Is Light the New Term for Sweet?

Yesterday, this thought was floating around my mind when one of my guy friends commented on my wearing of Shalimar. I make every effort not to be heavy handed when I am applying perfume. But I was wondering how can Shalimar be considered light? Or is light the new term for sweet? I'm just thinking that he is confusing sweet with light. Now Shalimar is a lighter oriental but when over applied, it's not light, it's suffocating. Tocca Giulietta is light, Chanel no 19 is more of on the light side but I still wouldn't call Shalimar 'light' nor would I call Mitsouko 'light'. Then, I asked him how can he confuse light and sweet when he has been hanging around me for the past couple hours? Something that is loaded with vanilla is not light. I sprayed A Scent and gave him the blotter and said that it what you call light. But he really doesn't get it and this is the guy who buys his mother perfume at Christmas every year. Since his mother has no real sense of smell, she over applies everything.

I view perfume as an art form and should be smelled carefully before deeming them light, heavy, sweet. Sometimes the initial impression might be light but after a couple minutes, it actually may be sweet. But I'm not sure if most people just don't know how to use their sense of smell or they are too used to these your skin but better perfumes.

Guerlain Apres L'Ondee EDT Review

I've finally got around to wearing something new. Not exactly got around but kind of got out of that rut of either finishing off my smaller decants or just wearing the same old things. For a long while, when I was reaching for full bottles, I was reaching for my no 5 in EDT form. And I still am fixated on L'Heure Bleue and L'Heure de Nuit. It took me a while to get L'Heure Bleue and now love it. I love L'Heure de Nuit but just can't bring myself to drop almost $300 for a shade over 4 ounces of perfume, so a large decant is gonna have to do. But both of those bring me to Guerlain's Apres L'Ondee.

For a while during my wearing of Apres L'Ondee, I couldn't place what perfumes that it smelled similar to. Then in the dry down it hit me, L'Ondee smelled like a very stripped down version of L'Heure Bleue. If L'Heure de Nuit was somewhat stripped down, L'Ondee is even more stripped down. Then I looked online and found that L'Ondee was created in 1906, a mere 6 years before L'Heure Bleue and over 100 years before L'Heure de Nuit. Comparing the three perfumes, they share similar notes. I was really loving Apres L'Ondee but the only formulation that I am seeing online is the EDT formulation. Guerlain EDT's and I don't exactly mix unless they are the vintage versions. So Apres L'Ondee only lasts about 3 hours on my skin and it sticks really close. When sprayed on clothing, I can get maybe 4 and a half hours. Not all is quite lost for me because I can enjoy it's two siblings and not be missing much. But it was fun wearing L'Ondee while it lasted.

Guerlain Tonka Imperiale EDP Review

The whole going through Amazon to get  full bottle of Theorema didn't pan out and I am getting a refund. But I did make sure that I was unhappy with the whole situation because it was described as being sold as Theorema but instead Amazon was shipping out Fan di Fendi. I had said that if Amazon is going to sell Theorema and describe a product being sold as Theorema, I should expect to get exactly what I had ordered, not something else.

I had been testing some vanilla perfumes or vanilla like perfumes and had always debated on trying Guerlain's Tonka Imperiale. I'm always a little wary of trying perfumes with a hefty price tag. What if I fall in love with it and finally save up enough to get a full bottle and it's been discontinued and have to wait it out on Ebay?

Tonka Imperiale reminds me of Spiriteueuse Double Vanille in many ways. Just maybe a little more nutty, little less smoky and vanilla like. Tonka Imperiale could possibly be a kissing cousin to Havana Vanille or it probably resembles Havana Vanille more than it does SDV. Could it resemble Shalimar? Maybe in Shalimar's dry down if one can ignore Shalimar's citrus note. While I do like them both and lasting power is good. I'm not sure if I want to shell out $260 for 2.5 ounces. Yes, I still do have a hard time with vanillas due to the fact that there are two routes that vanilla likes to go. It's either cupcake territory or burnt or smoky and sometimes they turn sour or bitter in the end of the wearing.

Going Through My Collection

I've been going through a mini phase of going through my collection of full bottles and wearing them. I have been testing to see if I still love them or even still like them. For one thing I need the space on my dresser because in the past year, I've added more than I have wanted to. Yeah, having about 30 bottles has gotten a little overwhelming.

Since going through my collection, I keep forgetting how wonderful Shalimar is and why I am not wearing it more often. L'air du Desert Marocain has gotten a lot of that same treatment of being ignored. So has Chanel's Sycomore. I think with the latter two, they are in the same vein of being mostly bone dry and they require a certain mood to be worn.

What made me decide to go through some of my collection is that I have been looking for a bottle of Theorema EDP to add to my collection even though I have a huge decant of it. Well, I did fall head over heels for it. I went to Amazon and found a bottle for a reasonable price. I ordered a bottle and with a couple recently discontinued scents, I've ordered and gotten said discontinued perfumes. Not this time. Instead of sending me Theorema, I got Fan di Fendi and the lotion that came with it. I was not happy. I e-mailed Amazon to let them know I received the wrong thing and that what I ordered was a 1.7 ounce bottle of Theorema and the picture was Theorema and I wasn't happy. They let me know that they are sending me the right item and that I could keep the wrong item. I sure hope that I get the right item this time.

