Tag: fragrance

Marilyn Miglin Pheromone

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It’s been a long time since I bothered putting anything on this blog, but I’ve gotten onto another fragrance kick this month. It’s about the only interesting thing to do during quarantine. In attempting to describe these scents to friends, I’ve come up with little vignettes, which I’ll share with you. I’ll start today with Marilyn Miglin’s Pheromone, which has been my signature scent since 1992.

Pheromone is a woman approaching middle age, attending a charity gala in winter with a famous man on her arm.  The hosts are serving Dom Perignon, but she chooses a snifter of brandy as her drink instead, as it is warm and golden and unexpected.

Cherries!

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Cherries are my favorite fruit and I’m always looking for interesting cherry-themed candles, perfumes, bath & body products, and even food. Today I’ll be comparing three fragrances based on this wonderful fruit: Hilde Soliani Una Tira L’Altra, Tom Ford Lost Cherry, and Montale Intense Cherry.

I blind-bought a full-size bottle of Una Tira L’Altra. When first applied, the scent was strong, fake candied cherry, and that disgusted me. I let it ride for fifteen minutes but then had to go wash it off. Stay tuned – I’ll be coming back to this one in a moment.

A few days later, at a Nordstrom counter, I took the opportunity for some generous testing of Lost Cherry on my right arm. The scent was very much a sharp, true, slightly sour cherry…really delicious, with something darker in the undertones that kept it good, and not too candyish. This is $335 a bottle, though, which was excessive for me personally.

Upon returning home that day, I decided to test Una Tira again, and sprayed it generously on the left arm. Surprisingly, when the candied cherry note had died down, it was almost identical to Lost Cherry, and of course at a more attractive price point. After this apples-to-apples (or perhaps “cherries-to-cherries”) comparison, there seems no point in buying the Tom Ford fragrance, although it is more readily available than Una Tira at the big department stores and at Sephora, if that makes a difference to you. I know some people don’t like to patronize independent shops.

Today I pulled out my Montale spray tester of Intense Cherry and gave it a go for the first time. This fragrance clearly has cherry in it – but it is not a “cherry fragrance.” I can smell the jasmine and rose, and the vanilla is (to me) very strong, and the fruit scent is interwoven in there somewhere. An hour after application, I was mostly getting vanilla and jasmine, whereas with Lost Cherry and Una Tira, the smell of the fruit itself stayed sharp and fresh for a few hours.

In any case, cherry to me is a spring/summer scent, so this was mostly experimentation in anticipation of spring 2020. But I’m glad I got it all sorted.

And back to Una Tira for one more thing: wearing it with I Profumi di Firenze’s Caterina de Medici created a beautiful, ethereal, summery scent that was greater than the sum of its parts. When spring rolls around again, I’ll be testing Una Tira with other florals to see how it goes. This may become the base fragrance on which I build all of my future scent wardrobe!

Viktoria Minya Fragrances

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This review is of the “Travel Trio” of fragrances available at Lucky Scent and at Viktoria Minya.  The packaged trio consists of Hedonist, Hedonist Iris, and Hedonist Cassis.  Viktoria Minya’s website also has a 5-piece travel collection that contains those three plus Hedonist Rose and Eau de Hongrie.  Lucky Scent (who didn’t stock the 5-piece set) was also kind enough to include samples of Hedonist Rose and Eau de Hongrie, which I will review at the end.

First off let’s talk about the packaging.  A handmade box is all very nice, but I have no desire or storage area for fancy boxes, so I’m going to throw it away…so that is an unnecessary addition to the cost.  I find that a lot of beauty product manufacturers offer items in special boxes and to me it’s just fancy trash.  A nicely-decorated mass-produced box would be fine.  But – a pleasant surprise – the glass vials are huge!  I had expected little “sample size” vials but these are about 5” high, a nice heft, and of course the little crystals in the bottle are cute.  The vials are refillable if you ever want to do so – or you could wash them out and fill with a different fragrance you like better, say for travel. 

Anyway, on to the fragrances.  Right after the shipment arrived, I sprayed on Hedonist Cassis at base of throat and wrists.  Surprisingly, I didn’t really notice any fragrance at all.  Almost as if this had been plain water.  I left it half an hour for something to develop, but I still didn’t smell anything, so I went back and reapplied and this time I did notice a faint scent.  Half an hour later I mentioned how weak this one seemed to be.  My husband put his nose right up at the base of my throat and sniffed, and said that he did get a vague sense of a fruity note that he couldn’t define better.  But I still didn’t smell it.  So this one won’t be a repeat for me.  I may use it as a hair mist in summer, or spray the linens in the guest bedroom before visitors arrive, or something.

