Calvin Klein Euphoria

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I know Calvin Klein’s been curiously overlooked in this blog for a while and here’s why–I don’t really like anything in their line. Even the hallmarks of Calvin Klein fragrances; Obsession and CK One. But I kept seeing Euphoria around and I’ve smelled it a few times before and decided to just get a few reviews out there because I know a lot of people love CK.

Euphoria

In Bottle: Sweet synthetic apple and berries smelling up top. The sugar isn’t mixing well with the pomegranate or the berries to my nose and it’s turning things into a bit of a cough syrup factory.

Applied: Syrupy sweet berries and a really obnoxious synthetic apple note on the opening that digs into the middle with the same syrupy sweet quality. The middle stage is marked with a series of banal florals, all of which are sweet and clean and try to clean up the sugary mess in the opening but all I get is sugar florals, sugar violets particular, trying to do what they can with a dewy green and clean note supporting them. Peaking up in the mid-stage is also a woodsiness that makes the mid-stage even more appealing. I think I would have liked the mid-stage of Euphoria a lot more if it was just the florals. Cut out the fruity sweetness in the opening and see how things go from there. But since we’re playing up the sweet, Euphoria’s end stage heads into a floral, warm and woodsy closer. Rather nice closing on this fragrance, actually.

Extra: There, I know a lot of people really like Euphoria but it did nothing for me. While the sweetness did not get to cloying levels, I felt the sugar in this fragrance was largely unnecessary.

Design: Euphoria’s bottle always manages to get knocked over every time I go hear it. The bottle itself is a purple glass shaped into a sort of abstract leave. The cap is a tall metallic rectangle that sticks up from the leaf. The design is interesting but the cap and how tall it is really annoys me.

Fragrance Family: Fruity Floral

Notes: Apple, berries, green leaves, rose, lotus, orchid, violets, woods, amber.

Euphoria’s not bad when you consider its mid-stage elements and dry down. It’s a pretty good scent if you can ignore the sugar. I just found the sugar particularly irritating in this fragrance because it really didn’t need to be in this. Or maybe I’m just bitter because this didn’t work as well on me as I had hoped.

Reviewed in This Post: Euphoria, 2007, Eau de Parfum.

Thierry Mugler Alien

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Call me a big old stick in the mud but I don’t like very many of Thierry Mugler’s fragrances. Okay, stop hurling rotten fruit at me. I said most, not all. Fortunately for Alien, I love it.

Alien

In Bottle: Alien is a very powerful fragrance, it’s a few notches above Angel and it doesn’t take a whole lot of this to scent the place up. I’m a big fan of jasmine, love the stuff. Would slather myself in it and Alien is like the wish that came true. It takes jasmine and really kicks it up several notches beyond normal to the point that all I smell is metallic jasmine–and that’s while it’s in the bottle.

Applied: Powerful burst of metals and jasmine right up top with a hint of peppery spice to sooth the nose a little. I know, pepper soothing a nose? The jasmine in this is really strong that when you end up smelling the pepper it’s almost a relief in a way. The fragrance continues to age with jasmine heading the way and the pepper and its strange metallic friend disappear. A bit of vanilla drives itself into the middle and lends a slight plastic quality to the mid-stage. I’m not a big fan of fake vanilla when I can tell it’s the synthetic kind, but the vanilla here actually doesn’t do too bad against jasmine. It goes well with the whole quirkiness of the scent. It gives it a bit more personality too so it’s not just powerful jasmine. Otherwise, this is pretty, white, with that little dirty quality that’s present in many jasmines. I can’t say much else in the way of Alien, it’s a one trick pony. But what a trick! If you love jasmine you’ll love this. It’s heady, heavy, very present and projects hugely. The dry down sees the introduction of some other notes, namely woods that help calm the jasmine down a bit.

Extra: Alien is like Thierry Mugler’s declaration that if you wanted to graduate into floral territory, you should do it with a huge celebration and a fragrance that shouts. Like with most Thierry Mugler scents, Alien has excellent longevity and fantastic projection.

Design: I’m not a huge fan of Thierry Mugler bottle designs either, and Alien’s bottle puts me off a little. It’s purposefully meant to be off-putting, strange, and a bit ridiculous. I can’t say I like the angles, the feel of this thing in my hand, or its pointiness. It’s a great strange little bottle, but it’s not to my tastes.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Jasmine, pepper, vanilla, woods.

I’m not a strong, in-your-face fragrance kind of gal. I love the subtle stuff, the stick-to-your-skin kind of fragrance but when I want to go loud, this is the stuff I’m doing it with.

