Fragrance Reviews by msleslie

Isn't the experience of scent subjective? This was to me an instant flashback to visiting the Honda Motorcycle Dealership on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco, in 1984 when my roommate worked there. The thick miasma was rubbery, oily, smoky, nasty, mysterious, high testosterone and quite intimidating.

Nice weird little memory of a long forgotten place but I can't imagine wanting to smell like that unless I was faking it to infiltrate Dykes on Bikes so I could be in the Gay Freedom Day Parade.

TPG gave this 5 stars, so it's me who is wrong, clearly!

I got this scent in a sampler, and had not heard of it before that. To me it is as wonderfully classic as any perfume I have tried so far (only about 200, including all the classic samplers at the Posh Peasant and the Perfumed Court). First is elegant, womanly, sophisticated and beautiful. I love the way I feel when I wear it, self possessed and capable of taking on the world. There is nothing playful or offhand about this scent, it is very serious about being exquisite! Wonderful.

I really love the parfum version of this wonderful, heady scent. The edt is not enough like it to matter, unfortunately. I would fall for an almost impossible to find product! It is somewhat like Chanel #5 which I used to love, but with more personality, depth and interest.

Lalique Le Parfum, Hermes Ambre Narguile and KM Loukhoum smell very alike to me. Cake icing sweet, powdery and with a waft of vanilla pipe tobacco. I have ended up with all three, but really they are so alike I guess I should not have bothered. Still, I would not want to choose just one, as they each have their own take on the theme. They are lovely but you really have to like smelling sweet!

My sample was elegant, rich, and refined but somehow generic; there was somehow no personality, nothing memorable.

During the drydown a slight smell of melting plastic appeared briefly.

The fragrance faded more quickly than I would have expected for a parfum.

This lovely scent brought to mind my long-gone grandmother's garden on Whidbey Island in the San Juan Island chain off the Pacific Northwest of the USA. Her little home was at the end of a deadend road, stop a cliff overlooking Puget Sound. Her garden was full of honeysuckle, sweet peas, rose hips and pansies - not your usual floral notes for perfume! Pretty scents against a backdrop of freshly mown lawn and an armful of cut flowers with the stems smelling brightly alive and green - and all recently lightly dampened with the fine spray nozzle of the garden hose. A sweeter, innocent time and place, I hardly dare wear it - but rather cherish it as a way to revisit the carefree summers of childhood. Beautiful!

Oh this is wonderful and amazingly lovely! I feel like I am wrapped in clouds of very refined incense and cherry blossoms. There is also peach brandy in there somewhere. It is so uplifting, and lasts and lasts. The body silk is maybe even more heavenly than the spray. Chinatown is strongly intoxicating and exotic, very special!

Datura Noir brings to mind an old-fashioned apothecary and sweet shop with all the sugary, bitter and mysterious scents mixing together in the air intriguingly.

It is very appealing to remember long-gone old shops but for me it does not work as a wearable fragrance. It will go into my perfume museum, though, as worth experiencing every now and again.

When I was little I used to secretly eat raspberry jello dry out of the package, and sometimes the powder would get into my nose where it registered as especially tart and strange: I loved it, it was wonderful. This scent brought back that experience vividly and made me laugh with pleasure. It is also similar to inhaling dry raspberry koolaid while stirring the contents of the packet into the water; does koolaid even still exist? After awhile I smell lemon lime instead of raspberry, and enjoy it all over again. This may smell good on somebody, I don't know, but I keep it just to remind myself of several momentary pleasures of childhood.

This smells very masculine to me: a very complex and in-your-face confident and aggressive type of man. It would not suit the sensitive new-age guys and civil servants in my orbit, but would be perfect for more intimidating types (if they still exist anywhere). Come to think of it, maybe that is why it is no longer in production - those men are long gone! Darn.

It starts out a sharp, bright and lovely cologne but fades rapidly, on me anyway. Too bad! I would give the fragrance itself 4 stars but it is so transient that, considered as a product, I can only give it 2.

My sample of the Caron Tabac Blond extrait smells like a sharp old potpourri with some concentrated Old Spice thrown in; plus the warm tobacco for awhile. Disappointing after all I've read. I am beginning to wonder if there is not an aspect of 'the Emporer's New Clothes' in perfume reviews. Or at least a Rorshach test of the reviewer's frame of mind more than anything else.

Reviewers' descriptions of this scent always alarm me and I keep sniffing my wrist to try to make some connection - plastic? manure? danger? naughty? improper? urinous?! Huh. Well, these sensations do not apply to my bottle of Cuir de Russie, anyway.

As a vegetarian I should be repelled by the thought or smell of leather, and am; this thankfully smells like no leather I have ever encountered.

It does smell rich, warm, sensual and wonderful. It evokes the same feelings in me as Hermes Amber Narguile. It is beautiful - and I feel wrapped in a cloud of privilege and pleasure when wearing it.

