Hey, put the flame thrower down!
These are our worst perfumes! Not yours, not ones that 100% are the worst perfumes ever made, just ones that we think pretty much blow and get classified as toxic air waste or just piss us off.
Here’s how this works – we list the stuff we hate, then you tell us how wrong we are, then list the stuff you hate, which I’m certain will be some of our Perfume Sacred Cows. We’ll gnash our teeth and caterwhaul about it, and in the end we won’t agree about any of it. But we’ll all have fun trashing the…
worst perfumes evah!
Patty’s list –
- Marc Jacobs Lola – Daisy’s slutty big sister, but, hey, look, no slut or taste! We hate this because Marc Jacobs usually gives better bottle than this and didn’t make up for it with decent perfume. It’s a perfume that pisses me off.
- Marc Jacobs Dot – Cutest.Bottle.Ever. Worst.Perfume.Ever. Marc, you disappoint me on so many levels.
- Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir – I used to call this Patchouli Whore. Oh, wait, I still do!
- Tom Ford Amber Absolute – Amber beehive with the bees still in it.
- Guerlain Winter Delices – “Oh, no, mom, I threw up behind the Christmas tree.”
- Estee Lauder Pleasures/Knowing/Beyond Paradise – I think they are the same perfume… with the same feminine hygiene product infused with TampaxFreshAccord.
- Etat Libre d’Orange Secretions Magnifique – Dexter episode
- Thierry Mugler Alien – jasmine cough syrup, and luckily! they also provided the phlegm.
- Guerlain Shalimar – oh, hey, hon, do me a solid and hand me the baby powder so I can slip into this rubber thong.
- Jimmy Choo – Your shoe bench is calling you back.
- Madonna Truth or Dare – Truth is? This isn’t the worst celebrity dreck, but it’s boring, which is, well, worse.
- Estee Lauder Youth Dew – Room clearing. One wonders what bathrooms used to smell like when this was a bath oil. It would certainly earn you a bathroom to yourself. Hmmm, that could have been the point.
- Chanel Coco Noir – you know, hate isn’t the right word. Did making a perfume that wasn’t designed by a focus group occur to anyone at the Chanel Perfume Brain Trust? You guys have the budget, know-how and talent to make amazing fragrances. You know that old saying… to whom much has been given, lots of beatings will be administered when you keep taking the safe route, or something like that. I loathe Chanel No. 5 with the the heat of a thousand burning suns, but it will never go on a hate list because it was brave, daring, and that frosty bitch is anything but safe.
Anita’s list –
Waaalll….
Patty and I laughed like hyenas (HYENAS!) over ‘her’ list. I can’t really fault any of them except the Shalimar (in perfume only) and, oddly enough, the ONE THIERRY MUGLER THAT I ACTUALLY LIKE!!! I don’t ‘love’ Alien – but I was so damn happy to not hate Every Single Thing he has done that I leapt on it like a wolverine (you can tell I’m all about the matted fur and gnashing teeth today. I’m envisioning hyenas and wolverines battling over a bottle of Youth Dew)
But I have some moo-ah to add to the list. Mine are mostly ‘I can’t believe you LIED to me” perfumes. You know, those perfumes that said “I have the notes that will make your heart go pitter-patter….come, step into this dark little alcove and snuggle with me.”…so you step your little trusting self into that dark little alcove…and a few moments later, come staggering out, clutching the dagger that XXX perfume just slid between your ribs….
- L’Heure Bleue parfum and Lorenzo Villoresi Teinte de Neige. Whoever pushed me on the Krispy Kreme conveyor belt should be ashamed of themselves.
- PG Drama Nuui. “hey, come smell this gorgeous green grass… don’t worry about that wobbly Easter Island Musk-Head. I’m sure it won’t fall over on you. No, really. It’s FINE!”
- Clinique Aromatics Elixir. The Official Perfume of Mordor.
- Thierry Mugler Angel. Studio 54. 1980. Women’s bathroom. 5am Sunday.
- Fresh Index Pomegranate Anise. Michael Myers’s signature scent.
- By Kilian Good Girl Gone Bad. I Crossed Delancey and fell into Sam’s pickle barrel.
OMG, I just found this wonderful place, and as soon as I can catch my breath from laughing my @ss off, I’ll try to post. Everyone here seems to share my Ph.D in snark AND know their scents! Match truly made in heaven! Thanks for another Rabbit Hole! Sincerely, Patchouli Whore (aka PomNoir)
Hey, I had to say welcome!. Well, if you love your snark, then you absolutely fit in here. Welcome to our fun little Rabbit Hole. 🙂
Creed’s Love in White. It’s the plastic or petrol/gasoline note.
I was nervous to write Iris Silver Mist, but clearly 50_Roses is in agreement with me. There’s a sour vanillic floral note in Givenchy Organza and Vanille Fleur by M/ Micallef that I just can’t stand. I don’t know what it is, but I’d like to see someone agree with me here.
Back in the late 80s/early 90s I only wore two scents: Fracas in winter, Calandre in summer. I got compliments *all* the time–especially for the Fracas. (Then I married a man who ‘didn’t like perfume’…yadda yadda.) I think about returning to Fracas, but maybe that time has passed–along with the ex-husband.
Sorry all Manoumalia by LesNez lovers, it smells like wet cardboard.
White Shoulders. That stuff is FOUL.
Agree about the Lutens Silver Iris: Petroleum meets old bong water.
I cracked myself up over this post – super funny! My worst is Issey Miyake L’Eau D’Issey, Angel (Thierry Mugler), Youth Dew and Knowing by Estee Lauder and a few others!
I got a new one.. I just got a sample of SL De Profundis from STC, and while I don’t know that I can go so far as to say I *hate* it, I definitely don’t like it. I was trying to get the concept behind it, but all I smelled was Juicy Fruit gum. Once the association was made, my brain wouldn’t let go of it.
Van Cleef & Arpels Muguet Blanc made me understand why some people HATE lily of the valley. It sure cured me of blind spritzing, as I had to walk around with it all afternoon . AP’s Passage d’Enfer at least was truthful: what you will have to wear, forever, if you sin in this lifetime…
I’m late coming to this, but I thought to just throw my most hated fragrance out there: Elizabeth Taylor Passion. I have a dear friend who used to drench herself head to toe with it in college. It smelled like the breath of the dying.
To this day, I cannot even go near the same shade of purple!
Dzing! Elephant poop. Huge piles of elephant poop in the rain and rhino hide that’s been rolled in the elephant poop in the mid notes if you don’t scrub it off before then. Oh yeah I remember its the only AP scent that has such longevity it WONT scrub off. I smelt like a zoo for 24 hrs!
Oh, dear, more Dzing hate. My poor, poor Dzing. I love it so, and nobody else does. I should worry more about what people are thinking when I wear it. Yikes, I spritz it with abandon, and I think I better stop that!
Oh my yes, I’d forgotten about L’Air de Rien. Horse eats hay. Horse digests hay. In a few hours, horse passes … L’Air de Rien! Pure barnyard.
Oh, yes, it is that. Except for me lately it’s cuddly barnyard. I’m still puzzling about that and hoping it is going to switch back. I loved hating it. It’s a weird world where that’s not happening.
As a newbie chimes in here, let me say I must love the fragrances that assault the senses. I CANNOT no way, no how STAND when I perfume is over applied, even on me. There’s been many a nightmares about vomiting in my sleep when there’s is too much Angel or Lancome’s Tresor clinging to my hair. Oh, gosh, just thinking about Tresor……*gag*….deep breath…..go to your happy place, Shiloh. Ahhhh, much better!
That being said, I love Angel. I hate her too. Sweet mother that perfume has some fight in her. She’s like the boozy, incense laden Black Widow out for her next victim! When I wear her, i usually find myself in dark venues with hipsters smelling like pot and Paps, listening to the latest garage band that made a record no one’s heard of. There I can subtly tell people to come or go, I don’t care. I’m wearing ANGEL!! That being said, I actually manage to wear it lightly so that no one can smell it unless they hug me.
