle. You can also get some pretty wicked looking purse bullets fragrance roll ones for $75. You will be hurting if you’re into this niche line but it isn’t as bad as some other choices out there that would have you proclaiming, “Eighty bucks? That’s nothing!”

Reviewed in This Post: Lady Vengeance, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

Kenzo Flower

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Kenzo Flower is the fragrance that spawned many flankers. Though it’s not quite at the excess of Shalimar, it can be a bit difficult to navigate the Flower maze. This review focuses on the original Flower, inspired by the concept of what a poppy would smell like and released in 2000. Flower

In Bottle: Bright and green. Smells fresh with a predominant sweet rose and violet fragrance. This smells a bit dewy and definitely smells clean.

Applied: The bright green of Flower is a fleeting little thing. Upon initial spray, you still detect it. You can even still smell it for a few seconds on the skin but as soon as it starts to dry, Flower loses that brightness and greenness and takes on a more floral and powdery scent. It still smells clean but it’s less of a screaming fresh scent now. It’s more of a classy, powdery, rose affair with a nice sprinkling of sweet violets to further write it into the floral powder category. Flower smells very familiar to me because of the predominant powder and violet. After mulling it over a bit, I realized why it smelled familiar and cracked open my tin of Guerlain’s Meteorites (the makeup not the fragrance). Instant familiarity. These two smell similar due to the powder and violets. They are not the same scent and Flower is obviously much more complex. As it dries down the powder takes the rose with it while the violets hang about and stay sweet until completely disappearing.

Extra: Kenzo is a fragrance, skincare and fashion brand founded by Kenzo Takada. It was bought out by LVMH in 1993.

Design: Flower’s bottle has a modern and rather recognizable look. It’s tall, curved, clear glass with a flower drawn on it. The stem of the flower runs up the middle of the bottle and the flower is drawn onto the cap. There are three different versions for the three sizes. Each of them represent the different life stages of the poppy. Very cute, rather chic, lovely bottle. A bit difficult to hold but I can sacrifice function for something that looks this good.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Bulgarian rose, wild hawthorn, cassie, violets, opopanax, white musk, hedione, cyclosal.

You may have seen hedione mentioned a couple of times. It is a fragrance enhancing component, usually coupled with jasmine but can be used with a wide variety of other notes too.

Reviewed in This Post: Flower, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Stinky

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Stinky is the scent whose name invokes the spirit of dogs everywhere. At one point in almost every dog’s life he or she has been stinky but Stinky by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab smells like everything but dogs. Stinky

In Bottle: Sweet and stinky honey layered over soap and powder. Smells a lot better than I make it sound. For one thing, the honey is a well blended matter as if it’s a honeyed bar of soap resting next to a pot of fluffy white powder.

Applied: The honey is the first thing that I smell, it gets a bit sharp on the initial application before it mellows out a little as the scent ages on me. But for the first hour or so, it smells like warm, sticky honey with a clean background. As Stinky ages, the clean background of soap and powder comes up a bit more and the honey takes a few steps back. It will remain present as the fragrance continues to age and starts to fade with the soapy smell going away the quickest, leaving a powdered, warm and sticky honey type of scent lingering until it all dissolves into nothing. Think honey-scented powder and you’ve got Stinky.

Extra: Stinky was released in 2009 in and around the summer months as a celebration of mud-covered and mischievous dogs. In particular, the dog featured on the label.

Design: Stinky is bottled in much the same way as other Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab fragrances. Held in an amber apothecary bottle, Stinky sports a cute Limited Edition label with a photograph of the dog which inspired this scent.

Fragrance Family: Clean Gourmand

Notes: milk, white honey, baby powder.

Leave it to Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab to come up with a fragrance that pretty much defies any sort of fragrance family.

Reviewed in This Post: Stinky, 2009, 5ml Bottle.

Clinique Happy

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You have to throw props at a fragrance that doesn’t even try to pretend that it has any ounce of natural to it. Clinique Happy is the big red balloon of the fragrance world. It smells fake, it smells perky, and it doesn’t even bother to hide it. Happy

In Bottle: I don’t know where the notes listing got the idea that this was supposed to be fruity and floral. The only thing this smells like is powdered makeup. Ever hovered near the Clinique counter at the department store? Ever bought any of their cosmetics? That scent you get is what Clinique Happy smells like in the bottle.

Applied: Juicy green citrus followed by a powdery green floral and dry citrus rind mid-stage that has this synthetic heart to it. That synthetic heart smells like a child’s red balloon. It smells like Clinique cosmetics. I swear this scent is what they imbue in their products because, to me as someone who knows and hangs out with several people who wear Clinique cosmetics, this fragrance is  extremely familiar. It’s not unpleasant by any means, it’s just familiar and frustrating because I cannot dissect it and cannot separate it from the products I know it smells like. I can only go so far as to suggest it smells like citrus at first, then green florals, ivy, and dry citrus notes and when it dries down it has a dusky green powder tail that drifts off leaving a hint of freshness. Fresh, clean and synthetic.

