Vera Wang LOOK ($70 to $300) is the latest fragrance release from Vera Wang.  If you know me, it’s hard to captivate me with a scent long enough for me to wear it regularly.  Sure, I enjoy many fragrances, but only a few get adopted into my perfume rotation.  With that being said, I have worn LOOK for the past two weeks.

LOOK is not a particularly unusual scent nor is it a bold one.  It is a pleasing, enjoyable scent perfect for everyday wear, whether you’re a mom-on-the-go or a high powered attorney.  For an evening out, I’ll still opt for something stronger and bolder, but this just suits me so well for all my other day to day activities.  The top notes of LOOK are mandarin, watery green, lychee, and golden delicious apple.  The heart of the fragrance contains lily, freesia, and jasmine.  The base notes consist of vanilla, musk, oakmoss, and patchouli.

The scent begins with a very clean burst of springy greens, but then it quickly changes to something more floral, more feminine.  More importantly is the dry down, which finishes into more detectable notes of vanilla and patchouli.  I consider this scent to have the earmarks of a feminine scent, but I wouldn’t classify it just as that.  For me, it’s a classic scent that’s not too strong or bold to wear around even my dad (who hates perfume-y smells with a passion).  It’s that just right scent for me.  I hope you’ll give it a spritz next time you’re at the mall!

Available in: 1.7 fl. oz. EDP ($70.00), 3.4 fl. oz. EDP ($90.00), 1.0 fl. oz. Elixir ($300.00). Get yours at Nordstrom.

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CLEAN’s latest addition to their scent line-up is Winter ($48.95).  Clean always has scents that remind you of exactly that–cleanliness. Whether it be fresh laundry or reminiscent of soap-lathered skin…it’s clean. This scent does seem grittier, deeper than the traditional Clean scents, but it is still a soft, crisp scent. It does live up to its name Winter. It reminds me exactly of cool winter days when the wind blows harshly and the air is crisp and fresh. I notice a touch of floral, a little spice, and a taste of the outdoors in the fragrance. I find this lasts on me several hours, and it never is overpowering. The way it lays down after about thirty minutes is very similar to how it smells initially. I really wish I could describe the scent better–I couldn’t even find a list of notes for this scent, which makes it even harder. I’ll just say this: if you love opening your door to a fresh powder of snow, taking a deep breath and inhaling the cool air… this scent is for you.

Clean Winter eau de parfum is currently available on HSN!

Many moons ago, I reviewed several Pacifica products, from candles to body butters, and now I’m happy to review their latest product:  solid perfumes.  At just $8.95 a pop, it makes it easy to collect ‘em all (five, that is) or just get your favorite scent.  Every girl needs at least one solid perfume, if only for how portable they are.  Even with today’s tighter restrictions on traveling, these can help you save some space in your liquids’ bag. 

My favorite scent was Spanish Amber, and I found Tibetan Mountain Temple, Avalon Juniper, and Madagascar Spice to all be very spicy/woodsy.  Mexican Cocoa is like a spicy chocolate scent; the sweetest of the five available.   If you’re all over vanilla and bright floral scents, these might not tickle your fancy.  However, when fall rolls around, I always reach for more intense scents like these, so they’re well-timed. 

For my animal lovers, heads up!  These solid perfumes are 100% organic and vegan.  Even the tin they come in is recycleable.

Slip one into your purse for whenever you need a scent pick-me-up!

Learn more at www.pacificacandles.com!

Get details on each available scent… Continue reading »

Fancy by Jessica Simpson ($59.00) is a sweet, dessert-ish scent. This is Simpson’s first fragrance, though she did have a beauty line called “Dessert Beauty,” which featured sweet, food-related scents. Fancy is not as cloying or as over-the-top, but there is still a distinct sweetness from the caramel and vanilla creme notes. I find in the beginning, it is too sweet for me, but after a half hour or so, it calms down and gets a healthy reduction in sweetness. It’s still noticeably sweet, don’t get me wrong, it just doesn’t make me feel like I’m in a bakery.

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Wellness by CLEAN:  Purity ($76.00) & Harmony ($76.00)

Purity eau de parfumhas top notes of bergamot, mandarin, tea, and ewberry, along with notes of rose, jasmine, muguet, and geranium at the heart. The base consists of cedarwood, sandalwood, elather, and musk. CLEAN describes this scent as “softly soothing and centered.” Between the two new Wellness offerings (Purity and Harmony), I do prefer Purity if only because it smells a bit more like a soapy fragrance than traditional soap. There’s still the cleanly scent easily detected, but there’s some sweetness and floralness (the rose, jasmine, and bergamot coming out to play) that lifts it up.

