100% Love {MORE} and Benevolent Blogging

REMINDER: As you’ve seen all over the perfume blogs, we have joined in this Mother’s Day Benevolent Blogging effort. We are giving $1.00 for every comment you leave today and tomorrow. Our chosen charity is the Orphan Foundation of America. We figured, as we close in on Mother’s Day, who could use more support than kids without mothers? If you’d like to learn more about this effort, visit Benevolent Blogging. Tune in tomorrow for our Special Edition of Mother’s Day Fragrance Recommendations.

Now, on to today’s fragrance…

I got my first sample of S-Perfume 100% Love from Patty in the original Candy Samples box. I´d read about it, and a fragrance described as (essentially) rose, chocolate and incense is just wrong, even if it´s put together by a genius like Sophia Grojsman. So my expectations were low, in spite of the rave reviews I´d read on Now Smell This and elsewhere. I don´t love rose (although we´re working in it.) I am not a fan of food fragrances. Incense was the only piece that made it interesting.

I was enchanted by 100% Love from the first tentative sniff. The rose is there most strongly in the opening, and it is a frank, clear rose without ever becoming the à¢â‚¬Å“roseà¢â‚¬? in quotations I´ve learned to loathe so much in perfumery: that plastic, too-sweet room freshener rose that makes my stomach turn. There´s something about the chocolate à¢â‚¬” which follows right behind the rose à¢â‚¬” that keeps it honest. The chocolate is a bar of high-grade extra-dark, or mole, or the smell of cocoa hulls, strong but not sweet. A few minutes later, the incense wanders in and hangs around for the rest of the story.

There is nothing else that smells remotely like this. You can parse the smells (yes, there is the rose, there is the chocolate, here comes the incense) but they meld together so beautifully and seamlessly that it is easy to imagine 100% Love as something God thought up but just didn´t get around to creating, until Grojsman picked up the brief.

I find 100% Love to be reasonably long-lasting, so I wasn’t begging for a stronger version. But other reviews I read expressed a desire for stronger juice.

The 100% Love {MORE} version is, in fact, much stronger right out of the bottle. To my nose the most significant difference in this version is that the chocolate is omnipresent, outweighing the rose even in the opening, although the rose is there. The rose-and-chocolate duo smells a bit different to me than the original, and I also detect a mild green note in the middle of {MORE} that I do not smell in the original, as if you were getting a bit of the leaves with your roses. The rest of the presentation is the same, more or less, with the incense slowly fading in over the first 10 minutes, although I never get as much incense from the {MORE} as in the original. To me it renders itself almost woody, like walking into an old wooden storage closet. Not a criticism; just different.

I spent several days last week applying and re-applying the two, sniffing back and forth. While they are from the same stock, they are not the same fragrance. The {MORE} is more opaque, although there is nothing heavy or cloying about it. It has the interesting density of, say, Passage d´Enfer, which manages to be bold and buoyant simultaneously. The chocolate in the {MORE} version is especially rich and dense, and in the first minute or two it is extraordinary. The {MORE} version also has a bit of spiciness in the drydown à¢â‚¬” a pinch of cinnamon that hints at a carnation.

Which is better? That would be a matter of personal preference, depending on whether you want more rose and don´t mind the lightness (the original,) or heavier with more chocolate and a hint of spice (the latter.) They are both beautiful and I think that {MORE} is strong enough it should please those people clamoring for, well, more.

Which one do I like better? I changed the answer to that question four times before posting this. As a rule I like stronger concentrations, and I am wild about the choco-Nirvana opening and the carnation in the {MORE} version. However, the thought of never smelling the soaring rose of the original, a rose that makes me think of the clear, deep ringing notes of a glass bell, and the stunning incense of that drydown fills me with sadness. So I suppose, if I were forced to choose, I would reluctantly choose the original. Fortunately, though, I don’t have to choose. I’d recommend owning both.

100% Love {MORE} is available for $80 (60ml) from S-Perfume. The original version is also available. There is a sample program.

******

The winner of the Fracas Giveaway is … Emotenote! Please send me your address via Contact us. Congratulations!