I have to admit, lately I´ve been feeling a little like Goldilocks, since I´ve been looking for “just right” and it seems to be eluding me at every turn. Rhubarb with too much patchouli, woods where there are none, and now I´ve fallen down the rabbit hole of celebrity. Wait – rabbit hole? That´s Alice in Wonderland. I am not well…

How many of you remember Helena Rubinstein? The brand hasn´t had a presence here in North America for a number of years, but it did attempt a splashy comeback about a decade ago. First, it was reintroduced in Canada at Eaton´s, before what´s left of the Eaton family let the venerable department store die on the vine and be bought out by Sears. Then, a day spa opened in New York City´s Soho neighbourhood, and was featured in a third season episode of “Sex and the City”. It was the one where Samantha caused a scandal because she wasn´t sufficiently “serviced” by one of the male massage therapists.  Now, Helena Rubinstein is back in North America with a fragrance, Wanted. It is being fronted by Demi Moore and billed as, “A vibrant woody floral filled with sensual and carnal tension”.   Lately, the only thing filled with sensual and carnal tension for me is an extra large Tim Horton´s double-double.  Um, that´s a coffee, light and sweet.

My mother used Helena Rubinstein cosmetics back in the days when they were available at Alexander´s department store, sold in blister packaging like Maybelline and Cover Girl. She adored Helena Rubinstein mascara, buying at least two at a time. My mother didn´t have many eyelashes to speak of, but for what few she had, that magic mascara made the most of them.  In those days I was too young to wear Helena Rubinstein anything, but when the brand hit the shelves again in the late 90s, I went hog wild.  The colour cosmetics were a little too bold for my liking, but the skin care products and their Vertiginous mascara were must-haves for me. Back then, my favourite items to smuggle from Toronto to New York were from Helena Rubinstein and Lush. Now, Lush is ubiquitous, and the only place in North America you can find Helena Rubinstein is in Mexico.  The times, they do change.

When I saw the picture of Wanted by Helena Rubinstein in the Shoppers Drug Mart flyer, I thought the whole line was being reintroduced here in Canada. Alas, only the fragrance, exclusively at Shoppers Drug Mart for now (it’s at Macy’s in the US). The tie-in with Demi Moore is a bit misleading since it is not her scent exactly, but “interpreted” by her. I´m guessing that since there aren´t many people here in Canada and the US for whom the name “Helena Rubinstein” rings a bell, they needed a boost from a more familiar entity. Especially if that entity is what´s known as a “cougar”, possessed of a body that is pretty well unattainable for us mere mortals in her age range, and a hot husband 15 years her junior.  I guess that takes care of the “sensual and carnal tension”.  The fragrance itself is as I said: not quite right. Not much is known about the actual juice with the exception of who concocted it – Dominique Ropion and Carlos Benaà¯m, and the notes: ylang ylang, wood magnolia and iris cream. There has to be more to it, but I´m not sure what. To my nose, it smells like one of those country club scents you smell on women of a certain age, dripping diamonds, carrying their Birkin bags and lunching on the stray lettuce leaf and celery stalk. I don´t know how else to describe it. It doesn´t have a vintage feel, nor is it carnal or sensual. I get more of a “which doesn´t belong and why?” vibe from it, because the iris cream clearly has no business in this scent. The earthiness of the iris is so wrong here, all the way through to the drydown.  Iris cream succeeds in one scent: Guerlain´s Iris Ganache. Other than that, it does not translate. It is either iris, or it is not.  Again, if we´re going to use the words “sensual” and “carnal” and Dominique Ropion in the same sentence, there can only be one scent we´re talking about: Carnal Flower. It begins and ends with that one.

At the bottom of my rabbit hole is Jennifer Lopez´s recent release, My Glow. And here´s the shocking part: I like it. And I almost bought a bottle of it. Why? Because when the mistress of your domain is policing every morsel of food you eat and threatening you with the implementation of a raw food diet, you need comfort wherever you can find it. When you open up the fridge and spy a mason jar filled with what looks like puréed front lawn, you want to crawl under the bed and hide until you wake up in a home you can call your own. Hey, I knew what I was getting into; I´m just blowing off some steam. But, the right scent does help lower my stress level. My Glow consists of lavender, water lily, freesia, white rose, wet leaves, peony, Casablanca lily, skin musk, sandalwood, precious woods and heliotrope.  All together, this makes lavender soap. But not soap as in “soap and water”. Soap, as in, “Please stop murdering onions in the kitchen. I can´t take it anymore!” If you live in southern Ontario and you´re having trouble locating an onion, drop me a line; they´re all here.  One snort of My Glow helps me keep the onions at bay; that´s because I don´t currently have a hazmat suit and a gas mask.  I´m thinking that´s as good a reason to buy a bottle as any I can think of.

