Ever smelt a peach glazed with glue? That’s what the first 30 seconds of this perfume Jimmy Choo feel like.

This fragrance was a lot of fun to sample, I was expecting buckets of insulin-triggering syrup but it was smarter than that.

Peach, or something quite similar to it, will be the signature note until the dry down. It’s fresh, with some of the crispness of pear, and although it tends to be tyrannical almost to the point of boring, it’s all the stuff happening around it that deserves to be told.

This Jimmy Choo parfum is – of course – sweet, but its sweetness is wrapped in a thin plastic film, which restrains it and at the same time polishes it with a layer of neon light. And if I could touch this peach, I would swear it’s even slightly sticky.

The fairly thick glazed peach curtain will make Jimmy Choo EdP change very slowly and not that much after all, but after about two hours – it takes a little bit of sharpening the nose – sweetness becomes creamier and patchouli splatters some light mud on it.

It’s only after a couple of more hours, that peach subsides and sets the florals free. That’s the beginning of the dry down, which keeps the dirty patchouli and adds vanilla-sweet notes, but it’s all nice and soft.

Fun, young enough, and all in all quite balanced, if I had to choose between, say – and I’m picking randomly here – this one, Flowerbomb and 212 Sexy, Jimmy Choo parfume would be the winner, Flowerbomb would come second, and don’t even get me started on 212.

The version I sampled was the EdP, it was launched in 2011 and created by  Olivier Polge (Only The Brave, Armani Code For Women, Flowerbomb).

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Jimmy Choo Eau De Parfum

Jimmy Choo Fragrance Review

When you smell this for the first time you may have the same reaction that Phoebe has to saltwater taffies: what’s the deal? Is it fruity is it floral? The two facets are so skilfully mixed together, that this question will not get a definite answer.

Emporio Diamonds Armani was launched in 2007 and represents one of the last great fragrances created by Thierry Wasser, before he was appointed in-house perfumer at Guerlain.

The top offers brief citrus notes, and then the perfume opens to rose and lily-of-the-valley. Although the bouquet is delicate and not overly intense, rose is a note that can bite if sprayed generously.

Fruits will follow quickly, blending with the florals. It is red fruits we are talking about here, like litchi, but with little or no sourness and a controlled sweetness. To simplify, there is a vague strawberry bubble-gum feeling in Emporio Armani Diamonds perfume. The result however, is by no means a teenage fragrance, also because the fruity-floral core is wrapped in light green notes, which provide more complexity and depth.

This delicate balance between the delicacy of the florals, the smouldering power of rose and the soft sweetness of the fruits will be its main quality for the most part.  As it moves towards the base, Diamonds Emporio Armani becomes a tad sweeter, thanks to a note of vanilla.

However, the fragrance will keep the balanced structure it has showed so far, and light amber will prevent it from having the usual all-vanilla finale of many other fragrances in the same category.

Nice job, Thierry Wasser, wrapping rose in a slightly gourmand red fruit, leaving us wondering if we should smell the fruits or eat the rose.

Among many perfumes that claim to be upbeat and uplifting, the simplicity of Armani Emporio Diamonds with a transparent name and a transparent bottle (diamond-shaped, of course), is the real thing. If you like sparkling, happy fragrances, with an edible quality, this is the one for you. Regardless of your age: more than ever, with this Diamonds for women, it’s the spirit that counts.

If this was a perfume it would be:

Perfume Diamonds

Giorgio Armani Diamonds Perfume Review

Beauty by CK is a complex fragrance, and you’ve gotta love complexity in a perfume.

It starts with very quick fruity notes, and then you’ll get a bouquet of intense and dense white florals, which are given a paintbrush of spicy, woody and citrus notes.

It feels like a diluted version of Opium, but not in a derogatory way, quite the opposite: intense and extreme don’t have to be always the same thing, and there goes your proof.

In the heart notes, the florals are still intense, but the sour nose-filling side is left out in favour of the cleaner one (probably thanks to jasmine), which melts great with the citrus.

The result is a great balance, of intensity and cleanness at a general level, but of many other things as well: sweet + sour (from the floral) + fresh (from the citrus) + powdery + spices. This means you will feel all of them, but none will step on the other.

In the dry down it will become softer, slightly warmer and cleaner.

Calvin Klein Perfume Beauty is a great fragrance and a mature one: 30-35, maybe 40 would be the appropriate entry age I believe. It was launched in 2010 an created by Sophie Labbe (Nina Ricci Premier Jour).

I liked all the Calvin Klein perfumes I reviewed so far, but this stroke me as the odd one, and in a positive way. It’s a more oriental version of Beautiful and a more human version of Opium. it’s the revenge of the intense-but-moderate, of the normal with a twist, as we all are.

And, on top of that, it’s quite sexy (and remember: guy’s opinion here).

If this was a color it would be:
Calvin Klein Beauty Fragrance

CK Calvin Klein Beauty Perfume Review

Tommy Hilfiger perfume for women starts with pear, which is light and bright but distinct, mixed with mandarin and orange.

