Fuel for Life Femme Diesel 2007

Although this fragrance isn't the most likable scent around, it sure is popular. Before becoming interested in fragrances, I had always noticed this fragrance on the shelves and noted how many people bought it on a daily basis.

I was surprised by the opening notes which really turned me off this fragrance. I was assaulted by strong and peppery citrus which to my nose was rather synthetic. For about the first three hours all I got was a loud concoction of peppery fruits and predictable and plain jasmine. I was indeed underwhelmed by Fuel for Life.

However, the drydown was quite pretty. The scent became warm and powdery, also a little sweet. The base notes agreed with my chemistry and also smelt agreeable on paper. Looking at many of the other reviews, I'm not alone in my appraisal of the drydown.

Unfortunately, even though the base notes are nice, after a while the scent began to smell like air freshner mixed with the musty and dirty scent of a bathroom.

I'm disappointed in Diesel for creating such a scent. I find their cheaper and lesser known scents more pleasing to say the least. Strangely enough I can see how this would be pleasant for some, however I just can't seem to like it myself.

My bottle came without the ‘sweater’ or whatever it is that they have wrapped it in. It looks cute, but I bought it without, apparently. Nevertheless, it cannot make it up for the smell, which is, on good days, a mystery. I like when a fragrance performs more or less the same way every time you spray it. This does not - on my skin. I have tested it several times and I get a new picture every time. Today, it is the jasmine, that dominates. Last time it was the mandarine orange. The longevity also varies a lot, and it is not due to weather conditions.
So this is not a fragrance I can recommend, if you want something safe. Expect nothing and be surprised - perhaps…
344/365

FUEL FOR LIFE FEMME - the bottle definitely catches the eye. This is surely a fragrance what works with your chemistry or not. Missk wrote, that a certain period of drydown was appealing for her, I am on the opposite site. If I were a beginner in world of perfumes, I would buy a bottle for the overture of FUEL FOR LIFE FEMME (and go bald after I realize, that finally I rather do not like it).

It is fresh, fruity with a lot of mandarin and black currant, and an enfolding, creamy musk. Pink pepper and patchouli were skipped on my skin. At the end the fragrance was really synthetic, and yes, it is similar to air freshener.

I had FUEL on one wrist, VERY IRRESISTIBLE ELECTRIC ROSE on another, and after 2 hours I could not make difference. After 3 hours I did not have to bother with differenciate, since both of them disappeared.

I finally folded and repurchased this icon of my early 20s, back when I first moved to NYC. I used to get compliments from other women when wearing this. I used to get a photorealistic sun-ripened blackberry from this.

Happily, it doesn't conjure bad memories of that time with all the confusion of early adulthood and toxic man children. Unfortunately my new bottle didn't come in the white lacy stocking as the original did. Also sad to discover the longevity wasn't as I remembered it.

he composition opens with mandarin rendered exceptionally bright and refreshing — a burst of joyful exuberance, entirely unrestrained. Pepper enters incredibly well-behaved and delicate in the most unexpected way, deepening the mandarin without ever competing with it, and as the scent warms on the skin, the mandarin expands and flourishes, holding fast to its youthful, rebellious character throughout. This is a rarely observed composition in its ability to project near-identically on the testing strip as on one’s own skin, a fidelity that speaks to genuine olfactory honesty rather than performative sillage.
Jasmine is woven in with the utmost delicacy, in golden threads of the finest silk, its unfolding lightly philosophical — measured, considerate, never insistent — while nutmeg here is neither heavy nor predictably oriental, instead edging off the mandarin to lend the citrus greater structure and precision. Then patchouli punches through the heart: green, juicy, verging on oily, not overtly earthy but unmistakably hinting at its own richness and moist embrace — this is punk rock and roll, Vivienne Westwood in her prime and at the height of her genius, tailored rebellion stitched into scent.
Vetiver arrives like a katana blade, cutting cleanly through the space between the scent’s expression on the skin and the air surrounding it, an invisible, lightning-quick motion that conjures a separate universe around the wearer, and nutmeg then expands into its own luscious, sexual fold, sustaining an aristocratic perversion dressed in silk and gold — as fitting for Buckingham Palace as for a Torture Garden.