I thought I had this one knocked a few years ago, when the original mystery sample bottle was first reviewed as “Be Delicious” (whoops) and then tentatively identified as “Live” in the comments.  It’s a good guess, given the incredible similarity in bottles.  Unfortunately, I’ve just discovered an actual vial of “Live” in my mess o’samples, so that means that the original sample bottle remains unidentified.  Maddening! Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, a scent jumps out and really surprises you. If I’d known Hypnôse smelled like this, I wouldn’t have left it rattling around in the bottom of the sample box so long.

Finally, finally — a vanilla that doesn’t muscle out every other scent! This is like a single bite of custard tart, piled high with glazed fruit. Though sugary, I smelled fructose syrup rather than a powdery icing sugar.  There’s something airy here too, laced with florals and sweet grass, but not overpowering in the least.  Some scents seem to be all about shrouding the wearer in mystery or in girlishness or coquettish flirting.  This is a clear-eyed scent, confident and maybe a little wry — like it’s beyond the smoke and mirrors. Read the rest of this entry »

I finally got my tea crates from NZ! I’d waited a long while before getting them shipped, so pulling everything out again was like a mix of Christmas morning and a yard sale. But then I hit a small box that had been very, very carefully taped up and buried in a nest of towels, and remembered: perfume samples!

I hadn’t wanted to bring all of my samples with me on the plane; I had a nasty experience with JLo’s “Still” while travelling in Iceland, and just the thought of getting off a plane in the 24th hour of travel and having to pick up bags reeking of leaked perfume was terrifying. So I thought I’d just bundle everything together carefully, wrapping some of the perfumes in tissues and paper towels, and ship them via ground. No problem, right?

Then I opened the box and realized that I’m still cursed. The scent hit me immediately. A hauntingly familiar, terrible scent. Fucking “Still”. Read the rest of this entry »

Solange Azagury-Partridge seems to be well-known in the jewelry world, and this scent is her foray into perfume (she followed up with “Cosmic”, which I don’t have). Her site’s a bit, uh — overwrought?  Annoying to navigate, very hyperbolic language, and the copy about the perfume mostly gets carried away with describing the brilliance of the designer.  That’s a fertility goddess on the bottle stopper, by the way. One of the selling points is that diamond dust blended in with the perfume will embed itself in your skin, thus “stoning” you.

…DUST.
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With a name like Absolument Absinthe, and the promise that it’s some sort of forbidden scent, I was expecting more than what I got.

This is a perfectly nice perfume.  It smells like the soap in the bathroom at the Ritz, and I say that very specifically because I recently was in one of the Ritz bathrooms.  I don’t know how the hotels who cater to wealthy clientele pull it off, but they somehow scent their lavs in a way that gets rid of all smell of chemical cleaners, all hint of water or ceramic tile, and certainly any indication of a bathroom’s function.  Walking into a bathroom at the Ritz is like being surrounded by fluffy, lightly scented towels.  And that’s what Absolument Absinthe made me think of: bathrooms of the rich and pampered. Read the rest of this entry »