I adore Shalimar. On me, it smells like an exotic trip through Hemingway’s 1920’s. The right mix of spice, intrigue, vanilla, and a light touch of powder, so that I smell inviting and not like my Great-Grandma returned from the dead haunting my waking days! (Love you, GG, but you really needed to put the Shalimar down and walk away.)
On to the hates……
Aromatics Elixir, Youth Dew and Amarige. Seriously. What the…? What happened to my noses?!? Why, why, why are you trying to kill me? All I wore was Angel! |-> God love Grandma, she’s a great lady with a bohemian flare, but who told her that Amarige was a good thing to put on instead of bathing?!? It’s the fragrances of dead flowers rotting inside of a crypt. (Macabre much?) Oy, when I smell these three I begin to think of Oxygen as a precious, rare, natural resource.
Oh, I cannot handle any of the swill being passed out en masse to the teens and tweens and grown-up sexy. Just because it says “Victoria’s Secret” on the bottle does not immeadiately translate as sexy!! Instead I wonder why you didn’t have time to go home and shower after you woke up in a strange place smelling of cigarettes and daddy’s liquor cabinet! Try to at least swipe a paper towel with water across….everything before going to work. Oh, dear, there goes my stomach again….
Shiloh, you do really great for a newbie. 🙂
I am so shocked at how much hate there is a Tresor. I hardly think of it at all, not that interested in it to even hate it, but wow, it really seems to be a stinker!
so many people love Shalimar, I always wish I got what they did, but alas, it despises me.
Exactly on the VS stuff. What is with that? It’s cheap and young women stock up on that body mist and then drown themselves in it, and it is just bloodcurdlingly awfu.
You know, Tresor, was one of the first fragrance minis I ever received. My beloved Grandmother (who had a deep and abiding love for EL Beautiful) gave it to me when I was 14 or 15. I loved it! I smelled intriguing and grown-up! OOOooooo-aaaaaaaa. Then one night, I had over applied it. I literally had a dream where I was vomiting on top of a house ( I don’t know why I was on the house, it’s a dream!) Well, I woke up in my own vomit. GRO-O-O-SSSS!!!! Yeah, now I can’t smell it without thinking of vomit, BO, and stinky garlicky skin all under the guise of sweet and smelly Tresor.
And the VS stuff? The body sprays/lotions etc.? Loved them when I was 16 and Pear was a new thing. But, I have read waaaayyyy too many posts on the web that declare them as the most sexy scents out there. Huh. That is one heck of a PR department.
OH, that explains it! 🙂 Yeah, it’s one thing to grab a VS Body Mist because they are cheap and easy when you’re a teenager, but it’s time to put them back on the shelf after 20, but they still sell the crap out of them. I think one of them was reader voted as the best perfume of the year last year. Huh?
I can’t think of any perfumes I trully hate… wait, have I gone mad???
I will never get tired of stating HOW MUCH I HATE ANGEL! It usually goes like this: “Hmm, what is this I am smelling?”, “It is my perfume do you like it?”, “It is Angel isn’t it?”, “Why, yes! You are so knowledgeable!”, “Not really, no. It’s just I have learned to recognize that feeling of being violated through the nose (you attention whore)”. Please IFRA, EU, unknown puppeteers of the universal conspiracy, do something to ban thin shit and I will never complain about your regulations again. EVER! (Oh and while you’re at it make its male sibling disappear too. A-men, I loath you as much as your sister. However you are not as successful so you don’t get to annoy me as much. You just might survive).
Now that my little rant is over I can catch my breath and give my frantic fingers a break. So, interesting list you got there Patty. Youth dew I find bizarre. The name, the heavy indolic Jasmine, the colour that screams “that’s gonna stain!”, I just don’t see the whole thing coming together. I don’t hate it but I have not been offended by it… yet. Pomegranate Noir happens to be one of my favorite Jo Malones. Can’t see it as hateworthy. I also happen to love Aromatics Elixir on any woman anytime but I see it is more like my thing than a universally likeable perfume.
Let me contribute with some male oriented perfume hatred. Please, Jean Paul Gaultier, don’t torture me anymore. Le Male is sickly sweet. Le fleur du Male takes this a step further and manages to be purely suffocating (same effect as Pure Poison Elixir). Kokorico is an inconsistent mix of notes but manages to be the best of the three (don’t know if anyone would call this an achievement but… whatever)
Sorry, I’m running a bit low in inspiration. Can’t think anything else at the moment
I think Pom Noir does weird things on me. I’ve avoided it from the first minute I smelled it, maybe it’s changed or I’ve changed? I don’t want to find out.
Oh, yeah, JPG warrants both love and hate. I can never decide at the moment who I’m feeling!
Betsey Johnson. If a perfume had a sound track, hers would go: “SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE (breathe) EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE(breathe) EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”
Thank, goodness I have missed this one entirely, that sounds awful!
Hahaha, not sure what entertained me the most – the blog post or the comments!
One of my most recent sniff – n – scrub experiences was with By Kilian – Back to Black. Was intrigued by the description and the name, ordered a sample and to me, it smelled like a My Little Pony dipped in gluhwein! A horrible, plasticky, rubbery, sweet doll smell along with old almonds and raisins. I couldn’t stand it. Tried to wait for it to change into something more manageable but it didn’t. Perhaps I’ll give it another shot someday but my first experience was bleh.
I know, the comments have been better!
no go on the Back 2 Black! I love it in theory, but no way am I wearing it. it is super-intense!
Yea, in theory it’s a winner! Judging from the description online it sounded so cozy and gorgeous. Hehe, and described as an aphrodisiac which to me is hard to grasp after smelling it.
On another note (pun intended), I actually have a sample of widely mentioned Secretions Magnifique (ordered a complete sample set as I think Etat Libre d’Orange has a lot of interesting scents) but am not sure I’m even going to try it. I guess my curiosity will win at some point though. When I am close to a shower…
It’s a sacrilege to even call it a perfume, but Elizabeth Arden’s bilge-water Sunflowers is the worst stuff I’ve ever smelled (of course, I haven’t smelled Secretions Magnifique yet…). Giorgio is next up on my hate list, followed closely by cheap formulations of Tabu. Thanks for letting me get that all that out in the open!
Sunflowers! I had forgotten about it. I am pretty sure that the entire volleyball team my freshman year BATHED in it twice a day. Ick.
Oh, I HAD forgotten about that one. Toxic beyond belief, like the sun had super-novaed, and this was some future society’s idea of what fresh used to smell like.
thanks for joining me in my belief that all now EL’s are the same thing…and they’re so strong your nose could never tell the difference…just a chemical blast which obliterates all nose hairs, then moves on the the migraine center. (include eternity, escape, and their ilk in this list. tea rose, even)
my list includes the much loved lutens chergui…just a gag fest on (or near) me.
l’hombre dans l’eau…holy strident lemon chemical roses, batman!
maison kurkidijan cologne pour le matin…not a dreadful scent in itself, but it smells exactly like deodorant carefree minipads.
but my favorite gagtastic perfume story is this:
i had a bottle of paco rabanne’s la nuit on my swaplist for years…until one day i was flooded with requests for the stuff. WTF? turns out the “esteemed” luca has given it his stamp of fabulosity. this stuff smelled so very bad…like three day old wildcat piss on a horse’s flank in the hot sun, but stronger. despite my urgings to the contrary, one of my favorite swapper s wound up with it. no idea if he was transcended luca style by the stench or not.
but i still think luca was kidding around.
Ha! I LOVE me some three-day-old wildcat piss! I’m a La Nuit fan, but obviously you’ve got to have a high tolerance for animalics, cause this one is like a whole herd of bobcats in heat. Same with MFK Absolue Pour Le Soir.
Oh, Pour le Sour and L’Artisan Al Oud almost knocked me down with the animalics. It was breathtaking in the worst way.
