I got this at a mission store in Stockholm for ten kronor, and didn’t open it until I got back to the States…
…where it smelled like every Victoria’s Secret store distilled into a bottle. Entirely too girlish sweet almond, rosebuds and muted citrus with some obligatory white musk underneath.
On my early twenties daughter-child it became Earl Grey tea in a rose-patterned china cup, elegant and perfect.
Dammit, I’m old.
This Swedish song (Oriflame started out in Stockholm) was a hit in 2016, too.
Test paper with photo of bottle, distorted through a jar of honey.
Beekeepers smell like this–honey and smoke and sweet resin. Flowers and wood and hard sweaty work underneath.
Bees make a sticky glue from pine sap called propolis to secure the honeycomb. It’s been used for centuries to varnish violins and in traditional medicine to soothe irritated throats.
Smoke gets the buzzy girls high, so they don’t mind the beeman in their home. He’ll say hullo to the queen and admire the brood before leaving.
Summer afternoons, when it’s too hot for even the roses, the propolis gets soft and the honey makes a mirage of heat over the hives–this is Pour le Soir.
Lolita Lempicka bottle with cloisonne almond blossom decorated cap, first out in the Caprices collection in 2007, and on its own two years later.
Amarena Whim is the vanilla ice cream and sour cherry cough drops after you get your tonsils out. Medicinal, comforting, delicate, soporific… one to wear to bed when sleeping alone.
The sugary musk on the bottom is delicate and delicious, but also metallic, like the scent of a tin of silver dragées.
I’ve doled this one out over a decade, my Rx at the end of a rough day. I’ll be heartsick when the last drops are gone–I look for it at every airport shop, every high end thrift store.
My all time favorite song ever, with so many different cover versions to love–I just discovered Nina didn’t write it!–originally from the 1964 musical The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd.
Micro bottle with a doll’s tutu around the neck, leaning against the mirror of a rose velvet jewelry box.
Pavlova starts as fingernails on a chalkboard, gives a stern lesson in botany, then hands out sugar pastilles while dismissing class.
Gen X girls got this as a hand-me-down from Mom in the seventies. She was gifted it in a holiday present swap, bought because it was cheap and the packaging was pretty. We stashed it in the bottom of the pink jewelry box with the ballerina who spun to a wind-up version of Swan Lake; we never understood the significance.
A shrill chypre powder grenade with a dry sweet finish.
This is my favorite arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece.
Pale green filled mini Les Belles de Ricci bottle, with a metallic fuchsia cap, among a cluster of tomatoes-on-the-vine.
Liberty Fizz could be marketed with one of those classy/trashy retro ads with the sexy half-dressed girl lounging in an enormous champagne glass– Only instead of bubbly, she’s cavorting in a salad made with green tomatoes. She wears a scant top of sweet herbs, flowers strung over her middle and a coy fig leaf on the bottom. She’ll stay for a second drink, cracking jokes about Virgin Marys with extra olives, but she leaves before the third.
Cardboard soft stick tube with angel illustration, and craft feather wing.
Sweet, slightly peachy, and gone in seconds.
Edit – 10/4/21
This one was disappointing–the performance is just so bad–and the canister has sat on a shelf for three years. I don’t know anyone in the 5-8 year old range (old enough not to lick it, but young enough to pretend it has any scent) who might enjoy playing dress-up.
This evening I scooped out the solid with a butter-knife (it has the consistency of ChapStick) and smushed it all into a tealight. After 90 minutes of burning, my hallway lav smells nicely of sweet, slightly scorched peaches. I’ve paid more for lesser candles, so no complaints.
A pink rose resting against a tiny Guerlain gold accented bottle, filled with pale pink eau.
A noncommittal and tired rose–a little dusty (the blooms might be fading a bit)–in some canned mixed fruit, heavy on the pink grapefruit wedges.
Boring, and not even that high end. I’m rather sad about it.
Edit – 1/5/2022
I had to go back and give a re-sniff, just to see if my negativity might have been the weather, or just my dreary mood, but nope, this is definitely a disappointment. Oddly, it was designed by the same guy who did Teazzurra, which is one of my favorite scents ever.
Mini Lolita Lempicka apple bottle with gold and white ivy and stem cap with pierced heart motif, filled with pale pink eau, casting pretty shadows.
All the Lolita Lemicka sexy goodness has been stripped out and replaced with DKNY Be Disappointed. Might be good for starting campfires.*
Edit – 8/27/21
Eau Jolie was relegated to decorative bottle shelf–but today I wondered, could this be a reasonably good perfume? Did I go into this sniff with biased expectations of my favorite design house? (Lolita Lempicka’s fashion aesthetic was a big influence, back in my costume designing days.)
And, well… The top notes aren’t bad, just a little shrill–the pear’s sweetness is turned up one notch too far by the black currant. The middle is some generic floral musk that’s definitely not the “coquettish heart” of the ad copy. But there’s some reasonably nice neroli lingering with the cedar at the base for a little while.
Would I be impressed if it came from the house brand of a tweeny-bopper mall store? Perhaps with the quality of the ingredients, but not by the blend.
*Never spray or splash perfume near an open flame. (Crayons and dryer lint work well, too.)
*
Eau Jolie came out five eight years ago. So did Carla Bruni’s pretty little riff on Chopin.
Mini Guerlain beehive bottle on a tiny white cardboard box printed with orange blossoms.
Flora Nerolia is basically everything I love in a good neroli essential oil with three times the staying power and an added touch of elegance. Opens with spring sunshine and honey caught in a crystal decanter, then jasmine and pettigrain rough it up to make it organic and skanky. (The lushness could get sweaty in the summer. In winter it’s like wearing hope on the skin.)
Sadly discontinued. Secondhand prices are weird on this one–I’ve seen empty boxes go for more than full bottles.
Blue bottle with hearts cut into the glass and a fluted gold top, with a neon ikat printed box.
Spring break hangover in a bottle–which sheds its lovely color on the hands–a generic tropical in a take-home plastic cocktail glass, garnished with artificial flowers. Passionfruit vodka on top, vinyl couch cushion musk and failed midterms on the bottom.
Edit – 1/4/2022
I discovered this a gazillion years ago, in a “Things You Left In My Apartment” break-up box. It wasn’t mine, and I’ve occasionally wondered if it belonged to the girl before me, the one during, or the one after.
*
A college roommate–she was a drummer–turned me on to Peter Gabriel’s Passion, the soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ. I’ve yet to see the movie, but we played the album for two semesters straight.
I got this at a mission store in Stockholm for ten kronor, and didn’t open it until I got back to the States…
kira a. gold 