Perfume Review: Crazylibellule Shanghaijava Ananas Imperial

I was really pleased when Sephora opened in Singapore last December, at Takashimaya, but it took me a few more months to discover some specimens of Crazylibellule & The Poppies perfume. I’d only read about this brand, as I had never before found it in Singapore. I was so happy to stumble across it, I just stood there sampling and sampling, until the assistants started to give me the funny eye.

Just a smidgeon of history – CatP is a new kid on the perfume block, being established in 2005 by Isabelle Masson-Mandonnaud, who also founded the original version of Sephora. It’s a tiny little French outfit that came up with this brilliant idea of making perfume in the form of 5g solid sticks, just a bit shorter and squatter than your average lipstick. Here’s what mine looks like:

Hmm, there must be some funky lighting effects in my living room. Anyway, it’s a simple cardboard tube, so I keep it in its box to protect it from getting bished inside my bag. I have a very Doraemon approach to bag-packing (i.e. everything plus the kitchen sink, in no particular order), so protection is essential. 

There are several lines, besides the (supposedly Asianic) Shanghaijava one, such as Les Divines Alcoves (flowery), Poule de Luxe (vanilla combos) and Le Baton (for morning, afternoon and night).

I chose to buy Ananas Imperial based strictly on first impressions. I could afford to be so superficial because these things cost S$32 per stick, which is not bad for French perfume. The notes are pineapple, jasmine, peach, musk, blackcurrant, lime, orange, grapefruit, lemon and cedar. I get a lot of pineapple first and foremost, then peach after a few minutes, with undertones of sweet citrus fruit, which makes it a sparkling, fresh and carefree scent on my skin. It’s an unusual choice for me, because I don’t usually go for the girly fruit candy kind of perfume. But this was so likable and affordable that I could not resist. Just the thing to make me feel a bit better when I’m post-call.

Being a solid perfume, this stuff will leave waxy residue on the skin unless well massaged in. It does not have magnificent sillage, but that’s OK by me because I wear perfume to make ME happy. Reapplication is necessary to make it last through the day, but hey, that’s why it comes in portable sticks, right?

The only problem with that, well, is that the damn thing has rolled under the sofa. Growl.

Perfume Review: Floris White Rose

I stumbled upon a range of Floris perfumes, moseying about in Greenbelt in the Phillipines, while I probably should have been attending a conference lecture. I had cherished exactly zero hope of finding any purchase-worthy, cannot-find-back-home perfume during this trip, but I was so delightfully wrong.

Thank you, Adora. You are possibly the most magnificent department store I have had the good fortune to step into. You have taught me the meaning of serendipity.

For some reason, I was in the mood for a very feminine, demure scent that day. Something along the lines of a white linen dress, cashmere sweater and real pearls on a morning walk in the garden. I don’t know why. I would never wear or do such things in real life. I put it down to the effects of having my own room in a foreign country. I imagine my natural habitat to be an overstuffed sofa, with a good mystery novel and a glass of port, at two in the morning in front of a blazing wood fire.

Completely disregarding the shelves of Serge Lutens and The Different Company (available in Tangs Orchard back home), I proceeded to hold a long conversation over decanters and samples with the male promoter, who was fairly knowledgable, appropriately swishy and impressively patient.

I was highly fascinated by the Histoires de Parfum shelf. The bottles and their boxes, being oblongs decorated down the skinny side, were created to resemble books. That is something guaranteed to grab my attention. The sniffing samples came in the form of inverted large glass funnels, holding  a circle of white filter paper doused in scent. My two guy friends made me laugh by pretending to stick the skinny ends of the funnels into their nostrils. I was going to fix on a bottle of HdP’s 1873, a blend of citrus fruit and prim flowers on a base of vanilla, caramel and musk, but realized in the nick of time that the bottles only came in 120ml sizes, which would not have passed Customs. Damn the liquid restrictions!

So on to the Floris shelf I went. I tried the Edwardian Bouquet, but although it did begin very floral, with a nice touch of wood, it rapidly morphed into… soap. Gah.

Panicking a little, because we had to be somewhere else in an hour, I squirted on some Seringa, some White Rose and some Stephanotis, pointed at the one that smelt least soapy, and told the promoter to gimme that one. Quick. At 3450 pesos for 50ml – which translates to maybe S$115 or thereabouts – it was not a cheap souvenir. But it was an excellent souvenir. I wanted a ladylike perfume, and now I had a ladylike perfume.

White Rose was first created in the 1800s, and is reputed to have been a favourite of Florence Nightingale’s and the Russian Queen Alexandra (I like  the thought of wearing a scent that is a descendant of another loved by a queen). It was reformulated in 2004, and is now sold in these oblong glass bottles that make me think of Diorissimo, another very ladylike perfume. The opening notes are sparkling bright with aldehydes, before calming and  sweetening to carnation, rose and a touch of iris. The official site also lists jasmine and violet, but I don’t get much of those. The drydown is powdery rose and clean musk.

I’m wearing it today with a Stepford Wife-ish navy-blue dress peppered with white polka dots, and it goes just perfect. It’s sweet, restrained and comforting, yet with a wicked little undertone of bright emerald green. Quite good for the sanity.