theNotice: a beauty blog

The product: Marc Jacobs Dot Eau de Parfum (50 ml/1.7 fl oz spray)

The idea: Described as a lush, effervescent floral, Dot is made for the ”eclectic, spontaneous female.” (I’m not making this stuff up, folks.) As part of the Marc Jacobs fragrance family along Daisy and Lola, the scent is as bold and girly as you’d expect from the bottle — which could be very good or very bad; it all depends on what angle you’re coming at this from!

Created by perfumer Annie Buzantian (the nose behind this year’s new Marchesa Parfum d’Extase launch, as well), I see Dot as Daisy’s younger, less-subtle sister; a starter fragrance for someone who knows better than to take things too seriously.

The bottle: The Marc Jacobs camp is running around calling their enormous lids a “chic play of proportions,” but honestly, I think this one’s a bit too large. Oversized lids seem to be “in” for fragrances targeted at a younger audience, though–perhaps in part due to Marc Jacobs’ own Lola bottle,– but it’s still rather ungainly to have a lid that’s larger even than the bottle itself.

Inspired by Marc’s love for the iconic polka dot and designed by/with Sayuri Shoji, the bottle is designed to be eye-catching and cheerful, conveying an “animated pop of energy, charm, and spirit.” It is, strangely enough, very much a right hand scent — which isn’t a negative, but it’s rather amusing!

(The polka-dot-butterfly-pearl placement means you really can’t fit this one into your left hand, though I’d love to see you try.)

The notes: With top notes of red berries, dragon fruit, and honeysuckle, Dot is initially a sweet burst of fruity berries. From there, heart notes of jasmine, coconut water, and orange blossom have been worked into the formula, and finally, there’s an underlying base of  vanilla, driftwood, and musk.

All in all, it makes for a fairly unadventurous (and very sweet) fragrance, but while it’s not my kind of scent, I can see it selling quite well to the general population. It certainly does smell tasty; I’ll give it that!

The scent: Dot starts off quite fresh; light and almost watery – effervescent indeed. Within a minute, the weightless top notes evaporate away, and the scent becomes more fruity; heavier and sweeter.

As it dries down, Dot becomes warmer and more mellowed-out, sitting closer to the skin with time. Its initial throw (sillage) is quite strong, and tapers off for the first hour or so before hitting a plateau. While it’s a fragrance that’s much too syrupy-sweet for my preferences, I’ll admit that part’s interesting: when I smell it from an arm’s length away, it’s bubblier and lighter than it is if I put my nose right to my skin, where it’s a bit more of a candied floral.

Overall, the scent is what I had expected: fruity with strong synthetic berry notes and no discernable specifics, with more initial sillage than I’d like (but which minimizes with time.) I think this would have been much more interesting with a floral tucked in there somewhere, perhaps magnolia or a more distinctive jasmine, and it definitely could have benefited from a longer wear time — it’s almost completely gone by the four or five hour mark, which is distinctly sub-par.

The bottom line

Inoffensive and fresh, if overly sweet, Dot has a very generic feel to it — good as a starter perfume for your preteen niece, for instance, but too syrupy and cookie-cutter for a more discerning nose. I think it’s exactly what I think it was intended to be, and I’d pick it over the Paris Hiltons and Britney Spearses of the perfume world, but I wouldn’t wear this one out of the house.

(Or inside it, for that matter.)

Availability:

Find it at Nordstrom, Sephora, Shopper’s Drug Mart, The Bay, & etc.

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Have I told you about my enormous crush on Tom Pecheux? Or, more specifically, on his talent? (Hint: the answer is yes; I talk about my unhealthy Pecheux-fixation on a fairly frequent basis.)

Pecheux, who had initially intended to be a pastry chef (seriously!) started out doing fashion shows, then moved onto celebrity/celeb editorial makeup, and finally ended up working for L’Oreal, Shiseido (did you know that he devised the Shiseido The Makeup line?) and–currently–is at the forefront of the Estée Lauder makeup line.

“I want young girls to be able to say, ‘My mother loves it, my grandmother loves it, and I love Estée Lauder, too,’”

- Tom Pecheux (as quoted in)

I’m crazy about a lot of things, from cartoon whales to neuroanatomy, but rebranding is close to the top of the list. Since they signed Pecheux in 2009 as their new Creative Makeup Director, the brand has had such a drastic revival. And, while I still (!) haven’t gotten around to really giving their new products a spin, I’m thoroughly enjoying watching the rebranding in real time.

