Fragrance

MAC's Asphalt Flower is like the gravelly crunch of new leather boots afoot a freshly paved street. An edgy, cool incense and sweet berries (mulberry and currant, to my nose) adds a dimension of femininity to this revamped version of one of MAC's earlier 1999 fragrance releases. Asphalt Flower reminds me of Pam from True Blood: feminine and fierce. The rollerball packaging feels very appropriate as this is a sensual, textured fragrance that lends itself well to dabbing on rather than spraying. Asphalt Flower is perfectly reminiscent of the brand it represents, and a must-have fragrance for fall.

• Asphalt Flower is available for $20 in a 6 mL rollerball from MAC Cosmetics
• Questions? Comments? Got something you'd like me to sniff? Hit me up at kristy.victoria@gmail.com.

Givenchy Play is a perfectly suitable fragrance for a modern young man. The target audience of this Eau de Toilette is most apparent in the packaging: the bottle is fashioned after an iPod, which is likely to attract a younger, more tech savvy man. Fresh topnotes of bergamot and grapefruit slowly morph into a woody amalgam of vetiver, tonka and amyris wood with has just the right amount of warmth. The official notes list includes coffee flower and patchouli, but these are imperceptible at least on my skin. Play was tenacious and long lasting on my skin, lasting throughout the day without needing to be reapplied. My impression of the development of Givenchy Play was something akin to unwrapping a present: the fresh topnotes are likely to entice your attention, but the warm and woody base beneath is what you want out of the experience.

• Givenchy Play is available for $53 for a 50 mL bottle at Sephora, Nordstroms, Dillards, Macy's and Bloomingdales.

The sillage generated by a fragrance is one of its most important qualities. (What is 'sillage' you ask? Why, it's the French term for the trail of scent left by a perfume, originally used to refer to the wake of a ship.) It's the first impression of a scent that you will impress upon those around you. Sillage done right can act as a lure: you may find your significant other enjoys keeping their face extremely close to your neck/chest/wrist, or it may inspire others to hunt you down demanding to know what smells so fabulous. On the other end of the spectrum, sillage done poorly can be purely repellent.

This is important to understand in order to fully appreciate why Prada's latest release is So Incredibly Fabulous. L'Eau Ambree will delicately entice those around you to come closer and sniff its warm, clean embrace of woods and amber. It is comfortably feminine and feels like an effortless work of art. A large part of Prada's mastery of scent falls in their ability to compose something so elegant that it can please the refined tastes of niche connoisseur while also appealing to throngs of women who just want to smell great. L'Eau Ambree fits into this archetype nicely. The "modern amber" note that is most distinctive upon the wearer is a minimalistic Amber: L'Eau Ambree is more like looking through a transparent lozenge of amber than being suffocated in the densely sweet or overwhelmingly powdery versions of yore. It's also worth noting that if you liked Infusion d'iris, you're likely to recognize some similarities in the base of this scent: Prada has developed a signature base accord that ties their fragrance compositions together as being recognizably Prada.

I cannot recommend this fragrance enough to everyone out there: You Need This. It's perfect if you just want to smell fabulous, but it's also perfect if you crave a refined piece of artistic perfumery. What more could you ask for?

L'Eau Ambree by Prada is currently available in 1.7 ounces for $76 or 2.7 ounces for $114 in from Neiman Marcus.

Check out this video spot for Prada's latest release, L'Eau Ambree. We'll be reviewing it soon on Specktra.Net, and until then, here's a snippet to entice you from Octavian Coifan at 1000 Fragrances:

"Here you have the latest Prada L'Eau Ambrée perfume that is for the next decade what Dune (Dior) was for the 90's. A reinvention of the oriental note far from any sweet connotation."

Good news for lovers of Jennifer Lopez's GLOW fragrance, a new version is being released this fall...
"For Jennifer Lopez now is the most perfect moment in her life. Poised between pride in the past and promise for the future, she feels fulfilled as never before. Her spirit is soothed with serenity, her heart overflowing with tenderness. There is no deeper love, no greater happiness than this. No words can describe it, but a fragrance can capture it."

For me, nothing quite represents the transition from summer to fall like Tom Ford's Japon Noir. It's a dynamic fragrance that starts with a sueded, gingery spice that morphs into a sea of sweet, smoky exotic wood. One of the most unusual aspects of this composition is a Port accord that flows across each stage of the fragrance, joining spice and leather into an intoxicating wine like blend. The texture of Japon Noir evokes everything that I associate with fall: the decadent fabrics and dark tonality of tree leaves in transition to winter.

Available at Perfume.com for $160.99.

I can't hear the word 'daisy' without immediately flashing in my mind to Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday saying, "You're a daisy if you do" in that movie Tombstone, from the 90s. Totally one of my guilty pleasures.

I can say that Daisy ($57) (the Marc Jacobs edition, not the Val Kilmer edition) is a true pleasure, and not a guilty one. I've wanted, for a long time, to try this fragrance. I have a picky nose, so I hate walking into any store that has perfumes stacked all atop one another because the scents mix and mingle and make me sneeze...that's my excuse for dallying so long in adding this to my collection.

I liked this perfume so much that I stayed up two hours past my bedtime just sniffing my arm. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed something in quite the same way. I was expecting this to be incredibly pricey - it rivals niche perfume lines like Amouage and By Kilian who sell their scents for $250+ a pop.

It's not. It's not even $50, and it's one of most amazing things I have ever sniffed. Start to finish, Kashkha has one of the smoothest transitions between top, middle and basenotes that I have had the pleasure of experiencing. After wearing Kashkha for a day, I realized how much the velocity with which a scent transitions impacts its quality. Most modern releases seem almost like a series of mismatched film clips, hastily and poorly transitioned, out of context from one scene to the next. Kashkha is congruous and has continuity. It knows where it's going and it ends up there, well directed from start to finish.

But what does it smell like? Oud, cedarwood, sandalwood, and arabian spices. The spiciness is muted, as if the spices have been suspended in an amber resin. The oud has an almost reflective quality to it, not at all musty or medicinal. The woody accords here, from Givaudan, sing through in an otherworldly way - this is a femininity of woods that has been unbeknownst to most of us in the perfume world, ages away from the harsh synthetic wood that dominates masculine perfumery.

Every last person out there with a nose ought to try Kashkha by Swiss Arabian Perfumes. (And yes, I'm buying a bottle!)

• Zahras offers complimentary samples of their scents, including Kashkha by Swiss Arabian Perfumes! All you pay for is shipping (International is $12, but I received about 6 samples - making this less expensive than any other sample sites out there which run $3 per sample + the cost of shipping).
• Kashkha by Swiss Arabian Perfumes is available for $45.00 from Zahras - email to order.

Sugar Babe, Sugar Scrub

I freely admit I've avoided ever so much as entering a LUSH store through the years, simply because I know I wouldn't leave without a dazed expression, an armful of delicious bath and body yummies, and a mission intent of spending hours in the shower.