Viktoria Minya Hedonist Absolute Review

Back in 2013, I was still in the habit of buying full bottles of perfume without testing them out first. At that point of time, the packaging still had some sway over me. Around tax time that year, Andy Tauer came out with Noontide Petals and Viktoria Minya released her debut perfume Hedonist.

You have no idea on how hard I fell for the pictures of Hedonist online and fell even harder when Hedonist arrived on my doorstep. It was a good thing that the original Hedonist matched my expectations. I loved the peach, the rum and the osmanthus. 

In 2019, Hedonist Absolute was released and I knew it was going to be a long wait before I could get my hands on this. I was looking for a more intense version of Hedonist and I'm not sure what really happened. The absolute is a stripped down version of the original with too much birch. A touch of birch could have added something interesting but the birch just doesn't fit. The birch, I think, is trying to make Hedonist a little more masculine but it doesn't seem to play well with the other notes. 

I find that Hedonist Absolute just doesn't play well on my skin and I am blaming the birch for it. The original was toothsome and more of my vibe. I do love a boozy perfume when it is done well and I do like woody notes when those are done well too; but the both of those elements combined are not the greatest idea. I have no idea why this isn't working for me right now.

But I do have to swing back to the packaging though. I love the black bottle with the gold embellishments. What I am not really loving is how I cannot see the juice inside. I have Memoir for women and that bottle is black but I can still see how much juice that I have left. With the Absolute, I don't have the ability. I would have loved to see some of those crystals in the bottle just like in the original Hedonist. The crystals in the bottle really fit the whole Hedonist vibe. I think it's not so much Hedonist Absolute but it's a me problem.
 

Fall and Eau de Hongrie Review

Fall is definitely here in Ohio. Pumpkin spice is here (I despise anything pumpkin spice), the days are shorter, temps are lower and the grilling season is just about done. We might get one last blast of summer in October but I am not holding my breath for it.

Now since fall has pretty much arrived, that means with the cooler temperatures, the windows are now closed. That means that I am not burning candles two at a time. I now can only burn one at a time. I've thinned out quite a bit of my candle collection and when Candle Day arrives, a good chunk of my collection will be used up. Lets hope that I won't be entirely out of candles when that happens.

For the longest time, I held off on buying Ginestet Botryis and when I got around to wanting to buy a bottle, I found out that Botryis was discontinued years ago and I was bummed out. The closest thing that I had to Botryis was Viktoria Minya's Hedonist. Now that's changed to Eau de Hongrie.

I had gotten the Viktoria Minya sample set from Luckyscent earlier this year. I mainly wanted it because I couldn't find Eau de Hongrie on STC or TPC. And for the life of me, I can't quite remember what Hedonist Rose smells like either. So now I'm getting around to the Viktoria Minya sample set and I am test driving Eau de Hongrie.

Hongrie is more of a boozy type of honey but the booze isn't harsh, nor is it overpowering but definitely there. The honey is a dominant note too but not the sickly sweet type of honey. Sickly sweet perfume can be pretty gross and Hongrie gets close to the edge without going over to the edge. I do get flowers in the background but booze and honey are the main attractions to the whole thing. Hongrie is the one that smells the closest to Hedonist in terms of smell. Hedonist is Hongrie's big sister.

If you are mourning the loss of Botryis or like me, didn't get a bottle of it when you got the chance, Eau de Hongrie is more than acceptable replacement. I get a staying power of 6 or 7 hours and Hongrie is one of those that doesn't beat you over the head with anything. Hongrie is a smooth perfume. No harsh notes or angles.

I do believe that I would get a bottle, eventually. I am thinking that any kind of full bottle buying is going to have to wait until next year at least. But I wouldn't mind a bottle if it fell into my lap.
 

