sweet

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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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Vanillary

Vanillary edgyVanillary smells like that $70 candle you scored for $6 at TJMaxx–a little chipped at the edges but still classy and delicious AF.

It’s a big cloud of ice cream cupcake, though a bit dirty, as if it had been picked up from the floor within the 5 second rule.

This song also came out in 2009. Smooth and sweet with some dirty bass–one of my all time favorites.

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Royal Riesling

4711 cut crystal flask with plain gold and white label, and a bunch of green grapes.

Nice green grapes at first bite, effervescent and tart, but then it suddenly turns into raisins…? Sickly sweet with awkward dusty spice.
Weird and disappointing.

Edit – 9/5/21

Sometimes I find old notebooks, snippets of things on scraps of paper, my first impressions of something distasteful or not interesting enough to write about–
Reading them later, I have to laugh at my ignorance, my arrogance, or my honesty–or the fact that I take a disappointing fragrance so personally…

But really, who wants to smell like raisins?!

4711 gold bottle cap and a stem bereft of its grapes, on notepaper scrawled with the word “why??”

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Royalty.

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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.

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Bittersweet

Black bottle with a white painted dragonfly silhouette, sitting in a bowl of chocolate chips.

(TokyoMilk No. 83 lists Cake Flour, Dark Cacao Bean, Osmanthus and Bronzed Musk.)

Big cocoa powder and apricot spice, a little musk at the bottom, but ooh, is this one rather delicious, sexy and gourmand yet a little prissy–like tea-time in the viewing boxes at a Victorian orgy.

The opening seems derivative, Angel without the wet patchouli, then settles to Hershey’s Syrup on the skin in 30 lovely minutes, with creamy florals on linen for an hour.

I’ll go through this quickly.

Edit – 1/29/2023

Yeah, I drained that bottle in a month. Not available any longer, but sometimes one can be spotted for resale.

This is the one that made me take notice of TokyoMilk Dark–and it was discontinued even back then–I think I scored mine at TJMaxx for $20. (Now they go for $150 or more.)

I’ve been going through old notebooks, and finding my scribbled thoughts on scents. I wrote about this one exactly six years ago, right after an awkward paragraph about the smell of dried kiwi (which is neither sexy or delicious.)

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A bittersweet song.

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Crushed

White cat sniffing a black bottle with a butterfly illustration.

#32 – Witchy grape soda.

This brand is ridiculous.

“Earth & Moss” and “Crushed Herbs?” Just say wormwood and stop being coy.
“Wild Grass?” Ookaaay.
The Jasmine I get.

It’s actually pretty good.

Edit – 2/12/2023

Well, I went back for it.

There’s an effervescent sweet wisteria purple that lingers for hours with hints of absinthe, that makes it enchanting and a little evil–poisoned soda pop at a birthday party.

Might be too young for me now–lately I’m more kitchen crone than fairy princess–but I don’t care.

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