Chloe Love Eau Intense

Love Eau Intense is the ‘intense’ version of 2010’s very beautiful Chloe Love fragrance.

Love Eau Intense

Love Eau Intense

In Bottle: Hint of florals a bit of powderiness and a lot of warm amber and vanilla.

Applied: Florals on the opening, a bit of bitterness and powder from what I think might be the iris note. Don’t be scared by that description, the powder and bitterness was barely detectible to me. It enhances the fragrance, giving it a bit of sophistication. As the fragrance progresses, I get the sweet warm amber vanilla fragrance with what I think is a little touch of honey. Love Eau Intense is a very well-blended and well rounded scent. It fades into its end stage with a nice floral dusting on a warm oriental base. It’s very nice, grownup, but also very loud so go easy on the sprayer.

Extra: Love Eau Intense was composed by Louise Turner (JLo Glow, Fahrenheit 32) and Nathalie Gracia-Cetto (Burberry Brit, Escada Sentiment).

Design: I love the design of Chloe’s Love fragrance line. The shape itself is reminiscent of a hip flask made of glass with a metal band at the bottom. I love the cap with the chain and the overall simplicity but elegant aesthetic.

Fragrance Family: Floral Oriental

Notes: Iris, heliotrope, hyacinth, lilac, wisteria, balsam, musk, vanilla.

Love Intense is fantastic and a great progression from Chloe Love. The original Love was already well done and Love Eau Intense improved upon it, in my opinion.

Reviewed in This Post: Love Eau Intense, 2011, Eau de Parfum.


BPAL Fox-Woman Kuzunoha

The full name of this fragrance is The Fox-Woman Kuzunoha Leaving Her Child. Due to space constraints, I couldn’t fit that whole thing in the title above. Regardless, Kuzunoha is a beautifully done clean tea floral fragrance from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. The Fox Woman

In Bottle: Lovely wafty of soft white tea settled with a pleasant bit of woodsiness. The jasmine in this fragrance lends the scent an even more tea-like personality.

Applied: Kuzunoha is one of my favorite fragrances. It’s light and beautiful and airy. The opening is a straight up showing of what the fragrance has, settling first with a hit of white tea followed by gently powdered jasmine. The white tea and jasmine mix well to make this fragrance smell a bit more like jasmine tea than just white tea while the two florals in this scent mix to make a floating floral background. The wisteria and cherry blossom are very light. The cherry blossom making a bigger appearance but it is still largely relegated to the background. The real star of the show here is definitely jasmine. Finally, the teak adds a tiny bit of woodsy presence to the fragrance to round it out. The entire experience is elegant, well-done, and very beautiful. Kuzunoha also benefits from the light approach because it is a very easy fragrance to wear.

Extra: The Fox-Woman Kuzunoha Leaving Her Child is a print by artist, Yoshitoshi Tsukioka.

Design: The Fox-Woman Kuzunoha Leaving Her Child is bottled in a similar way to most Black Phoenix Alchemy lab perfume oils. The glass is an amber color with a square label affixed to the surface of the glass. The label in this case features artwork by Yoshitoshi Tsukioka whose painting of the same name inspired this fragrance.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: White tea, cherry blossom, wisteria, star jasmine, teak.

Big as I am on this fragrance, its longevity leaves a bit to be desired. I’m not surprised by this as most of the notes are rather fleeting in and of themselves.

Reviewed in This Post: The Fox-Woman Kuzunoha Leaving Her Child, 2010, 5ml Bottle.


Parfums de Coeur Vampire

I don’t know why I’m drawn to do reviews of some of these more silly fragrances sometimes but you can chalk this one up to curiosity. Like that time I smelled Danielle Steel and decided I didn’t like her. Vampire

In Bottle: Citrus with a bunch of florals, rather sweet, with a violent note that makes me think of sticky flowers floating in cough syrup.

Applied: Goes on as a citrus with a sweetened pile of sugar. Again, that sticky flowers in cough syrup scent. It’s quite distracting as Vampire seems to want to get sweeter and sweeter on me as it slowly introduces more and more flowers. But it hits a road block before it goes too far with the chocolate note coming in to join the fray. What I end up with is a sickly sweet floral with chocolate slathered on top. The dry down occurs about nine hours later because Vampire has one major thing going for it and that is that this scent will not give up. It’s strong and it’ll last a very long time. Anyway, the dry down is remarkably pleasant if somewhat banal as the sweetness finally goes away giving the base of Vampire a rather pleasant mix of sandalwood and gentle amber. But that’s after you survive the top and middle notes.

Extra: Parfums de Coeur etched a place for themselves making “Designer Impostors” a somewhat different concept than counterfeits–I guess. Impostor fragrances basically try their best to match the scent of a designer perfume. Often they are sold at a cheaper price in cheaper packaging as is the case with Parfums de Coeur. Whether you approve of this practice or not, Parfums de Coeur offers a few “Designer Impostors” and a few original fragrances, such as Vampire.

Design: The bottle design for vampire is obviously not for me. I’m not entirely sure what was being accomplished here but the bottling is a major turn off. I like simple though, and this is anything but. It seems like the bottling took a strange mix of Cashmere Mist and original Chloe’s packaging and mashed in a muscles or veins motif onto the glass.

Fragrance Family: Floral Gourmand

Notes: Clementine, plum flower, wisteria, violet, chocolate cosmos, sandalwood, amber, musk.

I don’t think cheapie is going to do it for me. I already have a cheapie in my top ten favorites with Plumdrop and Vampire is geared at way too young an audience for me to pull off. It’s sweet, it’s a gourmand, it doesn’t make me think of vampires or sultriness. But it is very young, and the price is right.

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