Beyond Paradise

by Estée Lauder, 2003

Yes, it is beyond paradise, off the plane, down the jetway, into the the shuttlebus, back to the car, up the highway, through the 'hood, back home to my backyard and a flying leap into the brambles on my hillside... because that's where my wild honeysuckle is! (I'm writing this right now on my deck, sniffing the blossoms in the air). Beyond Paradise is a white floral melange dominated by honeysuckle, and almost ruined by a touch too obvious artificial musks and too liberal an application of other white flower scents. Happily, it backs away from that cliff, showing off its excellent sense of balance. Estée Lauder has succeeded in bringing a classy yet casual white floral to the masses, it's a popular, accessible scent, fairly affordable but not cheap, produced by a quality but not exclusive brand. One could almost say it could (or should) be this decade's Giorgio, except for 1 thing, its lasting power.

You spray it on, wait for the alcohol to evaporate, and are subjected to those light artificial musks right away a second before the flowers hit, then the musks go away with the alcohol, and you're treated to the white flowers framing the star of the show, honeysuckle. The musks reappear slowly about 2 hours later, and by then the flowers have faded into a sort of dead gardenia sourness. Reapply and it starts all over again. But 2 lousy hours?! Come on! Only Après l’Ondée is shorter lived than this! Lord knows the room deodorizer-esque B&BW version of honeysuckle will last as long as Twinkies (if you can stand to wear body splash with a half-life). Some would argue compared to Giorgio's steroidal strength (...able to create corporate anti-fragrance policies in a single bound!....), this might be a blessing.

I love me some honeysuckle, but no commercial fragrance has got it quite right. So I'll just sit on my porch and sniff the real thing, thankyouverymuch.

Mandarin Jasmine

by The Gap, 2007

Walk into any Anthropologie store and the air is filled with light florals & fruitness, crisp paper, & a slight scent of wool & bark, all spelling out "eclectic girliness". Walk into a Gap store and it smells like their men's scent G7, a "personalized" line of bland, flat, boring pine/citrus/soapy men's colognes, spelling out "hipness thru conformity". So, it perplexes me that The Gap is condensing, bottling, and selling the air from their fancier, more fringey competitor on the upper level of the mall. Although Anthropologie sells many scents (from 3rd parties) themselves, and their scents add to the ambiance of the store, you still wouldn't get Mandarin Jasmine if you bought a bottle of each and mixed them. You'd get a rottenfruit-stinking mess and a ruined $180 handknitted sweater. And possibly a very cute coffeetable book. And glassware you HAD to have (it was on sale!!)

Nevertheless, Mandarin Jasmine is another Gap scent from their GapBody line of eau de toilettes, and like its stable mates it's a simple composition drawn from cheap chemicals; components you recognize from their uses in laundry detergent, air freshener, and dryer sheets, but formulated with subtlety, lacking the chemically assaultive edge that Bath & Body Works seems incapable of avoiding. Its notable predecessors, Dream and (the late, lamented) Grass are also fine examples of Gap Gets It Right. The former evoking Cheer laundry powder, but milder and less assaultive yet equally evocative; the latter is exactly like smelling a freshly mown, pure, damp lawn while on an acid trip (Exactly!).

Mandarin Jasmine's not particularly orangey, nor are its artificial florals obviously jasminey, it's a whispery fruity-floral. Thanks to the Magic of Chemistry, it conjures the scent of paper from a world where you can smell the materials each thing was made from. This clean, crisp paper scent smells of wood. The scent doesn't evolve as you wear it. It isn't sophisticated, nor seductive, nor strange. You put it on and feel like wearing a $150 petite floral cotton dress, listen to a random wispy-voiced singer/songwriter chick on your iPod, and go make cute tote bags out of your old socks.... but not like shopping at the Gap.

Herrera for Men

by Carolina Herrera, 1991

A "men's fragrance" that's fresh & airy, airy & fresh! If the bright, clear fields in an antihistamine ad have a scent, this is it. When first applied there's some slight citrus, lemon or grapefruit --the mythical kind that juniper bushes produce. A tiny whiff of wild herbs follows: think heather & weeds, not cooking; but the central feature is a spectacularly bright-fresh post-rainstorm brisk aquatic smell. This fresh-airiness is most likely courtesy of Iso E Super, a chemical that reportedly smells like fresh air and conifer wood (I do not yet have my own sample of Iso E Super, available from Escentric Molecules, which packages it as Molecule 01 [UPDATE: Turns out this isn't a solo chemical, they blended Iso E Super with a few other scents to "round it out". Thanks. A. Lot.]).

