cloisterbell

Elizabeth Arden is a brand that flies well below the radar of many perfume enthusiasts - likely because it is uber-affordable and not especially flashy with either packaging or marketing...which is a shame, because Elizabeth Arden is always a reliable go-to for me.

Their 5th Avenue line and flankers are nicely done, especially for the price: this is NYC Dream, a more recent flanker that ran me about $20 for a generous 75 ml bottle. It has similar DNA as Carolina Herrara's Good Girl line to me - the same sort of sweet, creamy floral that wears well on a lot of people.

NYC Dream is extremely well-balanced to me: the florals are nice without being cloying, the pink pepper at the top gives it a nice zip of spiciness without being obnoxious, and the cedar and sandalwood at the bottom play nice with everything above it. The sillage is as good as any of the more expensive houses, and the longevity is better in many cases. The bottle design is nothing special in terms of artfulness, but it's got a nice heaviness and stores really well (some bottles look great but take up a lot of space). Overall, it's a great anytime scent for an excellent price.

The citrus of the bergamot is crisp and balanced nicely by the perfect amount of florals in the jasmine and ylang-ylang. I only get the faintest hint of the cedarwood, and I don't detect the tonka bean at all, but I don't feel like that's a loss because this is a truly lovely scent.

The longevity is fair - but when weighed against the affordability of a bottle of this, it's more than fair. You can hit yourself with another spray or two throughout the day and not despair that you're breaking the bank in doing so. The sillage is also fair, but that's no necessarily bad either: it makes this perfume, to me, a good scent for the office or in closed quarters - close enough for the wearer to enjoy, but not leaving a chemtrail of scent for any and all to smell.

This is a clean, concise, and well-executed fragrance, and it's a great option for a summer day or for a cold, rainy one where the wearer needs a bit of brightness to lift their spirits.

Virgin Island Water is undeniably a gorgeous scent. It's got a bright zing of lime with a coconut that smells like it's fresh from the tree - not cloying or artificial like a lot of coconut in other perfumes. It's a tropical summer day distilled in a bottle.

That said, I can never detect the base notes because this fragrance has the lifespan of a mayfly. It is with you for a too-short, glorious moment...and then it's gone. It dries down to a skin scent for maybe a handful of minutes, and then you are either left with the memory, or you can spritz yourself again.

And you probably don't want to spritz it too much because it is prohibitively expensive for how terribly it performs. For people who love the scent, you'd be better served to try Malibú - Party in the Bay by Simone Andreoli. It is very similar, outperforms this by a country mile in both sillage and longevity, and is available for a fraction of the price.

"La Religieuse" is not the big, blowsy jasmine of other scents: this one is cooler, quieter, and starker. It's the hush in the middle of a Catholic Mass between the homily and the communion. Underneath is the faintest bit of incense, just a thread of it to cut through the restrained florals. I don't get any of the indolic notes that others do, but that's the beauty and intimacy of perfume.

Uncle Serge has turned out more unique and beautiful scents, but this is nice in it's own right. It's simple, but maybe deceptively so. It's wearable for everyday use, but the sillage and longevity is not extreme, so the wearer will be wearing it mostly for themselves because it becomes a skin-scent quickly. Which can be nice! Not all scents need to be a sharp, brassy blast of a trumpet. Sometimes a scent can be a single quiet draw of the bow across the strings, and that can be beautiful too.

Pure Poison is the classy and restrained cousin of the original Poison: she opens with creamy white flowers that are tastefully understated, with a thread of brightness just underneath from the citrus notes. In the dry down, though, is where she shines with the amber and woods. Sophisticated, clean, and sexy in a polished way. It is firmly feminine, and for the right person, it could serve as a long-term signature scent.

(A note on the bottle: Dior's Poison bottle line will always be a ten for me. Maybe it's nostalgia, but there's something so pleasing about that round, forbidden apple shape cupped in the palm of the hand).