Extra: Clinique is well known for their line of hypo-allergenic cosmetics. So I’m guessing that all the people who say this fragrance makes them happy are either smelling the red balloon and remembering the circus or just really, really like Clinique products. Maybe I’m just not understanding the floral this is supposed to be. I didn’t find myself any happier having smelled this or put it on. I didn’t find myself any sadder either so there’s that.

Design: Very simple bottle design. Clinique does simple packaging very well with their signature light green color on their cosmetics. I was surprised Happy didn’t feature the light green in some way but I’m not complaining about what it currently is. Easy to hold, not unpleasant to look at. Just a bit too plain though.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: Bergamot, boysenberry, honeysuckle, bushflower, grapefruit, moss, freesia, lemon, Hawaiian wedding flower.

Nothing really sweet in this either. It was just a light, powdery, fresh scent. Not at all offensive, quite amusing in that it smelled like Clinique cosmetics too. This is nice if you need an office fragrance or a scent for everyday wear.

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

Acqua di Biella Kid Mohair

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Kid Mohair by Acqua di Biella was inspired by Audrey Hepburn and is supposed to be reminiscent of a warm embrace from a refined and elegant woman wearing a super soft and comfortable sweater. Now that’s an interesting, and very vivid image. Kid Mohair

In Bottle: Citrus with something musky hanging about in the forefront. I do get the slight sweet, syrupy scent of mango that adds an exotic touch to this fragrance. There’s also a sharp clean note to this that I can only assume is patchouli shoving its head into the picture.

Applied: Opens up with a really lively, fresh citrus note with a slight touch of musk. I’ve lost track of the mango but the fragrance is quick to turn for the powdery side of things as it starts working on that refined woman sweater embrace scent. Kid Mohair does warm up a bit and, strangely enough, is reminiscent of comfort. It’s a nice, pleasant, feminine and comfortable fragrance that settles itself nicely into a powdery, lightly floral and ever so slightly sweet fragrance. The dry down is also rather interesting, as the powder recedes the further this develops before it finally settles on a clean musk.

Extra: Acqua di Biella is a niche house established in 1871 by Luigi Cantono. Kid Mohair was composed by Chiara Cantono.

Design: Kid Mohair is packaged in a glass bottle with a very interesting textured glass finish that kind of reminds me of the privacy glass sometimes used at the dentist’s office. Not that it’s a bad thing. I would personally find hours of entertainment just feeling the texture.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Mango, mandarin, rose, osmanthus, pink pepper, patchouli, ambrette, musk.

Most people’s initial reaction to the name of this fragrance immediately conjures of images of human children with particular hairstyles. Kid mohair is actually a type of yarn taken from young mohair goats. This makes it a very luxurious, silky, material that’s usually made into sweaters.

Reviewed in This Post: Kid Mohair, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

Montale White Musk

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When people think “musk” their thoughts tend to gravitate toward the animalistic musks like civet then they wrinkle their noses thinking about intrepid perfumers chasing down civet cats in the jungles of the world. Very few fragrances still use naturally derived musks. Most of them are synthetics these days and hardly smell anything near animalistic. Montale White Musk

In Bottle: Bright, pure and clean. White Musk smells like lightly perfumed water. It’s airy, translucent and fleeting like the molecules of some fabulous fragrance is carried by the wind to you. With that having been said White Musk, due to its nature, is extremely light and fleeting. Even in the vial, after a couple of sniffs, it becomes hard to detect.

Applied: Very, very, very light. I would have to bathe in this stuff to get anywhere close to the average strength that other fragrances enjoy. White Musk is a blank (in a good way), refreshing, powdery scent. Sort of reminiscent of baby powder but a great deal prettier with hints of sweet florals in it. Think luxury powder in a gilded silver case. It’s also soapy and very clean. I don’t feel like this fragrance is meant to be an entity of its own. Rather it’s a natural scent enhancer and the fragrance is just so happy, light, perky and soft.

Extra: Montale is a French niche perfume house headed by Pierre Montale. The house focuses on agar wood (oud) fragrances. They also have a line of regular perfume from which White Musk is a part of.

Design: Montale’s fragrances come in a metal bottle with a signature look. I have yet to actually hold one in my hand but the design itself is iconic for Montale fragrances and it looks attractive enough. At least it’s a step beyond the standard rectangle glass bottle affair that most niche houses would swear by.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: White musk, violet, ylang-ylang, geranium.

Probably one of the more common misconceptions about perfumes is the discussion on musk. A lot of people associate the word “musk” with dirty, sweaty, or stinky smells. Musk is often used as a scent fixative in many perfumes. These days there are thousands of synthetic musks in use that don’t smell at all sweaty, stinky or animalistic. Synthetic musks are great examples. With their usually clean, almost invisible sheerness, that makes them great fixatives for fresher, cleaner, modern fragrances.

Reviewed in This Post: White Musk, 2010, Eau de Parfum.