SCENTS

Fragrance du jour, recent sniffs, random notes.

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Good Girl

good girl edgy
Golden spike-heeled stiletto shaped bottle on a store display.

A walk through a suburban shopping center on payday: Starts with a browse through the ubiquitous lingerie shop, stops for chocolate at an overpriced kiosk, samples soap and candles, then spends a frustrated hour in the sports equipment store not getting waited on.

Good Girl has the current trendy components, but it’s all fashion and no style. The stiletto bottle is somewhat clever (if it were packaged in a nice plastic Payless pump, I might have been impressed with the scent) though conceptually counter-intuitive… I can think of no occasion where I would want to spray shoe-juice on my skin.

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Nina

nina apple

A virgin Apple-tini served at a debutante cotillion.

A twist of lemon peel, green Jolly Rancher syrup, some cream soda.
And the breath of what I want to think is apple blossom, but is probably some kind of synthetic lily. (It works, though, like that bit of spandex in the silk knit shirt that would be shapeless without it.)
Sweet white musk on the bottom, the way the paper smells after you’ve poured all the sugar out of the one three pound bag.

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Viva La Juicy

viva la juicy edges
Magazine peelie advertising a crested bottle with a bright pink bow.

Opens with a Jamba Juice stand, and finishes with Brach’s Milk Maid caramel bullion cubes, amber, and overpriced shoes, but it works in a ridiculously girly-girl fashion.
Doesn’t project too much and doesn’t last too long, and the bottle is chichi cute.

Girls fashion magazines have smelled like this for the past ten years–inserts fall out of every issue of Teen Vogue, YM and Seventeen–I’m guessing the box sets sell like hotcakes on the holidays.

*

Edit – 12/10/21

Flanker after flanker (Bowdacious is the best of them) has come out since Viva La Juicy’s debut in 2008, but the original continues to be the least objectionable of the line and the most popular.
The peelies still trickle from my mailbox with every cosmetics store flyer, and the gift sets are stacked to the ceiling at the shops, but it feels dated, now.

Prada Candy‘s caramel has stayed more fresh.

*

Coldplay’s Viva La Vida came out the same year–here’s a great cover.

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Sun Moon Stars

sun moon stars (2) edgyRemember when you were a kid and you’d rip open the packet of Koolaid and huff that first little wisp of fruit powder?
Only me?
Alllrighty then.
There’s a weird wet/dry to this one, like slippery elm and peachfuzz. Three hours later it turns creamy floral–bright in the winter and soft in the summer–but at the end of the day it dries into a fantastic vanilla tree bark.
And the bottle makes for great curtain rod finials.

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Omnia: Green Jade

Omnia Green Jade
Bvlgari mini chain link in green and chrome on a pile of pistachios.

Squirts sharp orange out of the bottle–then sniffs some happy springtime flowers that haven’t realized they will be cut for a funeral arrangement.
Later, a furtive pistachio hides in white musk.

Over-designed, like a lovely semi-precious stone turned cheap and sad by a clumsy electroplate setting.

*

Another chain link.

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Bel Azur

bel azur edgy
Tory Burch display at the mall with gold and blue box.

This smells like the hot towels the flight attendants hand out with tongs somewhere over the Atlantic–gender neutral, inoffensive and gone in half an hour.

A bit of citrus, generic flowers and some Pine-Sol.
A pleasant and uneventful trip.

*

Somewhere in the Atlantic–

*

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Moonlight

moonlight AG edgy
Store display of perfume box, featuring a pop star in low lighting.

Ariana Grande’s Moonlight opens with prunes and clean sheets–but then dries down to peach yogurt cups–the lactose free kind with the pro-biotics.
The bedroom pillow marketing vibe doesn’t quite jive, either. The stuff smells more like a desperate middle-of-the-night countermeasure to imminent digestive issues than mattress lingerie.

Ariana and Miley in pajamas covering Crowded House is marvelous, though.

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Fleur de Corail

My well worn pale aqua sea-glass heart shaped bottle, with white coral charm in pink sand.

A beach wedding.
Opens with grapefruit, sugar and a silver spoon, then the frangipani* kicks in.
Waxy flower leis, festoons of them everywhere, sweet and heavy, lovely, but overdone.
The bride carries orchids, but you can’t smell them.

Hours later there’s breezy musk on dunes, and driftwood drying in the sun. The next day, an odd amber citrus still clings to the skin, like sand in unexpected places.

*(Does anyone else think “fancy-panties” when they read the word frangipani?)
(Only me?)
(This is awkward now.)

*

This is NOT a wedding song, even with the deceptively easy beach vibe–

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Sauvage

Peelie from horribly tone-deaf ad campaign featuring Captain Jack Sparrow Johnny Depp miserably avoiding the camera while lounging in ethnic accoutrements.

So apparently Edward Scissorhands smells like sawdust and lemon meringue pie–or maybe it’s sugared furniture polish?
There’s some old spice cabinet and an amber musk that is apropos to the aging pirate mystique, and a wave of evil English wizard lavender wand.
I like it, even though I don’t want to.

Edit–2/19/2021
I eventually did test this from a bottle.
Ad peelies have improved greatly over the years, but usually only hold the top and middle notes well. You can get more of the bottom notes if you stick the test strip in your pocket, to warm it up to body temperature.
In person, Sauvage has more of a labdanum campfire-creosote base, which gives confusing burnt pizza gourmand vibes.

sauvage edge
Store tester at the mall. I get the same notes as the peelie, but with more smoke on the bottom.

This song from the same year has some pretty savage guitar.