Narciso Rodriguez for Her EdP Intense

Narciso Rodriguez For Her IntenseToday we finish up March´s Mojo Madness with the third fragrance that caught my eye at Saks – the new Narciso Rodriguez For Her Eau de Parfum Intense, which is allegedly a limited edition at Saks and comes in a pink metallic bottle (shown left.)

I have an idea!  Let´s hire Narciso a life coach and get him to give his fragrances real names!  As it stands, you can´t tell them apart without a spreadsheet and photos – they´re all various combinations of the designer´s name with micro-clues like her, musc, and eau de parfum.  It drives me nuts.  Here´s a link to Helg´s exhaustive guide to the NR oeuvre on Perfume Shrine, which I like to think of as “what is the name of that Narciso?  Wait … is that the pink one or the black one?” and for which she deserves some sort of award for patience.

Many of you know I mocked the entire NR line brutally for a couple of years as non-scented dreck until I went to LA with Patty and … whaddya know, fell in love with the plain old original NR EDT, in the black bottle, which I promptly bought and reviewed.  Most of the rest of the line I still pretty much can´t smell, and I put on some Musc for Her (the oil) recently and stuck it under the nose of five perfumista buddies, and guess what?  They couldn´t smell it either.  The Narciso EDP in the pale pink bottle I can smell but it´s much more floral and I don´t like as much as the regular.  There´s always other weird bottles of NR sitting around too (this time they have a purse size bottle that´s labeled hair scent.)

When the nice ladies at Saks, having already wowed me with Issey Miyake´s A Scent and Natori, whipped this one out, I gave it a go.  Along with Natori, this is the other fragrance I may purchase to thank those long-suffering ladies over there for their patience.

The notes for the For Her Intense are musk, ylang-ylang, jasmine and orange blossom.  In terms of character, it´s much more in the style of the original EDT from 2004 than the later, more floral EDP.   By the way, somebody correct me but I think all of these were done by Francis Kurkdjian and Christine Nagel.

For comparison purposes, the original For Her EDT´s notes are (more or less) musk, orange blossom, osmanthus, amber, vanilla, woods, vetiver.

On my skin, the Intense is less focused on the orange blossom than the original EDT.  While the fragrances resemble each other, Intense is more what I imagine Musc for Her would be like if I could actually smell anything.  I put Intense on at Saks and pretty much forgot about it while I was all aquiver over Natori, etc.  Then (you know how these things go…) I found myself hoovering various parts of my body later that day, trying to sort out where that delicious smell was coming from.  It was the Intense.

Intense is about the warm, slightly toasty smell of another person you find attractive.  It is the For Her EDT minus the part that smells recognizably like perfume.  As such, Intense is the consummate wallpaper scent.  It is very much in the background, unobtrusive, and if that holds no interest for you, well – there you go, move on, nothing to see here.  However, if you share my admiration for the subtleties of these sorts of scents, Intense is probably the one I have enjoyed most in terms evoking the warmth of another human being.  I have devised my own two mental categories for these scents – “skin” scents that I can´t smell unless I jam my nose into my wrist, and “aura” or “halo” scents that project a delicate – but detectable – perfumed presence around me.  Intense is an aura scent.  It´s very subtle but noticeably there for me, and as I have discovered with other scents of this type, if it works for you it really works.  I can smell Intense for a full day after I´ve sprayed it, a delightful, comfortable presence around me.

***BTW – both Helg and an online shopping site refer to the fragrance as The Musk Collection and Limited Edition Musk; I can tell you that the outside of the bottle says Narciso Rodriguez for Her (at the top) and eau de parfum intense (at the bottom, which for some reason is not on the bottle pictured here).  What is the precise, legal name of this scent?  I have no idea.   Blame Narciso.

  • carter says:

    L’Animatiere.

  • Robin says:

    Michael Edwards calls it “NARCISO RODRIGUEZ FOR HER MUSC EDP INTENSE 2009”, which I think is funny enough that it ought to be the official name.

