Dior J'Adore EDP Review

I'm somewhat making good on my challenge on wearing and reviewing things from my bag that I haven't worn yet. Ever since I have started my perfume journey, I haven't been smelling a whole lot of mainstream perfumes. Many of my perfumes are either vintage, discontinued or niche. Yes mainstream does have the tendency to get the short end of the stick with me. Why? Because perfume coming from the mainstream doesn't smell very good to me. J'adore is no exception. After seeing so many commercials for it, I decided to spray my sample on to see what it smelled like.

When I first sprayed J'adore on my skin, I smelled nothing. After a minute, it came on, all at once, like a freight train. All I smelled was this sweet, watery, floral thing that was a little on the harsh side. After about a half an hour in, I was waiting for this to morph into something a little better. Lose that harshness and the aquatic note was what I was mainly looking for. Nope, that was never going to happen during the time I wore it. It just stayed there, for 10 hours and didn't do anything at all besides smell awful to my nose. It's linear to me and it seems to last forever to me. You know, I kind of expect a little better from Dior. Dior gave us the original Miss Dior, Diorling, Diorissimo and many other classics and I am thinking that they are cheapening themselves by making this garbage. I obviously will not be buying this.

Chanel Bois de Iles EDT Review

I did swear that I would review perfumes that I have not worn and reviewed. Last night was the night that I did apply something new to me, Chanel Bois de Iles from the Les Exclusifs line. Bois de Iles is generally well loved on the blogosphere and perfume people. On Now Smell This, some one's husband (can't remember who) looked at either the box or the bottle itself and pronounced it as Box of Eels and that is what it seems to be called on Now Smell This.

I do have a lot of respect for the house of Chanel and a lot of it's creations and I do have a few perfumes loves from Chanel but Bois de Iles isn't one of them. I keep looking at all of these reviews and a few other perfume sites and I am not seeing anything with tuberose, and I'm smelling tuberose. I have said many times before and will say it again, tuberose is my nemesis and if it's tuberose dominant, I'm not going to like it one bit. Some might say maybe the sandalwood or maybe the tonka is giving you that, but I wouldn't know what sandalwood smelled like if it bit me in the butt. I'm maintaining that there is a huge tuberose note in there. At first, it smelled like a typical Chanel, heavy on the aldehydes, rich in the Chanel base. But it king of turned out to be Chanel does tuberose. Sadly for me, that tuberose note seems to take over everything else. I'm sure I would have enjoyed this a whole lot more if it wasn't tuberose dominant to my nose. Lasting power is typical for a Chanel EDT, I get 6 hours on my skin. I will not be buying this one.

Thoughts on Chanel no 5

Yes, there is another flanker to the iconic Chanel no 5. That new flanker is called no 5 L'Eau and yes, I am suspicious of it. I am suspicious of it just like I was of Eau Premiere. Flankers of this classic confuses me. It seems like no 5 would not be the greatest canidate for 1 flanker, let alone 2. Now, Shalimar is something that has spawned many flankers and I can see why. You have room to play around with Shalimar. No 5 doesn't have the room to create flankers. I'm not a big fan of flankers in general but there are exceptions to the rule and some are well done.

I love the regular no 5 and have the current EDP, EDT, and some vintage parfum. I will admit to that I have a bottle of Eau Premiere in the original bottle but no 5 doesn't get a whole lot of love from me so much anymore. When you have a lot of full bottles to choose from an who knows how many decants, there are some perfumes that get lost in the shuffle. I know I shouldn't be picking on Chanel releasing a flanker and people are going to be asking why I am picking on a perfume that I haven't tried yet.

Apparently, Eau Premiere hasn't done as well as it could have or sales have really been horrible for Eau Premiere lately and maybe Chanel thought that a flanker of no 5 would perk people up and get them buying Chanel items again. Maybe the newest Chanel creations (Bleu, Chance, Coco Nior, etc) are not doing anything besides sitting on the shelf. I wish that Chanel would create and release something new that actually smells good and that isn't a flanker. Maybe they should look into ignoring the Les Exlusifs line or change that one completly. No 22 and Cuir de Russie are from the back catalog and should be released as part of their regular line up. Maybe Chanel should start looking at their back catalog and release some of those. The elusive no 46 would be a start as well.

The Random Post

Today is the last day that I have to go into work before I go on vacation. I have a couple of day trips planned but I am not leaving town. Having a vacation but staying home is a great thing. I don't have to go anywhere, I don't have to do anything, very rarely do I have to actually have to be anywhere. I always plan on wearing some perfumes with the intent of reviewing them and that almost never seems to happen. I hope to rectify that this coming week. I hope to have at least 3 or 4 since I have 10 days off. Hopefully I can stick to that much. My unworn and unreviewed perfume bag will thank me because it's overflowing and I really should see what decants in my reviewed bag have evaporated so I can make room.

After amassing a fairly large perfume collection and going through phases of perfume, I've come across something strange. Normally, in the perfume world, vintage smells better than the current batch of a certain perfume. Sometimes, the current batch smells better. At this point, after not wearing no 22 in forever, something changed. One day, I wore the current formulation and thought about my blog post on the current formulation and the vintage formulation. Something did change with my nose. I found that I actually do like the current formulation loads better than the vintage version. I think that the powder note in the vintage is more pronounced and smothers the other notes to a certain extent. Through my perfume journey, my views of a huge powder note has evolved. I still like powder bombs and musk notes. Laundry musk is nice in it's place but I don't need whopping doses of it in a perfume. The powder note can be huge but I don't like it to be overwhelming.