Patty, I’m not really replying to you, but I want to add a few things that i loathe. Dolce & Gabbana. I wore it once to the grocery store, and people were obviously avoiding me. Hate Bandit & Dzing. Praline Sandal, has anyone tried it? Who wants to smell like they just go out of the kitchen. Jill Sander #4, no wonder it’s discontinued. My own brother, usually a fra
grance lover, told me never to come near him wearing NU.
Yeah, Calvin Klein, Kouros, Paco Rabanne, Hugo Boss, all of those keep just making the same fragrance over and over and over again! It’s just so boooooooring!
Oh, wow Chergui is a scrubber? Hahaha, I love it when so many loved things hit the hate pile. I’m sorta indifferent to Chergui. Really like it, but not love, and it is soooo intense!
Wildcat piss?!?!? Hahaha, OMG, you.are.killing.me. Best reference ever.
I still try and kid myself Luca was kidding around about the EL things he loves and the Be never 2 Busy stuff. And tommy girl. EW.
Thank you Linda! LOL. You put Luca’s civet fart trashing of Mona di Orio’s Nuit Noire in shame. I like Nuit Noire.
The only one that really makes me shudder is Lutens Clair de Musc: I’m being buried in detergent scraped from under the lid of Mom’s washing machine, circa 1978.
But I like Fracas. Really. Love it. Don’t hurt me.
(ChickenFreak)
I wore Fracas for years, but sometimes it gave me a headache. Did that ever happen to you?
Wow! I love it when a normally pretty much loved fragrance draws some hate, it’s good for it, builds its street cred.
Lots of people love Fracas and Angel. We won’t hurt you, promise, as long as you won’t be mad at us. 🙂
Clair de Musc smells exactly like the Vitalis cream, which protects face in cold weather. It took me directly back to 70’s and mums smearing this all over us children’s faces. http://www.kotiliving.com/vitalis-cream,us,4,Vitalis_1.cfm
I love both the Marc Jacobs so incredibly much. Guess slut smells good on me.
Oh, I don’t think they are slutty at all. That was the disappointing thing about Lola. She was supposed to be the more grown up, knowing sister of Daisy – and I liked Daisy pretty well for what it was! – and it just wasn’t. I think the main problem I have with his stuff is they pretty much all smell the same. Mostly because they set the budget so low for his perfumes that perfumers have to use some of the cheapest ingredients available, they get loaded in,and they just wind up smelling that same synthetic chemical smell with a few variations.
it’s not just him, it’s most of the mainstream perfume industry, including my major target of pisstivity right now, Chanel Coco Noir.
“Clinique Aromatics Elixir. The Official Perfume of Mordor.”
This one caused me to burst out laughing at random times throughout the day.
Thanks!
I loved that one too. That darn Musette. 🙂
Haters gotta hate – it’s way more fun than being nice ALL the time, no? 😀
Where do I start? How about Amarige? Nothing from Mother Nature ever got close to the formula for this Medusa. I can feel my throat close just remembering the last time I smelled it. It should have been named Anaphylaxis. White Diamonds has a similar vibe – the chemical “tuberose” in both of them would stun a rutting rhino. Amarige is the Picture of Dorian Gray in the attic of the wonderful, perfect Carnal Flower, which was composed by the same perfumer. See what happens when someone gives you a real formula budget to work with?
Angel – I can enjoy it in an abstract way from afar as a really “interesting” aroma, but I can’t apply it to skin. I have never tried its various flankers, and I feel no urge to do so.
I have too many bad memories of Poison to ever enjoy it, I think. There was a woman in my office who over-applied it EVERY DAMN DAY back in the Eighties – no one liked her anyway, and that was just the toxic icing on the cake. She was the kind of person who wore stilettos to the office and did not acknowledge the existence of anyone who did not meet her standards. Poison seems just right for that sort of person.
Light Blue, aka My Nemesis. I hate fake “marine” notes – if the ocean really smelled like that we would all stampede to Kansas and stay there. Compounding the crime is raspy, sour “wood” which supposed to be cedar, I think, although it smells more like bug spray, and a hideously huge woody-amber note that feels like a rusty pike up the nose. Rarely does a so-called fragrance hit this Cerberus of a trifecta. When it was at the height of its popularity, it seemed as though everyone was wearing it and I had to avoid the department stores. Speaking of which, Poeme is just as bad on the opposite end of the smell spectrum – heavy, incredibly rich and headachey, a chemical spill barely contained in a bottle. I walk very carefully past the Lancome counter just in case anyone has the tester out.
So many perfumes are just so BLAH they are not even worth hating – bland, insipid, faceless chemical drones, legion in number and ever-increasing. To get on the hate list you gotta be really awful, and for my all-time worst, I nominate Christian Lacroix’s abominable C’est La Vie. Loud, vulgar, crude, and oily, with one of the most animalic and musky (in the wrong way) base notes I have ever smelled – sort of like skunk meets rancid baby oil. That this was launched under the label of a designer at the peak of his fame is even more of a mystery, although I hated his clothes too – he seemed to specialize in turning gorgeous, expensive fabric into ugly, unwearable garments. That’s a rare gift. It’s a good thing that monster got discontinued, or I would never be able to shop at Macy’s again.
Heh. I rather like White Diamonds in parfum, but hardly anybody wears the parfum. They get the big cheap bottles of EdP and spray it copiously. Which is just Too Much.
I’m getting over my Poison trauma.
Hating is good for the soul, clears out the poison. And it IS fun.
Oh, thank goodness, another Light Blue hater. I forgot to put that down and Creed Green Irish Tweed. they sorta fit in the same category of ” Fake Fresh” that’s just revolting and is like a jackhammer on my last nerve.
I left all the boring stuff out except Chanel Coco Noir. It’s my new target for everything that has gone wrong with the mainstream perfume industry. And it makes it worse because they know better. They have a lot of great fragrances in les Exclusifs and some great classics, and I just don’t get how they could get it so wrong. But maybe they are right and I’m wrong because all reports say they are moving them like hotcakes.
I hate Light Blue too! So we are three in entire World! 😉
This is so hilarious! It turns out that even my most revered perfumista idols are Philistines about 50 percent of the time! Just pass those bottles of L’Heure Bleue, Shalimar, Aromatics Elixir, Fresh Pomegranate Anise, and Youth Dew right this way, please!
The Sacred Cows that I would happily send to the glue factory are Fracas, Amouage Tribute Attar, Ubar and that whole numbered series, and Lancome Tresor. ~~nozknoz
Come to think of it, there is one Amouage that sent me running to the sink to scrub…Epic, maybe? Smelled like pickles and cumin with something kind of sicky-sweet at the bottom.
I didn’t like Epic W either.
When we start the “What I”m Looking for” regular post, I’d just tell them – send me all those hated things I love. 🙂
No love for Tribute? Well, up close it is a beast. I love it for the waftage. But I don’t really want to put my nose in it most of the time.
I’m not a fan of the Library thing either. I didn’t find anything in there that I even liked. I just don’t get it at all.
I used to work at a Clinique counter during college, and I got so sick of people spraying the Aromatics Elixir tester into the air right next to me that I pulled the spray nozzle off, put glue inside, and then put the nozzle back on. People would try to spray it and I would oh-so-helpfully give them the body cream to try, which would stay on them instead of asphyxiating me!
Last year I was doing a thorough testing of the Top 20 bestselling women’s scents (in the US) of 2010, and of course AE was on the list. The first time I bellied up to the fragrance counter, the Clinique SA told me she didn’t HAVE a tester. I let it go because she was looking so terrified.
Went back later and found a tester, and it was as I remembered: a rosy hedge drenched in pee.
My sympathies in reverse for having to endure that. I get why AE is classic and all, but nobody seems to know how to practice restraint with those big perfumes. Why is that?
But what a clever, elegant solution you came up with. Major proppage!
