D&G La Roue de la Fortune 10 (2009)
by Dolce & Gabbana

Notes:
Top: Pink pepper, Pineapple, Tuberose
Middle: Gardenia, Jasmine, Vanilla
Base: Orris, Benzoin, Patchouli

La Roue de la Fortune 10 ("The Wheel of Fortune") is a chypre-floral from the D&G Anthology series with the tag-line "for the adventurous" type, or someone who takes risks (probably in the context of Tarot games in this case). Considering the latest D&G releases, Fortune by comparison certainly comes off as quite a bit more adventurous in its structure and overall feel.

Fortune opens with a nice juicy pineapple note with floral accents. The opening lasts all but 30 seconds before Fortune expands into a grand vanilla-floral heart. Its mostly composed of two dominant notes of jasmine and vanilla and the balance can be a bit off depending on how it works on your skin. At times I smelled a bit too much vanilla, but in cooler temperatures the sweetish-floral accord was flying off my skin in perfect harmony. So far so good, but its still perhaps not too far from a yawn or a case of been there done that...but wait an hour and Fortune metamorphosizes into a custard-like aroma before settling on a light earthy base with an alluring smoky benzoin note. Smoky benzoin...gasp! could it be that D&G used a decent sized budget on a base containing good quality Sumatra benzoin?? I can't say for sure but its been a while since I have encountered a designer fragrance which featured a more impressive and coherently put together base instead of blowing the budget on fleeting yet attractive top notes.

Fortune surprised me with its consistent performance throughout its duration. Juicy pineapple top, dense floral-vanilla heart, and a surprising smoky-patchouli-benzoin base. Sure, its not a patchouli dynamo like the slick Coromandel, or the grand Borneo, nor is it a classic chypre etched in fragrance history like Mitsouko. But it can act as a stepping stone towards those classics for Sephora shoppers looking for some quality this shopping season. D&G should get rewarded because they took a little chance with this one.

Rating: 8.0/10.0

No.10 LA ROUE DE LA FORTUNE - The Player. Adventurous and creative - the epitome of surprise - its wearers are intrepid, experimental, players of life's game. Corny marketing taglines aside, I'm surprised I kinda like this one. The opening floral bouquet hits me with the subtlety of a brick but it does so without overwhelming. Maybe I'm so used to hitting into brickwalls. However, picking out the listed jasmine, gardenia and tuberose notes proves to be far too challenging for my mortal nose. Blame it on the brickwalls if you will though I suspect the benzoin is the culprit who runs interference. He killed the patchouli too I bet since I detect none. With drydown approaching, the florals shuffle towards the exits while the gourmand aspect takes haltering steps towards centerstage. And what I'm left with in the end is a delicious whiff of vanilla-esque custard. Yum-my. I love custard.

D&G offers its new “Fragrance Anthology” line niche style, in plain, (non-sequentially) numbered bottles. (Parfumerie Generale, Le Labo, anyone?) The five scents themselves are all hilariously bad. No. 1, Le Bateleur, is a fresh, aquatic sports fragrance so monumentally dull that I’m nodding off just thinking about it. No. 3, L’Imperatrice, is a crude, derivative, adolescent fruity-floral, for the likes of which neither I nor the world have any use. I took home samples of the other three scents for review: No. 6 and No. 10 because they showed faint signs that they might actually come to smell like something, and No. 18…well, because there was room for a third sample vial on the card, and it was the bottle in the front.

No. 10, La Roue de la Fortune, opens on the same artificial watermelon candy note as its sibling La Lune, then quickly morphs into an extra-sweet, flat, and disturbingly chemical vanilla custard gourmand that’s rendered even more obscenely caloric by an additional powdered sugar garnish. The upside, so to speak, is that the whole thing is far less potent than this sort of bland dessert often is. So see, it could have been worse.

It a heavy floral to me, but I'm still a noob reviewer. Its classified as a unisex but its pretty feminine. Benzoin is listed as one of the base notes but I just cant detect it, either its effectively not there or its so light that I can't detect it after a day of heavy testing. As a male I can't really recommend this fragrance. For females, I don't know what many femnine perfumes smell like and therefore can't really give a review from that side. It does smell alot like potpourri.