Demeter My Melody

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My Melody was released in Demeter Fragrance Library’s Hello Kitty series alon with the Hello Kitty scent and the Little Twin Stars fragrance. My Melody is the foodiest one of the three. My Melody

In Bottle: Smooth vanilla and almond. Demeter tends to do simple fragrances anyway and My Melody is a pleasant enough blend of two very gourmand notes that creates an almost edible scent in the bottle.

Applied: Delicious vanilla almond and cake. My Melody smells like cupcakes and cute, happy, tasty things. Everyone needs a little pick-me-up, especially lately and this fragrance is a delightful reminder that–if nothing else–we still have cake. The fragrance doesn’t do any morphing or changing for a while and the scent is fairly fleeting. Being an eau de cologne and all. As the dry down sees a fade in the almond note making the vanilla note more prominent.

Extra: My Melody reminds me an awful lot of many Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab fragrances. The foodies, in particular. I want to say this reminds me a little bit of Dana O’Shee and Boo from BPAL.

Design: The bottle I came across was a small, very typical glass rectangle bottle that Demeter’s fragrances often come in. It’s got a very simple, plain level of packaging that seems a little clinical to me so there’s very little to the design for these fragrances.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Almond, cake, vanilla.

My Melody should be a big hit for its target audience but it’s not really for me. I got Black Phoenix for gourmands like this that I really don’t see a need for something like this in my collection.

Reviewed in This Post: My Melody, 2010, Eau de Cologne.

Bath and Body Works Twisted Peppermint

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With Christmas coming up, I thought it would be nice to visit an old favorite of mine and a favorite of a lot of other people too. Bath and Body Works’ Twisted Peppermint is a seasonal offer that smells just like its name; peppermint candies. Twisted Peppermint

In Bottle: Strong sweet, sugary peppermint candy. There’s not a whole lot to say about Twisted Peppermint that you can’t get from immediately smelling the fragrance. It’s strong, it’s festive, it’s sweet, it’s just plain fun.

Applied: Twisted Peppermint goes on with a big blast of peppermint followed by the sweetening sugar that layers on top of the fragrance, sitting in place until the vanilla comes in seconds later. There is no progression to this fragrance and very little in the way of complexity. As stated, it’s just plain, easy, simple fun. The peppermint in this lends a nice cooling, tingling effect to add some extra zing to the fragrance. This makes a great cooling spray for summer but you might be a little out of season wearing this stuff in July. It really does smell like peppermint candy and candy canes. The vanilla is the typical synthetic kind, but it’s easy to ignore that when you first spray it on. It will become apparent that this stuff isn’t composed of the highest quality materials as the scent ages, taking on that “something is off” smell that you get with synthetic scents sometimes. I find the synthetic smell distracting during the fragrance’s final stages and find it near impossible to tolerate in the lotion. In the perfume, it is easier to ignore. This stuff does not have a whole lot of lasting power as it will fade on you within a couple of hours. But for a couple of hours you can at least smell like a festive candy cane.

Extra: Twisted Peppermint comes in a variety of products. My favorites include the lotion and 3-in-1 shampoo, body wash, and bubble bath. These two, plus the body mist, have that same peppermint oil tingling effect that I really like.

Design: Twisted Peppermint has gone through a few makeovers as far as I can tell. Its current incarnation is as a plastic globe containing a shimmer mist. The sprayer nozzle is a little wonky as it is made out of plastic and it is trying to disperse sparkles as well as scent. I sometimes have to wipe the nozzle opening to clean the sparkles off or the sprayer will dribble product instead of spray it. I have an old bottle that lacks the sparkly business whose sprayer nozzle works much better.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Peppermint, sugar, vanilla.

If you’re looking for a fragrance that’s candy-like and will remind you of the holidays, then this stuff should be right up your alley. I think it’s kind of cute that Twisted Peppermint’s tagline on the bottle is, “Mint with an attitude”. There’s no attitude to this. It’s just a peppermint candy. A sweet, delicious peppermint candy scent that’s done rather well.

Reviewed in This Post: Twisted Peppermint, 2009, Body Mist.

Bath & Body Works Warm Vanilla Sugar

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Warm Vanilla Sugar is one of the lead selling fragrances from Bath & Body Works. This, along with Japanese Cherry Blossom, aretwo of the most predominant fragrances I smell on younger women. It’s easy to wear, it’s affordable and it’s a pleasant enough foody vanilla fragrance. Warm Vanilla Sugar

In Bottle: Someone loaded this up with a mountain of sugar and vanilla because that is all I can smell. It’s a big dollop of that, now very familiar to me, faux vanilla scent.

