Welcome to today’s post, where I’m not gonna say a single thing about CREED {insert snooty trademark here} so we won’t get any rabid Creed fanboys stopping by and whipping out their – oh, never mind. Well, anyway, it’s been at least a month since I reviewed a Kenzo, right? Right?
In The Guide, Tania Sanchez says (and quotes LT agreeing) that the original Flower by Kenzo is quite similar to the original Royal Bain de Champagne by Caron, about which I would have zero idea, having never smelled that one, but if you’ve been lemming it, you might want to stop by one of the eleventy-million places that sell Flower. While you’re there, I’d sniff Flower Oriental if they have it, which is probably my favorite Flower flanker, with a darkish, incense-y drydown. I am also partial to the Winter Flower and Le Parfum. The original Flower is just too powdery and sweet on me (hawthorne, rose, violet, hedione, opoponax, musk, vanilla) and it wafts a bit of that doughy thing I get, sometimes from amber and sometimes from heliotrope. It’s done by Alberto Morillas, btw, for you fans.
A couple months ago, Kenzo released Flower by Kenzo I Have Another Boring Flanker Name Essentielle, the latest in a long line of flankers to the original Kenzo Flower, this one with an emphasis on rose, jasmine, more musk, pink pepper and frankincense. And HOW COOL IS THAT BOTTLE!!! Squeeee! They’re even more stretched out than the others!
It smells to me more or less like I’d expect it to smell – a more condensed version of Flower, which I’ve been trying and failing to fall in love with for years, because it’s lauded by several people whose opinion I respect. Essentielle strikes me as a stronger, more compressed, more effusive version of the original – although bear in mind that we’re talking about Kenzo here, not Serge Lutens. This isn’t likely to bowl anyone over in the elevator.
I really like the top, which seems to me the largest divergence from the original. Instead of the powdery onslaught that makes me wince a little, I get a whiff of something vegetal and green that reminds me of magnolia. It also strikes me as less girly than Flower, probably closer to the Winter LE, although dangit, I can’t find my sample. It never achieves the almost candied sweetness that the original achieves on me, although the drydown is similar. There’s a breadiness to it that is also quite enticing. After an hour or so it reminds me somewhat of Barbara Bui, only smelled side by side Barbara Bui seems more faceted and complex, with the honey top and the spicy incense, whereas Essentielle remains a perfectly smooth orb of scent.
Who would like this? Well, fans of the original Flower should definitely give it a whirl. People who sorta liked Flower but wished it were less powdery and sweet might also like it. People who like powder/dough comfort, definitely.
Let’s throw this open to a general powder/dough discussion. People get Play-Doh from all sorts of strange places – and a shout-out to our overseas friends, my understanding is that Play-Doh is in general an unhelpful reference for you all, being a quintessentially American product/smell? Is that true?
Scents in which I get Play-Doh, or just dough, include POTL, Anne Pliska (so those are amber play-dohs?), Barbara Bui (powder-dough), L’Artisan Bois Farine (sourdough), and several of the Kenzo dealies. Powder, like baby powder, can overlap in this area. Sometimes it’s powdered dough. Let’s see, what else? Estee Amber Ylang is Amber-dough. L’Artisan Jour de Fete is Play-doh/wet flour.
Dough I have a fair amount of tolerance for. Powder, not so much. Lorenzo Villoresi Teint de Neige, which is the powder against all powders shall be judged, much like Ambre Narguile (aka The Nazgul) is the amber of all ambers … gah, where was I? Anyhoo, some people loooove that Teint de Neige. I’d rather have a cavity filled, thanks.
Do you love dough? Baby powder? Both? Where’s the overlap? And what are some of the dough scents and powder scents I’ve forgotten? I know there are lots. Now’s the chance for you folks who hate L’Heure Bleue and Apres l’Ondee to come on out and tell the rest of us we’re idiots!
I enjoy powdery when it evokes makeup. For YEARS I avoided No. 5 for its powderiness, until I tried some vintage parfum. Wow, gorgeous. Love L’Heure Bleue in parfum, love Apres l’Ondee, love Mariella Burani, love Shalimar Light; liked Flower better than Amour but wouldn’t wear either.
