musk

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Sweet

sweet
Mini red apple bottle with gold foil wrapped cherry truffles.

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.

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Edition d’Ete

edition ete edges
Print of pale blue Lolita Lempicka apple bottle, dusted with talc.

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.

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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.)

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Eau Jolie came out five eight years ago. So did Carla Bruni’s pretty little riff on Chopin.

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Que Viva Escada

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.

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I Made You A Mix Tape

Silver lidded perfume pot with TokyoMilk crest and matchbox package featuring a glittered clear cassette tape.

I sometimes wonder about how perfumes get named–is it made with the intent to smell like a specific thing, or is the name a retro-fit, an oh-we-meant-to-do-that?

I Made You A Mix Tape absolutely has a cellophane vibe, that sweetly nostalgic chemical plastic note of audio tape, which works rather well with the white rose musk.
But would it be special to anyone under thirty?

This has really good performance for a solid–a foot of the skin for two hours, over half the day on skin–but it makes my head throb after a while (which is what my parents said about my music, so fair enough.)

*

“I made you a playlist” doesn’t have the same ring to it…

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Mon Jasmin Noir L’Eau Exquise

Solid perfume pot shaped like a gold and mother-of-pearl pocket watch, on a pale green gift box.

Refreshing grapefruit tea, at the edge of a swamp.

Edit – 1/20/23

Found a solid of this and am enjoying it much more than the spray tester I wrote off years ago–the cedar musk is cleaner, the almond topping less muddy–much more pretty marshland than bog.
I’ve seen a few comparisons to Un Jardin Sur Le Nil, and while I get a bit of that sunny water garden vibe, this one is more crystalline.

Collector prices are fairly steep, so snag it quick if it’s within the budget. Or just get a bottle of Guerlain’s Pamplelune, if you want a slice of grapefruit.

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I’ve been stuck on this song lately.

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Yohji

Indigo Yohji brand tag and matte black compact–that’s as heavy as cast iron–and applicator brush. The ivory powder has a faint glitter sheen, like eye-shadow.

This little powder solide came yesterday and I’m obsessed.
There’s something narcotic about it, in a sweet steamy fog way.

The dust goes on soft as silk, with creamy jasmine spices that rise from the skin as they warm. Then woody vanilla tracers float for several hours through a cloud of some the loveliest musk I’ve ever sniffed.
I can’t stop brushing it on.

The eau de parfum has a lot more green notes at the top–bergamot and cypress that I don’t miss at all–and here the freesia is more support for the nutmeg than a heart note.

But the musk is what makes this so special–delicate and clean, yet slightly opaque, like sugar frosting puffed into vapor, and impossible to stop tasting.
(I’m going to go through this stuff quick.)

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We watched The Graduate last night, so this will be in my head all week.

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Wisdom

Yeah, I totally bought this for the packaging–a glass cigar tube, with a corked ceramic stopper base, the black bottle inside decorated with a white botanical drawing, and kelly green label listing the notes.

Victorian herbalist chic? Yes, please!

Wisdom (TokyoMilk Dark #26) starts with a muddle of plant-stuff in a mortar and pestle, with some aquatics to make it soupy.
The earthy sweetness of the walnut listed on the label comes through fifteen minutes in, and sadly doesn’t linger long.
The base is nondescript woodsy musk.

All that adds up to forest lake, in an elusive dryad way, but to be honest, I got this one for looking at, not wearing.

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Another dark take on wisdom-