The next day I applied the plain Hedonist.  This has an interesting (odd) smell and it’s a little stronger than the Cassis.  I still have to put my wrist up near my nose to catch it.  This one smells vaguely like peach, pancakes, and…cleaning fluid.  Sad but true, underneath the foody aromas there is a distinctly unpleasant note of some kind of liquid housecleaning product, maybe Lemon Pledge or Windex.  Definitely not a repeat on me.

By noon, Hedonist had worn off, so around 3 I gave Hedonist Iris a go.  And do you know what?  This one didn’t last either!  I smelled it – and it was a pleasant generic “perfume” smell – until about dinnertime, and then nothing.  This brand is pretty disappointing, yeah?

When I opened the sample vial of Hedonist Rose it made a bit of a mess, and poured all over my hands and in the sink too.  Well, it was just a sample, right?  Hah.  This is a nice scent.  Rose, yes, but also something like cherry to it.  It seems to project itself further than all the others (unless that’s just because I overdid it).  However, about an hour later it smells mostly like almonds – perhaps more like marzipan, because there is a sugariness to it – and reminds me very much of Hilde Soliani’s Una Tira L’Altra, a cherry scent with almond undertones.  Since I already own a big bottle of Una Tira, Hedonist Rose is not going onto my list either.

Before bed I did generous spritzes of Hedonist Cassis all over – up and down my legs, across my belly, and at the back of my neck.  Other than a vague sensation of the carrier alcohol, I can’t even tell I applied it.  This feels much more like an eau de toilette, if even that. 

This morning, the tester of Eau de Hongrie.  Guess what?  Half an hour later, no scent.  While it lasted, it had a smell of yeasty bread, peach, and something else I can’t quite define.  I know they say “wine” is one of the scents in it, but it smelled more like beer. 

In short, Viktoria Minya is completely off my list for a re-purchase.  Of all 5 scents, Hedonist Rose is the only acceptable one, but it didn’t wow me.  For these prices, I expect to be wowed. You may have better luck.

Coming back a little later in the day to say that I’ve just spritzed myself with a combo of Hedonist and Hedonist Iris (very generously) and it is giving me a nice, fruity (still mostly cherry/almond) kind of scent. It’s good, and the cleaning fluid smell is not as obvious. While they’re not a repeat buy, they’ll do just fine in combination if I save them for lighthearted summer days.

Tom Ford Fragrances

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Let’s kick things off with a quickie fragrance review. I’m mostly new to this – have been wearing only Pheromone by Marilyn Miglin for many years (note: there are no pheromones in it, and I’ve always hated the name, but it’s rich, warm and intense) – but recently have decided to do some research and testing for a new perfume, since there are so many options available.

So my fragrance reviews aren’t going to have a lot of that fancy terminology. It’s just me and my little nose, deciphering things.

Today’s trip was to Nordstrom to sample some Tom Ford fragrances. I’ve been interested in his line mostly because of the uniform, adorable atomizers available. Wouldn’t it be cute to have one of every color on the dresser? Of course it would. And if you ever want to give up on TF, the glass vials in the atomizers are refillable, so you can clean them out and then decant a preferred scent into them.

Jasmine Rouge was the driving force behind this trip, but the store didn’t have it available, either as a tester or for purchase. So I spritzed Noir de Noir on the right arm and Mandarino di Amalfi on the left, and then wandered off to let the scent settle.

Noir de Noir terrified me at the outset. It had an extremely strong men’s cologne note to it, which I prayed would die down quickly, and it did. Unfortunately, what I was left with was a sort of vanilla-bubblegum-mint! Not at all what you would expect from something called Noir de Noir. This was disappointing in the extreme, and I crossed it off my purchase list. That was at about 10AM. It got more candyish and less vanilla as the day went on; it’s now 4PM and there’s nothing left of it on my arm.

Mandarino di Amalfi is a nice fresh citrus smell, right from the start. Citrus and vanilla. Normally I dislike vanilla in perfume but this was very well-balanced. After a short while, perhaps 3 hours, it just faded away. My impression? Nice, generic, but not noteworthy, and therefore not on my future-buy list. Seems like it might be nice to give to a young girl as her “first grown-up perfume.”

Tonight UPS is going to deliver a package from Lucky Scent, and I’ll review the included items later this week. Stay tuned!