Dita Von Teese edp review - a less lairy LouLou?

Although my interest in fragrance was pretty minimal most of my life, I did get excited about LouLou by Cacharel.  I bought a bottle, no less, a very unusual move at the time.  It reminds me vividly of my year teaching English in a lycee on the French riviera.  I lived in a villa - well, more of a bog standard bungalow that had been embellished with squiggly flourishes of wrought iron - with two fellow students, who rejoiced in surnames that were also body parts (Dick and Knuckles).  They were both extremely body-conscious as it happens, with matching eating disorders.  One of the duo existed entirely off Granny Smith apples, which she sat munching while devouring the complete works of Emile Zola, I never did figure why.  I once thought of writing my memoirs from that year and calling it 'Three Thin Women of Antibes' in a homage to Somerset Maugham.  

Now my villa-mates may have been slim, but they punched above their weight when it came to 'relationships' - I use the word loosely, because they were.  Yes, the year was punctuated by a steady procession of hot-tempered, arm windmilling Frenchmen coming and going at our villa, while I stood meekly by, occasionally emptying waste paper baskets full of apple cores.  In short, the Mediterranean is a very sensuous part of the world, and our villa arguably its pulsating heart - or pulsating something...  

My next visit to the area was in the mid to late 80s around the time of the launch of LouLou, a loud, intoxicating, tropical oriental centred around the sweet note of tiare.  I promptly bought it, possibly even at the airport - I don't remember - and it has served as a symbol of pugnacious sensuality ever since.  I must have worn it back then, but I cannot abide it now, as it gives me an instant headache, in much the same way that Giorgio does.  If you eyeball that note list you just know there is no way your that your forehead is going to escape its darkly heady vice:

Source: fragrantica

Notes: violet, plum black currant, marigold and anis, tiare flower, tuberose, ylang-ylang, orange blossom, orris, Tonka bean, vanilla and balsam.

And as it happens, Fragrantica, from whom I pinched that note list, agrees that LouLou is a polarising scent: 

"LouLou is a controversial perfume that people either like, or dislike, the one that provoke different emotions, and indifference for sure is not one of them."  For sure not.

Fast forward to 2012, and the release of burlesque artist Dita Von Teese's first eponymous scent, which is also built around the tiare flower, and which I think has some crossover with LouLou, though you might not think so from the notes. 

Dita Von Teese ~ Source: stuffpoint.com

Notes: bergamot, peony, Bourbon pepper, rose, Tahitian tiare flower, jasmine, incense, patchouli, musk, guaiac wood and sandalwood.

For starters, both scents have raunchy connotations.  As Elena explains in her review on Perfumeshrine:

"LouLou was meant to evoke the great film actress Louise Brooks and her Lulu role in the silent 1928 Pabst film Pandora's Box (tamer than its title would hint at, but not by much considering)." 

Another similarity is the fact that they are both cheap, and in LouLou's case, the bottle is both cheap and tacky.  Dita Von Teese, on the other hand, has a brassy-looking box with a hideous red plastic inner tray, but the bottle itself is pure class!  How many ways do I love the bottle?  Let me count the ways...!  I make that at least three.

- It has a flat facet you can rest it on.

- It is an intriguing cross between Neela Vermeire's classy ribbed flacons and a small incendiary device.

- It has a cute tassle that will amuse your cat for hours.  (Note to self to get cat.)

Bottle resting on its flat facet, though it probably would have done so anyway on that soft surface

Then as I say, they both feature the tiare flower, which isn't that common a note in perfumery, and which has a distinctive sweetness to it that not even a shedload of other foghorn florals in LouLou can manage to mask. And both scents are sweetly floral - not unduly so in Dita Von Teese's case, mind.  Then while LouLou mugs you with a fuggy base of vanilla-esque variants, Dita Von Teese is relatively sheer and inoffensive, with no noticeable base at all.  I'd describe it is a watery, faintly tropical floral braced with a shot of pepper that gives it the faintest smidge of raunch.  I completely agree with Natalie of anotherperfumeblog's of Dita Von Teese here.

