Some were spellbound; some were hellbound...

Avon U by Ungaro For Her & Bond Girl 007 Forever

Today we reach the end of my foray into Avon samples, though not the end of our week of affordable scents. But take heart, dear reader, there are more affordable scents on the docket for Friday and Saturday.

According to Avon, U by Ungaro For Her is

a fresh, woody floral fragrance which features notes of bergamot blossom, freesia and pepper blossom in the top, acacia, living lotus flower, and osmanthus in the heart, and orris, sandalwood and musk in the base.
Notes: bergamot blossom, freesia, pepper blossom, acacia aura, lotus flower, osmanthus, iris, sandalwood and musk

The first thing I think when I try U by Ungaro is that the scent is trying, on application, to be too many things at once, practically knocking me down with its enthusiasm. Then, almost instantly, it goes flat, puffing up iris and sandalwood at me like the weak smell of 1950s face powder. Had the opening happened slowly, playing out the notes over time, I think it might have been great. Truthfully, there is just too much happening that disappears too fast for me to even be able to tell you what all is happening there. It's sweet, it's spicy, it's floral, it's...trying to hard.

Reese Witherspoon is fronting for this one, and I love her and think she is immensely talented, but when I smell U by Ungaro, the immediate mental image I get is of Tracy Flick, the toxically perky high school overachiever. She's like Paris Geller, if Paris had no conscience.

Last up is Bond Girl 007 Forever. The ad copy hilariously reads, "A sultry cocktail of dangerous seduction blending sleek citrus fruits and black pepper with sexy jasmine florals and smoky woods. Forever Irresistible. Forever Bond." The notes include pink pepper, rose, neroli, violet, muguet, amber, incense and cedar.

This was by far the best of the Avon scents I tried. On me, it is an aromatic citrus, all citrus and spice with a hint of amber-y sweetness. It’s a lovely scent, light and fun. It reminds me of CK One, but sweeter and more feminine. That said, I think it could make a nice masculine scent as well.

Bond Girl 007 Forever retails in a cute 50ml bottle for $30 but is currently on sale through Avon for a mere $25. As scents bought smell unsniffed go, not a bad price point. However if you know someone who sells Avon you can, and should, get your hands on a sample.

I'm sure any of you that have looked in the general direction of any news source this week know that L.A. is experiencing some pretty serious wild fire right now -- over 140,000 acres and counting. The area I'm in is fine, but it's a pretty terrifying experience to look up into the sky and see haze from the massive smoke, not to mention the homes burned and the people injured and killed, plus the thousands more at risk. So cross your fingers and toes that we get some relief down here. Living here right now, between the temperature and the fires, more or less resembles living on the surface of the sun.

"So don't delay. Act now. Supplies are running out.
Allow, if you're still alive, six to eight years to arrive.
And if you follow, there may be a tomorrow.
But if the offer's shunned,
you might as well be walkin' on the sun..."
- "Walking on the Sun," Smash Mouth

Cause everything that glitters is not gold.

Avon Rare Gold & Rare Pearls

Two more Avon scents are up today: Rare Gold and Rare Pearls.

Apparently some internet wholesalers managed to grab the ad copy for these two. Rare Gold is, according to Avon marketers, “As rare as the woman who wear this scent, this floriental fragrance for women opens with notes of ylang-ylang, freshly sweet bergamot, and mandarin. Heart notes are sweet jasmine, orange blossom, lily of the valley, tuberose, gardenia and aldehydes. The base brings woodsy notes of sandal wood, amber and powdery vanilla.”

Just reading ‘floriental’ made me chuckle derisively, but hey? Who knows what beauty lurks in the hearts and minds of Avon chemists? So I tried it. On application Rare Gold is white flowers, spice, and wood. I get a lot of gardenia, jasmine, and aldehydes from this one, and only a little bit of spice, so it’s much more “flor” than “iental.” The opening is a lot less synthetic than I expected given the budget packaging and somewhat hilarious name. (“Rare gold”? As opposed to that other kind of gold, which is super common?) Still, a good lesson in not judging the book by its cover, because it was better than I expected. Rare Gold isn’t what I’d term as “art,” exactly, but as white flowers go, it’s passable, and after about thirty minutes it gets kind of jammy on me, which improves it. I think there are better “florientals” out there, but if you want something less aggressive, maybe this one is for you. Personally, I think it would make a nice candle or potpourri.

