Manchester Airport Sniffing: Reviews Of Estée Lauder Sensuous Nude, Valentino Valentina & Versace Yellow Diamond

The more I travel, the more I adjust my expectations of the duty free perfume ranges at airports. Birmingham, with its new Chanel Les Exclusifs concession, was a very pleasant exception to this, but mostly you see the same old mainstream brands. There's always a bargain display plonked right inside the entrance and featuring the drossier end of designer brands like Joop! and Escada, which you wouldn't ever wish to buy if the prices were in fact bargains, which they never are. They are simply 10% off their prevous levels of impudent robdoggery.

Then there are invariably a few sales assistants loitering with intent in a major thoroughfare between the perfume section and the adjacent fixtures of confectionery and alcohol. Before you can say "giant Toblerone ingot" you will have been intercepted - and if you are very unlucky - bludgeoned into trying Jimmy Choo. No, sorry, that was a previous trip.

This time round the big push seemed to be on Oh Lola! No Lola!, more like - keep that VIBRANT FLIRTATIOUS LIGHT HEARTED "effervescent raspberry" number in its disturbingy bendy and fetishistic Georgia O'Keeffe flacon far from me, please...

So where is this jaded diatribe leading, you may ask? So did I do any sniffing at Manchester airport or what?

Oh okay, just a bit...

ESTEE LAUDER SENSUOUS NUDE

Yes, I tried the new Sensuous Nude flanker at last, having scoped the Estée Lauder fixture for months now to no avail. It really surprised me, for it didn't conform to my expectations of a nude scent at all. I thought it would be like Stella Nude or Il Profvmo Nuda (that I came across in Vienna - mini-review here). You know, a silky whisper of a scent evocative of cold cream and flimsy lingerie.

But no, the overriding impression of Sensuous Nude was of a dark woody vibe or even perhaps some kind of burnt nut. Now as it happens, I did scoff 100g of hot chestnuts in Zurich the other day and can confirm that it wasn't that kind of nut, even if it had been properly cremated rather than just the shell getting a bit scorched in the process. And I don't think I mean popcorn, but definitely a nut. I'll say hazelnut for now, but I am not sure really. Let's see if the notes give us a clue:

Notes: bergamot, mandarin, black and pink pepper, jasmine petals and lily of the valley, coconut water and sweetened honey, sandalwood, vanilla, amber, heliotrope and woody notes

Well, all right, there is sandalwood and miscellaneous other woodiness, and two types of pepper - which my amateur nose might also read as "a bit woody" - and then there is coconut water, which is crucially related to a nut. Though it sounds more like those bottles of nutriceutical water Madonna and Gwynnie et al are wont to swig after a work out, as opposed to the truly burnt nuttiness I get from Sensuous Nude.

Anotherperfumeblog has a much more favourable take on Sensuous Nude, and I am beginning to think I missed a whole lot by only spraying on card, which of course is also related to wood, and may have amplified the overally woody/nutty vibe. So given that I own Sensuous and liked Sensuous Noir much more than I expected, I think this one deserves a more considered retrial.

VALENTINO VALENTINA

Valentino is a line I can mostly take or leave, though I have a bit of time for the original V, a pleasant casual scent with notes that include rose, something orangey, fig and amber. Their latest release is called Valentina and comes in a very, very pretty bottle. Taking its cue from the new Prada Candy bottle cap with integrated nozzle, Valentina also sprays out of its pea-shaped top. The bottle is unashamedly girly and fussily ornate and almost worth having for its ornamental value alone. Its colour scheme evokes Neapolitan ice cream: pink and white "ceramic" flowers are stuck on the side of the round glass bottle, while the top is black enamel. It reminds me vividly of the baroque cathedral I visited at the weekend in St Gallen, which was a veritable stucco frenzy.

Notes: Calabrian bergamot, white truffles from Alba, jasmine, orange blossom from Amalfi, tuberose, strawberry, wood notes, cedar, and amber.

Now Perfume Shrine has done a thorough review of Valentina here, so I will just add a few sketchy impressions - I have a sample of this so am able to try it on skin. And I will say right off the bat that it smells not unlike a wan, toned down version of Elie Saab that has been "white chocolatified". Valentina also has that utterly contemporary, slightly synthetic but well blended musky floral quality of Caroline Herrera 212, Jil Sander Style or CK Beauty, all of which I like and would probably like even more had I not come across the world of niche.

Valentina is slightly sweet, which might be the strawberry?, but not excessively so; I have to say that it is relentlessly mainstream in its overall vibe and doesn't live up to the artsy bottle. I see that the perfumers behind Valentina are Olivier Cresp (of Juniper Sling fame!) and Alberto Morillas, who is master of what I can best describe as the "fuzzy modern genre": Bvlgari Omnia Crystalline, the Kenzo Flowers, Armani Sensi - and I see he also did 212 - of which I had no idea till I just looked him up.