So for the princely sum of £10.80 (for 20ml) delivered from Cheapsmells, I think I have discovered in Dita Von Teese something rather remarkable - a 'louche-lite' aka an 'office-appropriate business scent'.  Which isn't meant to be tautology - or oxymoron - though it may look that way.

Juan-les-Pins ~ Source: Wikimedia Commons via jwieski

Discount Perfume: Because Cheap Doesn't Have To Mean Nasty... No 1 - Bid.tv

Last night I was zapping restlessly between "Australia's Ladette to Lady", "The Grumpy Guide to Class" and a documentary about Kylie, when I chanced upon the shopping channel Bid.tv, and my attention was immediately grabbed by the bidding frenzy over a job lot of two perfumes. Mindful of the recent hoo-ha over Mary J Blige selling her debut perfume My Life exclusively via HSN, I decided to watch for a moment or two, and found myself compulsively drawn to the action unfolding...

I don't often look at shopping channels, but I quickly twigged to the fact that the sales technique used is a reverse auction, where the price starts high and gets cheaper the more stock they shift. And shift it they did - when I tuned in there were 350 of these perfume duos left, and by the time they moved on to the next item (a 40 piece cosmetics kit that worked out at about 20p per item, and this at the starting bid!), there were about 100 lots left, though not for long I suspect.

"But what were the perfumes?" I hear you ask. Quiksilver Roxy Love (30ml) and Kiss Her (50ml). Exactly - are you much the wiser? Well, I am aware of Quiksilver as a brand of surfing gear, and I have seen Roxy something-or-other in T K Maxx one time (though I have never smelt any of the range), but Kiss Her was a new one on me. It is the in-house fragrance of Kiss Cosmetics, an online beauty retailer which carries a number of low to mid market brands like Maybelline, Rimmel, Max Factor and Bourjois.

The male TV presenter didn't disclose very much about these perfumes - at no point was the viewer given a note list, for example, though I think he referred to Roxy Love as "citrussy" at one point. His patter was so fast it is hard to say for sure. Kiss Her he described as a floral scent that could "go from day to night", but that was about it - or all I took in, at least.

The main sales message he was there to ram home was simply that the two scents were a steal at the price (£12.99 for the pair when I tuned in, falling to £5.99 by the end of the slot) - the subtext being that at prices this low, the concept of an informed purchase becomes an irrelevance... And when viewers did make a purchase, they got a name check on air, and were reassured that they had made a wise choice. It went something like this (punctuation not included, because I don't remember there being any):

"Well done Sarah from Driffield you won't regret it hello Jean from Wigan yours are on the way you can't go wrong John in Coventry your wife will love them what a bargain you've got yourself Barbara in Hull they are only £4.50 apiece now and going fast grab yourself a bargain before they're gone Dawn Sally Rachel hello Gillian Bert good buy only 200 left now this is such good value Jane absolutely mad not to..."

So, given the fact-lite nature of the sales pitch, here's some additional information - firstly, this from Amazon on Roxy Love:

ROXY LOVE

"A citrus-floral fragrance that’s as energizing as a cologne. It blends tea leaves, freesia, peony, citrus, pomegranate and a Bahia orchid note obtained through Scent Trek (headspace technology). Designed by: Antoine Lie, Givaudan."

Antoine Lie is the nose behind the woody woodfest that is the new Comme des Garcons Wonderwood, plus a bunch of other Comme des Garcons scents, including a couple of citrus numbers. He also created a clutch of fragrances for Etat Libre d'Orange, including....drum roll.....Sécrétions Magnifiques! So, you know, visions of grapefruit-scented unmentionables inevitably float into your head as you try to imagine how Roxy Love might smell, assuming it is an example of his best work, which I don't imagine it would be at that price point. That said, the notes don't sound too shabby, even though I have become a crashing snob about peony (with the shining exception of Histoires de Parfums Vert Pivoine).

