#perfumes with jasmine

[hajihiko]

What is your favorite Candle scent?

(And also, if it pleases you, what do you HC the Dangans fav scents are?)

HMMM.... been pretty fond of sandalwood recently. I didnt know I liked it because I didnt know it existed with a name, but it reminds me of wood varnish found in stuff like old jewelry cases (or in my case, an old music box)!

Also because I actually wrote and drew something to do with sandalwood scent hehe. But. I dont like it enough yet to post it.

But on that topic;

Hajime doesnt like almost any artificial scent; he can smell the actual chemicals too well, and a lot of it makes him feel kinda gross (cheap perfumes straight up smell like pure alcohol). He likes natural scents, like petrichor or the shore, stuff that changes often and can't possibly be recreated in a lab.

Sonia likes a specific scent for a specific creme from her homeland that can't be found anywhere anymore. When she tries to describe it, it sounds ... weird? But she SWEARS it was great. And of course, she likes book smell. Learns to tolerate the smell of rodent enclosures.

Kazuichi is completely neutral about the smells in his near surroundings (he might smell like oil, grease, gasoline and sweat, but he barely notices (someone ELSE might notice, and even appreciate)). Hes always liked "girly" smells, like floral perfumes or laundry softeners. The smell of car air fresheners (like the little rubber feet) makes him nauseated.

Akane doesn't like any froufrou stuff! She likes the smell of food, exhaust, dirt, forest and sweat. All natural baby. If anything, she's a bit particular to the smell of rubber and leather, since she uses both frequently at her best (in the gym). For some reason, men's cologne makes her feel physically sick.

Fuyuhiko is a traditional dude and likes traditional smell, like incense, oils, and bamboo. Nothing too overpowering. Just plain soap, too. His least favourite smell is not something he'll admit out loud (at worst, he'll seem like he cant handle himself, at best, it's just depressing), and you could never tell anyway.

[dorindameddler]

Lae'zel: Does your species release airborne pheromones upon beginning the courtship dance, Wyll? I've heard thus is the way with certain birds of paradise and prey. The chemical induces lowered inhibitions between the pair. Wyll: No. I mean, I don't think so. Would you count a light spritz from a vial of jasmine dust as a pheromone? Lae'zel: Indubitably.

completely obsessed with this interaction. no notes

[the-meme-monarch]

drank the most delicious perfume today

[dozydawn]

[coffinbutch]

Corinne and I want to get into fragrances so we got some sample ones and I really wanted to try secretions magnifiques from etat libre d'orange (the one that people say smells like cum) so we got that as one. Corinne tried it on and so far has described it as smelling like "a baby born in a tidepool," "mermaid breastmilk," "feminine but only if all the women you know are evil," and "sucking off Jeremy fragrance but he just got out of the ocean"

[khaleesiofalicante]

Finally got that vanilla perfume I’ve been crying about 😭😭😭 now I smell like David 🥰🥰🥰

[cleolinda]

This does not spark Joy (Dior, 2018 & 2019)

PREVIOUSLY ON: Jean Patou's Joy (1930) was voted the Scent of the Century, but for some mysterious reason, it's not manufactured anymore.

Dior fucking killed Joy.

I won't bury the lede here at all. It was Dior. And I love a good Dior, don't get me wrong. But in August 2018, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (which owns every damn thing, including Sephora and half the brands in it) bought the Jean Patou company (which had already changed hands twice). More importantly, they bought the name "Joy." And, somehow, their subsidiary Parfums Christian Dior had their own Joy, complete with Jennifer Lawrence ad campaign, ready to release two weeks later.

For a while, Designer Parfums was at least allowed to manufacture and sell Jean Patou's Joy in France. But now, according to the Patou website, the company's fragrances "are no longer in production." When "authorized outlets" run out, they're out. Because apparently, it was that important for Dior to keep anyone else from using the name "Joy."

So what did they replace the Scent of the Century with?

I had heard that Joy by Dior Intense was a huge improvement on the initial Joy by Dior (which infuriated fragrance aficionados itself by existing, clearly), and I'm glad I tried it first, because if I had started with the original ("original") Dior, I would have punched a wall. But let's start with that: I kept trying Dior Joy #1 over and over because I couldn't remember what it smelled like. It is literally, in the literal sense of literally, forgettable. I tried it one more time today in order to write this paragraph, and: it's soapy white musk. Which upset me initially, I remember now, because I'm just really not a fan of soapy/laundry white musk, but that's on me; I've seen user reviews that do really like Joy by Dior. On me, it's just bubblebath froth, eventually a sweet citrus that peeks up from under it, and a drydown that adds some vanilla to that. That's joyous, I guess?

