Play Intense for Her (2010)
by Givenchy

I've kept samples of "Play" and Play Intense for Her in my jewelry box for months. They were freebees when I bought moisturizer at Sephora. "This one" said the SA, dangling the plastic packet of Intense over the bag, "is my favorite. It smells soooo goooooood!" I try not to grimace as I smile and nod.

It's funny how the designers will list all of these exotic sounding florals and woods in their new releases, when in reality they are hawking liquid penny candy. Intense smells for a brilliant split second of blueberry and then devolves into a cloying sweet amber possessing the disturbingly addictive and slightly wrong dichotomy of powdery and chewy sweetness found questionable culinary anomalies like circus peanuts. It smells like the caramelized bottom of a macaroons, like reams of button candies and is purple like the non-latex medical gloves used in dental offices.

Most specifically, this smells of a kind of chalky, candy cigarette I consumed as a child. I used to hold them between my index and middle fingers like a real cigarette, wear an inappropriately haughty expression for an eight year old and slowly gnaw on the end of it, pretending to smoke and imagining myself as a very rich and classy older lady.

A perfect metaphor.

14th September, 2011. (Last Edited: 13rd November, 2011.)