Spring Scents From Victoria’s Secret

It seems like the most pointless thing ever, but I always light scented candles and wear perfume when I’m sick.  But why, you ask, you can’t even smell anything.  Yes, that is definitely true.  And I’m rarely cognizant enough to appreciate pretty scents while I’m battling a cold anyways, so really, why do it?

Because….because…somewhere in the depths of my poor muddled mind, I associate pleasing scents with blissful relaxation and health.  Don’t even ask me why, I have no idea.  I’m sick right now, and am having trouble forming coherent sentences, in case you couldn’t tell.

What I’m trying to get at is that scents are total moodlifters, even when you can’t smell them.  And here are some brand-new, happy-making scents from Victoria’s Secret.

Caron Muguet du Bonheur Review

I suppose the moment I first ‘graduated’ from Bath & Body Works body spray (nothing against the stuff, but it’s in an entirely different category) to perfume was when I picked up Coty’s Muguet des Bois.  Now, bear with me, I know this is a review of an entirely different perfume, but I must talk about Muguet des Bois first.

It’s the only fragrance I’ve ever bought unsniffed, not because I was certain it would be perfect, but because I didn’t know any better at the time.  It sounded clean, green, and floral.  So I bought it for a very reasonable $10.  Money well spent, since it changed my preconceived notions of perfume.  Not something you wear just to smell good, after all.  The closest comparison I can think of is music; when people talk about perfume they talk about how it develops, how it softly begins and soars to a crescendo and ends with a trailing diminuendo.  And I can analyze perfume all I want, but in the end, it’s more about the feeling, the faint memory it leaves behind.

While I’m forever grateful to Muguet des Bois for changing my view on fragrance, I cannot wear the blasted thing.  And this, my friends, is why you should never buy scents unsniffed.  It’s a lovely fragrance, but instead of melding with my body chemistry, it marches to its own beat, and then dances a jig right off my skin in about 30 minutes flat.  Fortunately, it fares much better on my mother, and is now one of her favorite scents.  But the point is, I simply couldn’t wear it.

Just as I was about to make peace with the fact that lilies and I weren’t meant to be, Carton Muguet du Bonheur came toddling along.

Hello, Daisy!

I think everyone has already said everything there is to say about Daisy here, so I’ll only add my two cents if anyone asks for them.  Enjoy the pictures!  I took about 50, but figured you wouldn’t want to see 50 images of one perfume bottle, right?

Speaking of which, if you can get past the plastic daisies, the bottle itself is quite beautiful.  I never noticed this before, because those gigantic flowers were always in the way.

Everything shot in natural light, on carpet/placemats.  I miss my lightbox.

~Makeup Morsels

The Makeup Morsels 2011 NYE Guide

This year, my New Year’s Eve plans consist of The Hobbit, festive candles, and my electric heating blanket.  While I am all kinds of excited to journey along with Bilbo and Company (for the millionth time), I realize that a guide on optimal blanket heating and Tolkien reading probably isn’t the most useful thing to the majority of my readers.

For those of you who plan to close 2011 with a fun night out, here are the top three things you should consider bringing along with you:

An Ode to By Kilian*

*An ode in pictures because my writing is hardly ode-like.  So I suppose it’s not actually an ode, because I don’t think ‘ode’ goes with ‘pictures.’  You may also notice that I neglected to watermark said pictures, mostly because I couldn’t bring myself to slap text across these.  Plus, watermarking takes time, and time is something that keeps running away from me lately.

Where was I going with that?  Hmm, who knows?

Many of you have probably heard of By Kilian by now.  It’s a niche perfume brand founded by Kilian Hennessy (as in Hennessy cognac, I’m told).

The L’Oeuvre Noir collection…well, I don’t think I can top the press release.  Here it is:

“I conceived L’Oeuvre Noire collection with a quasi-Faustian ambience in mind. I wanted to cast a spell, like those that darkened Rimbaud’s spirit or conjured the witches in Macbeth. But it also recalls contemporary R&B lyrics like those of 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg or Pharell Williams, all about temptation in the face of urban violence, like Baudelaire before them, as expressed in his prose poetry.”

-Kilian Hennessy

One thing I will say about the ad copy is that it does get inflated at times, to the point where even I shake my head in bewilderment.  But it’s also true that sometimes you can’t get to where you want to be unless you go overboard.  I applaud them (politely) for creating a little prose piece for each scent and (thunderously) for working 50 Cent into the same paragraph as Baudelaire.

Now, I’m no perfume expert, but as far as I could tell, this line was all about quality.  The 9 scents I sniffed seemed very well put-together, even if some weren’t necessarily my cup of tea.  Rather than going over all 9, I think I’ll focus on my favorites today.

I’ve always had a thing for flowery compositions, so it was no surprise when I immediately gravitated toward the floral blends.  While 4 of them stood out to me (Liaisons Dangereuses, Love and Tears, Love, Prelude to Love), I narrowed it down to 2 favorites.  The first is