(And herein lies the origins of this ramble: have you seen this fall’s Violet Underground palette? Gah.)

Other things that have been knocking around in my brain this past week: things in unexpected formats. I briefly mentioned Donna Karan’s Cashmere Mist ‘Pearl Essence’ Bath Beads earlier this week, and Tatcha’s Rice Enzyme Powder the week before that, but I’ve been keeping an eye out for innovative formulas ever since.

I did find some interesting textures, but in the last place I’d have expected: Molton Brown, a brand that focuses mainly on home and personal fragrance. How cool are these Cedrus Room Aroma Rocks? Made of acacia tree sap, Moroccan cedrus tree oil, and Bulgarian lavender oil, they’re one of the last things I’d have expected to run into at the start of the week.

(And as a sleep aid; how cool is that!)

Finally, we have Lancome Erika F, because things are best done in threes, and I’ve really only gone over two topics so far this morning. I need your opinions, my dear readers: is it a must-have? Because I’m not one for cult products most of the time, but everyone seems to be crazy about it, and… the recurring frenzy kind of makes me want to search it out.

I don’t even like silvery-greens most of the time, you guys. Make it stop! 

(Image via the gorgeous Xiao, at Messy Wands – read her ode to Erika F here.)

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Note: This post contains a few sponsored links, but the content — you should know by now; that nonsensical ramble’s all mine! 

Instead of the usual “New…” widget, I thought I’d do something a bit different this Sunday – a glance at a few new products in French Sephora stores, with a bit of babble about the site (and beauty market) enjoyed by our beauty-addict counterparts over there.

I have a soft spot for the Sephora.fr online shop, even more so now than I did a few months ago. Once the newness of the Sephora.com revamp wore off, I found that I… don’t really like it, to be honest. I’m quite fond of the aesthetic, but I’m a lot less crazy about the actual functionality. (That said, though; the Canada/US site has ingredients listed for more of the products, and I wouldn’t give that up for the world.)

The brands

As could be expected, Sephora shops in France carry a different product range than those in North America — more skincare, more fragrance; less makeup. They carry different brands, at times, too: they get Chanel, Serge Lutens, and La Prairie, for instance, (those lucky dogs), but miss out on Korres, Fresh, and a number of our newer brands, like Ellis Faas or Edward Bess.

Strangely enough, I spied a few North American drugstore brands on the French site; Sally Hansen and Hawaiian Tropic intermingled amongst the expensive skincare and impressive fragrance ranges.

The addiction

The last time I went through the Sephora.fr site this thoroughly (I think it was about a year ago), I noticed that they had a bit of an obsession with travelling beauty products. It wasn’t just a passing fancy, though, apparently, because there’s still a small-but-highly-visible section on airplane-appropriate products!

(I don’t know why, but I find that absolutely hilarious. I’m aware that, objectively, it isn’t funny at all. It doesn’t really seem to be making any difference in my reaction, though.)

The bestsellers

Of course, you can’t have a post about a foreign beauty site without going over the country’s bestsellers list. In France, 12 of the top 20 bestsellers are skincare, 3 are makeup, and 5 are fragrance; in Canada, only 8 are skincare, with 9 being makeup, and 3 being fragrance.

If you look at the products themselves, things get even more interesting. French women tend to focus their makeup purchases on mascara, while Canadians buy more base products. (Hey, maybe that focus on skincare is paying off, after all!) The Urban Decay Naked 2 palette is the only bestselling product the two sites have in common.

In skincare, the Clinique Even Better Clinical Dark Spot Corrector is the only product to grace both bestseller lists. The Sephora.fr list is dominated by Clarins (which, as we all know, I have a soft spot a mile wide for), but the brand doesn’t appear in Canada’s top 20 at all. We’re apparently just running around buying tinted moisturizers and BB creams like crazy at the moment, apparently, which–I cannot tell a lie–actually sounds pretty accurate.

Different, too, are our tastes in fragrance – I’d say the French have more refined olfactory palettes, but that wouldn’t explain how (or why, or what?!) a Hello Kitty EdT made it onto their bestseller list and Balenciaga Paris didn’t. Again, there was only one product in common between the lists: the ever-classic Dior J’Adore. (Don’t you just love it when patterns keep up being all pattern-y?)