As Valentina wears on, the sweetness fades a little, and there is a definite Nestle's Milky Bar quality to it. For sometimes you don't want forbidding, high cocoa solid scents like SL Borneo 1834 - or even your poncy Green & Blacks or Hotel Chocolat slabs studded with goji berries and macadamia nuts - no, sometimes you just fancy the fragrance equivalent of bog standard white chocolate...and Valentina is a girly version of that. The scent gets progressively softer and more wispy, and the sweetness fades, but retains that creamy dessert quality throughout, faintly rounded out by the amber, like the crunchy toffee topping on a creme brulée.

VERSACE YELLOW DIAMOND

Let's face it, it is hard to take a fragrance line seriously when its bottles are adorned by tacky, outsize crystal pebbles like the top of a dolmen. The fact that Donatella Versace has been seriously tango'ed doesn't help matters either. Now before people leap to the defence of Versace's bottles, saying: "It's a diamond, not a crystal!" let me just clarify that I do know this really, having done studies in the diamond industry myself. However, if it was a real diamond it would be worth more than Manchester Airport cost to build. And between you and me, I think yellow diamonds are a bit naff, possibly because they look like less precious precious stones such as citrine, topaz (or the yellow topazes, anyway ; - ) ), and the rather wonderfully named "rutilated quartz". Curiously, I don't consider the brown variety - so-called "chocolate diamonds" - to be naff, and I wouldn't flick the deep blue Hope Diamond off the duvet either if it happened to land on my bed.

So enough of this gemstone snobbery, how does Yellow Diamond smell?

Notes: citron from diamante (is that a note, or a description of the top?), pear sorbet, bergamot, neroli, orange blossom, freesia, mimosa, nymphea, amber, palo santo (sounds like the location of a start up company in the Bay Area) wood and musk.

Well, I did smell this on card at least, and I got a very watery pear note, a bit of orange, and some powdery, vaguely sherbety mimosa. It didn't amount to much of anything though, and I am tempted to borrow Times Journalist Caitlin Moran's incomparable description of polenta as: "a certain amount of matter on a plate". Well, then that would make Yellow Diamond "a certain amount of fragrant matter on a paper strip". And I have just clocked that Yellow Diamond is also Alberto Morillas's work. Smells like the perfume equivalent of a "Friday afternoon car". No, that is unfair - he may have had an incredibly watered down, feebly fruity brief to fulfil. Moving on.

Yes, in closing I must just mention something that happened on the way out to Zurich. When announcing the imminent passage through the aisles of the duty free cart, the flight attendant said: "We do carry a wide selection of ladies' fragrances from brands such as Paco Rabanne and Calvin Klein." "We do carry?" Have you noticed that airline announcers always "do do" everything they do, as in: "We do know that you have a choice of airline, and we do thank you for choosing Cheapo Wings and we do hope to have the pleasure of your company on board again." But going back to the duty free selection, funny that Paco Rabanne and CK should be singled out for special mention. And take it from me, the in-flight duty free range was not chock full of bargains either...

And lastly, I will leave you with the new sexed up word for "cup-a-soup" I learnt from the Bistro Menu Card: "IN-CUP SOUP" - by analogy, we must infer, with in-line skating or in-store promotions. Sadly, a fellow passenger in my row quickly turned my "beverage" into "in-lap" and "on-trouser-leg" soup, as he clapped my table up in his haste to get to the toilet. whither I followed him shortly afterwards, to do some urgent in-toilet sponging.


Photo of Manchester airport from viewpictures.co.uk, photo of lily from projects.accessatlanta.com, photo of Sensuous Nude from fragrantica.com, photo of Madonna from oneresult.com, photo of Valentina from feelunique.com, photo of Milky Bar from goodtoknow.co.uk, photo of Versace Yellow Diamond from femaletrend.com, photo of Donatella Versace from people.famouswhy.com, photo of a dolmen from wikipedia.com, photo of cathedral my own.

Estee Lauder Intuition - The Missing Link?

You don't read much on the perfume boards about Estee Lauder Intuition. I am not sure I have ever seen it listed as someone's SOTD, nor have I come across a person wearing it, heard of anyone receiving it as a gift, or wanting to. You don't hear it cited as people's top lemming, and I doubt whether you can order a sample at The Perfumed Court. Just checked - you can't. My next door neighbour owns a bottle, but these days she favours Chanel Chance and Coco Mlle.

