Interesting that we had a normal amount of views but very few comments for this competition. It makes me wonder if you love the frag and own it already?
This week we will have 1 winner who will receive: 1 x Emeraude EdC vintage decant (about 2ml)
P&H Anywhere in the world
HOW DID YOU WIN?
Open to everyone worldwide who follows AustralianPerfumeJunkies via eMail, WordPress, Bloglovin or RSS. Please leave how you follow in the comments to be eligible. I must be able to check that you follow so if you have an email address on your gravatar that’s different to your follow address then please email me (portia underscore turbo @ yahoo dot com dot au) so I know. Yes, you can start following to enter, in fact it’s encouraged.
You must tell me how you follow APJ
and
Please tell us what you love about Coty or any vintage fragrance
Entries Closed Sunday 26th July 2015 10pm Australian EST
Winner will be chosen by random.org
Photo Stolen nodepositforum
Marion Low (via Twitter)
The winner will have till Thursday 30th July 2015 to get in touch (portia underscore turbo at yahoo dot com dot au) with their address or the prize will go to someone else.
No responsibility taken for lost or damaged goods in transit.
My mate Natalie from the sadly defunct site Another Perfume Blog was cleaning out her unwanted samples and decants and gave me an enormous bag of things that she thought I may be interested in trying. The bag is so huge that I find it completely overwhelming and rarely open it. I do look at it often with love for Natalie and thanks that she thought me worthy of such an amazing gift. I’m not sure why but today I was inspired to go rummaging through and found something I’ve been keen to try.
Emeraude EdC: Vintage by Francois Coty for Coty 1921
I’m not sure what the vintage is of the decant that was in the bag but it is a lovely chartreuse colour, pale yellow green, it looks like dangerous poison. Nothing like the modern day-glo green fragrance in the picture above which I have tried in the plastic crowned bottle and quite liked.
Citrus and what smells like galbanum to me are already warmed through by the creamy ylang, resins and woods. This older version is softer and less strident than my previous tries of the modern Emeraude. A furrier, fuzzier green that is so much more than a green. This is a really complex warm green that both cuddles and cools. I could see this being sold as a high end niche in the 21st century, there’s something decidedly balmy about the whole scent. As if it’s not a perfume but a pomade, a thick lotion in a pot or a solid.
Calming and beautiful this Emeraude wears close but still has the power to change the air around you and make the world seem a little more technicolour, slightly more splendid and imperial. Emeraude vintage is like a glamour cast before your nose that makes the world seem lovelier by far to the rest of your senses. The dry down becomes resinous and the vanilla/amber wafts discretely for a couple of hours after the fireworks have burned off.
This week we will have 1 winner who will receive: 1 x Emeraude EdC vintage decant (about 2ml)
P&H Anywhere in the world
HOW DO YOU WIN?
Open to everyone worldwide who follows AustralianPerfumeJunkies via eMail, WordPress, Bloglovin or RSS. Please leave how you follow in the comments to be eligible. I must be able to check that you follow so if you have an email address on your gravatar that’s different to your follow address then please email me (portia underscore turbo @ yahoo dot com dot au) so I know. Yes, you can start following to enter, in fact it’s encouraged.
You must tell me how you follow APJ
and
Please tell us what you love about Coty or any vintage fragrance
Entries Close Sunday 26th July 2015 10pm Australian EST and winners will be announced in a separate post.
Winner will be chosen by random.org
The winner will have till Thursday 30th July 2015 to get in touch (portia underscore turbo at yahoo dot com dot au) with their address or the prize will go to someone else.
No responsibility taken for lost or damaged goods in transit.
Sometimes I like to go totally opposite from the high end of the fragrance register because I just want to smell good, not challenged or have to work hard to understand what I’m up to in the life cycle or even worry about the respritz value. Sometimes I want simple, pretty, cheap, cheerful and ultimately wearable fragrance. Lily of the valley is not a flower I am knowledgeable about in smell or growth. I do remember one year Mum and I bought and planted some pots of what was sold as lily of the valley but they did not live long enough to flower and that soured me on the whole plant so I have often overlooked it in fragrances.
Muguet des Bois EdC by Coty 1941
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
Fragrantica gives these featured accords: Top: Aldehydes, orange, green leaves, bergamot Heart: Cyclamen, lilac, jasmine, lily-of-the-valley, rose Base: Sandalwood, musk
A bright green citrus opening sings out sweetly and quite syrup-ish. The bouquet is pretty and light, perfect during winter for reminiscence of spring and as a coolant in the hot summer months, the flowers remain green throughout the life of Muguet Des Bois. I currently have a vase full of Asiatic lilies, not Casablanca, and the scent is so like Muguet Des Bois that it’s uncanny. They are beautiful big pink and white flowers, huge! This is what they smell like too. Even as it fades towards dry down at the 3 hour mark the sandalwood is only a slight buttery warmth, leaving only the softest whisper of a skin scent that’s completely lost to me for another hour or so maximum.
