Over the weekend, I went to the mall to check out 'Dirty English', which I found, eh, okay. Nothing I wanted to bag up and take home right away. Someone on basenotes suggested I try Davidoff 'Good Life' and CK Truth because I was looking for a grassy scent for summer. I stopped at a cologne counter that had both and tried one on each wrist.
'Good Life' is a really nice citrus. It reminds me an awful lot of one of the early Banana Republic fragrances, which was probably a 'Good Life' knock-off. It was pleasant and certainly inoffensive and wore nicely, but I was wearing that Banana Republic scent during a particularly rotten period of my life and it started to bring back a bunch of less than pleasurable memories and associations.
The CK Truth was, actually, surprisingly similar to 'Good Life', a sunny citrus, but there was a decidedly botanical note in there which I liked, very green. Also, I noticed as I sat at an outside table having an espresso and a cigarette that the smell of tobacco smoke mixed with 'Truth' in a really delicious way.
Now, you more militant non-smokers will be horrified I'm sure to read that. But smelling like cigarettes in an inevitable side-effect of the addiction to nicotine, so it doesn't hurt to have a fragrance that mixes well with it.
That sold me, and I bought a 1.7oz bottle of Truth.
I went to look it up and see what the Great Noses think of it and Chandler Burr dismissed it with a sniff as "an American mall scent". I guess that's fair. I am an American and I did buy the bottle at a mall. Still, I think it has a little more to recommend it than that. Also, I find that Burr and I differ significantly on our assessment of some of the Ellena fragrances. He loves Bigarade, which I thought smelled like a cab-driver peeling an orange for about twenty minutes, after which the orange evaporated, leaving me with the smell of dirty armpits wafting forth from my wrists and neck. Ha, ha, Monsieur Ellena. Very funny, yes, very Frawnch of you. Merci buckets.
Perhaps I am not 'Continental' enough and should stick to my 'mall'-i-fied tastes.
'Good Life' is a really nice citrus. It reminds me an awful lot of one of the early Banana Republic fragrances, which was probably a 'Good Life' knock-off. It was pleasant and certainly inoffensive and wore nicely, but I was wearing that Banana Republic scent during a particularly rotten period of my life and it started to bring back a bunch of less than pleasurable memories and associations.
The CK Truth was, actually, surprisingly similar to 'Good Life', a sunny citrus, but there was a decidedly botanical note in there which I liked, very green. Also, I noticed as I sat at an outside table having an espresso and a cigarette that the smell of tobacco smoke mixed with 'Truth' in a really delicious way.
Now, you more militant non-smokers will be horrified I'm sure to read that. But smelling like cigarettes in an inevitable side-effect of the addiction to nicotine, so it doesn't hurt to have a fragrance that mixes well with it.
That sold me, and I bought a 1.7oz bottle of Truth.
I went to look it up and see what the Great Noses think of it and Chandler Burr dismissed it with a sniff as "an American mall scent". I guess that's fair. I am an American and I did buy the bottle at a mall. Still, I think it has a little more to recommend it than that. Also, I find that Burr and I differ significantly on our assessment of some of the Ellena fragrances. He loves Bigarade, which I thought smelled like a cab-driver peeling an orange for about twenty minutes, after which the orange evaporated, leaving me with the smell of dirty armpits wafting forth from my wrists and neck. Ha, ha, Monsieur Ellena. Very funny, yes, very Frawnch of you. Merci buckets.
Perhaps I am not 'Continental' enough and should stick to my 'mall'-i-fied tastes.