 

Viktoria Minya Hedonist Cassis Review

It seems in a lot of ways, things are starting to get back to normal but there is a new normal. Stores are starting to open back up along with restaurants. But the new normal in those places is social distancing, retail establishments limiting how many can be in a store at a single time and a few other things. But all in all, I am pretty happy to see things open up. I don't care if I have to wear a mask in a store or do a little extra social distancing, things are returning to more of a normal state. I am hoping at this point that shipping returns to more of a normal state (looking specifically at Old Navy and Gap in terms of shipping).

Yesterday, a friend and I were out and about for a little while yesterday. We ate at Panera for lunch and stopped at Bath and Body Works for some foaming hand soap. I had only the intention of just getting the hand soap but walked out with the soap and two single wick candles. I keep trying to use the candles I have before I get anymore but I keep failing at it.

Last night, I tested Hedonist Cassis and I am spending a little more time with it this morning. I find it to be more of a springtime scent and a little unusual. I wasn't expecting a blast of grapefruit but I got a blast of grapefruit in the beginning. The first couple seconds, I wasn't sure if I liked it but turns out I do. When a perfume has citrus listed in the notes, it's kind of a vague, generic type of citrus note, not a specific one. Then I get a cut grass smell, which is nice but didn't quite move me but I enjoyed the cedar aspect of it. What tickled me the most and wish it lasted longer was the grapefruit. If the grapefruit lasted longer, I probably would have put this on full bottle worthy but since it didn't my decant will do just fine.

Viktoria Minya Hedonist Travel Set

I had forgotton that I had done a review of Viktoria Minya's Hedonist Iris. I had worn it today and do think that it's a cross between no 19 Poudre and Infusion d'Iris. It's not exactly not my cup of tea. It just smells like a few other cheaper perfumes. It's nice enough but it's not going to get a ton of wear from me. The last Hedonist that I haven't tried was the cassis one. I have dabbers of the absolu Hedonists and will give those a shot to see how those fair on skin. I don't think spending $200 for a blind buy is a great idea. Well, it's not a great idea anymore, well, it never was.

Saturday, my travel set from Viktoria Minya arrived from Luckyscent. I had fully expected it to arrive Monday but I was tickled that it came yesterday. While the pictures were fabulous, the 15ml vials were even more gorgeous in person. I couldn't stop gazing at them. The crystals made the whole thing awesome. I will admit that I have never been much of a fan of the whole crystal/bead thing is perfume bottles. Most of the time, that means that there is less room inside the bottles for actual perfume. Pretty packaging may catch my attention but like any good perfume nut, I am more interested in the perfume itself. It's nice to display a pretty perfume bottle but what good is a pretty perfume bottle if the perfume sucks? It is nice to have some pretty bottles, or bottle swag but the perfume has to be really good to have a spot in rotation.

I like the concepts of travel sets. When there are weekend getaways or trips that involve flying, travel sets make things easier. Just pop that large decant into a purse and you are good to go. I have never traveled with decants from TPC or STC, I don't exactly know how decants from them would go with TSA, so I feel a little safer with actual travel sets and samples from the perfumers themselves.

Amouage Memoir Man EDP Review

 I finally bit the bullet this morning. I went to Luckyscent and ordered the Viktoria Minya travel set. I do like travel sets, especially if they are different scents like the one I ordered. A little less commitment. Sometimes, I get weary of plain perfume bottles. So this time, I went with some bottle porn or travel set porn. When the original Hedonist came out and my bottle arrived in the mail, I did squeal. The rhinestones in the bottle, the color of the perfume, the packaging in general was pretty much bottle porn.

I have enjoyed quite a few of Amouage offerings in the past. It seems like after Beloved, I kind of lost interest in Amouage. Too many new releases and a change in direction that made me lose interest. I've never really explored the men's offerings that Amouage has. I am working on that.

Last night, I applied Amouage Memoir Man for a test drive. I have never been the biggest fan of the men's offerings when coming from Amouage. I have found what I have tried to be kind of thin and I don't smell the resemblance to the women's version. Amouage Gold Man was the only one that really tied in to the women's version of Gold. I prefer Gold Man to Gold Woman. Memoir Man in ways has left me unimpressed. Thin, no relation to Memoir Woman but I've said that with other men's offerings. I am not smelling much of anything that's listed. I smell hints of leather, hints of wood and grass.