POTL gave me that Tang-dust-in-the-back-of-my-throat feeling that I despise (I always delegate Tang preparation to my kids!), and Louve’s cherry-almond made me wash very swiftly. Barbara Bui sat on my wrist boring me for a couple of hours. Sigh.
They still make Tang? Seriously?
I’m going to have to try Louve since I like Rahat.
The CEO suffers DT’s if he doesn’t get his regular Tang infusion. And if we run out of Life cereal, he does the Wicked Witch of the West melt-into-the-floor moan and scream.
8-|
I thought Flower Essentielle was beautiful, and feel guilty for not loving it. Going to give it another shot though.
I am having the most peculiar glitch on the blog today. I literally have to leave the page, close the browser and come back to get it to load new comments. 😕 Which I know are there, because they’re in my email inbox.
So you didn’t love it? Which do you love? I think Amour is my first, followed by Oriental. I also liked Indian Holi a lot (a lot more than you, I think!)
I do love Flower Oriental, and I thought the Winter Flowers was great. I love Amour, and Kenzo Air. You’re right, I did not love Indian Holi! But in general I think we have about the same take on Kenzo.
I’ve really been wanting to try Essentielle, but you’ve made it sound like it’s not very much different from the original. I was hoping it was more, well… “flowery” with all that marketing hoo-hah about rose & jasmine and whatnot.
You may remember that I love Winter Flowers. I also thought Spring Flowers was not so good at all.
Powder? Not so much, but I guess it depends (or in Facebook-speak: “it’s complicated”). I love me some L’Heure Bleue. I also used to love Burberry Brit for Men, which is a rosy-powder fest. However, my idea of powder hell is Habit Rouge (and IMO, PdN New York is sort of like “Hell Lite”).
As for dough, I *really* love heliotrope, which I guess walks that powder-dough line. The Etro one is great, and I’m a POTL fanboy. And one of my ideas of heaven is being basted in Bois Farine.
I definitely wouldn’t describe it as more “flowery” as in floral. But it’s certainly less sweet, powdery and amorphous. Winter Flowers is quite nice.
And now I want to give you a big, inappropriate hug for loving dough and Bois Farine. And in general. Because you like interesting things. 😡
Well thank you! :d I’m from NJ, but do live in California, birthplace of the inappropriate hug, so I’m prepped.
The most recent “interesting” thing to capture my attention, by the way, is ELdO Vierges & Toreros. I am loving that leather-funkmonster more than I ever would have guessed and know I’ll end up with a FB someday when my decant gets low.
Joe, have you tried the different formulations of HR? There are so many now, with varying degrees of emphasis on the powder.
Carter, I’m afraid the big ol’ decant I have has kind of ruined even the idea of HR for me, so I’m not too keen on a Goldilocks-style hunt for the just right amount of powder. It makes me scrunch my nose so I think I need to just swap it out and move on. Oh well… no lack of smellies even in its absence, right?
No, in fact I would love to be able to pare down the sniffage sirens and simpify, simplify…
I’m not into powder, so that’s been a deal-breaker on many a fragrance. Bois Farine gives me flour, not powder, but oh, she is a temperamental beastie, that one. Emphasis on the MENTAL. Some days Bois Farine is weirdly beautiful, other days she is rancid sweaty foulness. It’s probably the most schizophrenic ‘fume I try to wear.
I get the Play-Doh note from POTL, but not from SL’s Rahat Loukhoum, which has a similar notes list. May the SL is missing the salty amber and that’s important?
I also get the plasticky note from vanilla-based ‘fumes sometimes–I assumed it was cheapo vanillin, but now I’m thinkin’ maybe there’s some cheapo musk to blame as well. 😕
Cheapo vanilla musk? And I swear, skin chemistry. Because some people get doll-head a lot more than others. Knocks wood.
Bois Farine I want to love but it’s nasty on me. Rancid. Like old flour.
Play-doh is my first scent love. I can’t think of anything in a scent that makes me happier, which is probably why I loved the original Flower so much. However, I wore it during a time of my life that was awfully trying – I can’t smell it now without thinking about that.
Oh, that’s hard. I think most all of us have a story of a fragrance we love that is so mixed up in a time in our lives that it’s impossible to untangle, and sometimes we can’t wear it any more.