And, finally, the reason why I was nosing around Sephora.fr to begin with:

They’re just so cute! {1} {2} {3}

The product: Chloé Love, Chloé Eau de Parfum Purse Spray

I have, admittedly, been sitting on this review for quite a while – but can you blame me? There’s something just so utterly photogenic about a well-designed perfume bottle, and the purse-sized Love, Chloé is no exception.

Anyhow; I ended up being more than a little overwhelmed by the chic gold casing of this particular flacon, and the number of photos I had sitting on my computer was… a bit intimidating, to say the least.

The scent

Love, Chloé is described as “[the embodiment] of all the olfactory vocabulary of cosmetics… a fine, powdery scent, light and sensual with a flowery wake, iridescent and musky with talc and rice.” And, to be entirely honest, I don’t think it can be put any more succinctly than that.

Created by Louise Turner and Nathalie Cetto-Gracia (Givaudain), Love, Chloé features top notes of orange blossom and pink pepper; heart notes focusing on iris absolute, but adding a blend of lilac, hyacinth, wisteria blossom, and heliotropine (for its suggestion of almond and vanilla); and finally, base notes of musk, talc, and rice powder.

What I love about this scent is how effortlessly feminine it is - feminine, not the overly-powdered girlishness of so many celebrity fragrances. It’s certainly not for everyone (my sister, who hates powder notes, can’t stand this one), but I was quite surprised to feel as strongly about it as I do.

The blend of powders, florals, and musks is just so, and despite quite disliking about the original Chloé, I’ve been reaching for this one much more often than I’d anticipated.

The packaging

The Love, Chloé Purse Spray is actually a small, refillable casing about 3 1/2″ tall and 1 3/4″ wide. Its build is plastic, surprisingly, with a glossy outer finish – giving it a more expensive feel without sacrificing its lightweight nature.

The refills (10ml x3) are the usual glass-and-spray combination, and fit quite securely into the bottle. The chained lid is a good fit as well; it’s nice not to have to worry about losing the cap on the go, and it sits snugly enough that I wouldn’t worry about it coming off in my bag.

My one qualm with the entire product is the twist-off base – I changed the refill just to see how it would go, and warped the slot a bit while I was at it. The purse spray is limited edition at the moment (and I’ve got my fingers crossed that it’s still on shelves), but I’d really like to see it added to the permanent Love, Chloé lineup.

In which case: it would be really nice to see the addition of a metal base, Chloé!

The bottom line

Packaging aside, I fell a bit in love with Love, Chloé this winter. It’s not my typical sort of scent (I tend to stray more toward unisex fragrances; think amber and patchouli rather than soap and citrus), but it snuck under my skin and I couldn’t (didn’t even want to) get it out.

Love, Chloé smells like something from the past; a classy, demure blend of powder and florals that would pair just as well with ’40s hair and red lips as it would with a neutral eye and a silk shift.

Availability and a couple more photos »

Oh my god, you guys. These sound amazing! They’re tiny ($32 US for 0.5 fl oz), but – um, yes please.

From the Anthropologie site:

“Each of these four scents from niche perfumers A Lab on Fire, are created by a famous “nose,” batched in a state-of-the-art facility, and packaged and labeled by hand in Brooklyn.

• What We Do Is Secret: the olfactory footprint of A Lab on Fire; bergamot, nutmeg, pepper, leather, jasmine, sandalwood patchouli and birch (SPICE)
• What We Do In Paris Is Secret: developed by perfumer Dominique Ropion; a blend of bergamot, honey, lychee fruit, Turkish rose, vanilla, heliotrope, tonka bean, sandalwood and ambergris (SPICE)
• Rose Rebelle SC-7545: an explosion of Bulgarian and Turkish roses, blended with valerian, red currant, ivy leaves, musk and labdanum (FLORAL)
• L’Anonyme ou OP-1475-A: developed by perfumer Olivier Polge; a rich blend of bergamot, geranium, blonde woods, white amber and leather (WOODSY)”

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I’m dying over the notes listing for What We Do Is Secret. Bergamot, nutmeg, pepper, leather, and patchouli, all in one little bottle! It sounds like a dream come true – but I’m wary to order, seeing as the four A Lab On Fire EdPs are online exclusives. Has anyone tried? Thoughts; opinions?

(And Olivier Polge; they’ve gone and gotten themselves a Polge! It’s no secret that I’m head over heels for just about any Polge creation, be it by Jacques or Olivier. Now that is a family with talent.)

More images »