Reviewed in This Post: Alien, 2008, Eau de Toilette.

Miss Dior Cherie L’Eau

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Miss Dior Cherie L’Eau is the green little flanker from 2009. It’s older sister, Miss Dior Cherie was a smash hit when she debut in 2005. I wrote a review of Miss Dior Cherie almost a year ago and proclaimed my amazement at one of the few perfume headaches I’ve ever gotten. And so, enter her flanker.

Miss Dior Cherie L'Eau

In Bottle: Sweet and flowery with a hint of cleanness. It’s like I’m smelling a bar of too-flowery soap.

Applied: So Miss Dior Cherie L’Eau is a little disappointing in the bottle, does she get any better on the skin? Eh, no, not really. She goes on with that sweet florals thing again, there’s a hint of sharpness to this that makes me think fresh and clean like a shower gel or a bar of soap or something. I’ll commend this for being less sweet than Miss Dior Cherie but there’s not much else to it than a very familiar, but very banal shower gel scent. The mid-stage is marked with a squeaky clean sweet floral blend of white flowers and fruits. The dry down is a floral woodsiness with a dash of sharp white musk for good measure.

Extra: Miss Dior Cherie L’Eau has a good thing going for it if you like weaker perfumes that don’t last very long but can still make you wrinkle your nose. This stuff smells nice, and if you like squeaky clean smells and little else, this is a good bet–just don’t expect it to last very long. The longevity seriously sucks.

Design: Miss Dior Cherie L’Eau is bottled in a similar shape to Miss Dior Cherie but with a taller bottle and a frosted glass-looking bow  and cap. It’s still fantastically cute packaging. The juice is also an appeasing shade of yellow-green.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Bitter orange, lily, gardenia, woods, musk.

I admit it, I do like this a lot more than Miss Dior Cherie. But the fact that I didn’t get a headache from this probably has something to do with that. In the end though, Miss Dior Cherie L’Eau, is just not special. She smells like a great deal of other things out there and there isn’t much to set her apart. The bottle sure looks cute though!

Reviewed in This Post: Miss Dior Cherie L’Eau, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Annick Goutal Eau de Sud

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Eau de Sud is a true, well done, citrus centered fragrance with a beautiful and interesting dry down. It was released in 1995 and is–unjustly–underrated. But if you do happen to be looking for a competent fresh citrus, look past the Light Blues and Versences and get yourself a bit of this stuff.  Eau de Sud

In Bottle: Herbal and grapefruity with fresh green notes. It’s a (refreshing and much needed) far cry from the citrus explosion of other perfumes based in this category.

Applied: Opens with a beautiful bouquet of herbal grapefruit greenness. The grapefruit used in this fragrance is a tart one, similar to Guerlain’s Aqua Allegoria Pamplelune. The mid-stage is punctuated with an odd but entirely pleasant saltiness as the grapefruit lingers back behind a pleasant mix of spicy peppermint, basil, thyme and lemon verbena. Eau de Sud’s relatively masculine composition might turn away a few more scent gender conscious ladies but it is a lovely fragrance that I think anyone can use because before it is masculine, it is fresh and classic smelling. You get the classic scent of this on the dry down where the fragrance takes a woodsy and herbal turn before falling off completely.

Extra: Eau de Sud’s more popular older sister, Eau d’Hadrien is a lighter more citrus-based fragrance.

Design: Eau de Sud is bottled in Annick Goutal’s iconic ribbed glass bottle with the lovely gold metal cap and an adorable gold ribbon that carries the fragrance’s name tag. It should be noted, if you happen to be interested in this kind of thing, that all of Annick Goutal’s ribbed glass bottles have removable sprayers. Though I would advise that you keep the sprayer on so long as there’s juice in the bottle as Annick Goutals are known to fade a bit quicker than other fragrances.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Aromatic

Notes: Bergamot, tangerine, grapefruit, key lime, verbena, peppermint, basil, patchouli, oakmoss, jasmine, vetiver.

You can get Annick Goutal fragrances in three different types of bottles. Not all of them are available in all bottle types but there is the square variety, the ribbed variety (shown above), and the butterfly bottle variety.

Reviewed in This Post: Eau de Sud, 2000, Eau de Toilette.

