Boadicea Pure and Benefit Laugh with Me Lee Lee
 These days, I am consistently finding myself being drawn to fresher fragrances. Only a year or so ago, my favorite scent in any line invariably would have been the darkest, the leather-iest, the skankiest. These days, when presented with a collection of perfumes, I often choose the freshest one as my favorite. I scare myself. The other day I tried Boadicea the Victorious perfumes, and I liked neither Intense, nor Seductive, Complex or Exotic, but Pure. Pure! The clean, comforting non-smell of a white t-shirt...I was attracted by the almost aldehydic and understated sparkle of the citrus top notes, by the way basil and juniper tempered the would-be robustness and sweetness of the base of sandalwood, patchouli and vanilla. There was an easy grace about Pure, something a little bit child-like...It was the comfort of the familiar, of the neutral...the calming, soft energy of the color white. Similarly, in the new collection of scents by Benefit, inspired by the Royal Crescent in Bath (and oh the presentation! the 10 year old girl in me squeeled in delight), I surprised myself by enjoying Laugh with Me Lee Lee the most, the girly blend of blackcurrant, melon, violet, lily and amber. Seemingly uncomlicated, it is in fact rather cleverly built on a contrast of the fresh (melon, lily) and sweetly-fluffy (violet, amber). After starting fruity-green, almost a little watery, the scent becomes more substantial, more fleshy, with the violet note revealing surprising and appealing creaminess. Paired with something that I can't help but interpret as minty, violet here has the same warm-cold quality as its counterpart in Aimez-Moi. In fact, I am tempted to call Laugh with Me Lee Lee something of Aimez-Moi Light, Fraiche or Summer.Boadicea the Victorious perfumes are right now available at Harrods and are soon coming to Luckyscent. The Crescent Row trio will be available in Sephora, Macy, etc in July. Have your tastes undergone a striking change as of late? Do share! Labels: Benefit, Boadicea, fresh scents, violet |
posted by Marina |
12:00 AM
22 Comments:
I was surprised by Pure as well - quite lovely. And I actually look forward to sampling that Benefit scent. I've been slowly coming around to appreciating more and more scents w/ violet, so this sounds promising.
The one thing that has shocked me recently regarding my scent choices is my craving for vanilla and gourmand scents. I'm practically mainlining Kiehl's Vanilla. Who am I?!
Who are you? I don't know you. :-) You used to be vetiver and Onda...You and vanilla, me and clean scents. It's the end of the world.
I am still a vetiver and sandalwood fanatic (mainlining them along w/ the Kiehl's) or I *would* be having DH take me in to investigate the possibilities of alien possession...but for me to love vanilla w/ this mad passion is just a huge shock to my olfactory sense of self. I feel like I need to hide the vanilla scents in paper bags so as not to upset all my skanky, street wise scent loves that they sit next to in my perfume closet (I think CB's Musk may be making plans to run away from home).
Lately I've been turning away from chypres and craving lush, opulent scents, especially for sleep -- go figure!
You wrote a lovely review of Songes by Annick Goutal a while back, and because you are the Oracle as far as I'm concerned I was surprised that I found it to be a definite "scrubber" on me. There seemed to be an awful synthetic, rubbery note in there. Some months later the 100ml EdP is in my possession, and one of my favourites!
(I'm also starting to appreciate the dry, leathery chypre - Cabochard by Gres was a recent purchase). Thanks as always for a great blog - Emma
L,
Oh poor CB Musk. The neighbors must insult his skankiness :-)
Olfacta
Which chypres did you use to like?
Emma,
funny how it makes a complete turnaround sometimes! Cabochard is amazing!
Isn't that with the changing weather ? Let's wait until next winter, all the leathers, woods and spices will come back to you, Marina.
I'm turning too : last week I had some work to do in both, Paris and London and from Paris I came home with Guerlain's "Angelique noir" (on me there's nothing noir though...). On the other hand, good old me - there was no change in London : I bought LeLabo's Oud and J.Malone's Figue (although, I rather should have bought LeLabo's Figue instead...).
Melinda,
Congratulations with your wonderful purchases! The scary thing is that my longing for clean and pure started in winter :-)
I have recently started loving white florals, which I always hated. I used to love leathers and smoky weird stuff (my favorite perfume was Bulgari Black.) But after sampling many samples, and a visit to Hawaii, now I'm obsessed with tuberose, jasmine, frangipani, gardenia, etc. I never thought it would happen. Next purchase: Carnal Flower! I've finished the sample and I NEED MORE!
Liz,
That was my path too, actually, from floral-hating days of leather and smoke to flower obsession, etc. :-)
It's the end of the world as we know it. I've always been a green-citrus lover in the summers and a patchy-amber lover in winter.
And I've always hated fruity-florals, or, for that matter, all florals and fruits while I'm at it.
So why can I not get enough of Sublime Balkiss? Berries, florals, nothing but. It must be the sublime-flu.
Quinn,
It must be some kind of flu. It's a virus. A change of scentonality virus.
I'm with Emma - I hated AG Songes when I first tried it, and there was that weird rubbery thing going on, and maybe some road tar - then I made myself try it again months later and it was LOVE! I even went back to MUA and fixed my review of it. I can only think that I was coming down with something or it was from medication i was taking that made it smell the way it did at first.
Another thing that has happened along the way is that I forgave Patchouli for the Seventies and we get along great now. :-)
Donna,
I am glad it works now! As far as I am concerned though, rubbery quality of some flowers is their most interesting characteristic :-)
Laugh with me Lee Lee just moved to the top of my list to try - I've received several samples recently, including all three of the Crescent Row scents, but I hadn't tried them yet.
I've generally been a lover of orientals and fruity-fresh scents, eschewing white florals and anything that smelled powdery or "old ladyish". Yes, I was guilty of dismissing classic scents as smelling like an old lady.
Since beginning my perfume hobby (obsession, addiction?), my tastes have changed markedly. Some scents that I previously liked (My Insolence, Pink Sugar - I know, ick) seem unspeakably vile and unwearable to me now. I've developed a great love for white florals and classic scents. My current favorite has to be EL's Tuberose Gardenia (I just wish that it lasted longer) and I've developed a huge appreciation for older scents like No. 5 parfum, Youth Dew, Mitsouko, L'Heure Bleue, etc.
My one fear now is that the stuff that I'm plopping down cash for now, will be the stuff that I don't like in 12 months...
Cynthia,
I started the obsession with Pink Sugar and Jessica Simpson scents :-)I wonder if a lot of us went through a gourmand phase first.
Where do they sell Laugh with Me Lee Lee. Amazon has nothing!
-Tish
They sell all of the benefit Crescent Row scents, including Laugh with me Lee Lee at Sephora - I'm not sure if they're exclusive or not.
It's good to know that I'm not the only one who went on a major gourmand bender at one point. Before that, it was all of the big 80s scents - Obsession, Giorgio, Opium .... I'm sure that there are people out there who have an aversion to perfume thanks to me.
Hopefully, I'm not killing anybody with my current testing and sampling - I don't think that I've worn anything with the dreaded "cat urine" note out in public ... yet. :-)
this is my daughter's name! who else spells their name "LeeLee"?! and that is her personality.
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