Many, many perfumes use this chemical, but few as obviously as this one, and also Air by Kenzo (or Kenzoair, as Kenzo prefers). It presents an idealized, very very faint interpretation of a cedar forest in the clouds with a cool wind skimming thru..... so minimal there's almost no there there. Herrera's fragrance has fresh air from somewhere completely else, some place with fewer pine trees, and everyone there has already attained satori. Instead of the cedar cloudforest of Kenzoair, Herrera for Men has citrus-rain on the plain in Maine (perhaps, but definitely not in Spain). The Iso E Super adds an inspiring eye-opening happybrightness to this scent that Kenzoair bypasses on its way to its next zazen session. Comparing that to the post-rain plain in Maine (or maybe Heaven or Mars, whatever, it's out of this world!) illustrates the very different moods one chemical can evoke by perfumers with skillz.

Stella

by Stella McCartney, 2003


The starry packaging says disco, the scent says... rose? Is that actual, old-fashioned Bulgarian rose? Yep! And not a bit old-fashioned smelling, either. This is not your grandmother's rose perfume. There's woods and tea, a bit of white flowers too. Ok ok, the notes do in fact say "old-fashioned", but I swear they're formulated in a way that doesn't add up to Grandma... but does it add up to your-name-in-lights DISCO? Nope.

I mean, come on... it's still rose perfume! And boy is it! Rose & white flowers in the beginning, rose & tea & ambery stuff in the middle, rose & white cedar at the end. It finishes evocatively as a rose sachet in your mom's (or Stella's mom's) cedar lingerie drawer, an almost universal scent from every girl's childhood. Comfort & class, but definitely not disco.

Quickies...& an explanation

My apologies for 4 months of inactivity. The excuses: We changed webhosts, work is extremely busy, the holidays occurred, and various family crises interfered. I'm sure this is the story of the lives of many. The webhost change in particular ruined all the pictures, forcing a Great Graphics Safari to rediscover each one.

To get back in the habit of snarky reviewing, I wrote several small quickies about various scents I received over the holidays. A few sentences each, not too in-depth, suitable for scents without much. Please enjoy.

Pink Sugar by Aquolina

Surprisingly not that bad. It's obviously cotton candy, but it has a slightly musky undernote and a bit of white flowers which saves it from being this generation's Love's Baby Soft. Lacks the dumpster-diver, trailer-sleaze "bad girl" smell of Chinatown, this is its "good girl" sister. A grown woman can actually wear this, to many different settings, no less. Knock me over with a feather!

inner grace by Philosophy

Light woodsy scent like every other one out there. Ellen Tracy comes to mind, as do many many many others. Perfect for the over-50 middle management office slave. If you're not (and don't want to be mistaken for one), stay away from this. Bor-ing!

Juicy Couture

Mix Happy by Clinique with Agree shampoo, the green kind, from the '70s. Got it? Now add some generic "expensive" smelling wood-musk bottom note that won't go away. Again, surprisingly not that bad, smells better on skin, but nothing unique about it. If you want to be invisible at a hip nightclub, (or just like wearing sweats with "Juicy" embroidered across the butt) wear this. It's scent camo at only $300/oz.!

Hard Candy by Urban Decay

Another sugary scent! Remember when Madonna was first famous? Yes yes, the 1980s. Remember her tween fans were called Wannabees? Right. See Pink Sugar & Chinatown above. Not as nice as the former, not as nasty as the latter, trying desperately to act grown-up but has to go to bed early (it's a school night). Grown women should not try to wear this.

My Insolence by Guerlain

I'll say! I washed the sweater I wore it with and it still didn't come out. Now I can't wear any other perfume with this sweater. Washing, drying, and hanging in the closet for 2 weeks, still there! It'd be fine if it didn't smell like my grandma's coat closet.. Damn! Insolent little b...... of a scent! The original's probably worse...

Body Lotion Sampler Signature Collection by Bath & Body Works

Mine has Japanese Cherry Blossom, Sensual Amber, Warm Vanilla Sugar, Sea Island Cotton, Sparkling Peach, and Sweet Pea Blossom. I have a problem with most B&BW scents. They're chemically and smell better as candles or air-freshener than on people, for the most part. The ones that work: Sensual Amber (one of their real winners, vanilla & orange & amber, oh my!), Sparkling Peach (like Hi-C peach drink), and Sweet Pea Blossom (innocuous). The ones that stink: Japanese Cherry Blossom (real cherry blossoms have almost no scent, this is masking chemicals for "unscented" products), Warm Vanilla Sugar (it's everywhere! on everyone!), and Sea Island Cotton (cucumber face mask mutated into Godzilla). After I tore up the packaging, I discovered the return slip taped to the bottom. Oy...

