DKNY Delicious Night

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Delicious Night is one of the flankers from Donna Karan’s very popular Be Delicious line which centers around the apple note. Despite its shape and its heritage, Delicious Night does not contain a single apple. Delicious Night

In Bottle: Sweet, citrus and berries that verge on being cloying even as it’s sitting in the bottle. This is a fact that troubles me. It’s like a warning.

Applied: Sweet blackberry and citrus fruits. Or should I say, SWEET BLACKBERRY and CITRUS INFUSION 9000!!! Because Delicious Night goes on loud. Very loud. Also very sweet and that cloying sweetness I got in the bottle is full throttle on my skin. This stuff is like blackberry and lemon syrup, dumped into a vat of sugar and then rolled into a giant candy ball. I had thought Miss Dior Cherie was a cloying headache inducer but Delicious Night really takes the cake as I wait out the top notes amidst this bizarre combination of scents that remind me uncomfortably of children’s flavored and sweetened cough syrup. Much to my chagrin the mid-stage echos the same level of syrupy sweetness as the opener except with a bland mix of flowers that are trying to swim out of the Sweet’n’Low sea but they can’t quite make it under the merciless sugar baron’s iron-fisted rule. If you think you can get away from the sugar baron on the dry down you’ve got another thing coming. The sweetness is miles long, and it won’t stop until you do. It invades the base notes as well, sugaring up the sheer clean patchouli and if it’s one thing I don’t think patchouli should ever have to do, it’s be both clean and sugary sweet.

Extra: Be Delicious was the original DKNY apple scent that a lot of people really like. And it’s a pretty decent apple scent that inspired Victoria Secret’s Appletini.

Design: Bottled in the same shape and concept as DKNY Be Delicious and DKNY Red Delicious. Delicious Night is a dark purple affair with an apple-like shape. The black plastic cap also hides the sprayer that makes a distinctly plastic sound as it splodges the fragrance out onto you like a hooked fish would regurgitate the last of its water. I wasn’t impressed by the lackluster function of the sprayer nozzle–in other words. Maybe I just hit a bad bottle. I will admit that it’s a pretty cute shape and a rather clever way of hiding the sprayer.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Pomelo, ginger, blackberry, pink freesia, martini, night orchid, jasmine, pink iris, amber, frankincense, myrrh extract, patchouli, vetiver.

Delicious Night was supposed to be sexy and modern. All it made me was kind of nauseous. Sorry, Delicious Night.

Reviewed in This Post: DKNY Delicious Night, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Aquolina Pink Sugar

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Pink Sugar is as simple as its name. It’s a sweet fragrance made for younger perfume consumers that’s not ashamed of admitting that it’s just a candy-like confection for people who like to smell sweet. And that’s about it. I can respect that. Pink Sugar

In Bottle: Sugar, caramel, and strawberry. Very reminiscent of Miss Dior Cherie but much more tolerable due to the lack of patchouli and the toning down of the strawberry note. This smells like the pink cotton candy you buy at carnivals and little strawberry hard candies.

Applied: Dominating the opener is the cotton candy and strawberry hard candies. If Pink Sugar were a food–it’d be aptly named. As the scent ages, it stays the same but for a caramel note coming up. The caramel note has been toasted a bit too much, smelling burnt. I have a suspicion there’s really only one caramel note shared between this fragrance, Miss Dior Cherie and Flowerbomb and it’s Burnt Caramel #2990. A pox on you, Burnt Caramel #2990! I’m convinced that due to this mysterious caramel note that these three fragrances are related in some smelly conspiracy. But they aren’t the same, Pink Sugar lacks the extreme sweetness and harshness of the patchouli and strawberry. The burnt caramel in Pink Sugar is more muted than in Flowerbomb. Pink Sugar has a not bad licorice note that makes brief appearances in the mid-stage. When Pink Sugar dries down, it’s a bit of vanilla and slap of clean woodsiness and then it’s gone.

Extra: Pink Sugar is consistently one of the most popular and well-loved fragrances among its target audience. If you were ever wondering what young people like these days, Pink Sugar is probably a good guess.

Design: Pink Sugar is bottled in a tall glass cylinder with pink crisscrossing lines on the glass. The presentation itself makes me think of cake. The lettering is playful, a bit messy for my tastes, but I’m not the target audience for the fragrance or–I assume–the design of the bottle.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Bergamot, sicilian orange, raspberry, fig leaves, lily of the valley, licorice, strawberry, red fruit, cotton candy, vanilla, caramel, musk, wood, powder.

From a choice of Miss Dior Cherie, Pink Sugar, or Flowerbomb, I will have to give props to Pink Sugar. It’s the most wearable, the least cloying and at least it’s upfront about what it is.

Reviewed in This Post: Pink Sugar, 2008, Eau de Parfum.

Jean Paul Gaultier Ma Dame

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Ma Dame has one of the most addictive and fun commercials I’ve seen as of date. It features international It Girl, Agyness Deyn, with a snappy song and a great dynamic series of cuts showing the rejection of order and embrace of rebel and style. But like all fragrances, I advocate smelling the actual juice. The fragrance itself doesn’t really follow its marketing image. Ma Dame

In Bottle: Fruity, sweet and candy-like. This is floral too and has a strangely clean cotton candy scent to it. Now that’s just a bit odd as when I think cotton candy, the last thing I think is clean but hey, Ma Dame.

Applied: Flowers, sugar and citrus, big chunks of sugar and a ripe orange thrown in for good measure. At the heart of this fragrance is a lovely floral mixed in with the sweetness, like candied flowers covered in citrus clean. There something lemony to this because I can smell a very strong, sharp citrus trying to overcome the other notes. Ma Dame is a strong scent with lots of sillage. It’s projection will reach an impressive distance so use it sparingly if you’re going to be in an enclosed space with others. She’s a nice fragrance though with a bright and spicy little kick to her. The dry down is a sweet woodsy affair.

Extra: Ma Dame is by Jean Paul Gaultier, a French fashion designer well known for his haute couture and conceptual fashion items. You may recognize some of his work adorning the likes of Marilyn Manson.

Design: Ma Dame is bottled in glass with a female figure recessed into it. The figure is a throwback to Gaultier’s usual bottle style in the shape of a woman. The glass has a nice orange pink sheen to it. This one is pleasant to look at but I’ve always found the body shape bottles to be a bit too much.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Orange zest, rose, musk, cedar wood.

I wouldn’t refer to Ma Dame as an order rejecting fragrance. It’s a nice tweak from the usual fruity floral fare but it has a long way to go before it rejects anything. The sweet floral is pleasant though it can be a bit much–especially if someone mistakes this fragrance for a wilting lily and bathes themselves in it, thus causing a 100 mile radius cloud of pink scent to perpetually swirl about them like a sugary tornado.

Reviewed in This Post: Ma Dame, 2010, Eau de Toilette.