Applied: Extremely sweet, almost cloyingly so, upon application as the very delicate floral notes in this evaporate almost immediately. What I get with the rest of the scent is a hugely predominant sweet vanilla that just won’t quit. If you have smelled a vanilla based fragrance, you’ll have smelled the vanilla in Warm Vanilla Sugar. It is the same sweet, foody, vanilla that you’ve likely experienced before. It’s reminiscent of a lot of vanilla based scents that I can recognize in Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab vanillas and Comptoir sud Pacifique vanillas. It’s the same vanillas that tend to have that slightly plastic feel to it. Warm Vanilla Sugar, nevertheless, is a great little gourmand with a nice tasty edge to it. Like you’re drinking vanilla milk and smelling a puffy vanilla pastry. This is yummy smelling stuff and let’s face it, you don’t wear Warm Vanilla Sugar to get several layers of complexity in the ingredients. This goes on smelling like vanilla milk, it arrives mid-stage with vanilla milk, and it’ll dry down with vanilla milk and a bit of clean dry musk to keep things a little interesting.

Extra: This stuff smells great on the right person so don’t take my aversion to it the wrong way. It’s a really great baked vanilla goods fragrance to it and is one of the nicest, most pleasant and versatile gourmands I’ve smelled.

Design: Warm Vanilla Sugar is bottled in a similar way as other Bath and Body Works eau de toilettes. A nice, classic looking glass bottle with the fragrance’s name on the glass and a plastic cap to protect the sprayer. Nothing too fancy. It just plain old works.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Florals, vanilla absolute, basmati rice, coconut, heliotrope, musk, veltol, sandalwood.

You might be wondering to yourself what in the world ‘veltol’ is. It’s a food additive meant to give things a freshly baked scent. So in this case, if you think you’re smelling a vanilla pastry, that’s the vanilla absolute mixed with the veltol talking.

Reviewed in This Post: Warm Vanilla Sugar, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Victoria’s Secret Appletini

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Appletini is a part of Victoria’s Secret Double Body Mist Beauty Rush line. The product itself is a fun little thing with a layer of color and scent resting over a layer of moisturizing oil. You use it by shaking it up, combining the separated components and spray it on yourself. Appletini

In Bottle: Appletini smells like apple Jolly Ranchers. Remember those hard candies that taste like fake fruit flavoring? The green one in those candies is Appletini’s very close cousin.

Applied: Straight up apple candy with an added jolt of sugar. Appletini is simple and painfully sweet. There’s nothing else to this fragrance but a huge apple Jolly Rancher scent and probably some sugar added in just so you get the full effect but the big, lush, brick of candy. Unlike Plumdrop, I find Appletini to be a far simpler construction with very little in the way of complexity. It is what it is and it won’t ever be anything more. I get tired of straight up fruits. As I smell more and more things, I find the fruity florals to still be pleasant–when they’re done right–while the straight up fruit scents outlive their novelty and I move on. Appletini is one of those straight up fruits that’s outlived its novelty to me.

Extra: Appletini is a perfectly fine fragrance, for sure, if you like scents in the same skein as DKNY Be Delicious or Nina Ricci Nina. But in the case of those two perfumes, they had other notes propping up the apple. Appletini smells like one note and if you don’t like that one note enough then you probably don’t want to go for this. Otherwise, this is great for people who want to smell like apple candy.

Design: Appletini and Plumdrop are bottled and packaged the same way except for the color of the liquid. Appletini has a vibrant green color. You get a sturdy plastic spray bottle with a metal sprayer and a plastic cap to protect the sprayer. Not a glass perfume bottle but it is a very nice and very competent presentation for what is, essentially, a body mist. One thing to note is that, unlike most other body mists, the Beauty Rush Double Body Mists line have their sprayer nozzles factory sealed onto the bottles so you cannot remove the sprayer (very easily anyway) and reuse the bottle when the fragrance is all done.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Green apple, sugar.

I find myself able to tolerate this fragrance but I don’t like it much. It’s just too simple for my tastes. Each full size Beauty Rush Double Body mist has approximately 250ml.

Reviewed in This Post: Appletini, 2009, Oil and Body Mist.

Victoria’s Secret Plumdrop

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When people ask me to name my top three favorite fragrances at the moment, I tell them this: #1. Spirituese Double Vanille. #2. Plumdrop. #3 Chanel Allure.  Which then prompts them to say, “What was that about number two?” I love Plumdrop by Victoria’s Secret. It’s a competent, wearable, likable, well-done fragrance and I am not afraid to admit it. Plumdrop

In Bottle: Creamy, soft fruit. Fairly non-descript on the fruit part. It’s like a vanilla bean milkshake with a heap of whipping cream a sprinkle of icing sugar, mixed with plums, a little coconut and topped with jasmine.

