Halle Berry will launch Closer by Halle Berry in September. Closer will be Berry’s fifth fragrance release, and the woody floral reportedly combines fresh notes with a classic masculine fougère accord…
Donna Karan Woman ~ perfume review
Just like a woman, the fragrance is a dichotomy of softness and strength. Utilizing ingredients that are traditionally found in masculine fragrances and wrapping them with nurturing white florals, Donna Karan and [perfumer] Anne Flipo’s groundbreaking creation results in a feminine and sensual scent: the confident signature core of sandalwood and Haitian vetiver is sublimated with the creamy feminine notes of orange flower resonating in an instinctual feminine sensuality.
— Donna Karan Woman press materials
If I had a nickel for every time a new women’s perfume has promised some “fusion of masculine and feminine”,1 I’d have a grande latte, or maybe even a frappucino. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the fragrance itself turns out to be business as usual — most women’s fragrances have notes that could be considered “traditionally” masculine, after all, just as most men’s fragrances have notes that could be considered “traditionally” feminine.
Why this should be a selling point — for women! men’s fragrances advertised as having a feminine side are as rare as dodo birds2 — is beyond me, but apparently it is, and I’ll say this for the new Donna Karan Woman, it delivers, at least on this particular point. Donna Karan Woman is closer to feminine than masculine, but not by much. If you put it in a different bottle and tweaked the top notes a bit, you’d have a Donna Karan Man.
The start is a fairly conventional blend of citrus and fruity notes…
Balenciaga Paris L’Essence ~ perfume review
Well, it’s supposed to be stronger but it’s not actually that strong—it just has a different language. It’s all the same elements but we are saying something different than we were with Balenciaga Paris, which was so much about the violets. This one has a metallic side, it’s about the violet leaves so it’s slightly more masculine and androgynous, too.1
That’s Balenciaga designer Nicolas Ghesquière talking about the new Balenciaga Paris L’Essence, the follow-up fragrance to last year’s Balenciaga Paris. And he’s telling the truth — so much so that I hardly need to write a review, and will prattle on only for the sake of anyone who really needed a little break this afternoon. So, those of you hoping for a more intense version of Balenciaga Paris’ muted violet elegance — perhaps with some sillage? — will be disappointed by L’Essence, although if what you’re after is a real wallop instead of a whisper, you can always turn to Tom Ford’s Violet Blonde.
L’Essence maintains the original’s sheer, close-to-the-skin feel, but intensifies the green notes in the early stages and the dry woody base notes later on. The floral aspect is nearly gone, and the powdery finish is even lighter than it already was. It does not really read as metallic to my nose (actually, it seems less metallic to me than the original), but there is an almost leathery feel (again, as advertised) to the dry down. On paper, it struck me as lighter than Balenciaga Paris, on skin, as ever so slightly more intense, considerably more chypre-ish and considerably more masculine…
Juliette Has A Gun Calamity J ~ new fragrance
Juliette Has A Gun will launch Calamity J this coming November. The new patchouli musk scent will be fronted by Lou Douillon.
Calamity J is described as a masculine scent for women and “the fragrance of a dandy”…
Gucci by Gucci ~ perfume review
In Angela’s recent article on Becoming a perfumista, she identified four stages along the road from newbie status to curating a personal collection of 300+ perfumes: strong interest, beginning perfume mania, full-blown perfume mania and connoisseurship. I’d like to add a fifth: rampant cynicism. This comes, I think, of already owning enough perfume to scent a small town for the foreseeable future, and then not only looking for more fragrances that you might conceivably love and want to own, but also trying (in vain) to keep track of all the new perfume releases and to smell as many of them as you can possibly manage.
You can tell you’ve reached stage five when almost everything you read about a new fragrance makes you either laugh out loud or roll your eyes, depending on your mood. I must have been “in a mood” the day I first read about the new Gucci by Gucci, because I remember rolling my eyes. Gucci’s Creative Director Frida Giannini was said to have “unleashed her affinity for masculine notes” — yeah, right. I’ve heard that nonsense before. And “modern chypre” gets an eye roll from me no matter what mood I’m in. The commercial didn’t help — I’m a David Lynch fan, but his spot for Gucci by Gucci struck me as silly…