Basenotes - Reviews by teaweed

United States

Showing 1 to 5 of 5.

Emerald Dream by Estée Lauder

Harsh, bitter greens trumpet in the opening. Cucumber and tea notes dominate. I like cucumber, but these smell inedible. The tea is of Tommy Girl (yucky, headachy, hateful Tommy Girl) rather than savory bitter like the real stuff. Eventually the blaring greens quiet a bit, but they remain abrasive. In the heart I kept catching a whiff of something heavenly. I'd bring my hand to my nose and the greens overwhelmed whatever it was. I never got to the base notes; I gave up and washed before two hours were up.

19th February, 2011.

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Odalisque by Parfums de Nicolaï

Day One on a sample from Luckyscent:

First sniff--lightly on top of a nice, nondescript floral is a soft, salty and smokey something, maybe seaweed or fresh sweat. It makes me think of a distant campfire on a beach. It's peculiar, but pleasantly so.

Half an hour later--Oh this smells heavenly! Now the florals are stronger and moist, like real flowers with nectar in their inner parts. (Though not so real that I can identify what kind of flowers they are). The smoke and brine still linger faintly. There's something kind of dreamy about the scent. The salt/smoke is distant enough that even though I keep catching it, it might be my imagination. The flowers are lovely, but I can't quite pin them down either.

Drydown--the florals have dried out to a perfumy stereotype. Eh. I don't recall seeing musk in the scent pyramid, but I think I smell some. The sweet smoke and wet salt is long gone. The flower nectar is gone. I can't smell the drydown unless I touch my nose to my wrist. When I do, it's not bad, it's just not great anymore. If only this were a linear perfume and the heart lasted forever.

The sillage was modest and the longevity was just about perfect. The opening notes lasted maybe fifteen minutes, the heart an hour or perhaps two, and after six, the drydown is quite faint.

My bias: I'm new to serious scent appreciation/criticism. My primary criteria for evaluating a scent is: 'Does it smell good? Is it pretty?' I like skin scents--strong sillage is as uncouth as talking during a movie. I want scents to last all day, but fade with me, so that by the evening, when I am worn thin, so is my perfume. I dislike musk--it gives me a headache-is-coming feeling and smells, not animalic (sweaty, fecal, or leathery) as I'd expect, but rather like powdered laundry detergent (heavy, bright and dry).

I doubt that I'll buy a whole bottle of Odalisque, but I'll use up the whole sample with heart-felt pleasure.

8th January, 2011.

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Liaisons Dangereuses by By Kilian

I smell heavy rose with an edible quality, despite not being able to distinguish the fruit or vanilla explicitly. After two or three hours, I can just pick out the butteriness mentioned by lizzie_j. It is a thick, perfumey rose, and very beautiful. I like this scent, but I can also imagine getting a headache from too much of it.

13rd December, 2009.

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Osmanthus by Different Company

I smell green tea and and soap. (Not the luminous clean sweet soapiness of Pleasures, but the waxy bitter clean soapiness of getting one's mouth washed out with soap.) I got the sample (from luckyscents.com, so I believe it's a relieable sample) after reading Luca Turin's review (dreamy peach) and boy!, am I confused. I don't smell fruit, neither peach, nor citrus as mentioned by other reviewers here. There's a transparency, and I agree with LT's "dreamy". It is an inoffensive scent and interesting, but I take no pleasure in it. I will revisit the sample again and try to smell more.

13rd December, 2009.

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Euphoria by Calvin Klein

I love, love, love the cream accord here and I like amber in general, so the first three minutes of euphoria is lovely. Alas, once the top notes have evaporated, there's an icky chemical tang and a thinness. I have sampled this fragrance repeatedly, wanting the sweet creaminess of the begining, but frustrated every time by the stingy heart. When I read about companies going cheap on ingredients, Euphoria always comes to mind as an example of something that smells cheap.

13rd December, 2009.

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Showing 1 to 5 of 5.