  • karin says:

    I have the EDT, and the bottle is almost empty! Bought it before the deluge (used to have maybe 10 perfumes – now I have more like 50!?). Interchanged it with others in my small perfume collection at the time – Coco Mademoiselle, Allure, Angel… It’s been somewhat neglected of late, with my sampling craze and trying to pay attention to my other zillion bottles. I wore it a couple of weeks ago, and remembered why I like it. Great scent.

    I’d love to try the other NRs, but I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. I know 50 (not to mention minis and decants) may sound like pittance to some of you, but I think I’ve hit my max. I’ve split the collection in a loose two categories–spring/summer, fall/winter–but still, when I look in my spring/summer drawer and try to decide what to wear, I get stressed!! But yet, there are SO many fragrances that I’ve yet to try, and so many more that I want bottles of. It’s making me think I need to drop out and go into hiding for awhile so I can focus on my current stash and not get lured into accumulating more…

    There are about ten perfumes that I no longer appreciate, though, so I’m thinking this is the best way to clear out the dregs and replace them with something better. I’m not quite sold on the whole swapping thing. Though I’d love to get rid of these bottles, I don’t like the idea of trading for someone else’s cast-offs. I get much more pleasure out of purchasing brand new bottles in their original, sealed packaging. Hmmm…perhaps I should just straight sell them.

    Now that I’ve bored everyone with my rambling… 😉

    • March says:

      Hey, your limit is your limit! I don’t mind swappage at all, although I’m a lazy swapper. Another way is selling them, but then you usually have to mail them… or just put them away somewhere for a year?

      • karin says:

        Ha ha…YES! Hide them!!! Hey, ya never know. That Mugler Eau de Star or Emporio Armani Diamonds may be collectors items one day. 😉

        • karin says:

          BTW, I don’t think I ever “appreciated” Diamonds or Eau de Star. They were both frivolous unsniffed purchases that proved fruitless. Lessons from my earlier buy before you try days. Ugh! Lesson learned! (Though I have to say I *did* have some success with that strategy, though I wouldn’t recommend it!!!)

          • Musette says:

            I have a friend who adores Diamonds and D Intense – if you want to get rid of yours, shout me a holla! I have no clear idea what it smells like – I rarely see her and when I do I am usually wearing something like Bal or JMadame that blows the paint off whatever she’s wearing – but she seems to like it.

            xo >-)

  • Nava says:

    I got a lot of orange blossom and musk from this and liked it very much. Admittedly though, for me, the bottle is the best part. Love that metallic purpley-pink.

    Speaking of life coaches, maybe we should refer Narciso to Jayson Blair, the former plageristic (I’ve packed away my dictionaries) NY Times reporter, who is now a life coach here in NoVA. What could this guy possibly have to offer: how to be monumentally lazy and get away with it for as long as possible while attempting to convince people of your fascinatingly vast intellect? Narciso does great clothes, but the fragrances need work! 😀

    • March says:

      Jayson Blair as life coach? Woman, you are making that up.

      And yes the clothes are fabulous.

      • Nava says:

        As I live and breathe; I swear I did not fabricate that disturbing nugget. He’s originally from Centerville, VA. Anyone who has any idea what he did in a past life and would still seek him out as a life coach, needs way more than a life coach.

        • carter says:

          It took me five minutes to get my mouth to shut properly after I read this. Talk about balls. Okay, well no one was, but still, that takes some huge honking Schweddy balls.

  • Shelley says:

    Ah, what language geekiness??? 😉 I’m all over aura vs. skin…to me, an “aura” scent would hang above your skin, ready to be discovered without the moving in, the snorfling of nose right on you that skin scent would require.

    (Does “snorfling” help with language issues? hmmmm…)

    • March says:

      Nope, snorfling is perfectly clear! I snorfle the gals here all the time.

    • Musette says:

      Hey! where you is?

      Did you see the Smoked Bacon butternut toffee? Didja?

      xoxoxo >-)

      • Shelley says:

        Still in the land of cable cars, fabulous food, and trash attendants ready to, as my son said, “school you in the ways of waste disposal.”