Memoir Man smells most like Chanel Sycomore on steroids with the extreme dry down of CdG Kyoto. I have both Sycomore and Kyoto. As time goes on, I get a little bit of a dusty smell to it. The lasting power is about 7 hours on my skin. I am not going to actively seek a bottle but wouldn't refuse a bottle if it were dropped in my lap.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is coming up in a few days. That means that my e-mail is being bombed with sale ads. Ulta sent me a couple emails about extra points on perfume but I didn't bite and that is just one example and I know it's going to get worse.

I just filed my taxes on Saturday and will be getting a little back and I am thinking about adding a new full bottle to my collection. I am debating between Coromandel, Lonestar Memories and Viktoria Minya's Hedonist travel set. I haven't made up my mind which one I will get, let alone if I should get one. I haven't decided on anything. But it is looking less and less likely that I'm going to spend some cash on Coromandel. The EDP is a little to thin and sheer to be the strongest contender and I don't really think that the EDP is worth $200, $120 at best. I haven't smelled the extrait but I have never been one to justify spending $250. I've pretty much grown out of buying extraits. Extraits are just more money than I care to spend on so little a bottle.


Due to my taxes and Valentine's Day, I was thinking about my collection. Thinking about all the cash I have spent on perfume. I've never added up the totals of what I have spent over the past decade but I know it adds up into the thousands of dollars. Whoever is a perfume fiend and has been at this for a few years knows about what it can cost for a few millileters of scented alcohol. It's a scary thought and scary to see what a few millileters of perfume could cost.

Some niche brands are fairly cheap and easily gotten and others are not so easy to obtain and wildly expensive (I'm looking at you Roja Dove and your bell jars, Serge). I don't have the cash to spend on anything hugely expensive nor the space to do it. If I do get a new perfume in the next few weeks, I wan't something that I am going to, you know, use. But I am liking the fact that a few niche brands are catching on to the whole travel set thing. I think it's to appease us perfume freaks who don't really want full bottles of anything anymore or just maybe something no more than an ounce. Considering what I've spent on niche, backup bottles and vintage, I want some travel sets in my collection.

Viktoria Minya Hedonist Iris Review

Another birthday has come and gone and I keep going back and forth what I want to do for my birthday perfume. I keep debating on if I should get the new Andy Tauer release, as a blind buy or should I hop on over to Luckyscent and get Lonestar Memories and punch in the code to get a 5ml mini. I hope I can make a decision soon.

After getting my entire collection back where it should be, when I saw my full bottle of Hedonist, I remembered that I had a decant of one of the Hedonist flankers that I haven't tried, Hedonist Iris.

I was expecting something that would live up to the name. A decadent iris but decadent it was not. Hedonist Iris was a straight up floral with the main note like the iris of Chanel no 19 extrait. So much of the composition reminded me of the no 19 extrait but without the green and the bite. I got the barest hint of cedar but it didn't help much. Can you tell that I didn't really care for it and was disappointed?

For the price of a full bottle (I am happy that I just had a decant) and the looks of a full bottle, it's not worth it to me. If you are going to name something Hedonist, make it live up to it's name. The original Hedonist did.

Viktoria Minya Hedonist Rose EDP Review

I remember when Viktoria Minya came out with her first perfume, Hedonist. The blogoshere seemed to blow up in perfume land. I raced right over to Luckyscent in the first few days of it's released and bought a bottle before I even bought a decant. A year or two later Viktoria had released 3 flankers. The only Hedonist flanker that isn't on Luckyscent is the Hedonist Rose.

I have always had a turbulent relationship with flankers. So I was wary of getting a decant of Hedonist Rose because it was a flanker and not exactly the easiest to get in case I fell in love.