Hmm. This evoked with vividness my grandmother's utility room of 1958, cold and dark and dank in winter, with mold and dirt in the corners where the wintry rains have leaked in. Very pungent soil and damp and mildewiness. After awhile the smell of the wet soil in her potted plants nearby became more obvious, with promises of life stirring in the living plants and the rich soil.This is a very strange walk down memory lane, and interesting and original in its own way; but as a perfume? I can't imagine wanting to smell like this, but am glad I have a sample in my perfume musuem. Maybe for old gardeners now stuck in nursing homes it would be a welcome reminder of the soil, but otherwise I can't think of a use for it.

Because lavender is a natural bug repellent I use this to spray my bed when it is hot and I must sleep au natural and uncovered; it works. Recent research has also shown that the smell of lavender helps insomniacs sleep better, and I appreciate that aspect too. On top of all that it smells very nice and is cheap.

My 6th grade class toured a huge Everett, Washington sawmill back in the 1950s, and I had forgotten it completely until it was brought vividly to mind by a sample of this scent.The massive stripped trees, the huge machinery in every direction thrashing and cutting and buzzing, the infernal noise, the pungent scent of the slashed, raw wood, the dark vats of chemicals for dipping the wood into. It was an interesting memory, but I would not want to wear this as a scent. I smell nothing in it, sadly, but devastated evergreen forests.

What an exquisite rose scent, almost ethereal and overwhelmingly wonderful.

I keep it for personal use only as it would reveal too intimate and tender a side of me to the world if I wore it in public.

Everybody else may feel that way too as I rarely encounter it in public anymore.

The blast of this almost knocked me off the bed. Tuberose, huh? I never realised there was a flower I would dislike the smell of but I loathe this one. It is the first time in my life I have run to wash off a perfume; I usually respectfully let them develop through their various stages even if I don't like them. But on me this was unbearable, hideous. And I had been so ready to be impressed with Carnal Flower! I can only pray people don't start wearing this on the plane, to the theatre and restaurants or I will have to become a hermit 'til it passes.

Jean Nate isn't a 'serious' scent, of course, but for what it is it is wonderful! A bright cheery cooling lemon verbena cologne, perfect for hot weather. It has been a lifetime favorite, but I would never wear it outside my home; does that make me a snob, I wonder? No, if I was a snob I would not even buy it! But I love Jean Nate.

I received Angel as a sample before I had heard anything about it, so was able to experience it without any preconceived notion. It instantly brought to mind the Puyallup State Fair my family attended when I was little, the only place we ever encountered cotton candy aka fairy floss. Angel smelled just like standing at the booth with the wonderful sugary scent floating all around us. This unexpected nostalgia made me laugh with pleasure and I thought I would wear it to work as a joke. I laughed all morning. However, I was sick of it by mid-day, and never wore it again. I now smell Angel daily on fellow bus passengers, and am happy to once again briefly smell a happy scent from childhood. It is cute on the girls and young women, but I do not really understand why adult women would want to smell that way. [On the other hand, I wouldn't mind having a sniff of it on a guy who was self confident and playful enough to wear it.]

I have not seen Lauren for many years, but lived in a wondrous cloud of it in the late 70's. What an enchanting, intoxicating, brilliant scent this was! I don't think I would wear it now, as I like more subdued fragrances, but I would dearly love to smell it again. There should be 'scent museums' so that these lovely creations are not lost for all time once their day has gone!

This is a lovely carnation scent, though I believe the clove or peppery note I used to love years ago has been removed in the current version and I miss that aspect. It is still wonderfully fresh and pretty, in some ways like Bulgari Pour Femme in its elegance. Bellodgia is my favorite Caron.

I was on my way to the Guerlain counter when I smelled something so wonderful I had to follow my nose to the source: a display of citrus verbena candles, soaps, gels, etc.

On this humid, hot, sticky day this enchanting smell seemed to be the perfect antidote - when I found the eau de toilette I sampled it lavishly, and was instantly uplifted, intoxicated and delighted. I left then - but found I had to return and buy every product on offer with that amazing scent! I was not even in the market for a citrus with essential oils in it, but this was a wonderful serendipity that I gave myself to.

Today I am slathered in the citrus verbena intensa body lotion, and am having frequent refreshing spritzes of the chilled eau de toilette - the intensity is indeed brief but the delicate scent remaining is still exquisite. It is my favorite scent for summer, ever! (And it is amazingly cheap for such vivid loveliness.)

My nose was awakened several months ago, just out of the blue, and I went from being indifferent (if not actually hostile) to perfume to being an avid sniffer of every scent there is. Before, I disliked having anyone "impose" their choice of scent on me, and found all scents registered the same. But with my new awareness I am overly sensitive to many wonderful nuances and subtleties, and can't help wondering what will happen next? (It might disappear as suddenly as it appeared.) Anyway I love White Linen, even though I did not expect to from what I had read about it, and the image I had of EL perfumes. But it is gorgeous, especially after it settles for a few minutes. It makes me feel beautiful and joyous. That said, I do not, and would not, wear it everyday. Just on glorious and wonderful days where everything is going my way!