Applied: The linearity of this fragrance makes it hard to really review its fragrance life as it pretty much has one smell that it sticks to and does fairly well. So is it a top note, middle note, or base note? I don’t know, guys. I don’t think it matters. It has one smell. Pretty much what you smell in the bottle is what you get on skin. On paper, it’s a fruity floral with an added dollop of creaminess. That creamy, milky feel this fragrance has is what sets it apart from the generic fruity floral that tends to focus on the sweetness. Plumdrop is sweet, but it’s main priority is smelling like a really good milkshake. Plumdrop has a fairly decent life on skin as its creamy fruity floral scent is a nice captured essence for a spring day, or even a hot summer day. It’s lovely, girly, highly versatile. It would be hard to offend someone smelling like this because you just end up smelling like a fruity milkshake anyway. And sometimes, you just want to smell like a fruity milkshake without having to think about it. Fun, easy, and a little bit different.

Extra: Plumdrop is a member of Victoria’s Secret’s Beauty Rush line. To call it a perfume wouldn’t be exactly right. It’s not even really a body mist. It’s one of these new fangled innovations called moisturizing body mists. Victoria’s Secret calls Plumdrop and its concept similar brothers and sisters, Double Body Mists. You have an oil layer and a watery colored layer that contains the fragrance. Before using, you shake the stuff up to combine the two layers and spray it on for moisturizing properties and scent. I am a lazy person and I can get behind this 2 in 1 routine.

Design: Plumdrop comes in a plastic cylinder with two layers of product; an oil layer and a colored water and fragrance layer. Plumdrop is a light, pastel purple color. Prior to use you should shake this up because as experiments have revealed, the oil only layer does not smell good. The sprayer nozzle is a nice metallic material with a plastic cap. For a body mist/spray moisturizer the packaging is pretty good.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Plum, milk, sugar, honeysuckle, violets, vanilla.

Those notes are approximations only. I was actually wrestling with whether or not this counts as a fragrance, and for a fragrance review blog. But hey, it’s got a scent, so why not?

Reviewed in This Post: Plumdrop, 2009, Oil and Body Mist.

Thierry Mugler Angel

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Angel is one of the most widely imitated fragrances. It’s introduction in 1992 changed the fragrance world. It became incredibly popular and still remains popular as people still rock this scent up and down high school hallways, fashionable city streets, and unfortunately for the rest of us , on the elevator. Angel

In Bottle: Beware of your first smell of Angel as your first impression will likely be something to the tune of, “Oh God! What is that horrible smell? Get it out of my nose! Aaaah!” Your second smell will yield an intriguing, jarring mix of bitter, spicy patchouli blended with rich, warm chocolate and some fruit.

Applied: Angel starts off with a typical citrus burst that disappears to lead you in on a roller coaster ride of gourmand thrill. The patchouli wastes no time on me to get straight to the point. It comes out of the gates, announces itself and drags the rest of the fragrance in. What I get is a mish-mash of sugary fruit. The chocolate is quick to come up with its creamy, warmth. The candy-like sweetness of the caramel mixed with vanilla is always present in Angel. Like a syrup cloud hovering over an outdoor chocolate fashion show. What? Too weird? How about the idea of dipping your chocolate bar in caramel and vanilla extract and then dropping it on the lawn? The dry down doesn’t come in until hours later when you’ve had just about all you can of the chocolate and sweetness. Where upon drying down you get more chocolate, sugar and patchouli. Hope you liked the ride.

Extra: Angel is strong. Mercilessly strong that its introduction in the 1990s could have been pushed up a few years into the Powerhouse Era and people would still say it’s strong. Go easy on this one, folks. You will be smelled from a mile away. And if you do happen to put too much on, avoid crowded elevators.

Design: Angel comes in a variety of bottles, concentrations, flankers and other products. The most iconic and instantly recognizable is the slanted star bottle design shown above. If you don’t like that one, there are many more. Most Angel bottles have the added bonus of being refillable too.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Bergamot, patchouli, chocolate, vanilla, caramel, red berries.

I wrestled with whether or not this fragrance could be considered a classic. Considering its iconic rise to fame and its still firm grip on popularity, I decided to just hand the label over. Not to mention the fact that it’s so instantly recognizable to so many people.

Reviewed in This Post: Angel, 2008, Eau de Parfum.