Harmony eau de parfum has top notes of Italian lemon, eucalyptus, and rosemary, along with notes of rose, jasmine, and orange blossom at the heart. The base consists of cedarwood and musk. Again, CLEAN describes this scent as “for centered, balanced living.” I found this one more closely scented to soap. It seems lighter than Purity, as well. I think this is a great, wearable scent for those who don’t like the more cloying traditional scents and perfumes.

Shop or find more at www.cleanperfume.com.

What do you think of CLEAN fragrances?

Fruits & Passion is a producer of face, body, and home fragrances. They recently launched a collection called Blue Pink Purple, which has three different scents, but all of them will remind you of summer. These aren’t scents that will bring memories of your grandma to the surface, and they aren’t scents I associate with sophistication, but they’re fun, friendly, and easy on the nose.

The collection bases off of the Blue scent, which makes Pink a lighter version with top notes of peach and black currant and touches of jasmine and freesia, and Purple a more vanilla scent. None of the three are too overwhelmingly youthful or fruity. Blue has the freshness of a summer with bottom notes of musk and sandalwood with melony top notes, while Pink is much more floral, and Purple is sweeter with vanilla heart notes and fig and ginger top notes. I liked Pink a lot, just because it was super wearable even around the house and on errand-running days.

Each fragrance is available in an eau de toilette ($40.00), shower gel ($14.00), body splash ($22.00), and body cream ($24.00). Find or purchase yours at www.fruits-passion.com.

Burberry The Beat is the fresh, new fragrance from the iconic house of Burberry. This youthful scent merges the energy of music, fashion and dance with an irreverent twist to embody the hip, British It-Girl. Agyness Deyen, International Top Model personifies this girl from her punky hair to her personal style. “Young, Modern, Energetic, Dynamic, Expressive, Fun, Vigor, Verve, and Spiritedness… all words that describe the mood, inspiration and sense of ebullience that we wanted to evoke as we created The Beat,” says Burberry Creative Director - Christopher Bailey. A sparkling woody floral, with notes of Ceylon tea, bluebell and iris combine for a sexy and contradictory fragrance. Further celebrating the energy of music - UK music sensation, The Fratellis have partnered with Christopher Bailey to create a special track entitled, The Beat.

Like any healthy beauty addict, as the seasons change, so do my fragrances and what I reach for (and what I push back for another mood).  This spring, I’ve been on the hunt for something that is fitting for my age, and yet sophisticated enough that it doesn’t make me feel like I’m in my teens (since even though you can ask me how old I am, and I want to respond 18, I’m really 21–closer to 22 now).  My fall-back fragrance is and, likely, will always be Dior’s Addict (it’s really like the ponytail; it always works!), but I’m extremely satisfied with what I found in Burberry’s The Beat for Spring 2008.

A touch of sweetness, soft florals, and something innately fun marks the scent.  It is entirely fitting for the spring season with its burst of fresh blooms, but the sweetness that accompanies it makes it utterly feminine and flirty.  There is an afterhtought of woodiness in the background, especially when it dries down fully, and I like it because it tames some of the overt floral notes you may initially catch a whiff of.  And for those who prefer more potent scents can find refuge in The Beat Intense Exlixir, which is more concentrated than eau de parfum.

The packaging is perfectly in line with the Burberry brand and image, which is exactly what I would expect (and I don’t usually love surprises–so this works for me!).  I love their version of a flask, and the beigey-pink glass is upbeat and reminds me of spring.  I have to admit that the Intense Exlixir packaging has me awfully tempted, just because it is so sleek and masculine, despite the fragrance being intensely feminine.

Could the hunt for the perfect spring scent before over?  Perhaps!   Sniffed this?  Share your thoughts!

Burberry The Beat is available at Nordstrom.com, Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue. 

