Lolita Lempicka

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Amarena Whim

Amarena edgy
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.

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Eau Jolie

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.

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Au Masculin Eau de Minuit

Iconic Lolita Lempicka Au Masculin tree trunk shaped bottle in dark green, and black licorice twists.

(I swear I don’t have daddy issues.)

Edit – 2/9/2023

I still wear this when I take myself out to the movies.

Opens with a bag of black licorice Twizzlers and a Coke with the good ice–casual and sweet, like Minuit Noir but in jeans and t-shirt–and stays politely at the edge of personal space for a long matinee. Lingers with unassuming wood through the evening, and ends with a jubilant spin-out of tires à la Bvlgari Black.

Hard to find, but worth every penny, even if one is usually a cheap date.

*

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So Sweet

so sweet rasp
Red LL apple bottle with a heart-shaped bite, surrounded by sugared raspberries.

So Sweet is burlesque in a candy-by-the-pound store. Raspberry, rose and tawdry flirting.
Like panties with ruffles–it’s not meant to be taken seriously.
I love it.

Lolita Lempicka’s gourmand musk is sheer, almost lacy, compared to Angel‘s heavy satin sheets, and I like it so much more.

More raspberries.