Tag: Perfume review

Timeless by Avon

Bitter, complicated, difficult, all opoponax and aldehydes, old fashioned, sexy and kind of melancholic, like that brooding artsy type you dated when you were 19 (don’t lie, we all had one). It’s certainly old fashioned, not modern, but for a bohemian or gothy type, extremely suitable. It is not sweet, or delicate, and it does not attempt to be universally charming, which makes it that much more charming for those who like it. There is no sweetness on my skin, on me Tabu has a cinnamon-sweet quality that this aggressively lacks.

It becomes softer, sweeter (but not sugary) in the dry down.

Alien by Thierry Mugler

Creamy, weird, heavy jasmine. Like whack you over the head with a bat made (somehow) of jasmine jasmine.

No green notes for relief just the lovely sweet, heavy languor of jasmine. It has a sort of soporific, almost opiate quality in its creamy, rich floral heaviness, and then there’s that odd quality jasmine has, I’m not talking about the animalic or indolic qualities of jasmine… more the odd synthetic… very well to be honest, alien note present in even natural fresh jasmine flowers.

Alien indeed.

Fleur Du Male by Gaultier

Fresh, orange blossomy, androgynous. Very wearable, orange blossom and chamomile, it’s like walking out into a garden on a wet spring day. Fresh, damp, floral with a hint of green. Very beautiful. It’s not a feminine floral, it’s floral like Oberon, king of the fairies, not overly sweet, elegant and dandyish but not womanly.

It’s a floral scent that has a kind of… aristocratic quality to it, it’s for a man who has never needed to prove his masculinity. His power is innate to him. He can wear what he likes and do what he likes and his manhood will remain unquestioned. 

This says “I’m the lord of the manor, and I can wear silk stockings and a powdered wig, and I’m still the cock of the walk”

Madame Gres by Gres

I have a shocking revelation! *cue soap opera reveal music*
MISS DIOR HAS AN IDENTICAL TWIN who was misplaced at birth. She was given to a poor, but good hearted family, is now married and living under the name Madame Gres! I know, I was shocked too, but these two sisters are too alike to ignore. The same rich sweetness that I thought couldn’t exist in a perfume at this price point, the same potency and wonderful sillage.

Creamy dreamy sweet patchouli floral-fruit heaven. I don’t know how they do it, but they do and it’s so damned good.

Guess Girl Belle by Guess

Pretty enough floral, indistinguishable from numerous other pretty, cheap, mass market florals. Wearable, easy, not bad by any means, brief longevity and frankly not particularly memorable.

This isn’t a bad thing, it’s inoffensive, and probably a great scent for when you want to smell pleasant without leaving too much of an impression.

Ideal perfume for a seceret agent.

Hypnotic Poison by Dior

Almonds, too many goddamned almonds if you ask me, which no one did, and vanilla.

Are almonds hypnotic now?  I don’t know what’s hypnotic about an almond, mostly I associate them with a girl I was friends with in highschool breaking out in hives and a health craze from a couple of years ago.

I associate vanilla with a nanny I hated.

So there you go, damn almonds

Cabochard by Gres

Picture this a fine leather glove, fitted perfectly to the hand that wears it, now picture a dainty pink powder puff, the most lady like powder puff filled with the daintiest of pink powder, a cosmetic from the 1950s perhaps. Now imagine you are in a room in an old house by the sea side, the sun is coming in, it is early summer and a fresh breeze is coming in. Now imagine the three together, picture that leather gloved hand picking up that dainty pink powder puff and applying it to a beautiful, ageless face.

That is Cabochard. Leather, tobacco and oakmoss made feminine by aldehydes and the most feminine flowers and freshened with orris root and sea breezes

Sweet, leathery, and utterly gloriously feminine. Complex as fuck, glorious.

Eden by Carcharel

Strange little fragrance, it is definitely a dry sharp green, the patchouli in its driest form rules the roost. It smells like there should be oakmoss where there is none, tart mimosa. The water lilies have been dried and give no humid wetness to the composition. A collection of pressed leaves and flowers in a naturalists album.

I am not sure if I like it, but I appreciate it.  It knows what it’s up to.

Illusions Noires Le Premier Parfum Eau de Minuit by Lolita Lempicka

Weird plastic vanilla licorice, strange, sinister, I feel like there are violets but there are no violets. It’s a horror movie sort of a scent, not a blood and gore horror movie, but a slow, subtle psychological horror movie scent… no, that’s not right. This is a horror novel scent a scent like House Of Leaves or We Have Always Lived In A Castle, there’s something off and dark in this scent. It smells like creeping insidious madness, not the loud raving kind, but the wrong thoughts that slowly creep in and take over without you noticing.  A whiff of trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid perhaps?

I am conflicted.
I don’t think I have ever been frightened of a perfume before.