I must be immune to the dough-note (doughnuts,anyone?), because I don’t get dough from POTL, or any of the scents mentioned, but I do think that Ambre Narguile is dead on apple pie; and I love it.
I used to be able to deal with a bit of powder on occasion, but then I smelled Tient de Niege. Now I am off powder forever. Apologies to Melissa. 😡
OK you are a freak with the apple pie from AN, just saying. Although you’re right on on the Teint.
Nava see my comment above — I’m write in the Apple Pie freak corner with ya!
But March, dear-don’t you find Sensuelle Russie almost a dupe of AN? Just asking 😕
Nope, Sensuelle Russie is warm, spicy goodness, and AN is … cloying and gag-inducing.
Well back at ya, cuz the apple pie amber grenade Narguile makes me head for the hills!
Ok.Ok! It’s Sensuelle R. for me today :)>-
Aargh… I’ve never gotten plastic babydoll head from anything and now I’m terrified that the next time I wear my beloved Kenzo Amour it will pop out at me and ruin Amour forever for me. Sometimes a little knowledge can be a terrifying thing…
Of course, I do like some powdery scents (no baby powder though) and like the doughy-bready scent, so maybe it won’t hit me. Powder is definitely an acquired taste, as I used to associate it with my grandma. It took a long time for me to come around and, even now, there are some days that I don’t care for it much. I don’t know if I smell it as strongly as some other people though – because there are some scents that others think are huge powder bombs, like Habit Rouge, Stetson, and Youth Dew, and I either only get slight powder in the drydown or I smell the powder, but it’s not overwhelming.
I know I know! I loved something until Luca Turin pointed out the rose, and then that was all I could smell! Same thing happened with anise in another scent.
Youth Dew? Really? That thing is so skanky on me. In a good way.
I know – I don’t really get POWDER from Youth Dew, but other people say it all the time. I don’t know if I would have associated grapefruit scents with urine on my own or not – but it’s almost always all I can smell now. 🙁
Luca calls Habit Rouge “sweet dust.”
My favorite powder is iris powder. I love Apres L’Ondee, with its heliotrope powder. I don’t get play-doh from it on my skin. I’ve sniffed L’Heure Bleue, but it did nothing for me. I found it meh.
My favorite Kenzo so far is the original Amour, but there are several I haven’t sniffed yet. I’ve got samples of the original Flower, but it has never appealed to me. The new one sounds a bit better, especially if it’s greener. I’m a sucker for green scents.
If I had to choose one, my favorite is also the original Amour, I love it and wear it regularly. And by “green” in the new one, it’s got something leafy that makes it less sweet, but it’s not like a big blast of grassy galbanum.
Reading the comments, I realized that these categories just beg some sub-categorization. Dough, sourdough, powder-dough, amber powder, aldehydic powder, super-uber-babypowder bomb, plastic dollhead powder dough…..:o
I haven’t found a truly doughy fragrance that I love. Bois Farine smells nutty yeasty to me (dough-nut?) and I just plain dislike POTL. Move toward powdery and I’m happier. Barbara Bui is okay and as Louise mentioned, the aldehydes and tobaccos with powdery notes are perfect.
As for powder bombs, my decant of Teint de Neige gets an occasional spritz on my bedsheets and a tiny spray to my wrists on cold nights. Very guilty pleasure?
The Many Faces of Dough. I should have called this post Flour Power. I wish Bois Farine were less sour on me. 🙁
You Teint Freaks! :d
Oh, I didn’t know we had Play-Doh in the UK – we probably didn’t when I was little; we had Plasticine which I have to assume smelled different. I do have an olfactory memory of it….
Anyway I adore and worship l’Heure Bleue and Apres l’Ondee and I love good, powdery scents of all descriptions (iris, face powder, baby to a certain extent – well really just Johnson’s itself, which, yes, has a deifferent scent in the UK). What was the questions again??
Never sniffed any of the Kenzos; I used to like his clothes, though.
Well, if you worship LHB and Apres, we are good to go. The Kenzos are excellent, but Apres they are not. 🙂
I get Play-Doh BIG TIME from L’Huere Bleue, and EL’s (old version) of Private Collection — since I haven’t yet smelled the newer ones I don’t know about that. There is a continum, er, scale, I think, between “plastic-y” to “Doll Head” to “Play-Doh.” Yesterday I got a little plastic from the end-stage drydown of PdN’s Number One — a surprise. And B. Bui is fairly plastic-y from the get go, but it’s not a sour plastic, it’s a musky one, and doesn’t bother me.
