Notes: Corsican peach, strawberry, Tahitian coconut, white flower bouquet, orange blossom, Egyptian jasmine, Bulgarian rose, incense, vanilla, cacao, benzoin, patchouli, cedar, sandalwood

Eugenie de Montijo was the wife of Napoleon III and the last Empress of France.  Encouraged by couturier Charles Worth, her fashion-forward style influenced European fashion trends.

Her namesake scent is a fruity chypre.  It’s one of those scents that is so well-blended, few ingredients really jump forward and speak for themselves.  The opening is an elegant sueded peach note that is rich and deep, slightly musty, very much Mitsouko-esque.  There is also the barest essence of sweet strawberry, with an underlying blanket of smooth white florals.  As the fragrance dries, the rose comes forth and the peach dies out, while a sweet creaminess coats the balsamic woodsiness of the base notes.  And then…it’s mostly gone except for a floral sweetness.  For a fragrance that comes on so strong at first, the relatively quiet drydown is quite a transformation. 

Eugenie de Montijo is, antithetically, not at all trendy, but a lovely perfume in a very classic mode.

From the Histoires de Parfums site: “Each Eau de Parfum is a voyage back in time to the origin of traditional fine French perfume making. In homage to the Master Perfumers of the 19th century, we use the finest ingredients and intricate formulations for our five original prestige Eaux de Parfums. And each one has a story behind its composition. You'll notice that we have given our Eaux de Parfums numbers rather than names. Each number is a date that corresponds with the birth year of a notable historic figure. Each perfume is named for someone who has shaped the world with their endeavors. We like to think we've captured and bottled their romantic essence. Inspired by adventures and vital personalities of the past and created to be worn by their modern counterparts our Eaux de Parfums are...memory etched in scent.”

There’s no doubt that Histoires de Parfums uses fine ingredients and intricate formulations – one sniff is all one needs to detect the high quality of this line. And their gimmick of naming their fragrances is pretty clever – if only the scents matched the personalities. At least, they don’t in my mind. But that’s certainly not a crime, and this line is certainly worth exploring.

Available at Mio Mia, https://www.shopmiomia.com/

1804 - George Sand

Notes: apricot, Corsican peach, Hawaiïan pineapple, banana, clove, nutmeg. Indian jasmine, French lily of the Valley, Moroccan rose, lilac, sandalwood, patchouli, benzoin, vanilla, white musk 

The convention-defying female author George Sand was the inspiration for this scent.  Her propensity to dress in masculine guise in order to guarantee that her work would be taken seriously would seem reason to fill this fragrance with more masculine notes like rich tobaccos or leather.  But no, Histoires de Parfums George Sand is a fruity floral of the highest order.  Let me assure you, however, that this is not one of those insipid department store scents marketed to the under-25 crowd.  Feminine, but not girly, there’s no mistaking the opening note of tangy pineapple; paired with the peach and apricot it gives the aura of an even more exotic fruit, the guava.  Under this tropical umbrella lurks a very powdery rose and sandalwood combination accented with faint spices and sweetened with vanilla.  It’s almost as if a traditional, somewhat old-fashioned rose perfume decided to take an island vacation and came back festooned in flora evoking the trip.

A shame Gauguin did not have a daughter by his Tahitian mistress Tehura, for that woman would be the right mix of French sensibility and tropical romanticism to have been represented by this scent.

I got my hands on a tube of Pop Beauty Lip Lust the other day.  It's a moist sheer lipstick that is super-emollient and contains Vitamin E and Hyaluronic Acid to help improve hydration and to plump the lips by trapping moisture in them. 

I got the "naughty red" shade, a somewhat bright, orangy-red.  It's a shade my Mom would have loved, as that was her favorite lipstick color family. One coat leaves a lightweight glossing of sheer red color, and two coats make the color more intense but not necessarily more opaque.  It feels really fantastic on my lips, and somehow it doesn't leave a lipstick mark on the side of my drinking glass. 

The moist feeling lasts a long time, and I really like it.  I think maybe I need to the the other three colors as well.... 

Notes: American cedar, Italian saffron, raspberry flowers, wild rose petals, Moroccan jasmine, lily of the valley, oriental amber, rosewood

Zafferano, Italian for saffron, starts out with just that - a very iodized version of it, however, more oudh-like than actual saffron, paired with the faintest bit of cedar.  Beneath the top layer of saffron is a powdery floral aspect, redolent of rose and a dry berry-like quality that fades quickly to leave behind a predominance of rose.

The bottle might look masculine, but the scent is overwhelmingly powdery and rosey in the drydown, with a wee, tiny, miniscule bit of woods.  Part of me thinks, "ok, I sorta like this scent," while another part of me says, "bleah! too powdery! and it vaguely smells like department stores."  So I'm torn.  

Odori scents are very expensive EDTs - $210 will get you 100ml at Luckyscent.  And now I'm not so torn.  I don't really like Zafferano at all. :)

Notes: star anise, heliotrope flowers, Madagascar ylang ylang, iris from Florence, oriental amber, bourbon vanilla

I'm perhaps famously not an iris scent lover, and Odori Iris starts out with that dry, oddly-textured sorta-powdery but somehow wet iris note that repulses me in Guerlain Insolence. But in a relatively short time (a minute or two), that fades, with heliotrope emerging to sweeten the deal, along with ylang.  

