Side B: Bleu de Chanel and Mark Jacobs Bang

By Tom What better way to celebrate Labor day than wandering around the mall? Well, there are lots of them, but part of the day I wandered around the mall anyway. The mall was the Beverly Center, which is a 20 minute stroll from my hovel in Beverly Hills' glamorous "Industrial Triangle". I was there to see the new iPod line- not that I was going to buy one since I already have two that I don't use much since I have an iPhone. I was sadly thwarted in this pursuit so onward I wandered. Bloomingdales had both of these new releases, which I am perhaps the last person to smell in the blogosphere. Bleu de Chanel is listed at Bloomingdales website as a "woody aromatic" with "a procotave blend of citrus and woods" and admonishes us to "Be unexpected" Sadly the juice doesn't take it's own advice. The square blue bottle dispenses rather square blue liquid that takes the idea of "blue" in it's most literal form. Yes, the dreaded aquatic. It's so clean, so fresh, so stridently inoffensive that frankly the name should be "Blah". Or perhaps "Bleech" $59 for 1.7oz and $79 for 3.4. Marc Jacobs Bang is listed (in all caps) as "FREE AND ELECTRIFYING, SEXY AND ALLURING" and "FRESH, PEPPERY AND WOODY". It is. It does have that "fresh" aspect to it but the pepper and woods keep the seashore aspects to a minimum, just a light metallic shimmer. The bottle looks like something from the "Fortress of Solitude" set in "Superman 2" but I can't fault the scent, it's very nice. I would caution to go steadily, the first couple of house were ALL CAPS on me- the one spray in the crook of my elbow was throwing massive sillage until it calmed. Not for the over-applier... $55 for 1.7oz and $75 for 3.4. Reminder- while the draw for the samples is closed, the deal offering all PST readers an introductory discount of 10% off their first order at Indiescents is still open. Just enter “PST” at checkout. Offer is good until September 30th.

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.