Gets better after an hour.
(The guy called it a mean old lady perfume.)
Edit – 2/24/23
I was so hoping this would be as fun as the dark flankers to the original Lolita Lempicka.
Si Noir is a lot richer and sweeter on the bottom, but still has that pink pepper and sweet pea sharp pinch on top and the patchouli cigarette ash in the middle, but I’m not willing to wait for it.
Better than the first, but it’s no Minuit Noir.
*
“Mean old lady caused me to weep and moan…”
Opens loud and long with green violets and absinthe, then hovers jealously over the skin with almonds and cherry musk for hours.
The wormwood coats the almonds, making them weird and witchy, with long bitchy fingernails.
Alluring, but odd.
*
Here’s a fun cover of one of my favorites, also a bit odd and bitchy.
This guy can dance, and knows how to choose a drink for someone else based on what shoes they’re wearing, but he’s got a dark gleam in his eye, and won’t hesitate to get you drunk.
Opens with Sambuca–aniseed liqueur–with a touch of absinthe to make it herbal, then gets almondy with an amaretto chaser for happy hour. Sandalwood tones the sweetness down, then the evening ends on smooth and smoky vanilla single malt scotch.
You let him take you home.
One of my favorites from Lazaretto. Definitely not smooth.
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–
This was my first lesson in flankers. I’d mistakenly bought it thinking it was a back-up bottle for my LL Midnight Sun.
LL Stardust Midnight is sharper and sweeter, closer to the original Lolita.
It opens with bright hot anise and settles down to licorice candy and sugared violets, then lingers on skin and clothes and sheets with an effervescent vanilla.
*
A darker Lolita:
I loved this passionately for three days–a torrid affair of chocolate tangerine jellies and peppery flower bouquets boldly stolen from the neighbor’s garden at noon–but then the ashtray dust and sweat socks became too hard to ignore, and I broke it off.
*
Put on that waxy red lipstick you can’t get rid of, bite a chocolate cherry cordial, then kiss the mirror. Voilà! Lolita Lempicka Sweet.
This one wears a short skirt with torn fishnets and whistles at construction workers and laughs outright when anyone tells her she shouldn’t do exactly as she pleases.
Drunk in Love by Beyoncé is by far the best song of 2014–when Sweet came out–but Lorde’s Royals is more lighthearted.
Vosges used to make a violet chocolate cream truffle that tastes like Midnight Sun smells straight out of the bottle.
It dries down quickly to aniseed powder and vanilla, anchored in place by vetiver–and lingers until dawn, a sexy Cinderella losing more than her shoes as she dances.
This was my date-night signature until I discovered Lolita Lempicka Minuit Noir.
*
Love, love, love this sultry cover.
An orange Dreamsicle and beachcombing date on Fire Island.
A drag queen in a glittering sherbet gown gets her train caught on a boardwalk nail, spilling sequins and she chooses to laugh, because it’s too nice an evening for swearing, isn’t it, darling?
Much later, sweet spicy comforting chocolate and cinnamon and flirty caramel musk, reggae night at the Latin bear club across from the Sandcastle–all the fabulous mustaches–and someone brought a marshmallow gun.
Miles of sillage.
I’m talking on the other end of the ferry on the way to the Pines. Against the headwind. They can smell clementines and vanilla before the boat has left Bayshore.
This stuff gets under the skin, deep into the hypodermis layer, untouched by ocean, shower or chlorinated hot tub–lingering tangerine peel and nutmeg and cream soda dum-dum pops–for days.
You find a glittering spangle in the sand when you come back next weekend, and it still smells like Myrrh Maid’s citrus spice smirk. She’s got a regular show in Cherry Grove serving sea-witch realness. Come see me, darling.
*
Hedda Lettuce is my favorite.
(NSFW!)
This is a baby-sitting diaper change at a ridiculously rich family’s house.
A splash of lemon scented bleach that combusts to a cloud of talcum powder and finishes with high end floral musk potty-spray.
An enormous powder grenade, yet there was an ugly chemical plastic underneath. I’m a Lolita Lempicka fanatic and I was so disappointed I didn’t even keep it for the bottle.
I’m not so sure about this song either, but it gets stuck in my head a lot.
kira a. gold 