rose

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Rose of No Man’s Land

Velvet rose with paper test of Byredo bottle, and decant vial.

The ad copy for Rose of No Man’s Land lists rose, pink pepper, raspberry blossom, papyrus and white amber.
I can pick out those notes, but all together it smells like the green-room at a drag show.

Ms Turkisha Petals camps out at the snack table–salty corn chips and berry ginger-ale–until Rose d’Red threatens her wig with pepper spray. Eventually Amber Oralgami sashays in after her paper dolls routine, to collapse on the sofa for a few hours.

Statuesque, sweet and savory, and a little chaotic in the best way.

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Annie Lennox’s ironic hit is a drag show regular.

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Kate Spade New York

Sample card and spray, with pink on white graphic pattern of Kate’s spade.

Seems like every design house is desperately churning out their version of a citrus-berry-rose, as if fruit sorbet is the must-have wardrobe staple now that COVID-19 has made hard pants a thing of the past.

This one should have been named TRULYsprite.
Kate Spade New York is nice, bright strawberries with lemon-lime zest opening, rosy refreshing middle and a mineral chrome shine at the base. It’s fun and bubbly, but it’s a bit brief, and a bit simple.
Pair with stretch leggings.

This is likely the first fragrance that Kate Spade herself didn’t have a hand in producing, on some level. Do most legacy houses take the safe route after their creator has recently passed?
I hope they find their way back to her iconic cuteness-as-an-artform aesthetic.

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Terry Gilliam took Kate Bush and Donald Sutherland to a new level of cute in her “Cloudbusting” video.

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Rose Pompon

Red cut glass bottle with gold cap, pink striped tea roses and raspberries.

Heat activated roses that last FOREVER.

Opens with Ruby Red pink grapefruit juice cocktail spiked with raspberry Chambord, and as it warms, the roses bloom sweet with vanilla, and stay there for days. Weeks, even.

The rose masks the violets, I only smell them in my hair (which is Covid-19 long right now) and on my shirt cuffs when I’m not wearing it. If I pin my hair close to my head the roses open again, same if I re-wear the jacket.
In a hot bath the roses get thorny, woods with a bitter bite of the grapefruit again, gorgeous, yet also a bit masculine.

There are sexier fruity roses out there—(come to me, baby) Angel Nova and (sigh) Sådanne—but none as delightfully mercurial or long lasting.

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Just discovered Esperanza Spalding, a cool jazz artist with a lot of Joni Mitchell energy–

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Delight

Sample vial on a detail of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, with two spoonbills riding a goat, a porcupine floating in a dandelion, and what might be a game of mounted naked dodge-ball on the right.

Delight is quite nice, with tropical sweet flowers that settle to a good ’70’s funky green jasmine. I get a pinch of gourmand spice, though none are listed–maybe the bottom notes of the rose?–that makes it modern and feminine and fun.

A single drop fades to the skin in two hours, but lasts on fabric for days.
This might be the most mainstream fashion, blind-buy-safe blend from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab that I’ve sniffed so far. I’d rec it to anyone who loves Estée Lauder flower showers but has a reaction to the woody musk on the bottom.

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Delightful song with some retro funk and modern sweetness.

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Twilly Eau Poivrée

Tw’ili-Pepper sample, mortar and pestle with pepper-corns, and a little black Hermès hat.

Heated car seats can be rather disconcerting. The ass is rarely that warm without the shame–or satisfaction–of a good spanking, so one tends to squirm, waiting for the accompanying sting.

Eau Poivrée is such the perfect fresh-ground peppercorn that I get anxiety waiting for the sneeze that never happens.

Before the first spray even lands on my skin, I’m frantically taking a deep breath, holding it, waiting for my eyes to water, getting slightly melancholy that no one is around to say “Bless you!”–and I stay that way for two hours.

The delicate rose and sheer patchouli eventually temper the spice, but by that time I’ve already taken an allergy pill and called my therapist twice.

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A satisfying Pepper:

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Chloé

Revamped rectangular Chloé mini bottle in the center of a ginormous fuchsia rose.

This relaunch came out in 2008–a complete break from the original Lagerfeld tuberose potion— now a sheer tea rose.

New Chloé opens with sweet soapy peonies and a soft fruity hit of lychee. The rose blooms quickly, so squeaky shower clean it’s almost transparent, and lasts inside personal space until soaked off again in a hot bath.

Floral, feminine and pristine.
I’m way too messy to pull it off.

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Here are some feminine roses and other flowers, from the album Petals for Armor.

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Angel Nova

Mini rose-red and chrome Mugler Angel star shaped bottle with mini red Swedish fish candy.

How much do I love this?!

Starts out cool and syrupy, like raspberry sorbet, then slowly melts into gorgeous sugary rose–the kind they make Turkish delight from–with a woody base tempered with benzoin.

The rose and the woods are linear, but there’s a slow progression to the fruity notes. They start tart and crisp and fill-the-room gigantic, but they sweeten through the day, softening to arms’ length pink floral candy, and end in the evening with a marvelous berry flavored cola on the skin.

Definitely a shift from the iconic patchouli-chocolate-caramel of the past thirty years, but this New Angel and Eau Croisière is a refreshing direction, and I’m totally ready for it.

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Here’s another Nova that I love–

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Florabotanica

Nosy Siamese cat sniffing flowers, and a mini bottle with black and white striped cap.

Dank Couture.

This stuff is amazing.
Wildflowers and weed, haute stoner florals in a dope high fashion editorial.
Feminine sticky-icky amber close to the skin, underneath a haze of roses sweetened by mint.
Lasts all day, but you’ll want another hit at 4:20, because she’s so fun to roll with.

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Café

cafe
Mini bottle with bas relief coffee beans, with some cloves and an autumn leaf.

This one is pure sexy fun–as if Opium and Tabu met at a Starbucks for an espresso and free wireless.
Cloves and roses at first sip and oakmoss and patchouli at the bottom of the cup.
Not huge or long lasting, but charming in a cheap and comfortable ’70’s hippy-chic way–and would be great on a guy too, in an A*Men style masculine gourmand.

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Here’s a back flip to the ’70’s–

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Pink Pepper & Grapefruit

4711 Pink Pepper and Grapefruit
Mini splash flask with fuchsia label and gold accents.

A 4711 Acqua Colonia mini that didn’t come with the sampler set, but I had to have anyway because give-me-all-the-matching-things.

Nice fresh squirt-in-your-eye grapefruit and peppery bite that slowly fades to brisk rose on the skin. I like the masculine zing–this one has a bit of a bristly mustache.

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More pepper. (Like the cologne, the original is better, but sometimes it’s fun to mix things up a little.)