It must be some vanilla/tonka resin-y thing.
L’Aimant is powdery in a good way, and Miss Dior. A lot of the vintages are. I have a bottle of vintage Habanita, though, that is powdery and bitter at once.
you get powder in L’aimant? I get it in L’Origan but not in L’Aimant. Huh:-?
xo >-)
I get powder in L’Aimant, too (bottle of pdt, prob. 70’s). Nice makeup-y face powder, rather elegant. No powder in L’Origan, but I only have it in parfum and that might make a difference.
What Mals86 said. Vintage Lanvin Crescendo is also a seriously powdery frag, very similar to LHB.
In Italy we played with something called Pongo (different smell), although my nephew now has Play-doh. Don’t care for it at all.
Other doughy/yeasty smells I like.
Doughy/yeasty is ok as long as it doesn’t smell rancid.
I’m open to the whole powder/dough thing and own Teint de Neige, which should tell you something about my tastes. I love TdN but my hubby says it smells a little bit like baby sick, so I can’t wear it around him. 🙁
BTW: I can confirm that Play Doh has infiltrated Europe. We have it in the UK and also here in Switzerland, so that’s probably got Germany covered too.
Yes, I am thinking that you should not wear a fragrance that your husband describes as baby sick around him… we could do a separate post on fragrances we don’t trot out in front of our nearest and dearest who hate them. 🙂 My husband doesn’t like some of the really butch/earthy scents on me, I think for him it’s uncomfortably like sniffing another man (although, interestingly, if I put on a classic men’s cologne it doesn’t bug him.)
:”>:”>:”> i do love teint de neige in all its complex powderyness…and all of the above quoted powders…but in saying that i have smelled it on three different people and only one wears it with that huge powdery sillage..the other two wore it quite elegantly and quieter (if that is possible)!!!! am not sure how it wears on me…but i love to smell it. there…i’ve come out with it now..and i also love the ambers:”>:”>
I wear a touch of Teint de Neige to bed. Very comforting. Now I’ve come out with it too! :d
So there you have it. My guess is that if you kill it off a bit on your skin, it’s probably quite nice.
I never played with real play-doh as a girl-since my mom insisted on some flour-salt-water homemade goo with as a “natural” alternative. The joy of a hippy-mom :d/ I also refused Barbies, preferring Tonka trucks, but still am plagued by the Plastic Doll Head malady. The Kenzos are some of the worst offenders in this category, along with BB, Sonya Rykiel for chicks, many vanillics. The sole Kenzo exception is the Oriental-somehow the incense kills the dolly 😮
I do like some powdery scents-including your friend Courtesan-which goes skanky-powder on my hide. Many of the Chanels have a powderiness to their aldehydes, and it pleases me. Other notes that can be powdery on me are vetivers (Onda does this, in a good way) and many tobaccos-Vento Canale, Chergui, TF. I can’t do Teint de Neige, though-but I still have the samp you foisted on me years ago-perhaps as a screener of early friendship :))
And what’s up with the “sourness” of Bois Farine?-I just get nutty goodness 8-}
I join you on the Plastic Doll Head thingy. I think I have isolated with certain combos (not all, the beast is elusive) of vanilla and oppoponax or vanilla and tonka. Makes me gag :-&
I think some ambers (poor quality?) contribute to the dolly thingy :-&
You are probably right, must be a combo of several ingredients. Shalimar does it for me big time and I get it also from quality ‘fumes like Lyric Woman.
Shalimar does it for me, too. At least, the current EdT does – I dunno about other incarnations.
Havana Vanille is a bad offender – all the worse because I had such high hopes for it.
Ava Luxe Milk, Madeline and LTBL are baaaaad too; actually the first one I ever found doll head in was Milk.
So I venture that it’s a particular vanilla and musk combo that does it.
Ooh!11!1! I had the hippy flour-water-salt-dough, too! You just totally triggered that memory, I had forgotten all about it.
Did you at least get food coloring in yours? We did-how drab it’d be all beige-y 🙁
You’re lucky – ours stayed beige. And then got eaten, of course.