Rare Pearls, which quite frankly has some truly hideous packaging if the photos are any indication, gets the following description from Avon: “It opens with rosewood, plum, honey and pepper. The heart is dominated by magnolia, while the warm base nicely caresses the skin with musk, sandalwood and patchouli.”

The opening on this one is really quite nice, like the dry musky smell of pressed drying flowers. I don’t get really any of the listed notes, though the petals drying in my mind might be blossoms from a plum tree, but the mixture is really pleasant at the first. As it dries down the sandalwood kicks in (I spotted neither hide nor hair of the patchouli), which moves it from this delicate musky experience into more of a flowers and spice gig one expects from perfumes marketed to “mature women.” Which is too bad, really, because if it had hovered in that initial place, I would have loved it. Where as Rare Gold gets more fun over time, Rare Pearls becomes less so. Still, not a bad fragrance, and also one that might have made a very nice room spray.

On both of these, really it’s the name that kills me. Shakespeare wrote, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” and to a certain extent, that’s true. But to call something rare, right there in a title, to compare it to jewels and other finery, is to either raise expectations or suspicions, depending on the experience level of the nose in question. These scents are nice for what they are, but I wouldn’t recommend buying them over something better made. Then again, gold and pearls aren't everyone's bag of tea. I'm sure some people out there love these and always will. For me, however, they both fall flat.

All the gold in California
is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills
in somebody else’s name.
So if you’re dreaming about California,
it don’t matter at all where you played before.
California’s a brand new game..."
~ "All the Gold in Calfornia," Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers

Rare Gold & Rare Pearls are both available for purchase direct from Avon.

With Every Trace Of Life, It Seems, Confined Within A Frame

Avon Christian Lacroix Rouge & Christian Lacroix Absynthe

The recent death of John Hughes and some writing I’ve been doing about the influence of Madonna in my life has got me thinking about the value of nonconformity lately.

I, like every other teenager in the history of time, once believed I was a unique and beautiful snow flake and felt the need to express that though the archetypical fashion choices denoting rebellion at that particular moment in suburban America. This, for me, meant flannel shirts over thermal underwear (in the Texas heat, mind you), long flower skirts, and big stompy boots. Also, lots of black. So much black, in fact, that my grandmother cut me off, wardrobe-wise, until I promised to buy something, *anything*, not black.

But underneath all this conforming nonconformity was a heart yearning to find originality and self-expression amongst the cookie cutter tract homes of my world. That part of me – the self-obsessive, introspective, navel gazing, artist-type – has never died. Though submerged by an even greater desperation to survive, she’s in there, still raging against the machine, whatever the machine might be. I like to think she does it with more effectiveness and grace now, or at least better clothes, but who can really tell about these things?

Anyway, this sharded self who must.be.different. above all things really values the occasional waft of a scent she’s never seen before. If it’s weird, difficult to love, or vaguely offensive in an artistic way, this is the part of me that screams, “YES!” and beings the frantic scramble for the credit card. Given my incredible brokenness and the high costs of moving and setting up life all over again, this is the part of my inner perfumista who is the least happy with me right now.

My Avon week is not really helping.

Today I tried two more Avon scents, Christian Lacroix Rouge and Christian Lacroix Absynthe. Like most Avon scents I was hunting all over the internet trying to find more than a meager one line description and a few notes as a starting point. (Not that ad/marketing copy ever really reflects the experience, but hey, it’s nice to start somewhere.) Thanks to Robin’s exceptional thoroughness at posting “New Scent” posts on Now Smell This!, I did find a few little blurbs.

Christian Lacroix Rouge is described by Avon as a “burst of citrus and spices [that] unveils a floral heart wrapped in the most sensual cashmere woods.” Robin adds that Rouge is a “‘floral chypre’ developed by perfumers Laurent Le Guernec and Carlos Benaim and includes notes of white pepper, orange, red peony; osmanthus flower, plum blossom, water lily, cashmere woods, patchouli and musk.”

Christian Lacroix Absynthe, per Avon, is supposed to be “[a] mysterious potion of sexy florals and rich woods inspired by the magic of absynthe.” Thanks to Robin, the fragrance notes are supposed to “include absinthe, freesia, green anise, orchid, saffron, narcissus, ancient woods, ebony, musk, myrrh and amber.” Supposed, Christian Lacroix himself had this to say about Absynthe:

Absynthe, a mysteriously mesmerizing 19th century potion known as the green fairy, is still one of the world's most seductive mysteries. Irresistibly inviting, dangerously captivating - a great inspiration to my fashion and newest fragrance.