Hedonist Rose naturally starts off with rose but not your ordinary rose. It's a jammy rose with a dose of peach. The peach kind of reminds me of Mitsouko, noticeable but doesn't take over. But the rose strongly reminds me of Nahema but it's not a copy cat at all. The peach and wine keep it away from being Nahema. The wine gives that boozy element but rum gives the original Hedonist the booze note. I haven't smelled wine in a perfume but have smelled rum and it's a different smelling booze note. I think that rum should have been stuck with unless it smelled really horrible with the rose. I see the similarities of Hedonist and Hedonist Rose. They are more like kissing cousins than siblings.

The lasting power of Hedonist Rose was impressive, lasting 9 hours on my skin. I think eventually I will get a bottle from Viktoria Minya's website but I don't exactly know exactly how much it is at the moment because of the price conversion and I'm not the biggest fan of ordering anything from overseas.

Amouage Journey Woman Review

I've made no secret about how I am an Amouage fan girl. I have many Amouage loves and own a few bottles and fairly recently, I've been slowly working on getting the Amouage body products.

Slowly but surly, I have been working my way through my decants that I haven't worn or reviewed yet and my hand landed on trying out Amouage Journey for women. I really haven't explored the Opus line or the masculine offerings of Amouage in depth. I've tried a few of the masculine offerings but they don't seem to work for me in the way that the women's versions do.

Journey is not the kind of perfume that says it's an Amouage perfume. Epic, Gold, Lyric, Memoir, Ubar have Amouage written all over them and I view those as what a typical Amouage is. Journey is very different and wasn't what I was expecting at all. In the first two seconds of hitting my skin, I honestly thought that I was smelling one of my most hated things, tuberose. I have never enjoyed a tuberose dominated perfume, too suffocating for me. Then I realized that I was actually smelling the honey combined with jasmine. Now the jasmine is not the high pitched, shrill type of jasmine nor is it presented like A La Nuit or Sarrasins. Okay, the jasmine is more of the A La Nuit type of deal on my skin. So no skank from the jasmine but the jasmine is muted by the honey. During the time I was wearing Journey a few other things crept in. Was I smelling a tea note, apricots, osmanthus? I have no idea (I don't have a whole not of experience with those notes) but I think the structure of Journey had left me a little jarred. I was thinking that I have smelled this before but when and where? After rummaging around my collection, I found out. Pushed in the back of my collection was Viktoria Minya's Hedonist (I promise that I will eventually get to Hedonist Iris and Cassis). I popped open the can and took a quick sniff and bingo, there it was. Journey has pretty much the same structure and smell as Hedonist but the there was no booze note and Journey had a prominent jasmine note. I do like Journey but I'm not sure if I would pay over $300 for a 50ml bottle since it isn't love for me and I already own Hedonist. Maybe down the road, I will end up getting a full bottle but it's not in the cards for me right now.

Viktoria Minya Hedonist Review

The good thing about summer is that I can wear one perfume during the day and another one at night. Sometimes that can lead to wearing the same old thing night after night but last night was different. I have a neglected bottle of Viktoria Minya's debut perfume Hedonist that I decided not to neglect anymore. I've had Hedonist pretty much since it's release and I've smelled it and worn it off and on for the better part of two years. I'm not sure why it's been neglected but so many in my collection do get lost in the shuffle that I do forget about them.

What pulled me in initially is the bottle, I swooned over the bottle but was a little hesitant about buying a full bottle unsniffed. What if the perfume doesn't match the bottle? What if it really sucks and I am left with a bottle of perfume that just sits on my dresser? But all that was unfounded. The perfume does match the bottle.

I do have a liking for honey in perfumes and I do smell honey from start to finish. After looking around the Internet, I am not really seeing honey listed as a note but it's got to be the rum and peach that must be the ones creating that. But the rum and peach do keep their identities but when together they seem to create that honey accord. I don't get a whole lot of flowers but the flowers that I do get is the big white floral. I don't exactly get any one big white floral but it's there. This is one perfume that I do not regret at all. It smells good without being over the top nor loud but not exactly second bottle worthy for me.