What I will say is, unlike the other perfume that made me think of bubble baths, it didn't give me a panic attack, so it's got one up on Chanel. But it's just... was this necessary? Did we not have enough soapy white citrus-vanilla musks in the world? At the time, I was just asking myself this rhetorically, but then I kept reading up on the Dior Joy(s). As Victoria at Bois de Jasmin points out, the actual fragrance is a copy of yet another perfume:

The result is that Dior Joy is Allure Lite. The rose and jasmine are folded into a sandalwood accord reminiscent of Chanel’s fragrance. From the top notes to the drydown, Joy follows the course of Allure, but in a softer, more transparent interpretation. The mandarin peel dusted with sugar, the rose blended with the lemony jasmine, a touch of apricot and orange blossom that melt into the sandalwood and custard-like vanilla. Even the same contrast between the sweet citrus and creamy woods is maintained.

Mark Behnke at Colognoisseur:

[Dior perfumer François Demachy] chose to create a mash-up of two huge best-sellers. The citrus opening is straight out of Chanel Allure and the floral heart is Dior J'Adore. In other words, it is just a re-tread.

DIOR! WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING DOING!

I won't say that Joy Intense (Dior #2) is more like Jean Patou's, but at least it has less of a soapy musk opening. Let's compare the notes:

Joy by Dior (2018): White musk, Grasse rose, Grasse jasmine, mandarin orange, patchouli, bergamot, cedar, sandalwood.

Joy by Dior Intense (2019): Neroli, bergamot, Grasse jasmine, Grasse rose, vanilla, patchouli, musk, sandalwood.

[Note: Grasse, "the perfume capital of the world," is a region in France famous for its role in the history of French perfume; it is especially known for jasmine and roses. "Grasse rose," "May rose," and "Rose de Mai" all refer to Rosa x centifolia. "Grasse jasmine" is Jasminum grandiflorum, as opposed to, say, the licorice-friendly jasmine sambac.]

Further info from dior.com:

Get the absolute fuck out of here with this BOTTLE and this LOGO, what are you even doing. I did not even know a perfume could eat crackers

Joy by Dior, per the official website:

JOY by Dior Eau de Parfum is a bright smile, and a pure concentration of joy in a bottle. A juicy, vibrant top note gives way to an enveloping white heart of flowers and musks, just like a soft caress.

Again, I hated Dior's first Joy when I first put it on, but that's my own bias. It was just sheer disappointment that they centered this on synthetic white musk—you vaulted the Scent of the Century for this?

The "Intense" version:

Oh well if there’s a star on the bottom I guess I’m not mad anymore??

JOY by Dior Eau de Parfum Intense is a new olfactory burst, a scent of joy wherein flowers celebrate and explode in all their faceted beauty. The dazzling light of the juicy Citrus blends with the colorful shine of Rose and Grasse Jasmine, and is heightened by an enveloping woody echo of Sandalwood tinged with Vanilla. The fragrance results in a floral firework.

Fuck the actual fuck outta here. "Firework" my ass. It's fine, I guess. It smells like vanilla lemonade and some jasmine on me, with a pleasant lingering drydown. Not just the smell of lemonade, but sort of the feeling of happiness you get when drinking a sugary glass of it on a hot summer day. Don't ever say I don't try to be fair. And it's 1000% better without the white musk. I honestly wouldn't mind wearing this under a different name, but it's just so adequate. I put on Jean Patou's Joy, even a diminished Joy, and it was a revelation. I put on the Dior, even the "good" version, and it smells like copying what the popular girls wear in hopes that they’ll like you. Thank God they didn't stuff some Ambroxan in there while they were at it. The only reason Dior didn't dupe some trendy note from Baccarat Rouge 540 is because Francis Kurkdjian didn't work for them yet. What the fuck are you people doing.

Back to Colognoisseur:

[It] is puzzling why Dior would make the decision to produce a new perfume with the same name of a masterpiece. The cynic in me says because they’ve unleashed their market research staff and found out most consumers have no idea there is a previous classic perfume called Joy. [...] Joy by Dior is a good perfume put together via the perfume assembly line of focus groups and market research; as cynical as it gets in other words.

This is absolutely my take as well. I wore Jean Patou on one hand and Dior's Joy Intense on the other and compared how they unfolded in real time, and what struck me most at that point was how gourmand-adjacent the Dior is. Not entirely so, but the vanilla lemonade I get is far more in line with the cupcake and burnt sugar notes (WHICH I LIKE!) that fragrance brands have put in everything since Mugler’s Angel, rather than just let a floral be good—superlative—at being a floral. But the marketing department says that the Costliest Perfume in the World isn’t on trend in the 21st century; we can charge plenty for something simpler, more predictable, more pandering.