Iris Silver Mist!! It is the only perfume I have ever put on my skin that actually made me feel as if I were going to vomit. It smelled like dirt, and not just ordinary dirt. I actually like the smell of garden soil, in fact much of my pleasure in gardening is in enjoying the smells of soil, leaves, mulch, and so forth. No, ISM smells like the fetid muck at the bottom of a muddy, swampy pond, probably with the remnants of a dead fish mixed in. I don’t understand people who say it smells like carrots. Believe me, if carrots smelled even remotely like ISM, I would never eat another carrot ever.
Ohnoes. *cries* ISM hate? Can that be? 🙂
you know as much as I love ISM, there are days it veers off in an area that I’m not that fond of. Luckily! those days ar efew and far between. But I love your description of it!
Mure et Musc was an absolute horror on me, darn near as bad as SM. I am always mystified at its popularity…on me, it smells like someone got a hold of that musk gland and just squeezed it all up in my face; I get the very literal sticky wet sensation one gets with that serumy stuff in scabby wounds or zits. Ugh, I’m gagging just thinking about it.
In a way it’s worse for me than SM, because I don’t think anyone really meant that as a real perfume, whereas the MeM is beloved by many.
Oh and put me on the Angel hatelist; I get straight up puke.
I hate tuberose and it makes my throat feel scratchy, but it doesn’t repulse me.
Wow, that’s a first! I thought everyone loved MetM.Guess not. Wow, you must just miss all the blackberries entirely except the sticky sweet syrup part, huh?
O.K., after reading the comments on this particular blog, I just had to go out and smell some of the offenders. The most memorable was the Jimmy Choo and it was disgusting. It’s got that chemical, fruity thing going, kind of like Angel (which is gross). Unlike Bart Simpson I did not say, “Smell ya later!” because I hope I never have to smell Jimmy Choo again.
Isn’t that stuff just awful? I wanted it to be so much more. I kinda liked the parfum he did later, it smelled closer to what I thought it should be. It was a flowerbomb wanna be thing that just failed to be anything but disappointing.
I love this post, you guys crack me up! Some perfumes just illicit strong reactions – to both extremes. My mother-in-law used to drench herself in Youth Dew, which my daughter and I nicknamed Youth Pew. Man, that stuff is ghastly!! Since then every EL perfume I have tried seems to have an undercurrent of Lauder-ade that reminds me of Youth Pew. I’ve yet to find a Lauder I can stomach but I hold out hopes for Amber Ylang Ylang. Funny that you smell Patchouli in Pomegranate Noir, Patty. I hate patchouli and studiously avoid any perfume where that note plays a starring role, yet Pomegranate Noir just smells like “wine jam” on me – perfect for an autumn day outside but I don’t necessarily want to go to work smelling like eau de wino. Angel is one of my BIG hates – saran wrap meets vat of corn syrup meets dead mouse – ew!! Another scrubber for me is Cuir Beluga ( which I nicknamed Whale Bag) a smell so anciently, brine-ily decrepit I can’t imagine anyone actually wanting to smell that way!!
OFFSake! Whale Bag! Hall of Fame, baby! Hall Of Fame.
xoA
yup, EL uses the YDade in everything. I do love me some Cinnabar – not sure why this escapes my wrath, but must be some other thing that makes me love it – the Tuberose Gardenia was okay, most of that series I was okay with. Not love, but I’d wear them.
patchouli amps on me unbelievably! So Pom Noir and Prada both are nothing but a big old spider web patchouli bomb.
Whale Bag? That’s so classic, I love it! I mean, I love Cuir Beluga, but I love that you hate it so much it got a great name. 🙂
What fun it’s been to unload about all the awful stuff I’ve had to sit next to or even (sob) spent good money on when I bought blind. In general, I’m struck by how many perfumes marketed as “sexy” could have a useful second life as cheap abstinence promoters, except that they aren’t cheap. I recently got a sample of one called “Kama” as in “Kama Sutra” (half a ml sample for $5.00 plus postage, hardly cheap) that definitely put me off any thought of sex until I could get a shower. I wouldn’t even hug my husband until I could wash. Scent-memories are powerful, and I just don’t want him to have that memory.
Exactly! Someone else said it so i didn’t have to — all those Victoria’s Secret scents? Not sexy. Ghastly, horrible chemical stew. Ugh.
abstinence promoters LOL
Stop the presses! I forgot some of the Lush perfumes. That Breath of God made breath of dog seem attractive. Even a fish-and-potato-eating dog. And Imogen Rose—screechy, aggressively artificial—made me feel like one of the mean girls on the high school breezeway had just beaten me up and taken my lunch money.
We are so in alignment on the Lush and Be 2 Busy perfumes. If someone wanted to torture me, they’d send me a gift set of all of those perfumes and then lock me in a small room with them. A day later, it would look like they did electroshock therapy on me.
I couldn’t tell you about Lush. I can’t even walk past a Lush space without getting a massive headache. I did try BoG, though……..God could maybe use a TicTac
Or a good dental hygienist.
I’m so with you on Breath of God. After reading March’s rapturous post about it, I sampled, and it was awful on me. I thought, “I guess God is a chain smoker who chews Wrigley Spearmint gum.” *shudder*
Are you sure March liked it? I think she thought it was interesting weird? Hmmmm. Maybe not. That stuff was just – well, it bored me. it was AFTER I tried it that I got stuck in their basement with all those Lushy smells assaulting me. I’m hoping one day I can at least buy some soap again, but so far, just no.
You know, I forgot about the most awful frag we got at Sniffa — the new Yves Rocher Purple So Eiixir. Tuberose, vetiver and patchouli in one bottle, each beating the crap out of the other. It smells like the most artificially-flavoured grape soda mixed with industrial cleaning fluid.
Even my dog winced.
Did I miss that one? Must have. I was too busy hating on those Nest things.
OMG! The Nest Things. God bless her, she makes a hella soap. And maybe that’s what went So Horribly Wrong. Every one of Those Nest Things smells like detergent. I kept thinking I’d maybe spilled some Tide in the box.
And you got the YR – it ended up in the fit/ship. I can send it to you, if you like….;-p
No, take mine, please for the love of god, take mine!!
Oh, hell no! Nest, don’t they do candles? Soap too? Probably.
Love these kinds of posts!
Ok, Fracas. Like you are being smothered by a giant buttered tuberose-lovinge circus fat lady. Ugh.
Baiser Vole. Unventilated nursing/funeral home.
Eternity (for anyone) Spike to the brain via tearduct.
Escape. Same but via nostril.
Secretions Magnifique. What I imagine Ted Bundy smelled like.
Dzing! Elephant flatulence fanned with hay.
Hypnotic Poison. AWhole bottle of almond extract leaked into vanilla bean paste and soaked some waffles. With cherries on top. Sillage of a tsunami.
This is fun!
ahaha your description of Fracas is pretty hilarious!
I know, me too! NOthing is more fun than trashing fragrances that you hate, especially if you know they are much beloved!
Oh, no, no vole for you! I love that one, but, yeah, if you put on more than one small spritz, it is exactly that – funeral home.
Yikes, my poor Dzing goes on the hate Heap again. Poor little darling, I need to give it some comfort and petting.
love your list, and that description of Fracas is completely it. Suffocating stuff.
oh, dear…you, too? Fracas is gonna have quite a busy night, beating the living daylights out of all you hataz! I gave her YOUR address, too, li’l missy. You can expect a visit as well!!
Oh, yeah, I forgot about Escape! The Calone Death Ray.
Ah! This is a though question because I think my brain tents to delete certain memories… I sure remember some perfumes I had rub off with soap as soon as I got home.
DAVIDOFF HOT WATER: just makes me gag
BLOOD CONCEPT (I think it was the ”B”): stinky dirty spicy oriental restaurant, It reminded me of curry (which I love) but in the most disgusting way
Kerosene Copper Skies: sweet thick sticky and toasted. That’s the smell I could imagine to find in hell…despite they say it smells of sulfur.
CdM Guerrilla 1: rotten fruit, synthetic and overloaded with sweet flowers. It reminds me of a person that stinks and still wears some loud floral perfume.
SL Fleur d’Oranger: I couldn’t stand it. Flat, again sticky and candy like.