        Have been to Diptyque and Gump’s for the smells…but have not, as of yet, encountered smoked bacon butternut toffee. Am busy doing many sacrificial taste testings, XOX truffles vs. Recchiuti chocolate. So far, both win. 😉

  • Musette says:

    I know what you mean about that ‘toasty’ smell. There was this man, whose skin and hair looked like caramel………he had that toasty smell..or I wonder: did he have that smell because I was wild about him?

    Anyhoo…..I never thought to differentiate between aura scent and skin scent. I was thinking of Arpege thusly this very morning – for me, it has a bit of that aura/halo feel to it, if it’s applied lightly.

    What say you?

    xoxoxo >-)

    • March says:

      You know what a language geek I can be (along with many others on this board) and I am always inventing new ways to look at things. 🙂 So at some point it occurred to me that I was using “skin scent” to mean several different (conflicting) things. I love me some skin scent when I want to keep my scent private; aura is almost the opposite, but not something obnoxious. I mean, Giorgio is not an “aura” scent. Giorgio’s … what, a miasma scent?

      I definitely agree on the new Arpege. The vintage one I find different enough it wears more like a classic, heavier fragrance on me.

    • carter says:

      My first boyfriend, whose name was Rice, btw, smelled like that. My knees would buckle. Every time I hear the song Caramel by Suzanne Vega I think of him.

  • Melissa says:

    I can smell most of these, with the exception of the oil one, which as you mentioned recently, might as well be vegetable oil. My problem is that Narciso’s naming problem is complicated by his bottle problem. They all look alike to me. Well, okay, different colors, if you count one with a clear edge and one with a black edge as different.

    One or two other designers have the naming disorder, among them, Gianfranco Ferre. I like about 4 or 5 of those, and luckily, the bottles all look completely different. But Narciso? No, he has two disorders. Narcissistic naming disorder and bottle identity disorder. So, I just stand there at Saks, glazing over and listlessly spritzing…ummmm. It’s pretty though.

    • March says:

      This cracked me up. I think we should definitely add NND and BID to our perfumer’s lexicon. And Ferre is a great example, aren’t they all named Ferre?

      The only NR bottle that looks a little different is the Essence. I love that silver bottle, I wish I’d liked the fragrance 🙁

      • carter says:

        Yes, March, they are. Ferre is the name that immediately popped into my head when you raised this topic. I always get so confused that I just give up and don’t buy any of it. It’s a variation on the Bodacious Bodalicious problem.

        • March says:

          Actually Melissa says that up there 🙂 I think she is in fact the Queen of Ferres, as Louise said. I’m pretty sure she has them all, probably in different formulations.

    • Louise says:

      You’re the Queen of the Ferres, Melissa 🙂

  • Louise says:

    I get theeees close to getting the NR EdT, ’cause I can almost smell the musk in it, but ultimately all I get is sorta orange blossom. For the others, I believe y’all that there is something nice there.

    I tried the Intense (or whatever it’s called) recently at Saks, and had the unfortunate “huh?” reaction-couldn’t smell it. I checked with my budding perfumisto son, and he similarly couldn’t smell anything at all. Ah, genetics…

    On you, though, I did smell something more than orange blossom water. Wait…could it be musk? It was quite pretty on you, whatever it was I smelled 🙂

    • March says:

      WEll, you were smelling my musky fabulousness. 😉 Or not, pretty sure that was the NR. In my opinion I bring out the musk in certain scents. Not in a bad way. Wait, there IS no bad way to bring out the musk, right?

  • Aura Scents! What are your other favorite aura scents? I love the Aura of ELPC Tuberose Gardenia but hate how it actually smells on my skin. The Amber Ylang-ylang has a nice one too…and Sensuous… in fact, I love the sillage of those ELs. Next in my head is Prada Infusion d’Iris and David Yurman (!) – they seem to smell so different awaft than they do when I’m sniffing then ON me. What gives?

    • March says:

      Lessee…. off the top of my head? That Prada IdI is a great summer one, isn’t it? That has really grown on me. Other favorites include Fendi Asja EDT, the Amber Ylang, several DSHs… honestly? A fair number of “aura” scents I can barely smell if I go looking for them on my skin. Just not the same, ya know? But in the air around me, yess!!