My other take is that Dior's Joy perfumes are formulated to inevitably be cheaper than Jean Patou's Joy, even what Joy was at the end of the company's life. I have smelled at least a Platonic shadow of the Costliest Perfume in the World, and (I don't care how much Grasse jasmine Dior claims is in theirs) this ain't it. I don't blame François Demachy; he was given a brief and he did his job. The man made not one but two versions of Hypnotic Poison. He has done more interesting things than this. Dior’s Joy has "cash grab" written all over it and it's not even bad. It's just WHY. Why would you DO THIS. I am going to stay mad and die mad about this. Jesus Christ. You can't even, like, gently reformulate the Jean Patou, put out the Demachy versions as flanker fragrances, and market them all? You have four kinds of Poison RIGHT NOW and you can’t figure this out?

And I wore these three perfumes for three weeks, I want you to know that. I alternated them day by day, sometimes wearing two at a time to compare. I gave them all many, many chances. And besides the fact that I personally don't like white musk very much, the two Dior Joys are not bad. They're not! They're just accessories to a minor act of cultural vandalism, is all. Imagine taking Botticelli's The Birth of Venus and saying, we're going to throw this out so we can have a photographer recreate it with Jennifer Lawrence. Everyone's wearing Dior Spring/Summer 2023 designs (including Venus). It actually looks pretty cool, I guess. Great, so we don't need the Botticelli anymore? When does the trash get picked up, Tuesday?

Even Disney doesn't vault its animated movies anymore after it remakes them as live action. Maybe I can scrape up enough couch change to buy a bottle of Real Actual Joy and some DVDs before anyone else gets some big ideas.

Perfume discussion masterpost

[bellysoupset]

So you’ve said Jonah smells like green apple. What do the rest of them smell like?

Just realising how weird that question looks out of context 💀🍄

dhjfkkdfj okaaay 🍄

Jonah smells of Hugo Boss Green, that has notes of green apple.

Bella smells of coconut, because of her hair conditioner. She only wears perfume in very special occasions and hers is Agua de Santos by House of Bo, which smells a lot like oranges!

Wendy smells like Daisy by Marc Jacobs. Very floral and fruity. She's also has a vendetta against the perfume Fantasy by Victoria Secrets. During winter she'll go for Elorea's Inflorescence, which is still floral, but not as girly. Out of my OCs she's the only one who wears more than 1 fragrance.

Vince smells like lavender and jasmines, because of his after shave. He doesn't normally wear any perfume.

Luke shaves every morning without fail and his after shave is minty, so he always has that distinct minty smell as if someone is chewing gum next to you.

Leo doesn't wear any perfumes period. He really dislikes powerful scents and he specifically picks not-scented deodorant, after shave, etc. His soap of choice is Marlowe's scrub soap, that has a faint pine smell.

Max smells like One Million by Paco Rabbane, which is a cologne with notes of leather, amber and tangerine, but personally I think it smells like rich chocolate. Its a little overwhelming in my opinion, but I think this man takes a shower in this in the morning.

[huntershowl-moving]

random hc while i’m at work and thinking about it: seph smells like campfire smoke more than anything, but there’s also always coffee and whiskey mixed in there — and if you’re very close to her, vanilla or orange blossom from the roll-on perfumes they like to use at their neck pulse points. :]

[little-honeypie]

I tried out my new perfume and I'm super disappointed cause it's super weak compared to what it's advertised as and it simply doesn't smell how it was described.

I need help. I love arabic perfume oils, I loved Al Sultan Gold but I really want something floral and preferably jasmine-y/rosy like Gucci Floral Gorgeous Gardenia but I don't have the money to casually drop $100-500 on a perfume that I wanna wear daily. Help.

Suggestions, please! I think the most I'd comfortably spend rn would be $60. Links would be appreciated as well if you have any suggestions!!!

[haveusmelledthisperfume]

Have you smelled this perfume?

L'Or is a super-luxe rendition of the modern classic J'Adore by none other than master perfumer Francis Kurkdjian. Focusing on the rich jasmine base of the original, Kurkdjian brings new life to the J'Adore line and offers one of the best mainstream jasmine perfumes to come out in quite some time. Have you smelled it?

[midnightwind]

starting to just pick up my Bath and Body Works candles to read off the ingredients so I can pin down what my OCs' could smell like

[tiralja]

My adventures with perfumes continue, i have a pretty varied collection of cheap scents now but almost every single one of them has notes of amber and jasmine in them. Guess my nose really knows what it likes!

[prince-liest]

I recently got very into perfumes after realizing that the V&R Flowerbomb I've been wearing for like 6+ years has become very grating to my nose over time and I needed to explore other scents, and it's absolutely wild how acute the realization that simply Walking Around While Smelling Nice improves my day so immensely is.