Piver Musc: acid musk on an hold dirty man
Ups! I would have some more, but I feel mean…
I just understood what sacred meant… sorry for this!
Well, I’ll throw in Jazz and Rive Gauche by YSL…not much to say though…
Oh, I think you got it the first time! 🙂
Hot Water? They did make something besides Cool Water, didn’t they? Wasn’t it discontinued after a minute?
I missed all the Blood Concept things, I just didn’t get the whole idea of whatever it was they were trying to do.
I thought she was joking! They did a fragrance called HOT WATER? How…odd..
I tried it not more that 3 months ago I would say, I don’t know if they have discontinued it.
Each perfume should fit a blood type person, but it didn’t really work out with me.
Let the gnashing of teeth begin! How can you diss my Winter Delices? I adore it – making gingerbread in a snowy forest. Hmph! So There! Besides, The Worst Ever is L’eau d’Issey. Industrial waste doesn’t begin to describe it.
Haha! Because everyone else is peeing all over my beloved Dzing, which has been discontinued and needs some respect. 🙂
Agree on L’eau d’Issey, ToxicFresh. It’s the scented world’s version of White Smell.
I love Dzing with all my heart… and after all the hate, dare I admit I love Angel, too? I think I was fortunate enough never to encounter the smell in enclosed spaces before I discovered it for myself…
Sweetie, let us go sit in the corner with our bottle of Dzing and commiserate. 🙂
Angel in the parfum, one drop only, is amazing. And I like the single note thingies they did, peony, violet, couple of others.
Huh.. I didn’t know Dzing had been discontinued. I’m not too worried,though.. I just got a bottle of Tokyo Milk Dead Sexy, and it smells really similar, like Dzing with a little extra peppery note.
Really? Okay, I think I need to investigate this!
Poison. Hands down. Smells like something bad aliens would use to hose down the earth before taking over the planet.
So we’d all be busy in the shower or burying our face in our own pillows hoping to smother so we don’t have to keep smelling it? perfect!
Actually no, we’d all be dead – not even alligators and cockroaches would have survived.
You do have a very good point. 🙂
You guys are hilarious! I have had a blast reading all the comments. I had to lovingly hug all my Shalimar bottles and whisper to them that these people are crazy, they’ll always be wonderful to me….
I’m not much of a hater but I do have a few: another vote for Womanity, from the stupid name to the fruit/sugar/dead fish/rotten fig/pink juice, to the gargoyle bottle. The original Poison, which is like grape koolade from the depths of hell. White Poison which is death by chemically altered plastic flowers. Fracas – there, I said it. Again. That bitch hates my guts and I hate her back.
I kept trying with Bandit, but it just smells like a drag race behind a small town high school to me: car exhaust, burnt rubber and singed grass.
This is too much fun 🙂
We have very funny people that read here. 🙂 It’s my favorite thing about this blog!
Shalimar, sorry!
White Poison, you mean Pure? OMG, yes. That stuff is toxic.
Fracas, agree. I know it’s iconic and all, but???? I’ll take probably any tuberose perfume besides that. It’s like tuberose syrup on me.
perfect description of Bandit! But you actually make it sound mor appealing, i like those smells!
I told Fracas that you gals were talking trash about her. She knows where you live. Expect a knock on your door tonight.
xo A
She showed up, and I hit her with some Round-Up.
What is it with Fracas? I have a bottle and used to wear it very seldom as I rather had the feeling that it was wearing me. Now after a couple of years I very carefully applied a tiny amount before meeting with some friends and they all complemented me on the perfume that smelled very CLEAN. Fracas?
Optomotrist: why are your eyes watering? Me: You’re wearing Poison arent you?
I used to hate Poison too. Now I don’t. I’ve always liked white florals, but I think the difference is that people used to marinate in the stuff. Every single girls’ dorm hall at college used to reek of it. Now that I can apply a teeny bit at a time, I rather enjoy it.
Poison parfum is kind nifty too. 🙂
Nooooo! Not my sweet L’Heure Bleue parfum! Then again, I would be thrilled to be on the Krispy Kreme conveyer belt…
My all-time least favorite perfume is Lush Lust, but that one’s purely a matter of preference. I hate jasmine, and Lust is the embodiment of A Jasmine Perfume. My loathing for Aquolina Pink Sugar is well-documented. I was also pretty embarrassed for Chanel Coco Noir.
Hey, beauty! That Coco Noir is embarrassing, innit? I mean, it’s not the worst thing on the market but you’d think they would’ve either made it NOIR…or..called it something else..Coco Jeune (or Coco Jaune, depending upon your p.o.v.)…it’s Chanel, dammit! They have the technology!
xoA
Went to get some Coco for the mom before it is reformulated out of all recognition and SA accidentally rang up Noir. It costs more! Seriously? Nice SA was as horrified as I was and said it was hard enough to sell that crap.
yeah. That black bottle costs more. 🙂
Chanel’s perfume direction has me worried.
I’m glad Anita put it on her list so I didn’t have to put it on mine. 🙂
All the Lush perfumes are on my list, but they are multiplying so fast, I can’t even list them all. Compounded by a visit there on a Sniffa trip where they held us hostage in the Never be 2 Busy Basement for hours going onandonandon about what great perfumers they were and blah, blah, surrounded by all those lush-like products with all of that smell coming off of them. I can’t go anywhere near that stuff without major heavage.
Coco Noir. Lucky for them, our loathing of it hasn’t hurt its sales, they are flying off the shelves.
Awwww it hurts me that everyone hates Lush so much 🙂 I have the sample set of what I think used to be the Be 2 Beautiful scents, and I think many of them are very interesting. And Lust, mmmmmm jasminey bliss. I even adore the smell of the stores! They’ve just opened in Cape Town and I’m going to go bankrupt.
I didn’t hate them until that horrible episode in London. I was choking to death!!!
I usually don’t post but….
Lone Star Memories- I live in TX. If it smelled like this I would have to move. First time in ages a fragrance has made me gag and knock stuff out of the cabinet to get to my scrubbing shampoo.
Secretions Magnifiques- 199?, return from long weekend to dorm room shared with 2 lazy suitemates who don’t empty trash. Open door to tiny, shared, unventilated bathroom and realize that it is that time of the month for someone and the garbage really needs to go out. Who would want to bottle this?!?
Youth Dew- Husband said I smelled good: briefly considered divorce.
Angel. Nuff said.
Holy cats and crackers. PLEASE POST MORE! LOL! You had me gagging with ick and laughter! SM is persackly like that. I remember undergraduate school…I was that lazy suitemate (though, to be fair, I had a cold). My suitemate alerted me to my gaffe. I was mortified. You’re right – who would want to bottle (or smell like) this.
The TX comment is priceless!
xoxoA
Liz, I agree, you need to post more.
SM, that’s it! I would actually welcome a sperm smell in it because I’d think, you know, there was some fun had by all, but it doesn’t even smell fun. Just Serial Killer in your dorm room, but better.
Dzing. It’s the worst thing I’ve EVAH met, except maybe Bandit. Then there are the general culprits of Angel, Womanity, and ANYthing that smells like grapefruit or praline candy. I read about a runway event in the 40’s when models were spraying the audience with Bandit. Many were retching and fainting. My mother wore a disgusting thing called Jessica McClintock. She just couldn’t get enough of it. It felt weird trying to avoid my own mother.
Jessica McClintock! Oh, yes. I remember when there was a boutique in Water Tower Place. They sprayed that stuff with abandon. Smelled like they’d overturned an entire semi full of Tampax Fresh Tampons.
Man, talk about butchering one of my most loved Perfume Sacred Cows. 🙂
I’m not a leathah lovah, so people going on and on about Bandit and Knize Ten and all those others just have me yawning. Bandit is definitely one that should be spritzed with supreme caution and restraint.
Oh Lord. Bandit tried to kill me with one drop – I can’t imagine it sprayed in the air.
Acasiosa – that jar of potpourri that you keep on top of the toilet tank.
