Roundup by Carol Nelson

As the daylight begins shrinking so do the days left to me to review some fragrances that I think are pretty good but are just not going to ever make it to the top of my editorial calendar. I’ve outsourced some to my fellow writers here at CaFleureBon but still there were four sitting there staring at me accusingly. I can hear them saying “You said you liked us. You said you would cover us in positive adjectives.” There’s nothing like a group of whiny samples to get me to write about them. Here are four of those needy fragrances and my mini-reviews of them.

Rodin

Back at the Sniffapalooza Fall Ball perfumer Darryl Do gave me a sniff of this fragrance he created for the beauty line Rodin. The Rodin Olio Lusso Face Oil supposedly has a unique aroma which the perfume was attempting to capture. I have never tried the face oil but as far as the perfume goes it is skanky indolic filthy jasmine to the max and I love it. Jasmine has so many versions within perfumery but my preference is for the concentrated straight no chaser version which many people find off-putting. Rodin pulls me into a jasmine underworld where indolic eruptions surround the sweet contrast of the floral nature of jasmine. Just to make sure that you don’t ever get confused about the nature of this jasmine a healthy dose of animalic musk adds an almost feral quality to this. If you love your jasmine in IMAX and 3-D you must try Rodin.

Nicole by Nicole Richie

Back when Nicole Richie was Paris Hilton’s sidekick I expected they would both eventually fade away due to their apparent lack of talent. While Ms. Hilton is finally down to her final wisps of relevance Ms. Richie actually matured into a shrewd business woman and fashion designer. From her original jewelry line House of Harlow 1960 she has been slowly expanding into all areas of fashion. I have admired her Bohemian inspired designs as it grew into her Winter Kate clothing line and now inevitably fragrance. I tried Nicole by Nicole Richie on a trip to the mall and was completely surprised at how good it was. At the top I was greeted with the typical fruity floral combo of blackberry and orange. From there the rest of the trip down the fragrant runway was atypical for a department store fragrance. A very restrained use of rose and lily of the valley could be expected but the use of amber and papyrus was the unexpected addition. The base is a great patchouli and sandalwood befitting a boho vibe. The lasting power of Nicole by Nicole Richie is very fleeting but for the time it is there it is very much a cut above the other things on the department store counter.

Marchesa Parfum D’Extase

Pretty soon the list of fashion designers who don’t have a fragrance line will be shorter than the ones who do. I wonder what took co-founders and creatives Georgina Chapman and Karen Craig so long to put out one for Marchesa. They finally did and it is called Marchesa Parfum D’Extase. The perfumer is Annie Buzantian and she has created a straightforward elegant floral. Every time I have attended a Marchesa collection event I am reminded of the founder’s words “We’re women designing for women.” Ms. Buzantian must’ve taken that philosophy to heart as this perfume is for a woman who loves florals. It opens with a spray of freesia and the silvery qualities of iris and violet also joining in. A cleaner more sophisticated jasmine is the heart and the iris persists from the top notes to still add that bit of shiny contrast. The base is sort of disappointing as the iris in all of its rooty glory remains and would have been better if left alone, I think. Instead Ms. Buzantian adds ambrox and you all know how much I enjoy ambrox and so for me it doesn’t improve the final moments. What came before was very nice and if you aren’t as ambroxphobic as me then this is another better than average fragrance you can find at Sephora.

Thierry Mugler Fragrance of Leather Womanity

I reviewed the three other Thierry Mugler Fragrance of Leather fragrances for Alien, Angel, and A*Men a few months ago. Womanity also got the same maceration with leather strips as the other three but for some reason it was only released in Europe. As a result I didn’t get the chance to try it until many weeks after I had tried the others. While I like the other Fragrance of Leather fragrances it seems to me that Womanity might have been the one Thierry Mugler line which was perfect for this experiment. When I reviewed Womanity back in 2010 when it was released I found it to be the most restrained of the entire Thierry Mugler collection. By taking that strait-laced perfume and wrapping it in leather and some labdanum the demure flower has become a slinky sex kitten. The leather plays contextual havoc with the very green fig at the heart of Womanity and the added labdanum takes the salty briny caviar accord and brings it up a notch or two in sophistication. The Fragrance of Leather Womanity turns something safe into something flirtatiously dangerous.

There you have it four fragrances for you to check out while you are at the mall doing your shopping over the upcoming holiday season. I think all of them deserve a little bit of attention even if they did have to whine a little to get it from me.

Disclosure: All of these reviews were based on samples provided by the manufacturer.

–Mark Behnke, Managing Editor