Marc Jacobs Bang

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Marc Jacobs came out with Bang (raise your hands if you read that as ‘came out with a bang’) earlier this year to a fairly decent media frenzy that at first revolved around his statements about the fragrance, then about the advertising that came out with the fragrance in which some men begged to wonder, “if I were to choose a cologne, do I want it to be the one with a naked Marc Jacobs on the advertisement?” Query of the ages right there. Bang

In Bottle: Bang slaps me in the nose right away with a gigantic dose of peppers. Red, white, pink, black. You got the entire pepper rainbow in this thing. And hey, it’s off-putting but I actually like it.

Applied: Pepper, pepper, pepper. Like grinding peppercorns and spraying them into my nose. The initial reaction I had was to sneeze but it didn’t get to that point. I love pepper. I love how strong and blatant the initial pepper blast in this stuff is. If you want something to wake you up, Bang’s opening is it. But after the pepper blast, Bang heads into something a little more conventional as it veers into a leathery woods scent with a tickle of vetiver and a now very familiar cedar note. But all that is second fiddle to the pepper that just doesn’t go away. Thankfully Bang is light-handed with its used of cedar and has ended up with a competent woodsy mid-stage instead of a cedar mess that so many other cedar-based fragrances suffer from on my skin. The dry down is a decent play between bitter green notes, a lingering tickle of pepper, and a pleasant bit of earthy patchouli and woods.

Extra: The less said about the advertising campaign for Bang, the better. I thought they could have taken this in a few different directions but ultimately picked the obvious, which was disappointing to me. Well, if nothing else, the ad caught a lot of people’s attention.

Design: Bang’s bottle is not for me. It’s a little silly looking, if you ask me, and seems overly gimmicky. The bottle boasts a metallic exterior that looks like it would have once been a statement piece in the world of metal rectangles before someone punched it out of shape in a blind rage. Surprisingly enough, despite its non-traditional appearance and respectable weightiness, the bottle is fairly easy and comfortable to hold.

Fragrance Family: Spicy Woods

Notes: Black pepper, white pepper, pink pepper, woods, elemi resin, benzoin, vetiver, white moss, patchouli.

I’m not a fan of the reputation they built around this fragrance. I’m much less a fan of the silly-looking bottle. But the fragrance is a competent well-blended spicy woods gig.

Reviewed in This Post: Bang, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Bath and Body Works White Citrus

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What can I really say about White Citrus that hasn’t already been said? White Citrus is one of Bath and Body Works’ more simple compositions that’s billed as a modern take on a classic citrus fragrance. Not sure what they mean about a modern take on a classic citrus as this just pretty much smells like a citrus perfume. Nothing classic about it. But it is very good.  White Citrus

In Bottle: Sharp citrus, tangy lemon zest and a bit of sweet tangerine. There isn’t a lot of sweetness in this but there’s a tiny amount that helps to balance out the tartness a little bit.

Applied: Big white florals and citrus fragrance. Heavy emphasis on the citrus. I mostly get the lemon zest out of this fragrance which is tempered a bit by the lily and freesia present in the fragrance. The freesia helps calms the tartness of this scent a little with its floral sweetness as White Citrus lays on the skin like a clean, sheer coating of freshness. This is a nice, competent citrus-based scent with a good level of initial projection. However, due to its citrus-heavy top notes, the fragrance doesn’t last very long or project very far on me so I end up having to layer, layer, layer. White Citrus remains predominantly floral and lemon until it calms down near the end by introducing a barely noticeable and very sheer woody scent on the exit.

Extra: White Citrus is also available in a white variety of other products from Bath and Body Works. This includes lotions, body mists, travel size items, hand soap and probably much more. So if you’re worrying about the scent fading fast, get the lotion, the shower gel, and start layering. For those of you interested in this fragrance and want something that lasts a bit longer, Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs’ Whitechapel is a citrus-heavy perfume oil that has a few familiar components to White Citrus.

Design: White Citrus is bottled in much the same way as other Bath and Body Works eau de toilette fragrances. A no nonsense rectangular glass bottle with a design printed on the front. In White Citrus’ case, the design on the front appears to be some sort of explosion of green, or a graphical representation of a halved green citrus fruit.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: Lemon zest, tangerine, grapefruit, mandarin, lily of the valley, apricot, freesia, waterlily, ginger flower, woods, musk.

I had a small bottle of White Citrus lotion and quickly grew tired of it. A nice clean and fresh fragrance is good for an average day but White Citrus wasn’t as pleasing a citrus-based fragrance as I had hoped.