That plastic doll-head thing is so depressing, that must drive you nuts. And I feel for you with the homemade Play-Doh — oh, the inhumanity when you could have nasty toxic chemical Play-Doh! The kids come home with it from school sometimes…
Bois Farine is sour on me too. Like peanuts that have gone a bit rancid. 🙁
I got both. And my mother would buy me the Barbie outfit I was convinced I would die without (pink satin strapless evening gown with REAL rabbit fur stole) and then she would make me another outfit similar to the Mattel one, but better. She made me a midnight-blue brocade silk evening dress with a REAL mink stole cut from some old coat she had inherited and wasn’t the type to wear. She also saved all of the 40s and 50s bombshell paper dolls and their clothes (Marylin Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor) that my older sisters played with between the pages of about five Montgomery Wards and Sears catalogs so that I could play with them, too, ten years later. AND she saved cereal boxes, tin cans, and all kinds of food packaging and brown paper bags so that my brother and I could play “grocery store” out of our garage. Our friends would “drive” up on their bikes and shop with Monopoly money, and we would ring them up and load their baskets. She was pretty amazing 😡
Louise, all I get from Bois Farine is peanut butter cookies. On some, special days I get Reeses Peanut Butter cups. And that’s all she wrote. I wish I got the whole bready wood flour thing!
We have Play Doh in the UK and it was a staple of my childhood. I therefore find it in the oddest places. I agree with POTL, Anne Pliska and Amber Ylang Ylang. I also get it in Agent Provocateur Strip, LouLou, Ligea la Sirena, MPG Ambre Precieux, Alamut, L’Eau Ambree and, oddly, Penhaligons Night Scented Stock. I always thought it was something to do with benzoin. And some of those I like, and some I don’t. As for powder, I can’t stand the uber powder Teint de Neige types but I think that’s because of the sweetness more than the powder. There are different types of powder for me: makeup powder (which I like), iris powder (which I like), baby powder (not so much).
If you want to try (just for giggles) an iris-baby powder, Washington Tremlett Iris Absolute will make you blink in surprise. A lovely swapper from the UK sent me some. I think she got it from First in Fragrance. I had to laugh. It should have been named Teint de Neige-Iris.
I agree that powder comes in many different forms. While I don’t like the scents that smell like baby powder, I also enjoy the makeup powder and iris powder ones. 🙂
Yes. Like powder, hate baby powder, which makes me feel like I might suddenly start screaming and not be able to stop. Instant psycho-migraine.
I tend to love both dough and powder notes. Teint de Neige is all baby powder and nothing else on me, so it’s not a favorite. It’s supposed to be a “complex powder” and blah blah Chandler Burr blah, but the few times I wore it complete strangers around me were asking each other where that baby powder smell was coming from. I don’t expect people to enjoy all of my perfumes, but I draw the line at smelling like a baby’s butt to the world at large 🙂
Chandler Burr likes it? I guess I forgot. Well, bleh. To me it’s bigger than baby — or, like, the 50-foot-tall Baby. :-ss And yeah, what if strangers think you’re chafed?
Hi, that’s true!
I just tried Fomula X by DSH, I needed a skin lotion that does not interfere with the frags I wear – apparently you can also use it as a test for your current skin chemistry. The leaflet gives many possible smell development options, amongst them ‘powdery’ which it did very much on me – in an agreeable way. So does the scent proper.
Coming from EU I don’t have a Play-Doh smell concept. We traditionally have Plastilin for that life phase which smells interestingly dirty and chemical like sports locker and old floor wax- you have to be really hard core to find anything edible about it. But I can absolutely relate to marvellous ‘Barbie head’. Ohoh that’s long ago.
Best, Andrea
Oh, I love that Special X. Love it love it. I reviewed it somewhere on here … on me it’s musky rather than powdery, which suits me just fine. A soft musk. She told me to stay away from marine scents, which is what I do anyway. /:)
Plastilin. I’d love to smell that.
Dawn typed me as “floral” on the X test-which surprised me, until she explained that meant I was meant for orientals, woods, incense-which is spot on-lovely gal, that Dawn:x
Gimme dough over powder any day. Though I prefer dough cooking in the oven, transforming into a nice crusty loaf (and without the lilac and cucumber of Giacobetti’s En Passant, ta very much).