On me, at first, both Rouge and Absynthe were fantastic and unique. Rouge was a delicious warm, sticky carmel apple concoction; Absynthe started out a weird balance of black liquorice, amber, limes, and cocoa powder. But almost immediately this strangeness burns off, as both collapse into a fizzy sweetness that reminds me of getting soda foam up my nose. An hour in, while Rouge tips toward the warm and sweet and Absynthe tips toward the aquatic and citrus, the mildly spicy bases were virtually identical. Both seemed flankers of a missing center pole, and without that center, neither really hold. And it makes me sad, too, because I tried both three times and each time the nonconformist in me wailed as the immediate singularly sensational impressions dissolved, crying, “Wait! That was lovely! Where did it go!?!”

I miss the weird. I like the weird. Absynthe could have stayed a mildly sweet, peppery, tangy citrus mix. Rouge could have stayed warm and supple and so sweet it reminds me of Starbucks Carmel Apple Spice. I’m sure neither would possess a huge audience, but it would have been so much better than the completely boring, mild and non-descript fragrance each becomes. As they are, neither were meant for me; they are not unpleasant, just ho-hum. And the little rebel within simply won’t have that.

“I feel like this could all come to no good.
The kids who populate these cul-de-sacs
will never know what stood
beneath those cookie cutter houses:
fields and streams and woods.
They'll sit in cars and wait for mom to drive them
out of this boring neighborhood.”
- “Oh, Susquehanna!,” Defiance, Ohio

Christian Lacroix Rouge & Christian Lacroix Absynthe are both available for purchase direct from Avon.

You got a nice white dress and a party on your confirmation...

Avon's Chic in White, Sensuality by liiv botanicals, & Vitality by liiv botanicals

In response to my failed attempts to do a drugstore series in honor of Sookie Stackhouse, a very helpful reader gave me a little pile of Avon samples, which I can equally see Sookie wearing if one of the waitresses at Merlotte’s was selling it. So this week, I’ll doing a series of posts reviewing some of your Avon-related options.

First off, trying two liiv botanicals scents, Sensuality and Vitality. The liiv botanicals are touted as ”pure natural fragrance oils. Avon describes each as follows:

Vitality by liiv botanicals: Delight in the natural essence of this invigorating blend of succulent citrus and cucumber with a warm floral heart and breath of fresh woods.

Sensuality by liiv botanicals: Arouse the senses! Tantalizing notes of water lily, the exotic florals of jasmine, and the soothing calm of vanilla.

Both remind me of fruit in the same way that pixie sticks taste like fruit. That’s not a knock; I like pixie sticks, always have. But it may not be an experience I particularly enjoy in a fragrance. Vitality has little hints of green and a tiny citrus edge on application, but pretty quickly descends primary into light, sweet, soft, and powdery. The most interesting part about it was the dryness of the opening, which I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Sensuality also opens up a bit dry, with a salty tang and hint of vanilla. Again this burns out pretty quick as it descends into the same light, sweet, soft, and powdery experience.

The real difference between the two is that while Vitality is a very mildly aquatic powdery scent, Sensuality tends toward a very mildly gourmand powdery scent. All in all, not unpleasant, but not particularly impressive either, especially given the weak lasting powder (disappeared in less than two hours). Perhaps a nice first fragrance for a little girl, though. I kept picturing girls in communion dresses, white gloves, and shiny white patent leather shoes as I sniffed it.

Speaking of white, let’s also talk about Chic in White for a second. Chic in White is, according to Avon, supposed to be “fresh citrus [that] flirts with floral bouquets and sensuous white woods.” I have no idea where the description comes from. On me, Chic in White is a less sweet, less rich, less spunky incense oriental than Lorenzo Villoresi’s Alamut. It’s a definite pass for me, but for someone who doesn’t like the bold strength of Alamut, you might like Chic in White.

...You got a brand new soul and a cross of gold,
but Virginia they didn't give you quite enough information.
You didn't count on me
when you were counting on your rosary...
- "Only the Good Die Young," Billy Joel

Chic in White, Sensuality by liiv botanicals, and Vitality by liiv botanicals are all available for purchase direct from Avon.