Fragrance Reviews by underglass

This is the heart of Chanel No 5 minus the dated stuff. When finances allow, I will buy a bottle. To me, Eau Premeire is as close to perfume perfection as a fragrance gets.

The above was my take in February. I had only sprayed it on my wrist in a departmehnt store. Since then I have obtained an ample sample and was better able to see how it developed. It did not live up to my expectations. Chanel Eau Premiere does not work well on me after a time. All I get are sharpened wood pencils and Raid. It is so woody, it should be called an interpretation of Coco, rather than of Chanel No 5. It also fades very quickly, I’m pleased to say.

Chanel 5 Elixir Sensuelle, which I do not see in Basenotes, starts out as pure, crisp beauty. Some of the old fashioned fragrance notes seem to be gone, leaving just the heart of Chanel 5, and it is jazzed up with a lightsome and sparkling floral opening that is new and yet very Chanel 5. It is cleanliness and freshness personified.

In its next stage, not very long after, it disappointingly oozes into a sickly sweet, cloying, and overly powdery concoction. It is ruined with too much too sandalwood or vanilla or amber or something and deteriorates into an unremarkable and predictable gooey department store fragrance. It loses its Chanel-ness completely. And it no longer smells very “fresh”, either. I was SO disappointed.

Ernest Beaux created the original Chanel 5 and he created the original Evening in Pairs perfume. I always thought these two perfumes had qualities in common. Both these fragrances are controlled and very directed and do not have the amber "poof" that, in my opinion, ruins fragrances. They get smaller as they dry down as if they were being compressed into diamonds rather than billowing out like clouds. Nether the original Chanel 5 or the original Evening in Paris have amber in their compositions! I expected Chanel 5 Eau Premiere and Chanel 5 Elixir Sensuelle to be like this, but sadly, they get ambery and sweaty toward the end, which is a characteristic of today’s facile and predictable fragrances. Mr. Beaux would be appalled.

I do not care for Youth Dew. It is too dark and strong and woody and spicy for me. The following anecdotal episode happened only a few hours ago...

I caught a whiff of some heavy, dark and majorly outdated old lady perfume while at a hotel. I turned to see what I thought would be an overdressed, over-bejeweled 70-year-old woman but it turned out to be a 25-year-old gal who had it on. She said it was Youth Dew. You cold have knocked me over like a feather. She should not have worn it. That perfume is a crime on someone so young. Even her pretty figure and and charming face could not support such an asphyxiating and dated fragrance. I was not so gauche as to tell her the perfume was all wrong for her, unflattering to say the least, and that it aged her. Whatever would possess someone so young to wear it? What a fragrance faux pas that was!

A pretty and autumny chypre. It is warm and creamy rather than fiery and woody. My Mother gave me a little bottle of Canasta by Jacques Fath when I was young. Later on, Flambeau reminded me quite a bit of Canasta, which, by the way, was in itself, a very finely made and delicate chypre. But alas, both are discontinued and are very hard to find.

My very first reaction to this fragrance was, "It smells like old perfume from the 50's." It smelled years dated then, and it smells doubly years dated now.

At first, Joy bubbles up like the first day of spring. I sniff; I instinctively smile. It is the kind of fragrance that makes me want to inhale until I faint. Too quickly, a repulsive, floor level insecticide odor quickly invades the juice. Then with no warning, that unpleasant odor abruptly fades and a lustrous pearl of floral fantasy rises up like the moon over the Taj Mahal. This is exquisite. Then an annoying odor that reminds me of carnation raises its unbeautiful head and sours the fragrance, making it seem sadly old lady. But the fragrance itself is so breathtaking that I can deal with the carnation, if, indeed, it is that. It is too bad no one has invented a perfume brush (like the brush that removes fat from gravy) and you would whisk it through a perfume you want to love and remove whatever odor saddens it for you. (Such a brush would have to be scent-specific—a different brush for each fragrance note.) I have researched Joy’s perfume notes and do not find carnation listed among them, so I wonder what is it that smells like it?

I have both the EdP and EdT. For my body chemistry, the EdT seems softer and sweeter, so I like that one better.

In dry down, that is when the perfect sexuality of Joy reveals itself. Most of the carnation-like fragrance is gone; rose and jasmine mingle like anointed lovers without the fragrance ever getting woody or amber-y (Heaven forbid). I would have liked Joy to be like this from the start.

Despite the one note I do not like, Joy gets a thumbs up from me. No other fragrance comes close.

The original was aldehydic while hinting to of dark berries, roses and wood. This lovely, iconic and sophisticated fragrance was cavalierly reformulated and now it smells dreadful. It was not even an interpretation of the original. It is a totally different fragrance. Why didn’t they leave it alone, create another fragrance, and give it a different name? Then new version smells like a stuffy discount store cologne, very ordinary and unimportant.