For more insight into my wonderful aunt and her food proclivities, please surf here. She´s a nutbar, but I love her very much.

Take another stroll down memory lane with me: If you do remember the Helena Rubinstein brand as I do, tell your story. Or, if you live in one of the countries where the line is still sold, what do you think of it now?

Did you know that J. Lo perfume is the most frequently searched perfume term on the internet?  Yup, shocked me too.  So given that popularity and our normal propensity for reviewing high end, niche, obscure scents, we’d like from time to time to look at more accessible perfumes and ones that are clearly making a killing in the perfume market.  Someone is buying them, so let’s find out why.

We have some generalizations about the JLo oeuvre, having sniffed seven in a short period of time. First, there´s a unified feel to these that indicates JLo´s involvement in these on some level. Not that she designed them, but they seem united even beyond what you´d expect as a branding effort. Lopez allegedly runs all aspects of her life like a pretty tight ship – congrats to her on the twins – and these reflect that. Whether you like them or not, they tell a coherent story.

JLo loooooves her some fresh accord.   How you build a fresh accord in terms of the aromachemistry is beyond our knoweldge, and it´s hard to describe, but you know it when you smell it – it´s sort of that “clean laundry” or “fresh from the shower” smell, only more gaseous and a little plastic. If Lopez´ fragrances are a tad less sweet overall than you might guess if you´d never smelled them, I´d really, really like to take the vat of Clean away from her perfumers — all perfumers. (March: There are things I hate more in perfumery, but “fresh” smells weirdly stale to me, sort of the antithesis of what it´s meant to evoke. “Fresh” is like too much room spray, when what you really want is to open a window.) (Patty:  I think of this “fresh” thing as TampaxFreshAccord. Artificially bright, trying to cover up with too much freshness things that do exist in nature, except, well, this smell.)

Beyond the “fresh” accord, there´s a curious, synthetic sameness to her scents. Using the word “synthetic” doesn’t really work because most of what we´re smelling in perfume is synthetic anyway, chemically. But a JLo fragrance´s relationship to fruit and florals is like the smell of Hawaiian Tropic tanning lotion – or Hawaiian Punch. You can see, if you squint, the original starting point in nature, but what you are smelling doesn´t bear any relation to a real fruit or flower.

March: If I had a complaint about the JLos as a group, it´s their lasting power. In general, I am not one to complain about how long fragrances stick around, because mostly they stick to me like glue. Deseo had the best lasting power, but really, what I was left with was an ambery musk for most of the afternoon. Live goes on quite strong and spicy, but after two hours I could barely smell it. Glow and Still were entirely undetectable after two hours (I asked my kids.) Some of you might consider this a blessing, but I was disappointed. If there´s one thing I admire about Jennifer, it´s her tenacity.

Patty: My main criticism about the J.Los is their sameness. After a few sniffs, cohesive as it might be, they aren’t very memorable or differentiated in the marketplace, except for the celebrity whose name they bear. 

Still - “In the eye of the storm I am still.” Sake note, white pepper, mandarin, Earl Grey, freesia, honeysuckle, orange blossom, rose, wild jasmine, sandalwood, musks, amber, orris.

Patty:  This one worked for me, at least I’m voting it as most likely for me to wear.  I did get more tea out of it and less fresh or floral. Not sure why, but the TFA (tampax fresh accord) disappeared, and the tea stuck around, though the whole concoction didn’t seem to want to stick as long as I would have liked.

March: This was supposed to be her original “mature” scent, by which I assume she means women over the age of 21. The notes don´t sound bad, and the opening is sweeter than I expected (that´s a lot of floral for a Jlo), although the drydown is satisfyingly tart. If I got more Earl Gray I´d be happy, sort of. But the fresh note in this just kills me. (Diva says: it smells like powder. It doesn´t smell like anything important.)

Glow - “fresh and clean, like you just came out of the shower.” Orange blossom, pink grapefruit, rose, sandalwood, soft amber, jasmine, vanilla, musk, orris.

March: The bottle´s sexy, but I´d describe this as the Office JLo – the one least likely to offend anyone in the Cube Farm. A very clean musk with muted florals. Oddly, for the “fresh” one, I get less of that Glade Ozone smell. I´d wear this. (Diva says: I like this one, I´d wear it.)

Patty:  I despised this one. I got more of the TFA in this, like a boatload, and it really grated on my last nerve after about 20 minutes, though I can see how it would work on a younger person who has more nerves to grate on and less frayage caused by age.  And that super-fresh feeling lasted for hours.

