D&G La Lune 18 (2009)
by Dolce & Gabbana

Notes:
Top: Apple, Bergamot
Middle: Rose, Tuberose
Base: Orris, Sandalwood, Leather, Musk

18 La Lune ("The Moon") is from the recently launched D&G Anthology collection, a me-too "niche" line from D&G in Chanel Les Exclusif like bottles. Recently nearly every perfume house has been infected with the niche H1N1 virus and its been hard to keep track of the number of launches but the Anthology is available from my local Sephora so I had a dib. German model Claudia Schiffer is the muse, and La Lune is for the "the Dreamer" - fresh, sensual, dazzling yet keeping her secrets with her ethereal beauty. La Lune doesn't have the impact of a Claudia Schiffer, but the end result is actually one of the better new fruity florals on the markets.

Despite the presence of heavy hitting notes, La Lune is a sheer and light fragrance. It opens with a burst of one of the best rendered apple notes in the designer realm, expertly juxtaposed against a veil of sweet florals. This apple/citrus + florals melding act is La Lune's greatest success; the materials are good, and there are no crass, loud, synthetic accords burning nasal linings. Infact, this first half act reminds me a lot of Creeds Spring Flower which opens with a brilliant apple note that links up with a smorgasbord of florals except that La Lunes' materials aren't as rich or dense. After this inviting apple-floral display, an aquatic lily note makes its presence felt around the edges...its not quite at the forefront but you can smell aquatic spikes here and there. The base flatters to deceive...La Lune had the potential to finish off things with a grand leather and iris finish but instead takes a cheap accountants way out by throwing out a tiny musky-amber base with a barely there plastic leather note. To its credit, despite its ethereal nature La Lune lasts a good 7-8 hours.

Despite an anti-climactic base, I would rate La Lune as one of the better recent fruity florals. Its apple-florals balancing act is good enough to entice me to further explore this line. La Lune is jovial, light-hearted, fun, a bit stoic, not terribly cerebral but a blast to have around for some short lived fun. Quite a bit like Claudia Schiffer actually.

Rating: 7.25/10.0

No. 18 La Lune - The Dreamer. Fresh yet sensual - a perfect enigma. Or so the ads say. I find it fresh and slightly soapy but nothing sensual in this blend of lily, iris root, tuberose, sandlewood, musk and leather. To me it feels more like a cross between Tommy Girl and Paul Smith Story with a frugality of notes which hint at 'cheap' or 'synthetic'. And that's what the collection of washed out notes is making this out to be - a perfume on a tight budget. A shame really. In the hands of a master I believe the combination of notes can be a killer but I must concede even a master can't do much with the pocket change of a 5th grader.

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. 18, called La Lune, starts on a crass, chemical “froot” note that’s common to a few of the D&G Fragrance Anthology entries and decides to make a meal out of it. There’s not much else going on here. What (except a possible point of origin,) this note has to do with the moon eludes me entirely.