Spellbound – I barfed up a pecan pie.
Eternity – a rose thorn grown to massive proportions, driven into your skull and out your nose.
Red Door – sad, sad baby powder for grownups.
En Passant – lilac-scented liquid laundry detergent (sorry, folks).
Knowing – a hive of bees escaped and flew up my nostrils.
Coco Mademoiselle – the smell of all the treats available at the movie concession stand.
Tea Rose – the Rose That Ate New York. OMG OMG get it away from me!
Aromatics Elixir – I took everything in my medicine cabinet and mixed it together.
Womanity – Hawaiian Punch poured over caviar that’s starting to go “off”.
The beauty of this is you can hate what you want! I am giving you a pass on the EP because in my Entire Perfume Life I don’t think I’ll EVAH see a funnier description of Womanity!
xoxoA
OMG, even though a few of these I love! 🙂 Maybe the bees escaped from Amber ABsolute, rounded Knowing and bam, up the nostrils.
First time reader, first time commenter (got here via the lovely Non-Blonde’s post about this list), and I’ve been laughing heartily at all of these descriptions, but “sad, sad baby powder for grownups” has driven me to tears. That’s some fabulous writing, and I’m laughing so hard i just hiccuped.
I cannot stand Poeme or Tresor. I had two aunts that wore those and my stomach had always churned when I smell those. Both of them smell cheap and chemically to me. Axe is one that I hate as well. Teenage boys and frat boys seem to use a half a bottle of this stuff and in spite of what my 34 year old guy friend says (he says it smells great), I still say it stinks. Jicky and Pour Monsieur are much better than most men’s colognes out there.
Eldarwen22
http://realmofeldarwen22.blogspot.com
You think Axe is bad? You orta smell BOD. My dad used to spray BOD – a lot of bod. He was 86 and not in favor of a lot of showering. He would spray it while sitting at his kitchen table. It took me 3 days to get the smell out of there.
Axe is horrific. It should be hate, but I don’t even have the energy to hate it because it won’t stop it!
Poeme is one I don’t get. I don’t get most of the Lancome fragrances. Tresor used to be okay’ish, but recent versions are bleah.
Hands down 100% Love by S-Perfume. Smells like the dog rolled in something vile and then sicked up on the carpet. 100% Nasty.
100% in agreement – I loathe the stuff. Like out-of-date raspberry liqueur chocolates FROM HELL.
YIKES! LOL!
Ha! I just swapped for this, it’s my wild card swap. Reviews from everywhere are wildly mixed! I figure I’ll either love it or put it on my swaplist for next spring 🙂
100% Love was hiiiiiideous. Just… just… I tried it maybe three years ago, and I don’t think I’ve recovered yet.
Oh, yeah. That stuff is toxic. I couldn’t ever figure out how it made so many top lists and love. It’s pretty much 100% Hate for me. Should have been on my list, except i keep blocking it out omy mind!
Oh yes, that is ghastly. Like vomiting up a malted milkshake on a mildewed rug.
Opium and Youth Dew makes me react in the same way I do when I read in the news that someone I thought was dead since decades obviously is still live and kicking: Uh? How could this be? And why?
Serge Lutens Datura Noir is the signature scent of Bette Davis in “Whatever happened to Baby Jane?”. If you have no reference for this movie, please picture google Bette Davis+Baby Jane. It is worth the extra trouble.
Calvin Klein Truth starts off with a nice grassy note and then backstabbingly moves over to the sour odour of old vomit.
White Linen is a great perfume, but unfortunately IS Nurse Ratched in “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” in fragrant formula.
Dang it, I had a response going to this, and then it disappeared.
I LOVE Baby Jane, but never associated it with Datura Noir. Now I need to re-watch during the holidays (great holiday movie!) and match them up. I’m putting Arsenic and Old Lace on the list as well, I adore that move.
White Linen, that is the perfume description. She would wear it with her white squeaking shoes and nail-embedded paddle tucked in the belt of her uniform. 🙂
Datura Noir and Baby Jane as a match depends on how DN evolves on skin. On me it turns into a hysterical, bizarr and chemical plant artficially oversweet madness. Perfect fragrance illustration of the face of Bette Davis in Baby Jane.
Oh yes – Baby Jane is a great inspirational movie! I will use the carachters in it as role models when I grow older.
Agree! I always understood Baby Jane and didn’t really care for her sister, Blanche? This also explains why I like Arsenic & Old Lace. Film Noir weekend, some Sunset Boulevard too!
Aww…Sunset Boulevard. Great movie! And sooo Youth Dew and Opium – great dinosaur mummies (T Rex=YD and Velicoraptor=Opium) from the past come alive. Or Dead man walking….
PS Yes, I always had a soft spot for spunky Baby Jane. Blanche is a jealous loser in a biege trenchcoat……
Vanille insensee: vanilla armpit
Shalimar: dry shampoo in dirty hair
Amarige: Klassy ho
Dior Cherie: strawberry semen.
Bond 9 Chinatown: i’m seducing you then i’m beating you senseless with an incense jackhammer
Agonist Infidels: love this but it pisses me off. 175 to smell like a Pike Place Market headshop? Really?
OMG, that’s it on Shalimar!!! Better description completely.
So you didn’t like the caramel with the strawberry semen in Dior Cherie? 🙂 I love that one, but I can see how it would go oh so wrong.
Chinatown seems like a good idea when you first spritz it on, but you’ve got it exactly right, it just beats you senseless. It uses a patchouli jackhammer on me, but you can’t make it stop for like 24 hours.
Ha!!!! I feel so bad about Dior Cherie…..I remember laughing so hard I cried the first time I wore it. I’m all…..’It’s SPERMFUME!!!!’
You guys crack me up!
There are a huge number of perfumes I don’t LIKE, such as White Linen and Prada Amber and Gucci Premiere. But if I made a list of ten perfumes I truly hate, four of them would be Youth Dew, and five would be things RELATED to Youth Dew: Opium, Cinnabar, Obsession, Coco, OJ Tolu. Add Angel, and you have My Personal Nightmare list right thar.
I love that you’re consistent. 🙂 I even like some of those! But Youth Dew and Angel are horrific. If Youth Dew helped launch fragrance in America, I wonder if it wasn’t because women wanted to get something that smelled good instead of that sludge?
Whatever, haterz. I love Youth Dew!!! (But I do not EVER wear it in public!)
One drop of Youth Dew is pretty enough. Alas, nobody ever seems to stop at one drop. Opium….I am getting a migraine just thinking about Opium.
xo
Hahahaha! What anita said. One drop is aplenty, but nobody seems to stop with the drop.
Hello everyone,
One of the nightmares for me is hideous Ultraviolet by Paco Rabanne or Poeme by Lancôme. I was also traumatised by Rumba from Balenciaga. I’m sure there are more killers out there but one of the most difficult are those cheap smelling fruity florals that attacked most shelves in perfume stores… and also by poor reformulations of old classics… and what makes me laugh are weird faces of SAs when I say that the fragrance doesn’t smell the way it used to before the change;-)
There’s one thing I have to say though, sometimes it’s a matter of the amount and skills while applying the fragrance. A lot of people can’t do it. I used to get a hard time with Obsession cause a lot of women used to put too much and for quite a while I thought it was disgusting. Now I know they put it on in a disgusting way.the one really need to know how to wear the fragrance.
I think Rumba is one of the absolute worst ever. Smells like a fruity bathroom.
Also despise the reformulated Magie Noire.
Oooh! The original Pierre Cardin in the oompaloompa bottle. Smelled like Raid. My best guy pal wore buckets of it. Not a mosquito for miles.
xo
I’ve been avoiding all Paco Rabanne fragrances since they ditched Calandre. All of them just seem the same toxic mess.
There are a lot of killers out there. I didn’t even scratch the surface of all the ones I really hate because they are so overloaded with cheap chemicals as filler that they smell like bug spray and urinal cakes, sometimes in the same perfume.
Ultraviolet! I nearly gagged; early on in my perfume journey, it was one of the first samples of older scents that I bought. I’ve blocked it out ever since.