Reviewed in This Post: White Citrus, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Guerlain Attrape Coeur

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Les Parisiennes is Guerlain’s reintroduction of popular classics that may have dropped off the house’s roster due to unpopularity, changing times, new restrictions on fragrance ingredients, or someone having a bad hair day. Among them is the famous Attrape Coeur (Heart Trapper in French).  Attrape Coeur

In Bottle: Attrape Coeur has a fresh, lightly floral scent in the bottle. It has a certain, understated feminine charm that leads you to think it’s a mild jasmine-rosey concoction that’s easy to wear and easy to pull off.

Applied: The real heart of Attrape Coeur (heh) lies in the middle and base notes. As the top notes fade away, it unfolds to reveal a darker, muskier, more sensual scent making full use of tuberose as tuberose was meant to be used. This isn’t what I smelled in the bottle, it’s a definite morpher as she goes from light and lilting to full on oriental fragrance. The jasmine, tuberose and rose are a great compliment the smooth and musky mid-stage with its faintly sweet and dry scent. The mid-stage is especially familiar as little bits of Mitsouko waft in and out of this one. The best part about Attrape Coeur is its dry down. This fragrance falls into dense woods, bright spices, smooth vanilla, and that fantastic Guerlinade.

Extra: Les Parisiennes is an exclusive Guerlain collection that’s only available in very select locations. I found it at my local Holt Renfrew and La Signature at Epcot in Florida. If you can find a big Guerlain counter, you will probably be able to find this line. And I highly recommend anybody interested in perfumes to stop by and test a couple of them. Most of them are masterpieces that are so far above and beyond what you usually see in modern perfumery. Attrape Coeur used to go by the name of Guet Apens.

Design: Attrape Coeur, like other scents in the Les Parisiennes line, is bottled in a beautiful classic bee bottle. The bottles for these things are the real deal, not the semi-bee bottle situation you get with the Aqua Allegorias but the full-on deal. It’s complete with bee designs on the glass. Les Parisiennes are not spray bottles but splash that you will have to dab on yourself. I sometimes prefer the splash bottles to the sprays because once the fragrance is all gone, the bottle can still be reused and to not reuse a bee bottle would be something of a crime.

Fragrance Family: Oriental

Notes: Rose, jasmine, tuberose, peach, spices, sandalwood, amber, vanilla, musk.

I get a little jealous every time I look at the bee bottles. They’re really excellent looking pieces that will live well beyond the point when the fragrances they hold are all used up.

Reviewed in This Post: Attrape Coeur, 2008, Eau de Parfum.

Guerlain Mitsouko Vintage

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After having read and heard about how beautiful vintage Mitsouko is, I had to get my hands on a half ml vial of the stuff to see how it was for myself. I like the new Mitsouko just fine but she pales in comparison to the vintage for good reason.  Mitsouko Baccarat

In Bottle: As fragrance restrictions were increased and time went on, something happened to Mitsouko. She doesn’t smell like this vintage and the difference is immediately noticeable. Vintage smells like a smooth fruity chypre, the peach is detectable, the chypre scent is distinct. It’s a beautifully layered, and beautifully composed fragrance that smells like rich history.

Applied: This smells heady, dense, very distinctly a chypre with a very smooth, soft peach note. This reminds me of Chypre de Coty for good reason, I can see how these two fragrances came about and I can smell how and why they were beautiful. It makes it even sadder that they don’t come like this anymore–Chypre de Coty being discontinued, Mitsouko having been reformulated into a sharp, powdery ghost of its former self. It opens with a gentle citrus with a touch of heady floral. It goes into the mid-stage into a smooth beautiful fruitiness with a soft peach scent intermingled with a rose and jasmine ensemble. Now, this isn’t peach in the Bath and Body Works sweet peach body mist kind of way, it’s a feminine but very grown up peach scent that lacks any silly girly-girl sweetness to it. The fade is a complex blend of oakmoss, spice and woods that makes Vintage Mitsouko smell so personal. Then there’s that familiar Guerlain base that lingers for an incredibly long time and makes me feel like I could totally pull off wearing a ball gown to a baseball game.

Extra: Any perfumista can write novels about vintage Mitsouko, but instead, you got me. What I can say about vintage Mitsouko is that it makes me sad in the way that smelling old vintages like this makes me sad. Because perfumes aren’t made like this anymore and it is a real shame.

Design: I do not own a bottle of vintage Mitsouko but I eye them very jealously. Guerlain has put their classic fragrance lines under a few redesigns over the years and they have always remained elegant and beautiful designs. Linked above is a newer bottle of Mitsouko. It’s a limited edition collector’s item dressed up in Baccarat and available for $7000. It is not how the original bottle looks. Too rich for my blood, and besides, I’d rather spend the money on a vintage. I always feel like something of a clown judging vintage bottles because I can only say that they’re beautiful and elegant and they certainly do not make them like they used to.