I think for the rest of this month and most of next month, I will probably be staying off E-Bay due to the fact that I am not going to have a lot of discretionary spending money to look for vintage perfume. I am starting to get into the serious dental work that I need to have done. And the serious dental work is going to cost lots of money, so perfume is mostly out except maybe the random decant of perfume. This will probably be good for me because I seriously need to use up a few bottles so I can have a little more space.

Lip Balm

It's going to be that time of year again. The time of year that involves lip balm. Ever since I started having dental issues, I have developed these little cracks in the corners of my mouth. I'm really thinking with losing a couple back teeth along with my wisdom teeth, make eating uncomfortable. So I am probably malnourished and is causing this. I'm thinking of taking a good multivitamin to help with this. But in the mean time, lip balm is probably going to be the most helpful. Winter is coming too, so lip balm is going to be a necessity soon.

Years ago, especially when I was a kid, you just had either Lip Smackers, Blistex, or Chapstick for your choice of lip balm. For us kids, we wanted the Smackers because they came in all different flavors and if you were into the Chapstick thing, the mint flavor was the way to go. When Blistex came out with the tinted lip balm (when I was a teen), you had to get it. The tinted lip balm didn't exactly fit every one's skin tone but it was the cross between lip gloss and lip balm.

Then everyone started to take notice of Burt's Bees. Burt's Bees has always had some pretty good lip balm that works well on chapped lips. I think that they might have always had a couple flavors but I can't quite be sure. Then they started to do the Lip Smackers thing but not as many flavors and the flavors are a little more 'adult'. Probably because most of their demographic is at least late 20's and older. Gone are the days of having Dr. Pepper, bubble gum and all the other kids flavors but yet not quite ready to for the whole unflavored thing. My favorite flavor/sent of the lip balm has to be the honey one. I had forgotten how good it is.

One of my peeves is that lip balm has gotten into trying to be this lip gloss/lipstick/lip balm thing. I'm not exactly sure why. I know that some lipsticks and stains can dry out lips but it only takes a second to apply regular lip balm. Or somebody is just too lazy to do that and would do it in one step.

That Moment

Sometimes with perfume, you find ones that you love right away, some that you hate from the onset, and those that take a little while. Deneuve was on that I loved right away, Ubar was one I hated right off the bat and now we get to Amouage Jubilation.

I didn't much care for Jubilation in the beginning because I didn't give it enough time and wearings to make the whole decision that I did kind of like it. There are plenty of perfumes that I have tried months or years later that I just don't like. But Jubilation has an interesting back story for me. I had tried Jubilation fairly early on in my perfume journey, back when I first took the plunge with buying decants. At the time, I tried to like it, I mean really tried to like it. It was Amouage and I had wanted to like Ubar but that smelled like bug spray with a hint of flowers to my nose. Fast forward a few months ago, I had quite a bit of Christmas gift cards on Amazon that I hadn't spent yet. I was going to get Beloved but accidentally bought Jubilation instead. I thought I had bought Beloved but didn't. I couldn't go and return it since Amazon really doesn't accept returns when it comes to perfume. So I was kind of stuck with Jubilation. But then, I started to crave it for some reason. I sprayed it on and it was love. I'm thinking that Jubilation was reformulated and made it more wearable for me.

Maybe I should give some others in my collection a second look.

Tauer Une Rose de Kandahar Review

This month, I have been the laziest blogger. Every time I get an idea, I realize that I have already blogged about it in one form or another. So it left me with wearing something new to me to review. And I kind of got busy with looking at Une Rose de Kandahar from Andy Tauer. And I'm not getting it and I have tried it off and on for the past couple months.

I have always loved and respected Andy Tauer's work, there have been a couple that haven't exactly worked out for me. I love how Andy Tauer has made me see a couple notes through new eyes. But Une Rose de Kandahar is something that I'm not understanding. I don't understand what I am smelling. I'm smelling rose, a dusty rose. The dusty part is not overwhelming or bad, I just don't get the dust part in perfumes too often. With the rose and how dusty it is, I start to get a shaving cream vibe to Kandahar. I haven't smelled a shaving cream this big since I tried Bois 1920 Sushi Imperial. A couple other bloggers have mentioned that they get the apricot in Kandahar but I am not smelling it. But at this point is starting to fade away, leaving with with the dust and the Tauer base that I can more often than not, pick out a mile away. I do love the Tauer base because I find it interesting. At this point in Kandahar, I'm getting the tiniest hints of an animalic note. It's nowhere near the league of Shalimar, let alone vintage Bal but I can pick it out when I sit and look for it. Like a lot of Tauer offerings, I get at least 7 hours of wear out of this one. Kandahar bears no resemblance with Une Rose Chypree or Une Rose Vermeille because I can't smell it.

Would I get a full bottle of this? I don't know because I don't know if I love it or not but I do like it. A 15ml travel size suits me for the moment. Like many Tauer scents, this one is better as a fall perfume or maybe an early winter perfume. Une Rose Vermeille and Ingrid are my summer Tauers.