It soon adds florals and becomes one of those perfumes for women that play on the line between fruity and floral (like Lalique by Lalique, I Love Love by Moschino, or Especially Escada for example) and with no caramel sweetness thrown in.

And this is where the issue with this perfume Tommy Girl begins. The fruits and the floral sides are just great: the pear (which is not among the notes btw, but this is what sums up the result of whatever mix it is) is fragrant, juicy, ripe and just sweet enough, and the florals are delicate, feminine, and not heady at all. Plus, there is a general greenness that never hurts in a perfume.

But there’s a huge catch I believe, and it all revolves around the fruity side. The thing is, the ripeness can be pretty nauseous, if not counterbalanced by something else like – in this case – florals or citrus notes: too much of these fruits and you – and all those around you – may start to hate this fragrance in just few hours. But if, on the other hand, the balance is right, this perfume Tommy Hilfiger will be just great.

In my case, on the blotter the florals came out alright, but not enough, and only in the end, whereas on my wrist, three sprays lasted less than four hours and then the perfume just disappeared on me. But the potential is clearly all there, the good and the bad: both the heavenly orchard immersed in flowers and the fruit must nightmare.

So here’s the question: where will Tommy Hilfiger Perfume Tommy Girl draw the line for you? You may be part of that army of women who wore it in the past and know perfectly how this will behave, but if you’re new to this, let it age for a couple of hours on your skin before you buy it.

The fragrance was created by Calice Becker (J’Adore, Beyond Paradise) in 1996 and many back then teenagers are now mothers who passed it on to their daughters.

If this was a color it would be:
Perfume Tommy Hilfiger

Perfumes Tommy Hilfiger Tommy Girl

Especially Escada starts velvety and floral with a good dose of juicy pear as a counterpart.

The fruity notes are ripe, but with a controlled sweetness and rose is the main flower (also, the ad with Israeli model Bar Refaeli is all about roses), but it’s deprived of its headiness and softened by the fruits, so chances are, you may feel the bouquet quite generic, with only a spicy hint here and there.

For a good while Perfume Escada Especially Escada will ride a fine line between floral and fruity, and in that period you may get a slightly bit of this or a slightly bit of that. As it evolves however, it will become mainly floral plus clean without being soapy.

It’s a no-harm-no-foul perfume, a butterfly flapping its wings, very unlikely to cause any storm. But even though it may not become you signature perfume, it’s a quite pleasant fragrance, and the good amount of fruits gives a delicate sweetness.

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Escada Parfum

Escada Especially Escada Eau De Parfum

Don’t be fooled by the gentle look of mimosa, the main note of this Une Fleur de Cassie by Frederic Malle: this perfume can be very gentle if you decide to oversee some of its qualities, but hard to appreciate if you stop to smell it for real.

Of course it will still be floral and it will be – or at least try to be – delicate. If it’s slow enough to evolve on your skin, you may even get citrusy notes at the start, if it’s slow.

But then the other side of this Frederic Malle perfume comes out, and it’s laminated and animalic, like the freesia in Antonia’s Flowers, although there’s no freesia in the formula.

At first I thought this plastic cover effect was given by the (real) plastic covers I use to keep the blotters of my niche perfumes, but in fact the other blotters are not affected.

(this plastic feeling is not unheard of, there are at least two fragrances I reviewed so far that gave the same feeling, one is Rush by Gucci and Clinique Happy for women)

Une Fleur De Cassie  has a delicate side (also supported by the intense floralcy of carnation) and another one that is dirty and illuminated by neon lights, with also a little of the chemical sourness of ylang-ylang (not among the notes either).

You can try it on and find out how it decides to go on you. All I can tell you is that,  if I ever get abducted by aliens, and I find a bunch of mimosas in their spacecraft, I bet it would smell like this.

This fragrance was launched in 2000 and created by Dominique Ropion (Euphoria, Armani Code for women, Amarige, Ysatis, Lady Million, Alien, Flowerbomb on this blog).

And here’s an excellent review of this perfume, too bad that the guy hasn’t posted in two years. Hopefully he’ll get the ping back to this link.

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 Une Fleur De Cassie For Women

Frederic Malle Une Fleur De Cassie Perfume For Women

Imagine they make a movie and then they write a book out of it (quite the opposite of what normally happens), and you read the book before watching the movie: your opinion is likely to be influenced.

Not that I ever did something like that myself, but I’m afraid this is what happened with Perfume Lovely Sarah Jessica Parker. After reading the interesting story of its creation in Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent, I knew so much about it that I found quite hard to understand what the fragrance was about when I eventually smelt it.

To sum it up we can put it this way: SJP had, by contract, the last word on the perfume, and she had a very clear idea of how it should be: strong, animalic, as little feminine as possible. Coty, on the other hand, wanted a commercial hit, and for that you don’t want to be too weird.

SJP Lovely is what came out of the compromise between those two ideas: a deep floral, made warm and “alive” by hefty doses of musk. So there you have something that’s 50% heady and dense, 50% dirty. No wonder it’s often compared to Narciso Rodriguez for Her.