Fragrance Family: Chypre

Notes: Bergamot, peach, jasmine, rose, oak moss, spices, vetiver, woods.

I would love to own a bunch of vintage fragrances because I have yet to smell one I didn’t like. Vintage Mitsouko and its newer formulation is close. Guerlain did what they could with the new stuff but it isn’t the same. The new formulation is noticeably sharper, more powdery, and has a slight imbalance that doesn’t hit the mark quite as well as the vintage stuff.

Reviewed in This Post: Mitsouko, circa 1950, Eau de Parfum.

Guerlain Vetiver

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Guerlain’s Vetiver is a classic that’s been reformulated over and over. As near as I can tell, the old and new versions smell pretty similar. I have only tried the new version on my skin. Vetiver

In Bottle: Lovely green and clean with earthy notes that spells fresh rain, leaves, and woods.

Applied: Green and citrusy clean. Lovely wet scent that ushers in the woodsiness with a nice elegance. One of the things I tend to notice with BPAL (Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab) fragrances is their dirt note is very pronounced. Fantastic for those who like more earthy scents but I prefer what the dirt in Vetiver is doing, lending a small essence of itself without being pronounced. I smell it’s there but it isn’t overpowering anything, in other words. The cleanliness of Vetiver is a fantastic feature as the fragrance shifts into a beautifully balanced dry, clean, spicy and woodsy fragrance. As the scent ages the citrus disappears leaving that clean dry spice and wood to mix with a pleasant light smokiness. While I’m trying to separate these notes, I’m not having an easy time. Vetiver is a masterfully balanced fragrance that makes it difficult to pick out individual notes and frankly, when a fragrance is this well balanced, I don’t care enough to pick the notes out of it. Just take it for what it is, a clean masculine scent that’s been referred to as a classic for good reason.

Extra: Vetiver is a type of grass that smells dry, green and grassy. Guerlain’s Vetiver came out in 1961.

Design: Presented in a lovely glass bottle with alternating clear and frosted glass stripes. Vetiver’s bottle is functional, pleasant to look at and easy to hold.

Fragrance Family: Woodsy

Notes: Bergamot, lemon, mandarin, neroli, coriander, vetiver, cedar, tobacco, nutmeg, pepper, tonka bean, capiscum.

If you were planning on picking up a bottle of Vetiver, definitely go out of your way to test it out first. This fragrance smells very different on the skin than it does on paper.

Reviewed in This Post: Vetiver, 2008, Eau de Toilette.

Guerlain Nahema

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Released in 1979, Nahéma is like an ode to the rose. Nahéma is a rose explosion that calls up the vision of what a rose is supposed to be. Nahema

In Bottle: Lush rose in that familiar Guerlain smell. Beautifully dense and musky delicate roses. So sweet that for a moment I’m thinking I smell cherry or anise instead but it’s all rose from here.

Applied: Big and fantastic and familiar. The rose goes on strong, comes out of the gates yelling and makes itself known. This is what a rose is supposed to smell like. A little sweet, a little floral, clean and dewy. Tea rose is what I’m smelling, and tea rose to me has a lighter, sweeter fragrance often used as a subtle addition but in Nahéma is the primary focus. I get roses for hours and hours as Nahéma has some fantastic staying power. The dry down is a lovely sweet rose on woodsy base and that familiar Guerlain scent.

Extra: Apparently, Luca Turin in The Guide shares with us a little rumor. That Nahéma, the greatest rose fragrance in perfumery, was made without any rose oil.

Design: The image in this post is not the bottle design that I’m talking about in this section. The modern Nahéma bottle that I held and sprayed is a mostly flat, rather boring bottle design whose shape is reminiscent of Tommy Girl except lacking that third dimension. It’s dull, drab and uninteresting and I wish they hadn’t changed it from the old bottle. But the bottle certainly is functional at least.

Fragrance Family: Soliflore Oriental

Notes: Rose, peach, vanilla, woods.

Even if you hate roses I highly recommend giving this a sniff. If not so you can find the perfect perfume but to know what conceptual rose smells like. If the rumor is true, that Nahéma doesn’t contain any actual rose oil then the mind-boggling alone is worth a smell.

Reviewed in This Post: Nahéma, 2003, Eau de Parfum.