Elizabeth Taylor – Gardenia + Happy New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

source: vermontcountrystore.com

Elizabeth Taylor‘s fragrances are a common staple of the TJ Maxxes and Marshalls of the world; in other words, their target audience isn’t the fancy dandy who pays an exorbitant amount of money for a pretentious cocktail at a speakeasy, or the trophy wife whose job involves checking out the latest Hermès scarves (no harm intended if you’re one such person, heaven knows I daydream all the time about being able to have champagne daily while having a personal assistant attend to me as I casually shop at Chanel – fine, I’m kidding, I’ve never harbored such illusions of grandeur, despite spending far too much on fragrance, which my mum deems “impractical” – or wait, do I?), but bargain hunters like myself, who excitedly pop into every discounter they see in the hopes of discovering that cheapie that will turn out to be a treasure. Case in point – over the past week I must have been into at least 10 of such establishments, some more than twice, in the hopes of scoring that elusive deal.

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I’m BACK! Histoires de Parfums Tubéreuse 1 Capricieuse Review

“Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me?”

“But he’s dead, you told me he was dead… so how can he be back?”

Fans of the hit BBC series Sherlock will immediately get the reference to the return of Moriarty (Sherlock’s arch-nemesis) at the end of the final episode of Season 3. I do suppose I should be allowed to provide this ‘spoiler’, seeing as how the episode came out at the very beginning of the year in January, so fans of the show would already have known about it. In any case, it feels good to be back. A number of reasons have made it difficult for me to blog about perfume for some time now:

Madonna – Truth or Dare

source: beauty-boks.com

Madonna‘s Truth or Dare attempts to pay homage to the grand dame of all tuberoses, Fracas, but unfortunately falls flatter on its face than Madonna does while singing Like a Prayer:

After a twirl of giggly bubblegum-my, marshmallow-y tuberose more suited for a tween pop star than the 55 years that Madonna really is (as of 2014), Truth or Dare sobers up and attempts to show some grown up flesh by playing peekaboo with some gardenia and jasmine, before collapsing into an all too generic musk within the hour. Unfortunately, Truth or Dare is ultimately thin, angular and reedy, and lacks the voluptuous curves demanded by a white floral fragrance . In short, it describes the singer to a T:

source: popcrunch.com

To be fair to Truth or Dare, Persolaise deemed it to be “not as terrible as as we might have suspected” while The Candy Perfume Boy reported that it smells “much more expensive than it is and is much better than it needed to be”. But I disagree with their implicit assumptions that we ought to hold celebrity scents to a different standard.

Madonna may pray, Give me all your luvin’, but at the end of the day, Truth or Dare leaves me Frozen.

~ The Smelly Vagabond

[P.S. I don’t think I’ve ever inserted so many music videos into one post before!]

Perfume Haiku Series: La Chasse aux Papillons by L’Artisan Parfumeur

La Chasse aux Papillons by L’Artisan Parfumeur

Summer butterfly
Flitting gently in the breeze
Lands on tuberose

~ The Smelly Vagabond

Perfume Haiku Series: Juicy Couture by Juicy Couture

Juicy Couture by Juicy Couture

Prepubescent girl
With her playful, flirty smile
Looking for a date

~ The Smelly Vagabond