1 star: 17 posts

Whenever I need some basic skincare or makeup, I usually go to the local perfumeries like Planet Parfum or Ici Paris XL. They carry the usual prestige brand suspects and are located on pretty much every corner in Brussels. As I get ready to leave with my purchases, a sales lady usually asks if I would like a spritz of perfume. I usually decline, but on one occasion I gamely decided to try her top choice. That’s how I met the new Dolce & Gabbana Pour Femme and spent the rest of my day trying to scrub it off.

First, a bit of a back story. Dolce & Gabbana Pour Femme has existed since 1992 as an aldehydic floral. Created by perfumers Jean-Pierre Mary and Martine Pallix (she also worked on Comme des Garcons Odeur 53), Pour Femme was the kind of high glamour fragrance with a whiff of the 1980s that you could still find in the early 1990s, and it made quite a statement.

Dramatic though it was, Pour Femme didn’t have much to appeal to the generation of perfume wearers who are used to sweeter, less assertive fragrances. Dolce & Gabbana rectified it by presenting a new version of Pour Femme–a fruity gourmand. Are you surprised?

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I was a late convert to Miss Dior Chérie (2005), the Coco Mademoiselle sibling-scent that expanded a green patchouli note with sticky carnival accords like strawberries and caramel popcorn.  Miss Dior Chérie is aimed at the young; I was converted to it by a nineteen-year-old girl who owned her own makeup store.  She considered it the height of elegance and at first I scoffed, and then I tried.  It was too much fun to pass up, with its neon fun-fair atmosphere bopping around underneath the nose in a major chord of teenage pleasure.  Why didn’t they have stuff like this around when I was fourteen?

With the mechanisms of the perfume industry being what they are, Miss Dior Chérie was recently reformulated and renamed  Miss Dior (the “real” Miss Dior is now called Miss Dior Originale).  Sometimes the reformulations means that a “bad” ingredient was removed and replaced by a “good” (and often inferior) one, and other times it means that something that is no longer available is replaced with something that is.  The truth is, perfumes are reformulated all the time for a variety of reasons, and the differences can be subtle or striking.

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Star rating: 5 stars–outstanding/potential classic, 4 stars–very good, 3 stars–adequate, 2 stars–disappointing, 1 star–poor.

Caron continues to regale us with conventional fragrances, stubbornly clinging to the idea that this is what modern consumers want. While Caron promises that “Délire de Roses presents the Queen of Flowers in an infinite variety of moods – audacious, tender, teasing, dreamy, provocative,” I only find that it captured rose in a conventional manner. The bland fruity top, the generic musky drydown and the nonexistent character… I think I have just described the majority of today’s launches. Why does Caron think that theirs might stand out in this crowd?

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Star rating: 5 stars–outstanding/potential classic, 4 stars–very good, 3 stars–adequate, 2 stars–disappointing, 1 star–poor.

In my 10 Perfumes I Should Love … But Do Not, Serge Lutens Rahat Loukoum occupies the top spot. It contains everything I should enjoy, but the end result smells like a cross between a cheap almond candle and a cleaning product. It is also one of the most popular Lutens fragrance. One of the reasons I finally decided to write this review is to hear the views of those who love this fragrance and gladly wear it. Since all of us perceive fragrances slightly differently, perhaps I am missing something. As things stand however, Rahat Loukoum, inspired by the Turkish confection, is not much of a delight for me.

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Star rating: 5 stars–outstanding/potential classic, 4 stars–very good, 3 stars–adequate, 2 stars–disappointing, 1 star–poor.

I am going to lay my cards on the table. I love Chanel to the point of forgiving it Chance and Bleu de Chanel. Even as I had qualms with the exclusive collections from other luxury houses, I have enjoyed and purchased every single perfume from Chanel’s Les Exclusifs. That is, until Jersey came onto the scene. To put it mildly, I am baffled by this scent, which is an orchestration of excellent ingredients that ends up smelling like a cheap Duane Reade candle.

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