Today’s musings were triggered by Aquolina Chocolovers, which I sampled at Sephora. Nobody loves chocolate more than I do. I consider chocolate one of my major food sources. Chocolovers is a gourmand fragrance, with a sweet cocoa opening and a long-lasting chocolate-dust follow up. It’s redeemed for me by significant red-pepper-type heat in the drydown, which keeps it more in the range of chocolate mole and less chocolate icing.
While I admit that by any objective and subjective measure I found Chocolovers pleasing, is not something I would ever want to wear. Tobacco, iris, incense, or cypress? Sure. But chocolate? No thanks.
I can’t think of a single dessert or food-y fragrance offhand that I love. I keep trying to sort out why. A number of them are toothache-sweet, and I’m not fond of sugar-cookie smells unless they’re coming from the oven.
Do I have some sort of bias against gourmand fragrances? Something deeply rooted in my id or DNA that doesn’t want to smell edible? I like tea fragrances a lot, why not coffee or chocolate? Intrigued, I rooted around in the candy box for more samples to test and found:
CDG Series 7 Sweet: Spicy Cocoa huh. I was fully prepared to dislike this based on the name. It started off as exactly what it’s called — cocoa, with a hint of citrus, like one of those chocolate oranges from my Christmas stockings of yore. But 15 minutes later it does a clever morph into cocoa combined with Versace Dreamer and pipe tobacco, with a big pinch of cayenne. The longer I smell this, the more I like it — but it doesn’t really smell like cocoa for long.
CDG Series 7 Sweet: Wood Coffee Dark, thick coffee, with a tiny bit of syrup sweetness (think Turkish coffee), consumed in Gepetto’s workshop, surrounded by wood shavings. Does that sound unappealing? It’s sort of … attractive. I’m huffing the back of my hand like a blue tick hound, which means there is only one thing left to do:
CDG Spicy Cocoa layered with Wood Coffee Eureka! This adds to the lasting power, too.
Oh, look, here’sAva Luxe Cafe Noir. I’m a little put off by its color, which is somewhere between maple syrup and cranberry juice. On me it is, well, cafe noir — black coffee, with a little spice and maybe a pinch of sandalwood in the base. I could use this on one wrist to clear my nose between sniffs of other things. Again, the Chocolovers Conundrum — it’s a gorgeous smell, because coffee is a gorgeous smell. But if you gave me a bottle of this juice I doubt I’d ever wear it. I want to consume the coffee, the chocolate, the cookie, the pumpkin pie. I don’t want to wear them.
So. Help me out here. Do you have a favorite fragrance that smells like something from the bakery or the coffee shop? What is it and why do you like it?
Image: www.shokoladki.ru (hey, ladies, is that Russian for chocolate? Great word!)
I really like the CdeG series, both of those you like, they are probably my favorites in the coffee/chocolate line. I’m taking a closer look at New Haarlem today, which I like too, it’s got that Chinatown feel to it, but with coffee instead, which has a pretty nice effect if you like Chinatown.
Shokoladki means chocolates. Shokolad is chocolate. It does sound cute.
I feel exactly the same way about gourmand fragrances. I love chocolate, but I do not want to smell like it.
Testing comments out in the pretty pinkness of it all!
Test, test, 1-2-3. Is the comment section working?
Amen!!! Folks, please be patient with us while we work out our kinks…
Oh, lordy, now I actually have to learn how to USE this thing… hey, Patty, can I just forward all my posts to you from now on, and you put them up?
No way, this will be way easy, really!
Love the new look. Beautiful!
I’m not good with most gourmands either, but I think that’s based on an A*men prejudice.
Molinard Tendre Friandise is about the only real candy fragrance I like. I wish I could explain what sets it apart, but it is late afternoon and my brain is quite dead.
March,
My dear Shokoladka, I am sorry I cannot find your email address, arrgh, so …thank you so much for the One True Ring…which, I am shocked to say, when sniffed from the vial (I have not applied it to my skin yet) smells exactly like Cree’d Fleur de The Rose Bulgarie