I was going to list Ultraviolet – it’s an olfactory purple Hulk of horror! ~~nozknoz
Thank you for the genuine LOL’s.
THE worst:
SL Borneo – vomit. Hey maybe it shares a note or two with Winter Delices. What on earth is the note that smells like vomit?
Secretions Magnique – this one didn’t smell like vomit; only made me nearly do so.
Oh, noes!! I have a weird fondness for Borneo. I won’t wear it much, but cobwebs and cocoa just kind of transfix me. March I know hates Borneo and loves Winter Delices, and I’m the opposite. you hate them both, which seems normal!
Agree on the SM, literally triggered my gag reflex, I thought I must be on the battlefield cleaning up wounded soldiers.
Well, I don’t hate Chanel #5, but I won’t be buying even a small bottle to add to my small collection since I already have a big container of hand lotion. Actually it sort of reminds me of the old Aquamarine lotion my mother used to use. And, then there’s Coco, which is simply a bottle of assorted house cleaning products. Yuck. And then there’s Joy, I mean melancholy. Really, what IS the deal with this one? Oh yeah, I just have to add Charlie. Remember that? Ick, double ick. That one was a crime perpetrated on all us “young, independent” women/girls. Is that even sold anymore?
Joy is way more perfume than I can wear. Yeah, it’s not very joyous, but maybe it was back in The Depression?
Charlie used to be my go-to scent for a ltitle while. LIke a month. Then I realized it doesn’t really smell good. 🙂
Oh, you big babies. Joy is JOYOUS! Charlie – luckily I don’t remember much about it….except…Cheryl Tiegs?
Joy is dense and chewy, like meat that’s supposed to be good for you. Oh, I don’t hate it, but it’s not joyful.
Yeah, Cheryl Tiegs was the Charlie girl, made a fortune off of it.
I think Shelley Hack was the Charlie girl. I used to work with a woman who drenched herself in Charlie before coming to work. What a painful memory.
On me, Coco (NOT Coco Noir) becomes delicious after half an hour or so and stays lovely for hours after that. The problem is the 30 minutes I have to spend in the bathroom with the door locked to avoid damaging an innocent bystander, or my husband, with the initial assault.
I’m with Patty on the EL Youth Dew revulsion. A lady in my choir used too much of it, and now I can’t stand it. Just singes my nose hairs.
Another baddie: Givenchy’s original Ange ou Demon is a horrible, screechy, nails on the chalkboard kind of scent to me. And of course, some SA generously gave me four or five carded samples of it!
Coco Mademoiselle is the one Chanel that I can’t abide. It does that fruitichouli thing on my skin which, frankly, is not my thing. Several others in this category: Angel, Flowerbomb, Jimmy Choo, and on and on…
Oh, womanity! Mugler really has put out some hated stuff, huh? Well, by us anyway, the rest of the world seems to love it so much.
Now, Coco Mad and Flowerbomb are my guilty pleasures, but I’m not sure how I can like them and hate Jimmy Choo and Angel so much?
Actually, I quite like some of these. And I love Aromatics Elixir!
By far the worst perfume in the universe is EL White Linen. Antipathy in a bottle. In fact, disgust in a bottle. It may be white linen, but it certainly isn’t clean – there’s something massively unhygienic about it. I’d nominate this for Mordor’s state scent.
Dior Poison isn’t much better – attack of the plastic monster. Mordor’s office scent.
Secretions Magnifiques – if that were what the real thing smells like, sex would go out of fashion. Instant celibacy.
L’Air de Rien: smells like that plastic bag you kept your dirty underwear in while backpacking through somewhere or other for three months.
Giorgio – dried blood on an old sanitary napkin.
I’d better stop here before I make myself sick…..
OMG! White Linen! I remember LOVING White Linen. For about 23 seconds. It seemed like such a good idea at the time..but there is a post-spritz shiv-to-the-left-eyeball that is horrifying. ‘Mordor’s Office Scent’ is…..omg!
Poison. My longest-running (she would kill me if I said ‘oldest’) friend’s 3rd husband gave her Poison. Then he tried to kill her on their honeymoon.
HOLY CRAP IS THAT POISON STORY TRUE
Oh, hey, listen, you cannot just drop that kind of story in comments without a full disclosure story. Um, NOW. That’s like a whole post – Best Perfumes to Plan Murder. *scribbling notes – DONOTSTEALTHIS!*
So true about SM.
I almost threw White Linen in that EL TFA stew. I don’t get most of the ELs at all, they just seem the same. White Linen is horrible, nothing like crisp white anything. Wait! yes, yes, it is, fresh white mini-pad.
SM was one of the few scents ever that made me gag. It’s that metallic thing. I get no sex out of it, just all blood at the crime scene.
White Linen should have been called Mildewed Laundry. Blech.
Oh this is so funny!
Sometimes you expect certain fragrances to make you smell like a toxic nanna, (Oz for someones grandmother who wears too much Chemist Warehouse perfume)
But it’s heartbreaking to sample something supposed to be classic/universally gorgeous and get:
Robert Piguet Baghari which actually shrinks your nasal passages, it is so shrill
Chanel, yes Chanel, Beige. Oh if only it were neutral.
Diptyque Do Son, I think I must be allergic to tuberose.
Vanille Insensee, sweaty vanilla sorry not even roomspray.
Thank you for the opportunity to sample!!!
Baghari is da BOMB! Right up your sinuses! LOL! That stuff scares the toenail polish off me! Beige. Damn. I was theeeese close to adoring it. Nearly swooning with delight, right there in the salon. Then that damn LAUNDRY MUSK…..
You CAN’T be allergic to tuberose. Whither Fracas? Carnal Flower? (whimpers)…
xoxo
I only get hair spray (Elnette?) from Beige. What am I missing. Why on earth would I pay Exclusif money for that. I rather save my pennies for Bois des Iles and 31 rue Cambon.
Toxic Nonna? Okay, I’m stealing that. 🙂
I hear you on the Tampax fresh accord on the EL’s. Hard to tell if Kimberley Clark copied EL, or vice versa.
My worst perfumes ever:
1. Pampleune: Really??? Pure litterbox on me…I can’t conceive anyone would buy this!! I guess it must smell good on someone (sure not me though)!
2. Versace Blonde: “Slut”. I felt like I let a snake out of a bottle. It totally creeped me out. I’m admittedly not a tuberose fan, but I can appreciate them. I even like a few like CF and the MdO one. But THIS ONE is so horrific it literally drove me to tears. Y’know how sometimes you cry if you have to clean up vomit or worse??…..it was THAT bad! I took the bottle, put it in a ziploc and took it straight OUTSIDE and put in the trash. Lasting power of plutonium, too! Scary!
3. Kiehl’s Musk: Dirty old man Also scary!
4. Rubj: What am I missing with this one? Everyone loves it! It was horrible-horrible-horrible on me. It smelled like a fruit over a dirty bathroom smell (spoken by someone who doesn’t mind L’air de Rien, MKK et al). Did I get the wrong sample? I am still intrigued by this one and I’m sure I’ll try it again at some point
I didn’t ‘get’ Rubj either, until March sprayed a whole buncho it on my arm. Then, all of a sudden….Ka-POW! Beeeeyouuuuuuteeefull!
Isn’t it weird when a scent actually creeps you out? I’ve had a couple of those ‘snake in the bottle’ perfumes ..
xoxo
How have I missed Pampleune? I guess all the descriptions scare me so much, I’ve just avoided the whole thing entirely. Eeek!
Blonde, wow! No kidding? I know I’ve smelled it, and there’s nothing shy about it, but that description of disposal cracks me up. 🙂
Kiehl’s Musk, um, yeah. Greasy, as in ‘hey, little girl, I’ve got some candy for you” kind of greasy. I tried to be nice to it before because I figure it was just an old ’70s musk smell connotation I was getting when I smelled it, but maybe not!
