Gucci recently launched Guilty Absolute Pour Femme* — a new flanker to 2010’s Gucci Guilty. Guilty Absolute Pour Femme is the female counterpart to 2017’s Gucci Guilty Absolute Pour Homme (which I bought and enjoy). What attracted me to Guilty Absolute Pour Femme was its blackberry note (accentuated visually by its purple bottle). I was hoping for a sparkling, natural-smelling blackberry accord mixed with rose and touches of patchouli and Nootka cypress (GoldenWood): a happy summer perfume…
I’ve been experiencing spring fever lately, so it seemed like a good time to pull a sample of some fun-and-fruity fragrance from my sample basket. I ended up with Plenilunio, a recent release from Italian niche line i Profumi di Firenze. Plenilunio’s concept of “a voluptuous bouquet of summer strawberries” with “an enchanting kiss of silver moon beams on the skin” seems appropriate for the season.
In addition to strawberry, Plenilunio features notes of mandarin, white musk, amber and soft woods. What you read is what you get, which is fine, actually; lately we’ve seen way too many poetic lists of fantasy notes (“‘angel mousse’ and ‘gardenia spasms,'” as Angela sort-of jokes) dressing up the thinnest and most prosaic of fragrances…
Strawberry in perfume. Sounds scary, doesn’t it? Strawberry is a note so familiar from jam, yogurt, and Bonne Bell Lip Smackers that it seems like it would instantly deep-six a fragrance. Strawberry carries a lot of baggage.
Imaginary Authors Cape Heartache and Dawn Spencer Hurwitz Amouse Bouche feature strawberries in ways that are fresh and interesting. For me, neither fragrance makes me hungry for shortcake and Cool Whip, and they both lend a new appreciation for strawberry — in completely different ways.
Cape Heartache takes strawberry into unexpected territory by butching it up with resinous notes…
La Collection de Grasse is a new quartet of fragrances from L’Occitane, and something of an introduction, perhaps, to the house’s newly announced in-house perfumer Karine Dubreuil (although she has developed fragrances for L’Occitane in the past, including Eau des Baux, L’Eau des 4 Reines and Myrte from the Notre Flore collection).
Today, reviews of Jasmin & Bergamote and Magnolia & Mûre; coming up on Thursday, Vanille & Narcisse and Thé Vert & Bigarade.
mandarin, bergamot, jasmine, lemon leaves, sandalwood and cedar
This is the one of the four I was most looking forward to, and it is in a fact a pretty enough, very wearable summer-weight floral. It’s a bit citrusy and a bit green (almost grassy), with a pale woody dry down. It’s not indolic, nor even a jasmine bomb…
For years, I thought of Clarins strictly as a higher-end French cosmetics company; then, a friend shared a few gift-with-purchase items with me, and I had the chance to try the brand’s “Relax” shower gel and body lotion. I’ve been interested in Clarins’ fragranced products ever since then, so I looked forward to trying Eau des Jardins when it was launched in May. Eau des Jardins is recommended as an aromatherapeutic product, created with “more than 10 essential oils and three bud extracts (beech, blackcurrant and sorbier)”; the plant-bud extracts are also reportedly beneficial to the skin.
More specifically, the notes of this “treatment fragrance” are listed as an opening of grapefruit, citrus, bergamot and orange; a heart of mint, laurel leaves, rose and blackcurrant bud absolute; and base notes of cedar wood, patchouli, vetiver, white musk. Eau des Jardins’ bottle is visually appealing, with shades of ruby and chartreuse that complement the fragrance well: it’s a blend of tart red fruits and crisp green leaves…