I’m with you on Teint de Neige. Kill me any other way than powder suffocation, please.
But I lurve En Passant! And that wet-road smell… you, perhaps not?
The TdN Freaks are coming out of the woodwork on here today … :-j
Everyone either talks about POTL as a warm ambery yum or something or as Play-doh. I got Cherry Cough Syrup from HELL. Guh. I like Jour de Fete but its inherent cheap smell (I walk by this bathroom at work that smells just like it, which is not a bad thing. For the bathroom) prevents me from spending more than $20 on 100ml.
I think I like powder but I haven’t faced any of the Powder-Dragons yet. I’m with you on the Nazgul though. You couldn’t put that on me if I were dead. DEAD. :*
So, how’s the weather? :-\”
If you put Nazgul on me and I were dead, I would come back to life and run away. 8-x
They are predicting “wintry mix” :-ss but so far nothing on the roads but a little damp and a lot of dumb-ass drivers.
POTL is a giant blob of Play-Doh on me but not that sweet. If it were really sweet too it would be terrible.
=))
xo >-)
Now, see, I’m wearing the Nazgul today, and have been for several days running in our sudden bout of Actual Winter Weather. I don’t get much amber from it at all–just sweet apple pie with caramel topping that morphs, blessedly quickly, into a wonderful pipe tobacco.
For big amber I have to go to Ambre Russe, which I believe is known here on the Posse as “Rasputin’s Armpit.”
Also, I get no dough from Anne Pliska. Just orange slurpee followed by cool amber.
Hee!!! Rasputin’s armpit! It makes me feel so special to be quoted like that! Although I’d wear Rasputin’s Armpit now. The Nazgul still gags me.
Orange slurpee? I’d wear that.
I can’t do heliotropine-heavy scents at all: they just don’t feel “me”. So no Flower, L’Heure Bleue or Barbara Bui for me.
Though as a little girl I did have some Play-doh, I never got that particular association: as Sweetlife says, it’s the almond/cherry note that was used to aromatize the Play-doh that triggers it. Heliotropin smells almondy; the molecule that gives almonds their smell is also present in cherry pits, and is actually used to create cherry flavors/smells.
Hey, thanks! I for one was never clear on why cherries and almonds should have that smell overlap, and now I know. There’s a popular lotion over here that is the quintessential cherry-almond smell. Play-Doh, to me, is slightly more complex: cherry-almond PLUS a bready, slightly sour smell. Must be all the chemicals. :d
My memory of it is hazy, but the bready smell could come from the paste itself.
… you’re right, it must. If you make your own Play-Doh, that’s the yeasty smell you’re covering up, they must add the chemicals to mask it?
March, I’ve always thought of that play dough scent as a cherry-almond combo also typical of the old Jergens lotion. So maybe cherry-almond, with a hint of plastic, might be a useful description for our overseas friends? Other ways to describe it? However you describe it, I don’t like it much.
Which is interesting, since I’ve never thought about it’s connection to powder–and powder is kind of final frontier territory for me. Early on in my sniffing it was sure-fire deal breaker, now I can take it in small doses, as a smoothing, softening layer over other things, rather than as a scent unto itself, but big powder I still can’t do. So no L’Heure Bleue or Apres L’Ondee magic for me–not quite yet anyway. And I can only wear my viscous vintage version of Habanita, and then only on some days. And I have bad days with some of the Ormonde Jaynes too–Ta’if and Woman, particularly–though the rest of the time I love them to pieces. Sigh. I wish it wasn’t so…
That’s what I (overseas Play-Doh-less person that I am) understand it to be, these days. I went on a bout of loving and seeking out almond and heliotrope fragrances, and was warned about the dreaded Play-Doh note left and right. Never got it, though I do remember having Play-Doh as a wee one. Do you suppose there’s such a thing as differently scented EU-made or Asia-made Play-Doh?
Barbie head, OTOH, I intimately know and do get in some fragrances. Havana Vanille being the latest and possibly greatest offender. What causes that, anyway? Vanilla/musk? Just musk?
I love doughy-bready type scents, generally. Hiris has it, vaguely. Jour de Fête does. Bois Farine (though I get more peanut butter than bread from that particular one). Baby powder or soapy powder, though: no ta.
