Search

April 30, 2010

Quickies

Spring Flower by Creed, 1996

What do you get when an ancient and distinguished house of couture parfumerie belies its distinguished heritage and puts out crap? ...My Insolence.. (ba-da-bump crash!) No, seriously folks, a 250-year-old perfume house, Creed, a family business handed down father to son since 1760 (1760!!!!1!!) provider of perfumes to royalty, many famous and well-loved perfumes, managed to make... a fabric softener sheet. Seriously... seriously folks, it's a #@!%&* sheet of fabric softener! Strong generic-blah flowers, unidentifiable fruit salad, some detergenty musk soapy smell... it comes screaming at you all at once and suddenly disappears. Shoulda known by the packaging, it's a cheezy pink bottle, fake metal cap... Classy, real classy there, Creed.


I Am King by Sean John, 2008

I realized much much later that I referenced this one in my Star Trek Scents post, but didn't actually give a review. Much as I said about Red Shirt, this is generic to the extreme. The juice is freshclean melonwater skyblue airbreeze calibrated precisely and scientifically using only the best market research polling, PowerPointing, and seven-point-of-difference-to-avoid-lawsuits documenting available. The feats of marketing that went into its making are brilliant, precise, and laserpointer-accurate. The bankroll for this level of professionalism is impressive. It achieves what it sets out to accomplish, be perfectly poised to appeal to everyone and no one, to suit every taste, style, and function, yet be so perfect a distillation of current mens' scents it transcends them all thru perfect ubiquity. It doesn't achieve more thru less, it attains, finally, the sought-after, perfect state of  ...meh.

Lily of the Valley by Penhaligon's 1976

A basic lily-of-the-valley analog, lacks the soapiness some other LOTV scents. Has a light musk base, with a tiny bit of an oakmossy note added, which leans it towards a chypre scent. The musk base turns it into a masculine scent for me, although it was meant to be a feminine. Definitely not meant for a hot-young-thing in a party dress, this is a mature feminine scent, or a good masculine for a dapper dressing man.