Glow After Dark – her nightclub scent, “out with your friends, celebrating and enjoying the nightlife”. Passionfruit, lychee ice, pink peony, orange flower, blond woods, pink musk.

March: You know this is her nightclub scent because along with the blended fruit it has the singular, tangy smell of fresh vomit – like someone threw up a Mai Tai. Ugh. (Diva says: too fruity.)

Patty:  Oh, Lord, just kill me now.  I would have thought that I would like this one, but reminds me of too many long nights drinking cheap fruity cocktails and waking up to regret all the things you don’t remember doing. 

Live, about “living for the moment, celebrating life through my very first love, which is dancing.” Sicilian lemon, orange, pineapple, redcurrant, spicy violet, peony, musk, vanilla, sandalwood.

Patty:  Not that bad at all. It’s a little too much sweet on the open, but that blessedly blows off  a little and gives a nice musky minimally sweet fruity smell.  It’s still much too sweet for me even in the drydown, so I”m sticking with Still as my fave, but this comes in right behind it.

 March: This goes on nicely musky, with a minimum of Glade, and a spicy accord (must be that spicy violet.) The only JLo that registered as spicy, and the musky, woody drydown is sexy. This is my favorite of the bunch. I won´t buy it, but if I owned it I´d probably wear it. (Diva says: that´s fun, I´d wear it.)

Live Luxe celebrates “Jennifer´s excitement for dance and her love of luxury.” Pear, peach, melon, citrus, apple, satiny muguet, amethyst freesia, honeysuckle, precious diamong musk, vanilla, sandalwood.

March: In this case, Luxe means “I can afford enough sugar to bury your entire family.” Too sweet. (Diva says: ewww, that´s really gross, like you threw up something sweet.) The vomit reference – a weird coincidence that in hindsight maybe isn´t a ringing endorsement of the line … I mean, how often do you compare a fragrance to vomit?

Patty:  Fruity sweet TFA. Not sure how they screwed up a Live flanker this badly, but they threw out everything that was good about Live and threw in a gallon of Sucrose-fortified cotton candy.  If you like Pink Sugar and that ilk, you’ll love this.

Deseo means “desire … wish .. dream. I want to inspire people to dream and want more.” Tropical plants accord, bergamot, orange blossom, geranium, mineral accord, amber.

Patty:  Did not smell this one.

March: Deseo is the newest JLo and seems like a bit of a departure for her. The bottle´s more sophisticated and interesting – sort of a lumpy, assymetircal uncut gemstone. It opens on a huge fresh accord, what I am thinking is her idea of tropical plants. Once that goes away, I kind of like it. It´s got decent lasting power, and that musky, sexy, warm-skin drydown that´s like the part of Live I like best. (Diva says: that´s nasty, that´s worse than the throw-up one. It smells like our locker room.)

Miami Glow has apparently been discontinued, although it´s still all over the net. Notes are passion fruit, coconut, orange flower, sunbathed sand, amber, musk and vanilla.

March: I´m sorry it´s been discontinued, because I really liked it – it´s Jenny at the Beach, complete with tanning oil and big white sunglasses (must have been that sunbathed sand note.) It was a great virtual-reality beach fragrance.

Patty:  I didn’t get to test this one this time around, but I know I smelled it when we were doing some blind things a year or so ago. I’d agree with March - from my memory, it’s pretty great.  Why they would discontinue one of the best of the bunch is a mystery.

Love at First Glow — bergamot, Georgia peach, osmanthus, pink jasmine, wild rose, freesia, blond woods, musk, and vanilla absolute.

Patty:  I really didn’t mind this. It’s not something I’d wear, but if someone sprayed it on me while I wasn’t looking, I wouldn’t be horrified or annoyed.  A soft little scent, less of the TFA than most of these, only on the open and then disappears.  Something a young girl could wear without smelling like a tarted-up child-floozy.  It also faded on me pretty fast, so maybe that explains my lack of annoyance?

March: This is probably the most candy-fied of the bunch, and smells the most tweener. Having said that, I still find it less offensive than, say, Pink Sugar. It strikes me as something my 11-year-old would like. (Diva says: too sweet, too girly.) Okay, so 13-year-olds are too mature for this one?

In summary, only a couple of these are pretty atrocious, but even then, they likely appeal to people with different tastes than ours — we lean more towards the odd, ridiculous and skanky.  A couple of them are pretty good and stand on their own merit as a lower-cost perfume that smells decent.  But best selling?  Sorry, I don’t understand that at all.  There is nothing remarkable enough in any of these to be a standout.  The one that might have been close, Miami Glow, is discontinued

Patty