Viktor and Rolf Flowerbomb

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Flowerbomb is a pretty silly name for a fragrance that features so few flowers in it.  In fact, it smells more like caramel  or cotton candy than anything. You could call this Candy Bomb and it would make more sense. Flowerbomb

In Bottle: Despite the notes listing for this fragrance the first thing you are going to smell is sugar, vanilla, and caramel. Yes, the  fragrance that calls itself Flowerbomb doesn’t open with any florals. It opens with a gourmand. But wait, there’s more if you give her a little more time.

Applied: As you’re settling into your dessert you may start to wonder, where are my flowers? Didn’t I buy Flowerbomb? Why am I tasting a mountain of sugar instead? Then it hits you, jasmine and smoke. Did someone burn the caramel? Wait, I think I found a flower in Flowerbomb! A faint floral whiff of it coming at you from behind the cotton candy bush. It sneaks up on you, this little jasmine note, but its feet is stuck in the sticky candy and caramel mush road. When you finally notice it, you also start to notice the other florals too. Florals who had bloomed and are now dying, sinking into the hot sugar quicksand made of powdered sugar and melted caramels. What I’m trying to say is, Flowerbomb has a sweet, toothache inducing caramel fragrance with a floral heart that’s barely detectable. If you are looking for a floral fragrance, you will be looking hard for it behind the candy. As the heart continues to develop the caramel turns burnt, and the sugar, vanilla and whatever else is making this stuff smell like the underside of an amusement park ride seat gets even sweeter and sweeter until it hits cloying. Not just cloying like Miss Dior Cherie. Flowerbomb is smoky cloying. It stays at cloying well into the dry down when sugar attack mania is still all that you can smell until it fades into nothing but a light smoke trail. Wait, is that patchouli I’m smelling at the very tail end of this? Well, a little late to the show but at least I caught a fleeting glimpse.

Extra: I can’t understand the appeal of this fragrance that was released in 2004. I could understand Angel by Thierry Mugler but Flowerbomb’s youthful jolt of sweetness is beyond me. It polished the grit and character out of the patchouli so what I’m left with is a benign patchouli that can’t tame a sugar overloaded scent. I don’t think I will ever come to fully understand Flowerbomb either and can only commend it as one of the sweetest gourmands ever. If you want sweet and candy-like, you want this stuff. Did I mention this stuff has insane projection and longevity? Go easy on the sprayer, you will smell this for many hours.

Design: Flowerbomb has its rather signature pink grenade shaped bottle. Cute and iconic. A little conceptual if somewhat literal in interpretation. It makes this a nice looking perfume and a good conversation piece. The bottle itself is well designed, has a nice weight, is easy to hold and the sprayer is just dandy.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Bergamot, tea, jasmine, freesia, orchid, rose, patchouli.

Flowerbomb is probably one of the best examples of why the advertisements are not to be taken to heart. Official word labels this as a floral. But it is a gourmand above and all else and almost everyone who has smelled Flowerbomb would tend to agree. It takes a lot of digging, in other words, to find the flowers. This is a great fragrance for a very young audience who likes sweetness, likes caramel, and likes candy with a once in a while faint whiff of florals. It isn’t for me though.

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

Britney Spears Fantasy

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Watch a few perfume collection videos on YouTube and you’ll start to notice a pattern. Everyone owns relatively the same perfumes and one of the most commonly mentioned is Britney Spears Fantasy. That fragrance in the crazy rhinestone studded ball. So of course I went out to smell it. A scent this popular practically begs to be sniffed. Fantasy

In Bottle: Pink, sweet and candy-like. There’s a huge jolt of sugar. I’m thinking Couture Couture’s sugar mountain has a very likely adversary vying for first place in the tooth decay competition. This doesn’t mean that Fantasy smells bad. This stuff is sweet, but it’s not so sweet that it approaches the point of no return; cloying sweet.

Applied: Sweet fruits with a tiny bit of tartness on the opening. The tartness gives way to more sweetness as the gourmand notes come in for a jam. I don’t believe I could smell a big cupcake but I did smell vanilla and white chocolate that lends the fragrance a very nice creaminess. This is a pretty and edible smell that went from fruits to sugar and candy very quickly. The dry down takes a while as longevity in Fantasy was quite good for me. I get clean, sugary musk on dry down.

Extra: The advertising for this fragrance claims that it’s supposed to signify Britney’s more grown up personality. I don’t know what in Fantasy is supposed to represent that but I don’t have any of it. This stuff is extremely popular with young girls and younger women. I wouldn’t call it anything remotely approaching grown up. But it’s not a bad fragrance. It’s fun, it’s girly, it’s young. Just don’t try to take it seriously.