But I have a significant connection with this scent, for it is the only one I owned between the time of its UK launch in 2001 and my being struck down with "sudden onset perfume mania" in January 2008. I don't know exactly how or where I came to buy Intuition, but I shall take a flying leap and say that it could have been in a duty free shop in Lanzarote, where we holidayed that year. The fact that I don't remember anything about the circumstances of its purchase tells you all you need to know about my near indifference to perfume until comparatively recently.

I also have next to no memories of actually applying this scent, which doubtless explains why it was 98% full eight years after purchase. I probably wore it on a handful of special occasions that are now lost in the mists of time. Once perfume mania had taken hold, I was quick to have another sniff of it to remind myself what this haphazardly acquired "signature scent" actually smelt like. Only to find that the juice had gone off - not surprisingly, given its twin habitats of sunny bedroom windowsill and en suite bathroom. The dark amber liquid was a dead giveaway, had I known its significance at the time.

So, not long into my new hobby, I decided I should replace the bottle, as a tribute to the fragrance that connects the old "normal" - or some might say "sub-normal" - me with the current "abnormal", bonkers about perfume person I had abruptly become. I got a bargain on Ebay for about £15 and vowed to take greater care of it in future.

Any readers who have not tried Intuition may be curious to know a bit more about it. Classed as a "vanilla oriental" on Osmoz, it was created by Alberto Morillas, and the notes are as follows:

Top notes: Mandarin, Bergamot, Grapefruit

Heart notes: Gardenia, Rhododendron, Freesia, Double Delight Rose

Base note: Mineral Amber

I would liken it a little to the original Stella in terms of overall "vibe". Though Intuition has rose and amber like Stella, it is not noticeably rosy by comparison, grapefruit and citrus generally being the dominant characteristics both in the opening and for a large part of its development (though, not liking grapefruit as a food or drink, I may be picking up on the note more than anyone else would). Stella is more obviously feminine and sweet in its rosiness, but both scents have the same warm, powdery, amber base and a similar level of projection. By "powdery", I don't mean the sort of powder as you get in a classic Guerlain, but rather the modern, synthetic equivalent that stays just the right side of "furry", and which could be best summed up as "fuzzy". Some of Morillas' best work (ie scents of his that I particularly rate!) is also on the fuzzy side of things eg Bvlgari Omnia Crystalline, Armani White for Women, Armani Sensi and Kenzo Flower Oriental.

Going back to the comparison with Stella, I much prefer Intuition, but only when it mutes down into the drydown after about three hours - before that I still get too much grapefruit.

Here is one of the rare mentions of Intuition in a blog site review (The Scented Salamander). Mimifroufrou is actually writing about Amber Ylang Ylang, but at one point draws an interesting comparison between the Private Collection scent and Intuition:

"It (AYY) has the same soft, understated ambery aura. But where the diffusion of Intuition seems very calculated and is a veritable technical achievement in the art of the discreet sexy sillage, Amber Ylang Ylang is simpler in its aim to warm you and make you feel comfortable with just a suggestion of golden-skinned Mata-Hari, albeit safely held captive in between the leaves of a good adventures book."

I would agree that Intuition is sexier than AYY - and Stella, for that matter - as long as you have got well past the grapefruit business. I have to say that I am only dimly aware of the presence of the heart notes, even though you would think gardenia and freesia might register. I'll bet they are acting as a floral buffer between the citrus top and amber base, absorbing some of the hesperidic sharpness, but the overall effect is so blurry that I really cannot single out any flowers at all.

So would I wear Intuition now on a big night out? Almost certainly not, though it is a perfectly pleasant (grapefruit gripe aside), slightly sultry designer scent that used to fit that bill in the past, before I discovered "the drunkenness of things being various". And not only various, but in many cases, better.

But Intuition will always hold a special place in my collection - as a "missing link". Wikipedia gets to the heart of the matter:

"Transitional fossils (popularly termed missing links) are the fossilized remains of intermediary forms of life that illustrate an evolutionary transition. They can be identified by their retention of certain primitive (plesiomorphic) traits in comparison with their more derived relatives, as they are defined in the study of cladistics."

In a sense, my original bottle was a sort of "fossilized remains" - it was rancid, certainly - and I am sure you could have stood a spoon up in it. Moreover, it definitely "illustrates an evolutionary transition" in terms of my appreciation of scent, in the sense that I was on the cusp of a epiphany. And it is characterised by "certain primitive traits" (fuzziness! prominent grapefruit!) in comparison with its "more derived relatives", such as Guerlain's Plus Que Jamais, a superior floral oriental of more recent vintage. Okay, so I may be using "relative" in the loosest sense possible.

And I haven't studied cladistics either, come to that, but intuitively I know I am on to something here...