Chinatown

by Bond No.9, 2007

This isn't Chinatown in New York (or anywhere else). This is a mall, or maybe a carnival midway. It's a caramel corn and cotton candy kiosk next to a Yankee Candle Co. You don't wear this scent, it wears you. There's a faint whiff of rotting chicken in a dumpster in the parking lot; funky in a gross way, not a cool way. Simple, but not boring, the scent ages exactly the way the objects of the scents it presents would age; the caramel corn starts smelling stale, the incense/potpourri candles fade, the cotton candy dissolves and the dumpster scent goes flat at further distances. It smells puerile, and flirts with the edge of disgusting and tawdry, almost falling over. It communicates skankiness without musk, leather, or any of the usual animalic scents used in traditionally skanky perfumes. It does this using sweet and familiar scents, perfectly illustrating a very, very underage bad girl. This perfume should be named Lolita, not Chinatown.

Despite all the jailbait associations, I don't hate it. It's very much not boring. Like rubbernecking at a car accident, it holds your interest. There is nowhere I can possibly wear this perfume, it isn't appropriate for anywhere I go, smelling like I live in a candle store and regularly roll in stale caramel corn is SO not work-appropriate, and will annoy people in any public venue. It is, however, perfect if you are: 1) Going to a carnival while drunk/high, 2) Regularly pick up teenage boys at the Abercrombie & Fitch, or 3) Are 15 and take your baby along for the other two activities.

Kelly Calèche

by Hermès, 2007

You're thinking, "What's with all the Hermès scents lately? First it's that Bel Ami swill, then the newer/nicer Hermessence ones. What gives?"

What gives is I got a free sample of Kelly Calèche, which I've been jonesing to try due to the breathless anticipation in the blogosphere about it. How did I get it? I had the opportunity to buy my Hermessence fave, Ambre Narguile, in a quantity larger than 1.5 ml. (Specifically, 3.3 oz. @ $195. Ouch! I better have gotten a free sample with that!) I also bought it while wearing shorts and flip-flops.

WTF?! Isn't the Hermessence collection only in certain exclusive Hermès boutiques? Aren't these boutiques in very very fancy boulevards and shopping gallerias (not malls!) that have actual fashion police to keep out the riff-raff earning less than seven figures annually, minimum? Why yes, they do, MOST of them. I was fortunate to be on my honeymoon in Hawai'i (that's MRS. Heretic to you!) Yes! The Waikiki Hermès boutique is one of the few that carries the Hermessence collection, but in full-size bottles, not the small 4-bottle sets (the Hermès outpost at nearby Ala Moana Mall does NOT carry Hermessence!)

Any readers that've been to Waikiki know it's heavily geared towards rich Japanese tourists, yet still manages to be full of beach bums and West Coast college kids, plus any of the above regularly go to a fancy dinner right from the beach, still sandy and in their flip-flops. This equals the only Hermès boutique in the world where I could walk in (after some prodding from my husband) dressed like this without getting dirty looks, actually get attended to by a very nice Japanese sales girl, and actually be allowed to purchase anything... AND get a free sample!

OK, so... Score! So what does the stuff smell like already? It smells exactly as the advertising says (now you know why I went on about its acquisition). It smells like the accessories section of every fancy department store you've ever visited. It's softly flowery, softly woodsy, and gently leathery, like very soft suede gloves, not something harder and nastier like a saddle or a motorcycle jacket. Other bloggers have already said much the same thing about Kelly Calèche, there is no new news to report. The advertising images of a model in leather pants with a bottle of the stuff caught in a carriage whip is inaccurate, there isn't even that much leatheriness in this, it's much more civilized. The scent doesn't change as it wears, it's "linear" with no noticeably different top note or undernotes that appear later in the day as it wears out. This is a soft, tasteful scent you can wear everyday, to the office, going out, etc. It succeeds in communicating wealth and taste subtly (unlike anything by Jean Patou). Many might adopt it as their signature scent. It provides an aura of classiness, but isn't obtrusive. Obviously it's designed to appeal to everyone. I find it boring ...but not tedious, which is further evidence of its excellent design. For everyday wear, I'm still in love with Ambre Narguile, a much more complex, intriguing scent that I can sniff all day and find a different facet. Kelly Calèche, much like the actress Grace Kelly after whom it was named, is a more aloof scent. Nice and classy ...and so what?