Design: The design, for me, is repellent. It looks like a number of things but none of those things are particularly attractive to me. I suppose the shape is sort of reminiscent of a fortune teller’s ball and the crystals…eh, I don’t know. Everything from the shape, to the crystals, to the detailing around the cap just isn’t doing it for me. Not me with my clean lines and ultra-minimalism. Interestingly enough the belted design around the sprayer featured in the picture above with the crystals is no longer being produced.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Red lychee, golden quince, kiwi, cupcake accord, jasmine petals, white chocolate orchid, creamy musk, enchanted orris root, and sensual woods.

Some of the verbs used for those notes are just silly. But it’s also fun and playful. I can’t take Fantasy seriously. This isn’t the kind of fragrance you wear to a board meeting. However, you could wear Fantasy to the beach, to a hoe down, or a cupcake festival. Basically, if it’s not whimsical and fun it’s not a place Fantasy would fit in.

Reviewed in This Post: Britney Spears, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

BPAL Miskatonic University

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Coffee has become something of an obsession of mine. Not in the drinking of it, but rather the smelling of coffee. That rich, dark, woody fragrance of coffee is the hallmark of a good morning to me. I suppose it helps that I’m not a coffee drinker so all the terrible mornings don’t sour this scent. But in my search for the perfect coffee fragrance, I’ve discovered one thing; The note does not last. Miskatonic University

In Bottle: Beautiful, creamy, rich coffee with a french vanilla twist in it. I smell a slightly fungal scent in this too that can probably be attributed to Black Phoenix’s dust note. It smells a bit like mushroom to me, but in the bottle, the mushroom is a good pairing to the coffee, making it just a little more complex than, “Here you go, your coffee smell” plunked down onto the table without ceremony.

Applied: Coffee, dense and rich and good enough to taste with creaminess and sweetness mixed into one. Miskatonic University is like a really good cup of coffee–for about thirty seconds. The coffee note in this fragrance is really fleeting on me and disappears in less than a minute. I can try layering all I want but it is not going to stick around on my skin. When that elusive coffee does evaporate it takes the vanilla and the sweetness with it. Remember that mushroom note? After  the coffee departs, the mushrooms absolutely bloom. Actually, I don’t think it’s mushroom I’m smelling but the leftover cream and the dust note mixing together to form this really bizarre tangent with the woodsy notes in Miskatonic University getting a scent that I can only attribute to mushrooms on wood polish. It’s not particularly interesting or nice. Well–that’s not true, it is interesting.

Extra: Miskatonic University is a fictional post-secondary institute located in Arkham which appears in the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

Design: Miskatonic University is bottled much in the same way all other Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfumes are. It has a different label to denote its place in the Picnic in Arkham series.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Irish coffee, dust, oak.

As much as I wanted to find that one true coffee scent in this fragrance, Miskatonic University and I were just not meant to be. The coffee note is so fleeting, and I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. It is a top note for me. I just hoped it’d be one of those top notes that defied all logic and reason and hung around a bit.

Reviewed in This Post: Miskatonic University, 2009, 5ml Bottle.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Morocco

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Morocco is among one of the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s more popular fragrances. Morocco conjures up romantic images of drinking tea in one of the most vivid nations in the world. The fragrance is BPAL’s interpretation of the place, using spices and warm milky notes to bring forward a very lovely gourmand fragrance. Morocco

In Bottle: Creamy, sweet tea with a touch of spices. I want to say I’m smelling saffron, nutmeg and cinnamon blended into a warm, milky, spicy beverage. There’s a touch of sweetness to this too that helps Morocco avoid being a hit of spices and milk. The sugar adds a much needed dimension because the sugar helps tip Morocco into gourmand territory.

Applied: Spices and milk before the milk settles off. Morocco moves along, carrying its cinnamon and nutmeg scent as sugar trails in behind. The fragrance ages into a slightly spicier piece of work when carnation starts to bloom. As Morocco continues to unfold on the skin there’s a touch of something musk coming up and intensifies as the dry down continues to wind its way through the streets piled high with spices and milky tea. Final dry down is a lovely creamy musk and woods.

Extra: BPAL fragrances are perfume oil blends. Which means they are fragrance oils set in carrier oils. This means the fragrance is set in an oil base such as almond oil or jojoba oil instead of alcohol and water.

Design: Morocco is contained in a 5ml amber glass bottle with a plastic top, just like other general catalog Black Phoenix Alchemy lab fragrances.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Spices, milk, sugar, carnation, sandalwood, cassia.

I do like Morocco, really and I was leery to even try it because of the spiciness. Sometimes too many spices can be a bit much to handle but Morocco strikes a very agreeable spice middle ground.

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