Here is an interesting feature about the original Evening in Paris that I do not think any other perfume can claim -- no matter how old the original Evening in Paris, it stays as fresh as if it were new. I have a bottle my Dad gave my Mother in 1945 and it is still fresh and wearable. I have smelled full vintage bottles of this at antique shows, and the contents are as fresh as when they were purchased.

I remember Blue Waltz from Woolworth's. I distinctly remember it had a a lot of vanilla in it and was very powdery. It was strong and sweet. I tried it but never wore it. It reminded me somewhat of Shalimar.

I had two different perfumes that came in the same shaped bottles and they smelled identical. I wondered if they were really the same formulas. They were Rose Cardin and Taffetas. They had what I think of as a Moroccan rose theme. They were strong and spicy and smelled like linens sun-dried in a rose garden. They reminded me very much of potent Aromatics Elixir and Maroc. All four of these smelled great from the bottles but they became too strong on me. I found another perfume at a swap meet, a little softer and deeper, within the same Moroccan rose family and I fell in love with it. It is called V’e and it is made by Versace. All of the deep Moroccan rose is there, all of the garden depth is there, all of the delicious bitter golden sunshine is there, but it is richer and lower-keyed. It has become one of my favorite fragrances of all time. I did not have to "try" to like it. It was perfection from the first sniff.

The 70's version, which I suppose was like the original, remindned me of the Chanel 5 imitations you can find everywhere today, or like Coty's L'Aimant. It was floral, powdery and very sweet. It was very old fashioned but not old lady as with Youth Dew. It was more girlish. The powdery quality was deep rather than gritty like with Ombre Rose.

This is one of my favorite fragrances of all time. This was all at once light, fresh, clean and cottony but thankfully not musky. It was rosy but not “flowery”. It made me think of wearing a crisp cotton eyelet dress on a breezy summer day. It was gently powdery but not gritty powdery like Ombre Rose. It was cleanly sweet but not piercing sweet. It did not yet have Avon's bizarre signature note they started adding later on that makes many of their fragrances dry down to the smell of a stale, sour cigar.

This was a sweet but light and fresh candy-violet. Nothing funky or musky in it at all. It made me think of cool breezes and wearing a violet sprigged cotton dress. I liked it alot. And I would definitely buy it again.

An asphyxiating, overly sweet, synthetic musk is all I smell. And then it dries down to that weird cigarette-like signature note Avon puts in a lot of their stuff. Even new, it always smelled "past its prime" to me.

I actually remember this one. A great cologne. It was a light, enthusiastic, "yellow flower" fragrance. It was soft, fresh and upliftng. It was marketed as a children's fragrance, but old time children's fragrances are "mature" by today's standards, and this one could be worn very successfully by grown ups today. Daisies Won't Tell was created before Avon started putting some really weird signature notes in their fragrances. There is no negative smell in this fragrance at all. I would use it today; it was that good.

Odyssey is one of the most TERRIBLE fragrances I have ever used. It smells like a rotted, gritty, sour men’s cologne. It was almost painful to smell. A friend gave it to me for Christmas and I tried so hard to wear it. It was putrid from the moment I put it on and got worse with the day.

The new fragrance is a huge letdown. The original used to smell a little aldehydic, like cherries, roses, light woods and amber. If rubies were a flower, they would smell like (the original) Evening in Paris. The new fragrance is dull to the point of being unpleasant, tobacco-y and excessively powdery with NONE of the old "pearls and black cashmere" excitement. Could they not have had the decency to give it its own name – like Evening in Old Socks? Evening in Paris used to make me think of dressing up and going out to dinner during a summer’s evening rain storm, romantic and mysterious. Now it smells stuffy and ordinary and unimportant, with no magic in it AT ALL, like a run of the mill low-end drugstore perfume. For aficionados of the original Evening in Paris, I found another fragrance that seems a tiny bit like it It is Chanel 5 Eau Premier.

I used to use Grass perfume from the Gap in the 90’s. I went back then to get more and I was brokenhearted to see it had been discontinued. I ordered a set from eBay and was thrilled with it. I pestered the Gap for a long time to get it back and today, 1/9/09, it was back. Excited, I sprayed it on and was very disappointed. It smelled nothing like my old Grass. It’s totally different. The old Grass smelled like the memory of a sunny day spent lolling on the grass. The old fragrance was rich, polished, slightly aldehydic, soft, not biting, and had a hint of a deep flower at the end. And it really smelled like grass. To my nose, this new Grass does not have any grass or floral smell in it at all. It might be in there, but it does not come through. The only thing I can smell in it is thin, raspy cucumber. Actually, it smells like a sharp shampoo. I will just keep with the original Grass perfume I have. I’m glad I bought the big size.