DKNY Women (1999)
by Donna Karan

Clean and refreshing but unfortunately not my cup of tea. A pleasant enough lemon-scented detergent blend in my opinion.

I'll give credit to this fragrance for being unique and modern. DKNY is like a mixture of fruits, soapiness and spices. There is also a subtle hint of alcohol, like vodka intermixed with the citrusy top notes.

I have actually smelt this on a girl that I used to work with that really did this scent justice. On her DKNY smelt clean and pretty but on my skin this fragrance is acrid and strong. It really depends on skin chemistry with this scent.

I read somewhere that there was a note of wet cobblestones in this fragrance and somehow I sense it. DKNY does remind me of a city just after a storm, the smell of damp concrete and stone. A fascinating scent to say the least.

This is a relatively light scent which lasts a great while on the skin. I can't say that I disliked this fragrance, I enjoyed it to a certain extent just not on myself.

12nd June, 2011.

Utterly pointless, totally banal. Save yourself the money and dab some fabric conditioner behind your ears.

28th February, 2011.

Hard not to love this, unless you are not into synthetic fragrances. This is a close relative of D&G Lightblue. Same sharp sweet with a strong citrus cut. I would definately agree with sexy. This is beautiful on a city girl with a high tech flair, in the summer ofcourse.

23rd July, 2010.

DKNY Woman shares character, if not content, with Mugler Cologne: an unabashedly chemical presence, a strong suggestion of fresh laundry, an effervescent citrus so abstract as to be unidentifiable, and a bright, translucent countenance. The citrus and clean musk come dangerously close to smelling like shampoo or a household cleaner, especially as the flinty aldehydes that accompany their entrance start to fade. After the first ten or fifteen minutes’ wear DKNY Woman is a crisp, linear, skin scent that from time to time reveals surprising hints of sillage. The laundry musk drydown lasts a couple of hours before trailing off. In this antiseptic, abstract, postmodern eau de Cologne style, I actually prefer the more chameleonic and elusive Mugler, but DKNY Woman makes pleasant and ironically gender neutral hot weather refresher.

14th March, 2010.

DK says it has the smell of wet NY cobblestones in it. Not sure wet NY cobblestones have a geographically distinctive smell, but I love the generic smell of wet cobblestones. Still I wouldn't want to smell LIKE wet cobblestones, and fortunately DKNY Women doesn't. It's an enchantingly simple, jolly, fizzy grapefruit cocktail, best for a sunny day, or perhaps, as the old song says, 'the dullest morn which heralds in the fairest day'. I bought this by accident, and have never regretted it - I like it when I don't want to be too serious about anything, including perfume.

25th October, 2009. (Last Edited: 11th March, 2010.)

Bitterly effervescent, this unique combination of weird yet wonderful notes is compelling. I'm not a complete fan, but admit there's something delightful about DKNY Women. What I love about it is the way the topnotes stay "fizzy" smelling - for a long time. If I didn't know any better, sniffing this blindly, I might suspect it to be a Keiko Mecheri frag. To my nose the blood orange citrus comes off a bit like grapefruit, which includes the pith. Obviously one could never pinpoint "freshly laundered t-shirt" or "wet pebble" accords when trying to deconstruct this mix. Definitely not sweet. Not soapy either. Impressive for a 'designer' offering, I must give a thumbs up!

31st July, 2009.