Previously Loved

Right now, it seems like I am in a little bit of a dilemma. I have always loved jasmine dominant perfumes and had longed for A La Nuit for a while. But now, most jasmine dominant perfumes drive me up the wall.

For the past two weeks, I've been trying to wear A La Nuit off and on and it's not working. It's become like Fracas and most tuberose perfumes. Just too much no matter what is going on. I do have to agree with Tania Sanchez on A La Nuit that it's "Death by jasmine". It's funny that I've never had much of an issue with A La Nuit before but now I am finding it a little too dense. In the past two weeks, I have worn Patou Joy in EDP, Serge Lutens Sarrasins and Diorissimo in EDP.

While Sarrasins and Joy were fabulous smelling on my skin and wasn't horrifically overloaded with jasmine. Diorissimo was a lily and indolic jasmine overload and I'm just not understanding this. I love an idolic jasmine but apparently the jasmine can't be too dense and white flower and must have something that will stand up to the jasmine.

Sarrasins is one of my favorite jasmine scents. The jasmine is indolic but there is a wonderful leather note in Sarrasins that keeps the jasmine in check. But I have noticed in Montale's Jasmin Full, it's more of a clean jasmine, a mainstream jasmine. I have noticed that Jasmine Full has a certain stickiness to it. Some days, it's the feeling after I ate too many jelly beans or the sticky hand feeling.

Guerlain L'Heure de Nuit Review

Guerlain is one of those perfume houses that I have come to love. I've had a hard time liking, let alone loving a good most of what I have tried. It took me a long while to love Mitsouko, L'Heure Bleue and understand Jicky. But I understood and loved Shalimar right away. But I realized one thing about Jicky. The EDP version of Jicky doesn't last all that long on my skin, even when wearing a thicker moisturizer. I had ordered a fresh bottle of it and was so excited to spray it on my skin. I had gotten about 4 or 5 hours of wear before it petered out to nothing. Boy, I was disappointed and Shalimar in EDP kind of does the same thing too. But Mitsouko and L'Heure Bleue (in EDP form) simply last forever on skin. So there is a lot of head scratching there.

With flankers, there is a lot of pearl clutching going on on my end. Especially when it comes down to classics. No. 19, no. 5, Shalimar, and now L'Heure Bleue have flankers. Even though I like Eau Premiere and now L'Heure de Nuit, classics really shouldn't have flankers.

For the past three days, I have been wearing L'Heure de Nuit. At first, I was kind of unimpressed. It did smell exactly like L'Heure Bleue and I felt a little on the cheated side, Then on the second day, I smelled a whole lot less powder and maybe a little more on the flirty side. With L'Heure Bleue, I got a whole lot of powder with maybe some flirt deep down. L'Heure de Nuit when compared with L'Heure Bleue, there is a whole lot of flirt on L'Heure de Nuit. The flirty part is almost skanky unlike Mitsouko who makes you dig for the sensual or Shalimar that has an animalic growl to it.

While I really do love L'Heure de Nuit, I hate the price tag for 75ml. For almost $300 and packaged in a bee bottle, I just really am not able to fully love it like I should in spite of the color of the juice being blue. I'm guessing that I will have to make do with large decants and my bottle of L'Heure Bleue.

Kat Von D Make-up Review

Yesterday, started off to be a pretty good day for me. I managed to finish off that vintage Mitsouko EDT that only had one or two small squirts left and when that faded, I finished off another small decant of Sarrasins. Then, I checked my email and discovered that waiting in my inbox was overflowing with perfume deals. So I just added more to my collection. And it looks like that I will be able to order Sarrasins through the Serge Lutens website. Right now, I am verifying this. For the past few years, I have been drooling over Sarrasins and a couple other bell jars. The price tag at Barney's had me raise an eyebrow and on the Serge Lutens website, I have to raise an eyebrow. For 75ml, it's about $300 and I am not exactly thrilled in wanting to pay that much and even 75ml of Mitsouko EDP doesn't even cost that much! I didn't decide to blog so much about that but about makeup.

After a few years of either not being able to afford makeup or having it fall of my radar, I have somewhat got back into the habit of wearing it again and forgot how long it could take to put it on. After receiving a gift card to Sephora, I had the opportunity of getting an eyeshadow palette from Kat Von D which I had been looking at. I did enjoy her lipstick in Hellbent. I actually bought two different palettes and have worn them for a little bit. Sinner and Beethoven were the two that I have been experimenting with and both palettes are very similar in colors. I did enjoy experimenting with the colors but did find them a little too glittery for my liking and the glittery part did catch me off guard even with the neutral colors. While I liked the set up mostly, I had a hard time with the fact that the eyeshadow itself was not compacted and seemed pretty loose compared to other brands of eyeshadow that I have used. What really took me by surprise is that in Sinner, there is no applicator brush to apply the eyeshadow, instead there was eyeliner instead of a brush and had to hunt one down. Thus far, after a lot of experimenting, I'm not exactly thrilled with the Kat Von D eye shadows even though I like the eye primer that I got.