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

No Unmarked Door Unpushed: Meeting Katie Puckrik Again And Cadging A "Smadge" Of Madonna Truth Or Dare

My recent merch selling duties in Germany meant that unfortunately I had to pass up Katie Puckrik's lively talk at the Perfume Lovers London meet-up in April. Comprehensive accounts of - and the next best thing to attending - the evening may however be found on Candy Perfume Boy and Olfactorias Travels.

As it happens, I was down in London the last weekend in April, so Katie and I arranged to meet on the Sunday afternoon for a "senior supper" and a bit of a catch up. I had just clocked her hilarious, no-holds barred article in The Guardian about her meeting with Stephen Nilsen, the perfumer behind Madonna's new fragrance release, Truth or Dare, and a few days ahead of our meeting dared to send a cheeky request of my own.

"Really enjoyed your Guardian piece and wondered if you could possibly bring a smidge ("smadge"?? : - ) ) of the Madonna scent on Sunday, as I am mad keen to try it, having recently enjoyed a bit of a white floral epiphany."

Katie replied that that would be no bother, but could I please bring a vial with me, as she hadn't got any decanting tackle with her in London. She gave me the address of a club in East London of which she was a member, and said she would meet me in reception, adding that the door was unmarked, but that I should just push it and go on in.

So I got to the address with five minutes to spare, only to find that every single door in that particular street was unmarked, not with building names or even numbers (though I only had the name of the street anyway). Suffice to say that if I was in the signage business, I would give that entire postcode a very wide berth. But okay, I thought, not to worry, I will push every last one of them and see if any yield to the touch and lead into something resembling a reception area. I say "resembling", because East London is noted for its trendy warehouse conversions and other quirky developments, so one should keep an open mind as to the possible layout of any given building.

Some eight doors later, I asked a passing American for help - on the principle that if Katie is an American living in London, there may well be others with good local knowledge, and so it proved. "That's the one you want" he said affably, "you see where those people are going in?" Aha - I suppose I should have taken the party of four club members filing in as a bit of a clue. After all, no one had made any attempt to gain entry to those other unmarked doors I was scoping in my ten perplexed minutes wandering up and down the street.

Shortly after that, Katie herself arrived, and after a quick tour of the building (also a warehouse conversion!), we ensconced ourselves on the squashy sofas of one of the lounges, and proceeded to "download" our news over a late brunch of portabello mushrooms and poached eggs, which we recast as a "senior brunch". This was washed down in my case by a pot of tea, because I had a lot of "catching up" to do on that front too to meet my copious daily requirement.

The meal over, we got down to the serious business of decanting my sample of Truth or Dare from Katie's handbag size bottle. We both had a go in the end - with and without funnel - and I ended up applying the not inconsiderable overspray to both wrists and neck. That was my SOTE sorted, then! We did finally coax a couple of ml into the atomiser I had brought with me for the purpose. My first thought was that the juice itself was a pretty peachy pink, not unlike Shalimar Parfum Initial, to which I have recently taken an unexpected shine.

Before setting out to write this post, I couldn't resist taking a peek at the reviews already out there, which are all favourable as far as I can tell, and with good reason. For Truth or Dare is a cut above your usual celebuscent all right.

As I type I am wearing a number of diva-ish floral fragrances at once to see which ones Truth or Dare most closely resembles. Robin of Now Smell This dubbed Truth or Dare "Fracas Lite" in her review, while Jen of This Blog Really Stinks likened it to "Fracas Candy" (as in Prada Candy).

Well, I'd say that those are two very good analogies: in the case of the latter, you've got a big white floral bouquet with tuberose and gardenia at its heart, like twin prom dresses with swishy, bouffant skirts, and underneath all that you have a sweet, candied, fluffy layer not unlike the base of Parfums MDCI Promesse de L'Aube. I detected a syrupy vanilla, and at one point could have sworn that a toffee apple accord flitted in and out again. "Miscellaneous calorific desserts", let's just say. Or one of those Ben & Jerry ripple-type ice creams with crumbled bits of pavlova.

Notes: gardenia, tuberose and neroli, with jasmine, benzoin tears, white lily petals, vanilla absolute, caramelized amber, and sensual musk

Now Truth or Dare may sound a bit full on, but it really is soft and caressing in a little while, like a musky meringue - the drydown is reminiscent of the perfume Kate Middleton didn't in fact wear on her wedding day, ie the "wrong" batch of White Gardenia Petals that accidentally came my and Birgit's way... I am also wearing "correct" White Gardenia Petals, and it is not much like Truth or Dare - too sharply green, wan and metallic to my nose.

As well as being these variants on Fracas, another scent which I feel Truth or Dare resembles is Gardénia Pétale, from Van Cleef & Arpels' Collection Extraordinaire.

Notes: green notes, citrus notes, lily of the valley, jasmine, and gardenia

Like Truth or Dare, it is a plush white floral blend featuring lily, jasmine and gardenia. Okay, LOTV in this case, but at the risk of playing note bingo, that is still a fair bit of crossover.

For fun, I just tried layering Gardénia Pétale with its stablemate, Lys Carmin, which has a very sweet, gourmand facet that I thought might possibly mimic the edible drydown of Truth or Dare. And d'you know, it isn't a dupe by any manner of means, but there is a marked likeness between this layered combo and Truth or Dare - much more so say than between it and either of the Van Cleefs in isolation. Now Lys Carmin doesn't have the same kind of sweetness exactly - it is too spicy for one, and generally darker in feel - but texturally it is very similar in terms of the fluffy nimbus thing it has got going on. And it adds the vanilla in our note bingo game, and yet more lily!

Notes: Lily, pink peppercorn, ylang ylang, vanilla, and sandalwood

You may not be surprised to learn that the next day in Selfridges I came this close to buying a 50ml bottle of Truth or Dare, but ended up "fondling and replacing" it as is my practice these days. Even though it cost a mere £25 for 30ml, £32 for 50ml and £42 for 75ml. Clearly the more you spray, the more you save, to annexe Mr Bonkers' beer mantra for a moment. So that is a "Fracas Lite" price to boot!

I don't know what stayed my hand. Quite possibly the bottle, which looks a bit plasticky in reality, and reminds me of a kitschy replica of an altar my dad bought when I was a child - at Lourdes, or somewhere like that selling cheap religious souvenirs. I distinctly remember that this white plastic altar also had accents of gold, plus a red chalice (coated to look like burnished metal and concealed behind a little door, for all the world like a chocolate in an advent calendar). And Madonna was of course brought up as a Catholic, so it is perhaps not surprising that those early influences might assert themselves later - in a scent bottle with ecclesiastical overtones, or the dodgy outfit of her Like A Virgin video.

So it might have been that, or the fact that the sales assistant in Selfridges and I were discussing the intended demographic for Truth or Dare, whose upper limit of 45 stops a good 8 years short of Madge's actual age. The SA told me that it was in fact selling to ALL ages, including a lot of teenage girls, and maybe that was what put it beyond the pale for me. Which is plain daft - and cutting my nose off to spite my face - because this is a well-made fragrance, which I like a lot!

But meanwhile, I have a bit of my sample left, and thanks to Katie have also inherited a scented candle featuring the fragrance, which would doubtless have taken up her entire hold baggage allowance on the flight home. And if those two things are not enough to sate the Madonna scent lemming, I reserve the right to dare to crack - by which I mean "fondle and take to till" - the next time I am in Selfridges, which may very well be next week...


Photo of East London from macnovel.org.uk, photo of Madonna Truth or Dare from fashionison.com, other photos my own