Fragrance Reviews by Rue

This is my favourite Demeter. I love the serenity that thunderstorms always evoke in me and I really miss them since moving away from the east coast. Demeter has managed to capture the exact scent in the air that blows in through an open window during a storm. The electricity, wet pavement, rain and ozone.

Tart and tangy on a cool creamy base. This is my favourite fragrance to wear on those really dry hot summer days we often have here in the interior of Canada's Pacific north west. CdG Rhubarb is an unusual twist or departure from the ubiquitous citrus I love to wear during the warmer months. More importantly, no one else around here is wearing it.

I love Angel, and more importantly Angel loves me. It is warm, soft, sweet but not cloying and it melds with my chemistry perfectly creating the most discreet-yet-sexy sillage. On me it is downright ethereal.

Funny thing is that 2 of my top 5 favourite fragrances are by CdG. To me Palisander smells just like a 'memory' of Luctor and Emergo. It isn't the same, more like an echo. It is like nothing else I have ever smelled, and I absolutely adore how it sinks into and melds with my skin almost a little too naturally. If Avignon is a cathedral at High Mass, Palisander is the fragrance inside a quiet, rustic chapel after the congregation has gone home.

This is the fragrance that lingered on my clothes and hair after attending high mass. It makes me feel serene and it has become one of my top 5. I wear whenever I'm feeling spiritual and best of all it is a 'cool' incense fragrance evoking marble basins filled with holy water.

I finally got to try a sample of Les Nuits d'Hadrien thanks to a generous swapper. :) I instantly loved it. It smelled so comforting and natural, so warm and so uplifting all at the same time, it smelled just like my own skin! It's no surprise that this is a beautiful fragrance that appeals to so many people. It contains one of the most classic of French combinations: orange and amber! This is a common combination found in many distinctly French fragrances and toiletries, that I use on myself and my children almost daily. I know this combination very intimately from childhood until present. I will eventually purchase a full bottle of Les Nuits EDP mainly for its depth and lasting power once I return to the workforce, but until then, I will enjoy its more affordable, fleeting, and common blood relative, Mont St Michel Cologne Ambrée.

When it's wrong on you, it is dreadfully wrong, but when it is right, it is unusual and sublime! In the eighties I wore Parfum Rare by Jacomo. Madness comes close, but with a slightly sweet softness around the edges where Parfum Rare had a delicate aridity. I will wear it this winter for sure. It reminds me of how my wool coat smelled after wearing Parfum Rare on a night out at my favourite Italian restaurant nearly twenty years ago.

Coty has some really nice fragrances. This is one of them. I'm a huge Coty fan, and this is really sexy. *swoon* It's right up there with Coty's triumvirate of sexy male scents: Stetson, Preferred Stock, and of course Gravity. My only criticism is the corny names.

We have a bedtime ritual in my home. Both my girls unwind with the help of a moist face cloth scented with a lavender cologne, ever since they were born. They breathe in the fragrance, and pat it on their faces, necks and arms. I'm out of our usual cologne (Mont St Michel Lavande Impériale) so, I ordered Lavande Velours. This fragrance is beauty, well-being, and comfort all rolled into one. It starts out all herbal/antiseptic/medicinal lavender, almost pine-y on a violet backdrop. It then evolves into the sweetest, truest violet. I normally hate violet fragrances because they are always too sweet or cloying. This one is perfection.