Photo Stolen sito
Compared to Vintage Diorissimo Parfum (which is all I have) it is more sugared and way less stark, it also feels more transparent and gauzy, and let’s be perfectly honest cheaper. Looking at their respective price points though Muguet Des Bois is WAY better value because you can only tell how much cheaper side by side.
I think that Muguet Des Bois would be a wonderful work scent, as long as they aren’t fragrance phobic or too cramped quarters. It is also a lovely shopping, dining, dating fragrance, so fresh and light while being fragrant but not “clean”. Know what I mean?
So it’s not news that Lady Gaga has a fragrance released by her own The Haus Laboratories Paris and the historic house of Coty. You won’t be surprised to hear that it’s the first black Eau de Parfum. The bottle is pretty cool looking in pictures, like a Thierry Mugler cuff treatment or a freaky fascinator for the races. The ads have been wonderful homages and pastiches and have included enough excellent visual content, costume, make up, art direction and lighting to almost completely obscure the fact that we are being sold the same fruit tingle, soft jube, fizzy, fruity, 100% artificial pap that nearly every other celeb and quite a few of the expensive big boys are bottling and calling perfume.
WTF? Lady Gaga, you have let us down. Your promises of an olfactory adventure, the blood & semen accord, the outrage and scandal of your brilliant advertising that hits your target market dead on have all lead to this slightly fizzy dross? Oh yeah!! You know your target market. You know that this has been what is served to them since they started thinking fragrance, you want to sell stuff not make a gesture, not teach a lesson, not change the board but play to it. Smart! It’s not bad, just derivative and BORING Boring boring ZZZZZZZZZZzzzz
Instead of venting my spleen here I decided to do something different. I took FAME by Lady Gaga to Trivia last night thinking I would get the crowds reaction because many of my players are the target market, here’s how that turned out.
I was wearing FAME and the first thing that happened when I walked in was a question about my fragrance and a compliment on it. I had my dinner as everyone was arriving and was chatting and welcoming everyone over the next 40 minutes. As we got started on the trivia I asked if anyone would like to smell my pre Aussie release import of FAME and a surprising amount of hands went up. Thank goodness I’d ordered a 5ml decant! So around the room I went spraying on a couple of wrists at each table and folks, the place smelled absolutely gorgeous. Those opening notes are really great en mass in a large room with no other scent distractions. Everyone was huffing away at themselves from 18 to 80 years old and it really smelled wonderful.
Even as they were leaving 2 hours later I was getting fragrant wafts of fruity fizz, not strong but still quite nice and everyone had really enjoyed being the first Aussies to get a go at it. Some even going as far as to say that they would definitely be purchasing a bottle when it is released here later this month. So what do I know? Bloody nothing obviously. It’s a hit across the board. All ages and sexes were entranced by FAME.
Fragrantica gives these featured accords: Belladonna, incense, honey, saffron, apricot, Sambac jasmine, tiger orchid
On me the opening zips, fizzes and sizzles and that must be the apricot and saffron, there is also a very clean white flower that has been completely stripped of its sensuality. After about an hour it becomes much quieter and stays quite linear after the initial rush. I feel that there is no base holding the fragrance down. I would have liked some real depth to centre it a little more. Somewhere in the 3-4 hour area it becomes too soft for me to notice much other than that it is not my skin but something sweeter, almost but not quite milk and fairy floss, or DAIRY DROSS. I can’t say after wearing it for 2 days that I hate it but I don’t love it and wish I had more of a reason to purchase the bottle, but no…..
What fragrance have you been let down by lately? You know, the build up and hype had you HYPErventilating till you tried it? Please leave me a message in the comments. I love this kind of insight.
I hope you’re having a great day, if not the good times will roll around soon enough so please endure the crap.
Love always,
Portia xx
Madonna. Released her first single “Everybody” in 1982. It became a dancefloor hit in the underground clubs of the USA and, soon after, the world but it wasn’t until “Burning Up” was released that we in the Australian club scene heard of her. I remember seeing the video of Madonna writhing around on street asphalt looking like Marilyn Monroe and wearing loads of plastic bracelets. We instantly, guys and girls, adopted this look and a million shades of it and took our 15 year old selves out to the streets and clubs of Oxford St in Sydney. It was the era of acid trips, no doze and spumanti, disco was dying and Madonna seemed to step up to the mark and take its place effortlessly. After the sexy slow groove of the 70’s we wanted faster, more confrontational, heart racing music formulas and video hits. Here it was; and with her wicked, so slutty, don’t give a toss, finger up at the establishment, messed about attitude we were hooked.