This double-faceted personality – “a tightrope walk” to use Burr’s words – is probably the main reason why the perfume was not a simple success – that could have been explained with SJP’s own popularity – but a huge one.

Again with Burr’s words, Sarah Jessica Parker Perfume Lovely is “a sheath of light built around a core of dark. It reveals the scent of the skin of the shoulders below, the scent of a clean, warm, very human  body […].”

Got that? For many but not for everyone: Lovely doesn’t have to rhyme with delicate.

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Sarah Jessica Parker Lovely Fragrance

Lovely By Sarah Jessica Parker Perfume Review

The very first whiff gave back a brief moment of intense rose, but it was clear that it was just a note that got through and was not supposed be there.

See, I know Chloe parfum. The real opening is indeed with fruits (apples, litchi and other fresh, sweety stuff) and – as it sometimes happens with floral fragrances – after a couple of minutes there is a delay between the moment in which the top notes fade and the next ones come in, and the perfume seems to disappear under your nose, although still with fruity notes in the background.

And when I realised that all this parfum Chloe was giving back to me were generic floral notes, I started to get impatient: where’s the flippin’ rose?

See, I thought I knew Chloe, after all, it’s the signature perfume of a person who is very dear to me, but I didn’t: I was expecting a full steam heady rose but in fact it’s nothing like it.

I was initially disappointed, but then I realised that was just a stupid reaction because the rose that was gradually coming out was way more interesting: still with a heady, intense side, but also gentle, fruity, pepperry and slightly soapy, obviously cut with other florals, like (I would venture to say) a non-animalic freesia and iris. And the fruits are still there as well, although more on the skin than on the blotter.

This Chloe parfume won’t have the deepest of bouquets, but it’s fresh and young, as young as a mature flower like rose can be. It was created by Amandine Marie and Michel Almairac (Gucci Rush) in 2008 .

If this perfume was a color it would be
Chloe Perfume Notes

Chloe Perfume For Women Review

…it would be like Premier Jour

I love Premier Jour Nina Ricci perfume for the same reasons why I hate Flowerbomb, but with opposite signs.

It was launched in 2001 and created by Sophie Labbe and Carlos Benaim (CKIN2U, Eternity for men, Euphoria for women, Armani Code for women, and Flowerbomb).

The opening was quite floral and dense, it felt like rose at first, but it actually wasn’t, and just when I thought I was in for a heady ride, the perfume toned down.

The florals are quite generic at this stage, and although the intensity is fairly low, there seem to be dense and powdery flowers with a peppery side, together with soapy ones, like carnation and iris.

It eventually grows, adding soft fruity notes in the background, although it remains mainly floral.

The mix is where the title comes from, and it shows how pleasant a non-sweet fruity floral mix can be. I really wonder why this fragrance is hard to find in perfume shops, if the space for Nina Ricci perfumes for women on the shelf is limited to two or three, they should sell this instead of Nina.

Indeed it’s more metallic on my skin, but I’m starting to think I’m like King Midas of perfumes, except that I turn them into tin.

The final will be slightly musky, but keeping the floral side up.

Nina Ricci Jour parfum is dense, fruity at times, prone to freshness, and inherently gentle. Wear it only if you are exactly like that.

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Nina Ricci Parfum

Nina Ricci Premier Jour Eau De Parfum

Beautiful by Estee Lauder perfume was created by living legend Sophia Gojsman (Tresor by Lancome, Eternity for women by Calvin Klein and Lalique by Lalique) in 1985.

It starts with a type of sourness like the one of ylang-ylang, which covers 50% of the space, with a truckload of florals covering the other half. Very hard to pick one in particular, although, under the sourness I could swear there is carnation, with its quiet strength (the Bellodgia Caron perfume is still fresh).

After a while, Beautiful parfum becomes green as well, and there you have a full picture of green sour, with a rich bouquet underneath. That will be the signature note of the fragrance until the dry down, when – after a while of good old floral powerhousing – musks come in. They’re far from banal though, as they are spot on and blend perfectly, keeping the same intensity but slightly warmer.

The final result is a deep, rather than dense fragrance (although you will certainly feel it in the nostrils), and as complex as you want it to be, but not in an intimidating way.

Beautiful Fragrance Estee Lauder is from the eighties, and it shows the taste if its time. It’s still very popular, especially among those who were in their twenties in its decade (and are not too fussy about the inevitable reformulations it underwent in these years). I guess it’s because of the memories it brings (a perfectly good reason to wear a perfume) or because the imprinting of their tastes formed in those years.

Having said that, it’s a beautiful thing: of all the feminine perfumes from the “past” I have tried, this is the one that I found the most pleasurable; the one that, although from more than two decades ago (an Eternity, in perfume years), it’s still not old enough to retire.

If this was a color it would be

Perfume Beautiful By Estee Lauder

Beautiful Perfume For Women By Estee Lauder