Run Lola Run

By Tom I was wandering around the Beverly Center Saturday sucking up air-conditioning (because that's how I roll) and my friend and I ducked into Bloomingdales to use the loo. There was quite the hubbub going on there about the release of the new Marc Jacobs, featuring Flamenco dancers (note to Marc, the presence of dancers is undercut by the fact that the music is courtesy an underage DJ with an older iBook. iTunes should not replace instruments), giant replicas of the bottles and women wearing makeup and outfits that would have been perhaps more at home, say, in pre-Giuliani Times Square at Midnight rather than under the cold harsh white light at Bloomingdales Beverly Center. The first impression of Lola is of course of the bottle. I adored the bottle for Daisy, a little minimalist gem adorned with a squishy white plastic daisy, adding just the right dab of not-taking-itself-too-seriously silliness. Lola's looks more like something that would have been used in the original version of "The Women", with it's purple glass base and knurled gold cap topped with a frankly-fake rose just about the color of Franka Potente's hair in the 1998 German thriller I entitled this review with. It's a Carmen Miranda of a bottle, seemingly about four times larger than the amount of juice contained within would warrant. The juice itself is far more discreet than the boisterous packaging would lead you to believe. On my skin I get a spiky-bright green apple opening with pear and pepper that becomes supplanted by powdery roses and a light skin musk. Like the movie, this scent has a couple of starts and stops, with the fruits popping back up a couple of times before the final drydown of sweet ambery musk and a light touch of floral. I wouldn't wear it in a thousand years, mind you, anymore than I could get away with bright red hair: it's uber-girly (even a bit grrrrly), fun, flirty and for me, kind of forgettable. But I'm not exactly the target market. Plus, it's $80 for 100ML and is certainly a lot more interesting that about 90% of the other stuff that's come out so far this year. That bottle is so giggle-inducing cute I would consider getting a bottle just to look at it. If you're interested, run, Lola run to Bloomingdales. As of today Bloomie's in Century City had only 6 bottles left.