Photo Stolen wikipedia
We were her slaves, even personally being part of 2 Madonna tribute shows. The peak of my Madonna madness came while she was doing the Girly Tour. It was her brother Christopher’s birthday and a group of us were asked to perform at the party. It is surreal standing next to your idol and singing Happy Birthday with her, to her brother on a stairwell overlooking a room full of Sydney’s most beautiful movers and shakers. Christopher and I picked the chocolate dipped strawberries off the cake and threw then to the heaving throng. I was extremely let down by Madonna at that party, she was tired and clearly just wanted to get the hell away from the madness but stayed, maybe for Christopher, and looked bored out of her brain. This was after a MONSTER world tour so she had earned tired.
Photo Stolen frenchculturesf
Madonna has been not stop in your face to the point where I can’t remember a time without her musically. Having also been there for every movie, yes even the ones we fans would prefer to forget about, we were thrilled when she nailed Evita so well. Trailing along in the wake of her oft times disastrous personal life through the lenses of the paparazzi Madonna has become so entrenched in our psyches that it’s often like we know her better than we know the people in our street, making it easy and painless to gossip about her, which brings her more into our world. Everybody has a Madonna moment to share, be it a disastrous date movie, early bedroom hairbrush singing, rollerblade track, wedding waltz or a zillion others, just bring her name up at a dinner party, everybody has a story.
Now I’m the first to admit that lately there has been a whiff of desperation about our Madge; the need to stay current, creative and controversial starts to look like a hard slog when you’ve been doing it for over 30 years. Every time she has brought out a new album in the last few years I have felt a little more embarrassed for her. Staying young forever is clearly thinning her out, in all ways.
Photo Stolen rollingstone
So, about 20 years after I would have expected it, Madonna has finally made her first foray into the world of fragrance. She has chosen the house of Coty as her scent mother, which strikes me as both extremely clever; for their enormous marketing and distribution powers, their long running work with many big celebrities; Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Lopez, Beyonce, Celine Dion, and our very own Kylie Minogue are just some of the Coty celebs, but also in all honesty on the flip side I would have hoped Madonna might have gone and found a more niche brand perfumer and really rocked our socks off. I suppose the lure of making big profits ran roughshod over the siren call of making the best. As yet Madonna’s fragrance Truth or Dare has not made it to our shores but by a lovely stroke of luck my friend Jay was over visiting in the USA teaching shoe design and cobblery last week and he just happened to drop by Macy’s, where there just happened to be a friendly sales assistant who just happened to let him have the free gift with purchase tote AND clutch, as long as he bought the BIG bottle. So Jay dutifully bought me 75mls of Truth or Dare and I am so grateful.
Photo Stolen allaboutmadonna
Design wise I love the gold and white box with its embossing. It looks cool and, for want of a better word, classy. As a side note an Australian artist RJ Williams (his work has hung in the Art Gallery of NSW and Museum of Contemporary Art) is currently suing Madonna for her use of his copyrighted symbol. Upon opening the first thing you notice about the bottle is its unusual hexagonal shape with the look of beading around the perimeter. It is stark and neat, comfortable in your hand, the little gold tone crown on top like the head of a scepter or a scaled back Westwood-esque world. The whole bottle has heft and could even be a nod to Deco. I really like it, while being a much calmer piece that I ever would have expected Madonna to put her name to it does fit.
Photo Stolen style.mtv
So history and design aside, the most important thing in a perfume, in my eyes anyway, is the juice. Madonna asked perfumer Stephen Nilsen who is the nose behind Vera Wang’s 2011 Lovestruck, SJP’s 2009 Dawn, and Bond No 9’s 2008 Andy Warhol Union Square for a white floral tuberose fragrance reminiscent of Robert Piguet’s 1948 Fracas that her mother wore. Having lost her mother while she was very young Madonna wanted to bring her memory back in olfactory terms while still giving her a massive update and facelift.
How does it smell? Buttery tuberose, creamy gardenia and neroli open in a big fat mouth watering HELOOOOO! I can hear my arteries clanging shut and wouldn’t be surprised if this fragrance could cause blood pressure problems it is so full of delicious fatty flavour. OMG! Madonna has blown my nostrils
As the initial blast calms down to a dull roar there is a peeking in of the lovely benzoin, which gives us a sweet and balsamic, slightly milky vanilla, and I love it when the Casablanca lily starts to hum in the background. I’m sure it’s there but I am not getting any jasmine in the heart, I’ll wait a while, maybe it’s a late starter. The tuberose, vanilla and gardenia pump gloriously through the heart of this perfume backed up by Casablanca, amber and, I think, musk with little softening of the after initial rush scent so far at 5 hours. I am thrilled that Madonna has done such a good job here. Sweet but not sickly, vanilla but not foodie, white flowers done with distinction.
Good for perfumistas, Madonna fans and the general public. A winner.
Photo Stolen fabsugar
I hope you have enjoyed this lengthy look at Madonna’s Truth or Dare,
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
Photo Stolen nodepositforum
Australian Perfume Junkies 