Hm. Interesting how many folks are having trouble with the Havana Vanille dollhead. I had trouble getting past something that smelled like melon. ::shudder::
omg. HABANITA. I was expecting something really different, you know? Some exotic floriental. Habanita almost killed me. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there’s an overseas Doh, but I bet it smells a bit different.
Plastic doll-head is a whole separate problem I should have included in the original list. I do think it’s vanilla, yes, and musk seems to be a good guess as a conspirator. I think some people get it more than others? Louise has a doll-head FAIL regularly. I do not like that smell. 🙁 The few times I have gotten it, it’s been in less expensive scents, so I thought it was price-related, but it’s not.
I’m with you – a little powder goes a long way, though I do love Apl’O edt in the spring and early autumn. L’HB I can do in edp or thinner. the Parfum makes me want to tear my sinuses out!
Interestingly, though, L’Origan (COTY) is way gorgeous in parfum – something about that concentration squeezes the powder out.
I will never forget my intro to Anne Pliska (thanks March!:-w I spritzed some on and immediately found myself in that “wtf is that SMELL? – I KNOW that smell” place – it continued to haunt me for severall hours. Finally went to bed…..at 2am I sat bolt upright and shouted PLAY-DOH! It was my first intro to a ‘weird’ scent. I love it, though only for curiosity.
LV’s Teinte de Neige is like falling headfirst into a van-load of funnel cakes from the carnival. Which sounds good….for about 2.3 seconds – then the grease and powdered sugar get all tangled in your hair and pores…
xo >-)
I forgot that about the Play-Doh! That’s so funny! Also I am pretty sure in CBIHP in his gallery, he has a small bottle labeled “You Know What This Smells Like” or something similar. You sniff and you sniff and you sniff and then eventually you yell PLAY DOH!
Did someone say “cherry-almond”?
Helllloooooooo Rahat Loukhoum! I wore it to bed the night before Thanksgiving. Love. Love. (Yes, in small doses… re-lax!)
Yeah cherry-almond is Rahat Loukhoum (which is amazing), not play-doh to me…play-doh is more plastic and vanilla.
Love the Doh! I love that smell so much (yup, a GenX American here) that I bought some heliotropin crystals, and made up my own heliotrope-amber perfume that smells exactly like (somewhat exalted) Play-Doh. My European husband just doesn’t get it. “What is that stuff??” But when I wear it, I’m as happy as a leeetle girl….:x
That is hilarious!!! Build your own Play-Doh smell…. I don’t *mind* it so much in perfume, but if that is the main/only note I end up feeling like I’m not going to spend $100+ to smell like Play-Doh. Yours is a better solution. ^:)^
I am humbly honored.
I don’t mind powdery scents and I don’t in general think of scents in terms of dough. However recently in trying the By Kilians I kept coming back to Cruel Intentions so much so that I finally gave in and bought it. I love wearing it and find it a comfort scent. It’s a skin scent, not a killer. Nothing cruel in it to me at all. I’ve thought of it instead as “yeasty” but now your term Playdough strikes me as just right for it. But for the life of me I can’t figure out anything that is in the notes list that would be doughy. Any ideas anyone? Here’s the list: Bergamot calabria oil, orange blossom oil, violet accord, centifolia rose absolute, agarwood, Indian papyrus oil, gaiacwood oil, Haiti vetiver oil, sandalwood, styrax absolute, castoreum absolute, vanilla absolute, musk.
Indian papyrus oil backed up with agarwood will give you a big hit of dough. I’d think of it more like bread dough, as Play-doh smells like Barbie head to me; bread dough being something completely different. That may have left ALL the Europeans scratching their tete, kopf, cabeza and hoofd. I’ve worried over Cruel Intentions, perhaps I should go back and try again.
I agree with Quinn, and also violet + rose + musk can I think give you a “trick” heliotropin note. I too think the name Cruel Intentions is funny for that scent.
I adore Cruel Intentions, purchased an FB loved it so much, but don’t get any play-doh…but lots of oud.. but it is true there is nothing “cruel” about it…
I agree with Quinn…pay-doh is barbie head (which is actually kinda cool sometimes in perfume), not bread dough..(which is yick!!!)