• Eau de Parfum Spray (2.5 fl. oz.) $80.00
• Eau de Parfum Spray (1.7 fl. oz.) $62.00
• Eau de Parfum Spray (1.0 fl. oz.) $50.00
• Body Lotion (5.1 fl. oz.) $39.50
• Shower Gel (5.1 fl. oz.) $35.00
• Intense Elixir (1.3 fl. oz.) $130.00 (pictured below)

June Jacobs Better Love Naturel Eau de Parfum ($90.00)

For 2008, June Jacobs wants to go eco-friendly, and they reformulated their Better Love scent to be more “Naturel.” I hate to say it, but I would never wear this scent. I found it cloying, overly smoky with a heady mix of nutmeg, and just not something I would see myself wearing. I put it to the boyfriend-sniff-test, which evoked a response of, “It smells like old lady.” Since I’m 21, that is mostly definitely NOT the fragrance I want to keep on my shelves! Best part about it? The packaging is simple and elegant. Unfortunately, the scent just isn’t for me, but I would love to hear your thoughts on it if you’ve had the chance to check it out!

Notes include: Bergamot, Lemon, Mandarin, Rose, Jasmine, Pink Pepper, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Cream, Cedar, Musk, and Amber.

The Sweet (and Cool) Smell of Pop Art in Andy Warhol Union Square by Bond No. 9

“My favorite smell is the first smell of spring in New York,” Andy Warhol once said. Perhaps in a similar spirit, Warhol began painting and silk-screening a series of highly stylized, phantasmagorically colored flowers during the 1960s. He returned to this age-old painter’s subject in 1970, when he developed a portfolio of vibrantly colored flower screenprints at the first of his two studios on Union Square. Both the florals and the location were the inspiration for Andy Warhol Union Square, the latest in Bond No. 9’s series of collectible Warhol eaux de parfum, arriving on counter in March, 2008.

The scent, a seductive green floral that’s simultaneously cool and warm, is housed in the slim Bond No. 9 superstar flacon, this time displaying Warhol’s flowers as its surface design. Outsize, otherworldly flowers such as these are of course a major fashion statement for spring 2008—with multitudes of designers taking their cue from the Warhol Flowers series. Likewise, Bond No. 9’s Andy Warhol Union Square is in tune with the times (as perfumes should be). But let us go one further and propose that this latest scent of ours, enveloped in Warhol’s iconic flower motif, raises the art of perfumery to—dare we say it?—a new level of sophistication.

The bottle is in typical Warhol artistry, but instead on a sculpted glass perfume bottle.  It comes decorated in various shades ranging from red and yellow colored flowers to blue shaded blades of grass.   As part of an effort to be more environmentally friendly this year, Bond No.9 boutiques will accept empty perfume bottles [to recycle for you], and as a reward, they will give you a refillable pocket spray.

The scent itself is a soft, feminine floral that definitely reminds of spring blooms and decadence.   It dries down to a nice subtle scent that delights the nose, but it isn’t overwhelming.  I found the scent stayed on throughout the day, fading minimally, but never turning.  I definitely detected the Lily of the Valley and Blue Freesia notes, and when it dried down, I noticed a touch of musk and wood.

Top notes include:  Lily of the Valley, Green Stem Notes, Sweet Blue Freesia, Golden Amber, Silver-cloud Musk Accord, White Birch Wood.

Union Square launches March 15th, 2008 at their four New York boutiques, www.bondno9.com, and Saks Fifth Avenue nationwide.  It will be available in 50ml size ($135) or 100ml size ($195).  A special collector set will be available of ten different bottles ($1500 for ten 100ml bottles) as well.

Let’s not forget about the ladies!  I thought it was only fitting to do a bath/fragrance version for all of the females.

Davies Gate Sweet N’ Glow Set ($25.00) in Pink Grapefruit will give you a memorable bath time experience. The scent is only subtly sweet, but kind of a tangy, spicy grapefruit scent. I think the set is priced perfectly, because you get a little of everything and the sizes are decent. The Fizz Pop makes me a little hungry, though, since it looks delicious. Since I don’t always have time for a bath (and my boyfriend doesn’t wish for me to act like I’m 12 too often–seriously, I splash around like I’m a toddler and slosh water all over the place), I love to treat myself to a body scrub and shower gel duo for regular, more everyday showers.

Diesel Fuel For Life Gift Set ($55.00) contains both 1.7 oz eau de parfum spray and a 1.7 oz body lotion. I can note the mandarin, jasmine, and black currant in the scent, as well as a bit of musk. There’s a certain sweetness mixed with something woody that makes it perfect for me. I tend to enjoy scents like these compared to sweeter scents. What I like about this particular Diesel scent is that it lasts awhile on me, and I don’t find it cloying or overpowering. I find it wears down quite well throughout the day leaving a pleasantly softer version of the initial woody scent.