I have purchased 3 different samples at 3 different times willing myself to love Rubj. I even got compliments while trying it out, and it still makes me feel like I am trapped in a gas station bathroom For Over 10 Hours! I am actually relieved someone else doesn’t like it!
Kiki, on the other hand, I love in both formulations. Luckyscent gave me a sample in an order of Vero extrait, and I was blown away by how much I enjoyed it. So you just never know.
I’m not a Thierry Mugler fan, but I have nothing against his fragrances except one – I absolutely hate A*Men. It smelled bad on all of the men around me who have tried it, no exceptions, and finally they passed it on to me claiming it’s more suitable for women, anyway. It’s not. It’s not suitable for anyone, well – maybe for a priest who’s way too much into caramel treats, cause it smells like sweets&church. 😉
I have to agree with Marc Jacobs Lola and Dot, I’d just add Daisy to the list. I kind of agree on Estee Lauder Pleasures, too, but – while it’s purely boring on me, it smells quite nice on my mom.
I like Jimmy Choo. It smells rather uninteresting on paper, but on my skin the drydown is delightful soft toffee, and it lasts for hours. And I think I like Lorenzo Villoresi Teint de Neige, on some days. When it’s cold and rainy, it’s somewhat comforting.
Another few on my hate list are: Chanel no 5, because to my taste it’s way too aldehydic, almost suffocating. And Mademoiselle Chanel – the edt – something’s just wrong with it, I can’t quite say what. By Kilian Beyond Love is a cloying mix of tuberose, candycotton and rubber to my nose. And, Gucci Premiere turns into some pretty awful cat urine-like thing after three or four hours…
The notion of a caramel-eating priest in A*Men (heh. I just got the joke. heh!) …ewww… 😀
I’m not sure I’ve ever smelled A*Men alone. I’ve gotten all the pure malt and leather and coffee and like those. maybe that’s why he started making those, like a cat wanting to cover up its business, Mugler keeps putting stronger and stronger stuff on it to make it smell good?
5 is on my hate list – except the parfum only on the rare day – it IS suffocating, it’s like a fragrance bomb you set off as soon as you spray it, and it just keeps eating everyone around you.
The sacred cow pic makes me LOL.. 😀
I share in the Pom Noir loathing, but I think maybe for a different reason. I can’t stand the pomegranate note. It’s sour and chemical and screechy on me.
Shalimar, at least in its current formulation, made me think of changing a baby’s diaper. It was toxic chemicals and then just baby wipes all over the place.
I wanted to like Alien, but after the initial jasmine fades, I get a slightly minty windexy thing that I just can’t get past. (I’ll be the odd one out and say that Angel grew on me, though I hated it at first).
I don’t get the pickle thing in Good Girl Gone Bad, fortunately. That was actually the only one of the Garden of Good and Evil series that I liked. It’s In the City of Sin that goes pickle-y on me. And Forbidden Games just made me think of shampoo. It could’ve at least had the courtesy of being eeevil shampoo. That could’ve been interesting.
A couple of “oh-crap-that’s-coming-from-me” moments: One was with Serge Lutens Arabie. I tried it on in a shop and then went about my day. Whenever I would get a whiff of it, I thought at first that I was smelling something from an Indian restaurant down the street from where I was, but then I realized it was me. I felt like I had spilled chicken tikka on myself and couldn’t wait to get home and wash it off.
The second was with Malle Noir Epices. I liked the first part and the middle of it well enough.. it was the drydown that was the problem. I was in my car, and I thought I smelled something burning, like burnt plastic or something like that. It kind of freaked me out a little and I was afraid something was wrong with my car… and then I realized that smell was coming from my arm.
It’s not NICE to make an old lady snort coffee up her nose! OMG! ROFL.
I want some ‘eeeevil shampoo’!
xoxoA
LOL sorry! I think Patty’s talk in her review about it being malevolent got my hopes up!! ;-P Eeeviiill shampoo would definitely make showers more interesting..heh
But it was malevolent on me!!1 🙂
How in the world did I miss Arabie on my list? Exactly what you said, I smelled like freshly served up Masala. When I was in Delhi, we went to Khan market, which is pretty cool, and all the food vendor smells are, well, Arabie, down to some unwashed bodies piled on top of each other.
Noir Epices too. Spice Cabinet gone so wrong. Man, I missed a lot of my big hates, but the list would have gone on about four more pages. 🙂
noir epices – I made the mistake of trying that the day I had my hair dyed. I hate hair dye smell and the combo of the two was baaaad.
I can recall decades of bad perfumes, including that forgettable era when everyone you passed on the street was lost in a dark cloud of Georgio. But in my entire life I’ve never smelled one quite as gag-worthy as Angel. Imagine the rotting lilies piled in the funeral home’s dumpster. Now imagine drenching them in hot sugar syrup. Like that.
While it’s not in the same category of pure olfactory evil, I do have to put in a bad word for Tom Ford’s Black Orchid. There’s a certain appeal to the odor of a healthy and well-maintained compost heap, but most of us aren’t tempted to roll in one and then go to dinner.
This is by far the best description of Angel I’ve ever read! The Angel of Death. Exactly like that. Aghh…
The Angel of Death Threw Up in the Dumpster.
Yeah, I can’t stand Angel, either. It is just so irritating; it doesn’t evolve beyond that for me. I sprayed on at a cosmetics counter awhile back and sneezed every time I sniffed my arm.
Angel has earned a spot in Perfume Hell, truly, for the pain it has inflicted by its adherents who spray a whole bottle on themselves. I’m always at a loss when I think about Angel to explain how truly vile it is. Well, except in those pure parfums. The Angel leather one? Cumin, seriously. It was UFB, and I can’t decide yet if I liked it or found a new layer or loathing.
Haven’t smelled Angel Leather. Doubt that I ever will. Mugler is never allowed near my olfactory nerves again; he’s had his three strikes with Angel, Alien, and that other nasty one. BTW, Patty, I have finished the first elf slipper. I sent an email to the Posse address and tried to include a photo, but you can send me your email for a better photo. My email is wooddogs3 at gmail dot com.
Womanity/ Yeah, that stuff is toxic.
I cannot wait for these elf slippers. 🙂
Hoorah! The return of…TampaxFreshAccord!!..But, wait, no mention of the infamous Tom Ford ass accord??
Oh yes. Alien made me all but gag. And don’t even get me started on all the more horrific Baby Jane aspects of Angel…shudder…I have a few olfactory sociopaths to add: Dammuso by Profumi di Pantellaria, aka Eau de Noxzema; Clean by whomever. Why in the world would anyone want to smell like CVS fabric softener? and then there is the excoriating memory of the first Juicy Couture ‘fume that nearly gave me a nosebleed. It was like inhaling a Brillo pad.
But Anita,dollface, Good Girl Gone Bad and pickle juice? for realz?? It is the first turberosy frag I’ve like in aeons –definitely sex-bomb stuff. And, yes, I have outgrown it, but I still have a bottle of that Index Pom-anise. So there.
I know! I KNOW!! Patty SWEARS I am nuts and that there is NO pickle in GGGB. And I swear to you I did not even so much as glance at a review or notes or NOTHIN’ prior to spritzing it. Which is why I was stunned! to get the p-juice. Apparently so were the 32 other reviewers! LOL!
I don’t get the TF ‘ass’ accord. Most of his stuff is just ‘meh’ on me, though Black Orchid smells like grape jelly.
That stupid Juicy Couture smells DIVINE on my sister. Smells like the laundry bin at the nursing home on me.
xoxoA
There is NO pickle in GGGB. Mariekel, I get sex-bomb too, so ignore the wench, Musette. Her nose is just making stuff up.
oh, my goodness! so glad to hear from someone else who cannot tolerate clinique aromatics elixir. to me, it smells like car-sickness and a musk-ox had a baby made of partially digested grass. i’m sure there’s a market for that in mordor!
Omg, this honestly made me lol. Partially digested grass is priceless.
Yet again another reason to NOT open up the Posse comments while drinking coffee! LOL! xoxoA