Covet

by Sarah Jessica Parker & Coty, 2007

You've seen the commercial: Sarah Jessica Parker in character as Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City, kicking in a shop window to get at a bottle of Covet, then getting hauled away, maniacally hissing, "I HAD to have it!" Of course after a hysterical ad like that, I HAD to have it for my next review!

At my local Macy's I sniffed the bottle, another sweet fruity-floral, oh yawn. I wouldn't kick in a shop window for this. Normally I'd put it down and move on to another bottle, but in the interest of a fair review... (ok, you can stop laughing now..... really..... are you done yet? Thank you) I made a small sacrifice, I spritzed some directly on my arms.

After determining I wasn't melting like the Wicked Witch of the West (which Sarah Jessica Parker uncannily resembles), I found I smelled like a spicy, candied apple pie... with a bouquet of white flowers drooping over it... and Mom's Tussy deodorant accidentally smudged on the apple slices before baking. Oops.

The Tussy middle note lasts for a while, then fades into a generic
vanilla-woodsy scent, which lasts for hours. The Tussy adds a slight
trashy edge to the generic trendiness, much like the character of
Carrie. Compared to the other Sarah Jessica Parker perfume, Lovely (a
ripoff of Beautiful by Estée Lauder) this is only a little more
interesting, but still a generic fruity-floral. So what's all the hype
about? Certainly not the intriguing but short-lived appley-spicy top
note, nor the generic floral note, definitely not the Tussy. Covet it?
Not so much.

Ambre Narguile & Osmanthe Yunnan

Today I have 2 of the Hermessence series by Hermès: Ambre Narguile and Osmanthe Yunnan. The others are Poivre Samarcande, Rose Ikebana, Vetiver Tonka, and Paprika Brasil. This is a very "foody" line of exclusive scents from Hermès, which you can only get (supposedly) from selected Hermès boutiques (or online discounters and decanters).

Ambre Narguile, 2004

I detect: Amber, a powdery note, almond (marzipan?), mimosa, musk. The amber isn't annoying and obvious, but is used as rounding, as it should be, instead of as a head-splitting club. The mimosa is probably giving it the almond/marzipan scent I detect. I always smell marzipan in mimosa scents...

Nice.

It makes me reminisce about a dog grooming salon, specifically the
almondy-powdery notes smell just like the powder they put in my dog's
fur after they shaved him for the summer, with the slight musk note it
actually smells a little like my dog, too. This isn't a bad connotation,
clean doggie is a very nice, friendly smell, and I miss my doggie!

This one lasts and lasts on the skin, getting foodier and almondy-er as
it wears, but never tips over the edge into making you hungry or
smelling like a cookie.

Osmanthe Yunnan, 2005

Like Sweet Honesty by Avon, freesia and a powder note, lily of the
valley, and the slightest of musk. Very sweet. Smells just like some
Holly Hobbie bubble bath beads I had as a child. Absolutely NO lasting
power, sweet top note dissipates in a few minutes, soft powdery note
lingers slightly longer but fades sharply very quickly, there's nothing
left in an hour. Would be an excellent choice for the tween girl in your
life, if you're the sort of cool aunt who'd give her an expensive "grown
up" perfume. It's much more sophisticated than the usual choice of
9-year-olds -Love's Baby Soft, or any of the wretched fruity-floral
Hilary Duff fragrances that are so popular lately. Much less cotton-candy sweet than anything by Aquolina, either. I wish I had more to say about it other than "sweet & lovely & GONE in 60 minutes!"

Après l’Ondée

by Guerlain, 1906

It’s hard to be snarky about violets, they’re soft and purple-smelling, and are about the only choice if you want to say “innocent” without cloying sweetness, tho historically, they apparently mean something else. Après l'Ondée (After the Heavy Rain) is all about violets, it’s got violets out the wazoo! Picture that for a moment....

Remember the end of "Poem, or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal" by e. e. cummings?

. . .
perpetually crouched, quivering, upon the
sternly allotted sandpile
--how silently
emit a tiny violetflavoured nuisance: Odor?

ono.
comes out like a ribbon lies flat on the brush
. . .