Coco Mademoiselle

At Sephora, yesterday, I once again let myself be seduced by the pretty bottle and serene pink juice, and I spritzed my wrist again with Chanel's Coco Mademoiselle. I think that part of the problem is that I have trouble remembering in between times what Coco Mademoiselle smells like, and I keep reconstructing in my mind what I imagine it to smell like--a sparer, younger version of the great Coco. And I spritz.

OK, so I don't forget this again, Coco Mademoiselle smells a lot like a Shirley Temple. As a number of people have pointed out, it is really a fruity floral, not an Oriental, as it has been wrongly promoted, and the predominant note, to me, seems to be grenadine. Not pomegranate, Rose's grenadine. Maybe that's the litchi the official notes refer to. I detect the same note in Gaultier's Ma Dame. Ma Dame disappointed the hell out of me. I spritzed it in Sephora also, and for about five minutes, it smelled like what I've been hunting for for ages, a richer, deeper version of Clinique's Happy. Then the top notes faded, and the plasticized Shirley Temple came on full blast.

This note, whatever it may be, seems prominent in a lot of the popular fragrances of the past several years, and I can't stand it. It's not a bad smell, it's just the last thing I would ever want to smell like. Artificial and sweet.

Coco Mademoiselle dries down into something less fruity, and rather more pleasant, but I smell plastic all the way to the bottom. Note to self: do not spray this on me again. It is not working.

Happy to Be

Here in Northern California, we are having a heat wave, and my bottle of Clinique's Happy to Be has finally come into its own.

I picked this up after a long love affair with Clinique's Happy, and for about a year, found that I could not wear it. (This is the sort of thing that used to make me feel like an idiot until I heard scentbloggers saying the same kind of thing. What scentbloggers may say about my love affair with Happy is another matter. Hands off my Happy. It makes me happy.)

Anyway, I have discovered that the defining element for making Happy to Be's honeysuckle-and-cucumbery notes get along with my body chemistry is heat above eighty-five degrees. The sweetness no longer radiates obnoxiously the way it does when I wear this in slightly cooler weather, the weird watery chemical notes smell clean and cool, rather than, well, weird. Best of all, the scent is somehow tricking my brain into believing I am surrounded by cool gardens full of ponds, rather than in my sweltering apartment with a pool outside that will not be opened until Memorial Day, no matter HOW hot it gets.

The only problem I am facing now is how rapidly the scent is burning off in this weather--while in cooler times, my concern was how determinedly it clung to me--but I just keep spritzing, and praying for fog.