Saturday, August 30, 2008

Estee Lauder - Youth Dew

A powerful fragrance you can taste in your mouth and feel in your eyes from one microlitre of application. It smells mouldering, like an exhumed matron who died from emphysema whilst on the bidet. Musty, bitter, this should never have been resurrected, it smells of death already, permanent marker, a broken string of pearls, a sixty-year-old matted powder puff, rotten matte lipstick, stagnation, a vacuum cleaner exploded.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Boucheron - Miss Boucheron

Slightly-above-average fruity thing, enlivened by some woods.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Chanel - Sycomore

This is what the mace smells like when the riot police are all amphibian-eyed Helmut Newton amazons. Mutant vetiver, burnished to a poison-dart-frog-venomous sheen, with no trace of heart or pity.
It could be fabulous on a boy.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Yves Saint Laurent - Rive Gauche

Immense rose. Eau de Pantsuit. Dry, sober, an eggshell off-white, not the towering metallic I expected. Such a beautiful iconic canister, though.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Guerlain - Vetiver

A classic, clean vetiver, perfect for boating or shrimping, for worn cotton shorts and little nets, baskets, gathering shells seaweed rocks, white sunshades, a rocky Breton beach . . . wading, salt . . .

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Caron - Farnesiana

Mimosa blossom-marzipan, milky tea, powder, a Victorian virgin's petticoat, stocking garters, meadowfoam, nectar, honeysuckle cream.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Robert Piguet - Bandit

The most bitter, argumentative, viper-tongued perfume ever made. This is what bile smells like - a hornets' nest, rubber, leather, sharp and acidic. This is the sound of your nerves shredded to bloody threads after lying on a bed of caustic-soaked nails.
EDIT: Six hours later it fades to an astringent eau de cologne, bracing and herbal.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Lancome - Magnifique

Bog-standard woodsy-floral that smells like dried spittle, or Tresor or Volupte (some such). I really loved Hypnose, so to see Lancome immerse itself in whitebread pap (the Princess fucking Diaries!) is a walloping disappointment. Also, the tagline for it is the absolute cheeseball dregs. This deserves to tank.

Monday, August 4, 2008

L'Aromarine - Mousse de Chene (Oakmoss)

Drycleaning a Shakespearean professor's forty-year-old tweed suit.

Saturday, August 2, 2008