Sadly, I don't get the star anise at all, but the vanilla and amber that come in the drydown more than make up for it.  They round out and mellow the iris scent, yet somehow don't cover it up or take away from it at all.  The sweetness + iris in another Guerlain scent, Iris Ganache, nauseates me, but here I think it's wonderful.

The biggest problem with Odori Iris is that it's so very faint.  If I move my arm more than two inches from my nose, I can no longer smell it.  Perhaps this Iris needs to be spritzed on with abandon in order to best enjoy its loveliness, but at $210 for 100ml, I think I'll continue to dab it timidly from my sample vial.

I was placing an order at Sephora online when I noticed Kat Von D's True Romance Eye Shadow Palette in Ludwig.  Although I'm not a fan of tattoos - at all - I think Ms Von D is really pretty and I can appreciate her dramatic rock 'n' roll style. So...I put it in the old shopping cart.

The Ludwig palette contains the shades Lucifer (matte charcoal black), Orbi (golden green shimmer), Dimebag (metallic lime green), Clay (beige with gold glitter), Tequila (metallic cornsilk shimmer), Downtown (metallic light copper shimmer), Baroque (golden bronze shimmer), Leather (deep chocolate brown sheen), and two double-ended applicator brushes, all in a pretty mirrored case with stenciled rose design based on one of Von D's favorite tattoos.  (It makes for much prettier ornamentation on an inanimate object, IMHO.)

The makeup brushes are for shit - tiny and stiff, they just make a big mess out of the powder and make for a less-than-smooth application.  I prefer sponge applicators, which work fine with Sephora's fluffy-textured powders.  I do wish they were a little harder-milled, but there's a reason why they cost about a third of Chanel's high-quality shadows.  At least the shadow texture is smooth and doesn't drag across the eyelid like broken glass like some other shadows I've used (and I'm not talking drugstore products here - I mean expensive stuff).  And the colors are terrific. I love the shimmers, and the gold glitter in Clay really is quite subtle.  My favorite way to use them is: Clay under the browbone and at the inner corners of the eye; dimebag on the lid; leather at the outer corners and as a lower-lid liner.

The lasting power is pretty decent, but I can't go from day to evening without a major touch-up since the colors do fade.  And my eyelids are greasy.  All-in-all, though, I do like this palette and the colors are fabulous with my brown eyes.  I think they'd work well for green eyes too. 

Notes: strawberry, almond, vanilla, musk

According to "the scoop" on Luckyscent.com, Mukhallat is:

"An intriguing new take on Turkish Delight, Montale’s mouthwatering creation replaces cherries with luscious, ripe strawberries and mixes them with the sweet nuttiness of almonds and the creaminess of vanilla. The sinfully rich blend, with its slightly powdery, wonderfully comforting quality, rests on a sensual musky base. An unapologetically gourmand composition for true connoisseurs, a new delicacy to be enjoyed by the fans of Oriental Dream and Loukhoum."

Oriental Dream on.  That happens to be one of my favorite Montale fragrances, with its combination of sweet tobacco and roses kissed with almond.  Mukhallat doesn't even come close.  As far as being "unapologetically gourmand" is concerned, I guess if your idea of gourmand is artificially-flavored strawberry Cool Whip dolloped on a Twinkie, then sure, it's gourmand.  Actually, it's more like a "strawberry"-scented pine-tree-shaped car air freshener, or a cheap head shop candle.  It's the kind of thing I move away from if I smell it on a bus passenger or someone on the street.  In other words, it's truly awful. 

Comme des Garçons has issued an eighth series of fragrances to go with leaves, red, incense, cologne, sherbet, synthetic, and sweet - Energy C.  There are three scents in this series: Grapefruit, Lemon, and Lime, all EDTs, and all with the staying power of most citrus scents = nada.  

Grapefruit is citrussy, but doesn't smell particularly of grapefruit to my nose.  Likewise with lemon.  Lime is far more limey, and my favorite of the three.  Although the citrus notes fade away pretty quickly, there is a drydown and it does last a while, the first two leaving behind a woody vetiver quality, and the Lime being softer and more feminine.  But I can't say that the other two are really masculine - just not at all girly.  All are definitely unisex.  And all three are nice examples of the brisk, pick-me-up sort of summery scent.  But Lime's the best. :) 

Grapefruit notes: blackcurrant buds, pink grapefruit, petit grain, jasmine, yellow mandarin, essential oil of orange flowers, musk, tree moss, iris, vetiver 

Lemon notes: bergamot, yellow lemon, citron, cardamom, angelica, incense, musk, vetiver

Lime notes: Lime, bergamot, green lemon, water jasmine, rose tea, lily of the valley, musk, cedar, white amber

Have a safe and happy holiday and enjoy your three-day weekend!

Notes: fresh lychee, pineapple, black currant, stargazer lily, freesia, neroli, muhuhu wood, bamboo, crisp papyrus, vetiver

Is there anything worse than the combination of lychee, pineapple, and black currant?  If there is, I don't want to ever find out.  Nyakio Kamoche's Safi makes me think of vomiting after too many tropical cocktails.  The fruit is there, mingled with the bitterness of stomach acid. The bottle is lovely, the price is reasonable enough ($78 for 50ml) but the smell is comparable to many an insipid fruity/floral department store perfume.

Truth be told, once the initial rancid pineapple note wears off, what's left is much less awful.  Well, somewhat less-awful.  If you like it, I'm truly sorry.  Maybe it smells good on you, or perhaps it just reminds you of your hard-partying college days.