Vera Wang Princess Night

Really? Another one? At this point, the Princess line has become this heart-shaped, sugary thing I find myself inexplicably drawn to. Like I can justify smelling its many iterations in the hopes that something about the whole lot will strike my fancy. So here goes nothing.

Princess Night

Princess Night

In Bottle:Fruity with a distinct sweet vanilla fragrance. There’s a creamy quality to it too. Smells a lot like a warm berry dessert.

Applied: Fruity opening with a slightly tart berry personality that pretty much bursts out of the bottle and attaches itself to your skin to attack you while it has the chance. The berries are rather shortlived and end up devolving into this anonymous “fruity” smell that mixes rather nicely, but also rather blandly, with the florals in the midstage. The staple jasmine, rose, and orange flower combination does what its always done–create a benign floral twist that behaves in the presence of fruits and vanillas. The dry down isn’t too much to write home about either. Sweet vanilla, layered with a hint of woods to give the fragrance a warm, sweet finish. The warmth in this one shouldn’t be confused with the warmth you might get from an amber note, this is all mild warmth. Kind of like dipping your toe in lukewarm water as opposed to wrapping yourself in a plush sweater.

Extra: Princess Night, presumably after the success of the Princess line by Vera Wang, was released in January 2012.

Design: All right, who green lighted this thing? I picked up the bottle and had glitter all over my hand the instant I came into contact with it. Now I’m not as big on glitter as some people–in fact, I kind of hate glitter. Regardless, the glitter makes the already garish bottle look even more garish. Princess Night was sitting next to a bottle of regular old Princess and the former made the latter look like a baccarat masterpiece. I’m sorry, the look doesn’t appeal to me and the glitter just turned me off completely. On more technical terms, Princess Night is shaped exactly like the rest of the Princess line with a removable ring you can wear on your finger. It’s two chief differences being the dark purple glitter that covers the entirety of the bottle and a metal tag hung from the neck to identify the fragrance.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Oriental

Notes: Red berries, raspberry, watermelon, orange flower, jasmine, rose, sugar, vanilla, musk, woods.

Kind of had to stretch to call this an oriental but what else stands out from Princess Night but it’s fruity opening and vanilla finish? Maybe the next Princess flanker will work out for me a bit better.

Reviewed in This Post: Princess Night, 2012, Eau de Toilette.


Calgon Hawaiian Ginger

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.