Sutter Home White Zinfandel.
Pleasant enough for a bluejeans lunch date with the girlfriends–fresh tart fruit, woodsy nuts at the bottom–and cheap enough to order the whole bottle.
*
A fun tune for an easy afternoon spent with friends.
Amore Mio
fruity
Midnight Fantasy
This one is fruit syrup made from Italian plums and fresh picked raspberries, purple flowers and vanilla underneath, but with a hint of metal, like that sourness of sucking on a penny.
The amber musk base gives it enough gravitas to take a high school girl into college, and it lasts for days on skin and weeks on clothes.
It’s a rather brilliant note in Britney Spear’s collection–a teenage lipstick fashionista graduating magna cum laude with advanced studies in sociology.
One of my guilty pleasure songs–
Sweet Delicious Pink Macaron
This one started sticky and turned to mush on my skin, like fermented fruit, ending in a rosy wood alcohol. I gave it to the props mistress at the children’s theater and on her it became frosting flowers and sass.
Pinkest song ever.
Womanity Eau
The bottle is gorgeous. I want it to hold all my secrets and mist me with strength and sex and knowledge.
It doesn’t.
Instead, I am sprayed with slush and rock-salt from a road plow, and pelted with rotting strawberries, and wow, does Thierry Mugler ever blow loud and long on that truck horn.
Whew. Not for me.
All the love for this woman–and I adore this salty song.
Fraaagola Saalaaata
Imagine the Morton Salt girl in a pink raincoat and red rubber boots, blowing a bubble of strawberry gum.
The strawberries run the gamut from fresh picked berries in the sun, to red soda pop, then shortcake ice cream bars, and finally those smelly erasers from primary school.
The salt melts quickly and disappears into violets, then a breath of vanilla, a brief taste of hazelnut.
Sweet but strangely chaotic.
(In my head, this is what the Strawberry Letter was scented with.)
Yuna is amazing–this song was featured in an H&M video spread.
Encens et Bubblegum
All I get from this is dried peaches in a plastic bag. Maybe a whiff of the incense aisle at the other end of the food co-op.
And it lasts as long as the 10-items-or-less line.
I’ve seen Encens et Bubblegum compared to Gorilla Perfume’s Tank Battle (from LUSH).
Nope.
This stuff is a stale sugarless dime ball from a reproduction piggy-bank next to Tank Battle’s fresh packet of Big League Chew. This is clove cigarette ash likened to Satya Sai Baba Nag Champa.
Twice the price, half the sillage and none of the longevity.
Doesn’t compare at all.
Edit – 7/3/23
(Wow. I was a bit angry about it!)
Here’s some more French bubblegum from 2006.
Nemamiah
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.
*
Another angel, with better projection.
Aqua Allegoria Bouquet № 2
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.
*
Looks like rain.
Eau Jolie
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.
Que Viva Escada
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.
kira a. gold 