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Narciso Rodriguez Narciso Poudree ~ fragrance review

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Narciso Rodriguez Narciso Poudrée, still from brand commercial

I used to hate (really, hate) powdery perfumes. Now I’m very nearly the opposite: you can take a fragrance that I don’t love all that much, give it a nice dusting of powder, and there’s a good chance I’ll at least like it better. So it goes with Narciso Poudrée, the latest from Narciso Rodriguez, and the latest entry in the current trend of powdered flankers. If they’d dumped a load of powder on Narciso by Narciso Rodriguez, a fragrance I already thought was darned good, I might have been forced to buy it. Instead, they did an Eau de Toilette version that I found distinctly less interesting, and then they dumped a load of power on that.

Actually, this one is tweaked a bit from the Eau de Toilette…

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Oriza L. Legrand Cuir de L’Aigle Russe ~ fragrance review

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Oriza L. Legrand Cuir de L'Aigle Russe label

Oriza L. Legrand’s latest perfume has a strange name — Cuir de L’Aigle Russe.1 No, this is not the scent of a ‘Russian’ eagle’s tanned skin…I assume we’re in “Royal Leather” territory. Oriza L. Legrand is one of my favorite new fragrance houses of the last several years. So many of their perfumes are on my to-buy list that I’m paralyzed with indecision and will probably buy none. After my first sniff of it, Cuir de L’Aigle Russe also went on this weird active-but-inactive to-buy list.

Cuir de L’Aigle Russe begins with a dry lemon-bergamot accord; I detect fuzzy geranium leaf with a hint of rose, warm immortelle snuggling with cardamom and a burst of non-species-specific floral indoles…

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Valentino Donna ~ perfume review

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Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey for Valentino Donna

If you adored Lancôme La Vie Est Belle1 or any of its various spawn (Giorgio Armani Sì, Nina Ricci L’Extase, Salvatore Ferragamo Emozione et. al.) and you were hoping for more candied iris powder, do try Valentino’s new-ish Donna, which I’d call the latest in the series except that I’m so far behind that Donna has been out for months and there are probably umpteen new fragrances in the same vein that I haven’t even smelled yet. Ah well.

Donna is the feminine counterpart to last year’s Valentino Uomo, and it maintains that scent’s emphasis on sugar, or to put it as Kevin did in his review, loads of sugar, at least in the opening…

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Friday scent of the day 10/16

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Molinard Habanita poudre

Happy Powder Puff Friday! Our community project for today: wear something powdery!

What did you pick? As always, do chime in with your scent of the day even if you’re not participating in the community project.

I’m in vintage Molinard Habanita. Quoting my review: “If you can imagine dousing yourself in baby powder, donning an old leather jacket and then smoking a cigar in a closed room with a single rose in a vase 10 feet away, you’ll get the general idea.” I would imagine it’s been cleaned up for modern times but I haven’t smelled a new bottle in eons…

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Nina Ricci L’Extase ~ fragrance review

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Nina Ricci L'Extase, brand images

Nina Ricci’s perfume distribution in the US is spotty. You can find the old classic L’Air du Temps at Nordstrom or Macy’s, and Macy’s also has the youth-oriented Nina. That’s about it. Bloomingdales, Saks and Neiman Marcus don’t have anything (although Neiman Marcus has some lovely items from the fashion line at the moment), nor does Sephora. I never saw Ricci Ricci or Mademoiselle Ricci here at all, although admittedly I did not look all that hard.

I was curious about L’Extase, the latest, which is geared older than Nina but younger than L’Air du Temps. +1: it’s a musky floriental from perfumer Francis Kurkdjian. -1: the advertising, with Laetitia Casta, is the usual drearily predictable writhing we’ve already seen a million times over…

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