A big more digging unearths the following - rather more impressionistic - description of Roxy Love from dooyoo.co.uk:

"...woman bathed in an ocean of passion and joy. Flouting (sic) a message of life and desire, Roxy Love is a concentration of tender emotions written in pink floral-citrusy notes against a blue background."

I also found a few reviews on Makeupalley and Fragrantica:

"When I first smell it, it gives me a headache but after a few mins it smelled like lemeon. I was undecided on it but the price and the fressh lemon scent become the reasons that I put it in my collection."

So price was a main driver - she sounds like just the sort of model punter our Bid.tv man is looking for.

Another reviewer captures the effervescent quality of Love with a vivid confectionery image:

"Remember "flying saucers"? The rice paper casing enclosed an acidic fizzy sherbet that could make your eyes cross.....& now I find it in perfume form!"

I DO indeed remember flying saucers, and they are not endearing this perfume to me, ditto the two comparisons on MUA between Roxy Love and Alka-Seltzer.

And then we come on to the larger of the two bottles, the multi-tasking floral, Kiss Her.

KISS HER

Finding hard information on this one presented more of a challenge, as you can see:

"Launched by the design house of Kiss in 2006, KISS HER by Kiss is classified as a fragrance. This feminine scent posesses a blend of: Wet fig leaves, Vintage Mahogany Exotic Black Orchid, Crushed Red Peppercorns. It is recommended for wear."

"Classified as a fragrance" reminds me of the 'damning with faint praise' remarks people used to make when they peered into my pram (I was a very plain infant), along the lines of: "Now there IS a baby." As for "It is recommended for wear", would this be as opposed to drinking it? Running our car on it? Using it instead of mace spray to disarm attackers? And could there be a comma missing, or is there such a thing as a "mahogany orchid" perfumery note? With headspace technology, I guess anything is possible...

Now this scent appears to be below the radar even of MUA, and I could not find the name of the perfumer anywhere. Which I don't necessarily take to be a sign that he is hiding. Reviews were also quite thin on the ground, though this one jumped off the page:

"used this going to work at a mazzios and at the end of the night instead of smelling like onions and pizza i could still smell the perfume!! I always got comliments and the only other thing i use is Addidas and Hiku.. for a little something differant."

Okay, so it is recommended for wear - specifically to mask strong culinary odours. A picture is beginning to emerge.

I did, however, find a more comprehensive note list, which is chock full of what I can best describe as the Chantelle and Kayleigh of perfumery ingredients - things like "sueded frangipani petals", "apple-tini" and more...

Top notes: Apple-tini, Wet fig leaves, Red peppercorns
Heart notes: Red Poppy, Black Orchid, Sueded Frangipani Petals and Calla Lily
Base notes: Amber Crystals, Musky bare skin accord, Patent Leather and Mahogany.

Joking aside, I actually wouldn't mind trying this one, as the leather, wood and fig leaf notes sound genuinely appealing. : - )

Riveted by the sales spiel - or 24Mbps sales babble, more like - it never occurred to me to question whether this combo of two perfumes for £12.99, or even £5.99 at the closing price (plus £7.99 p & p), represented good value. On the face of it you would think so, however, a cursory google of online retailers throws up some equally bargain basement prices for either scent at around the £4.99 mark.

So the moral of the tale is that shopping for perfume on a shopping channel can be thrilling, and if you are lucky your purchase may not even be nasty. But it won't be all that cheap either. Or let's say that the possibility of its not being such a bargain cannot be discounted...

: - )


Photo of bid.tv logo from tvadio.com, photo of bid.tv presenter auctioning other perfumes from img.youtube.com, photo of Roxy Love from aphrodelta.cz, photo of flying saucers from sweetsncandy.co.uk, photo of Kiss Her from fragrancenet.com