[artemisbarnowl]

After last weekend of helping my friend move and the washing machine drama and work being cooked I said 'next weekend I do nothing and speak to no one's so what I've done is finish work early today to take 2 friends to a diy perfume workshop (the scent I made FUCKS but I gotta wait a few weeks for the ethanol to chill) then go out for a beer with a different friend gang and tomorrow I'm going ice skating with perfume gang and their +1s and someone's sister. But all of this is business days so it don't count

[cleolinda]

Sparking Joy (Jean Patou, 1930)

What's the best perfume of all time? Objectively, I don't think that's an answerable question; it might be that the absolute best perfume (which means what?) is something designed by an artisan outside the French tradition or the Arabian tradition, or not by a professional nose at all, but a single bottle mixed up by a hobbyist in some quiet little corner of the world. We just don't know. But much the way the American Film Institute decrees that Citizen Kane is the best [American] film of all time, what do Those in the Know think is the best? Chanel No. 5, right? The top seller in the world for decades?

Not at all. In 2000, the Fragrance Foundation FiFi Awards bestowed the public's choice for "Scent of the Century" on Jean Patou's Joy.

I remember reading this in the newspaper at the time, back when we had newspapers; I hadn't even worn fragrance since Sun-Ripened Raspberry body splash in high school, and I was shocked that it wasn't Chanel No. 5. I have to think "the public" meant "knowledgeable members of the perfume industry," because I had never heard of Joy, and most people I've talked to (who aren't hanging out on on fragrance forums) haven't, either. I feel like many of us would reflexively say "No. 5" because Chanel's done that good a job at shoring up their flagship's legend.

The story of Jean Patou's Joy is the opposite: when a fragrance isn't given the respect it deserves.

(Joy ads, 1947 and 1978; more here)

Famously, back when Joy was famous, perfumer Henri Alméras created Joy for Parisian couturier Jean Patou, as an oddly defiant, perhaps even life-affirming reaction to the 1929 Wall Street crash. At the time, it was "the costliest perfume in the world": "One ounce of the lavish scent contains 10,600 jasmine flowers and 28 dozen May roses"—and it cost $40 ($728.45!!!). And I might say it's a little obscene to create such an extravagant thing in the middle of the Great Depression—and yet, somehow, Joy was a huge success. A master perfumer created a work of art for a luxury vendor, and people bought it, and they loved it. Jackie Kennedy wore it; Vivien Leigh wore it. I've been wearing Joy for three weeks, and if I could have saved up enough pennies in 1930 to buy a tiny vial, I could see myself doing it, just to have that little something.

Joy was explicitly intended to be "a lighthouse" in a dark time of deprivation, and it wasn't overpriced just for the hell of it; it was the costliest in the sense of quality. It might best be known for its rose-jasmine pairing, but besides the entire region of Grasse crammed into every bottle, Joy also contains "leafy green notes," tuberose, ylang-ylang, aldehydes, peach (our old friend undecalactone?), lily of the valley, orris root, orchid, civet, musk, and sandalwood; Wikipedia also lists "michelia," which may mean magnolia here.

I'll admit up front that I have no idea when the sample I bought last month was produced, but the “juice,” as they say, looks very new; it doesn't have the deep dark color that I've seen on vintage bottles of Joy. It's got to be one of the newer formulations. Tom at Perfume Posse can speak for the older ones:

The [2022 sample] I received smells thinner than I remember - more skimming over those fields of flowers than just bashing into them, face-first. The Joy I remember reveled in the excess: bowers of roses, masses of lilies, clouds of tuberose backed with some of that “don’t F with me” musk that must have been civet back in the day. This is nice. Nice and sweet, with only a hint of the previous hedonist.

Angela at Now Smell This:

For the longest time, to me Joy smelled dense, like a Victorian room with the curtains pulled. I couldn’t feel my way around in it. The turning point for me came from hearing current Patou house perfumer Thomas Fontaine describe Joy’s sillage as lush and old fashioned. I’d been trying to make Joy a light, happy perfume. Really, it’s a gorgeously constructed velvet overcoat, heavy and plush and meticulously made. It’s red wine, not champagne.

The Scented Hound:

Joy (current version eau de parfum) is truly a joy when it first goes on the skin as it’s full of lush ylang-ylang and soapy white flowers and bright aldehydes. [...] As Joy continues its slow and deliberate path, a jasmine blends itself with the rose…but combined, they’re still very controlled and incredibly proper. Joy doesn’t transform or morph very much, but in the end, the florals fade and soften a bit, and what you’re left is a lightly warm breeze of light floral sandalwood musk.

The version I have is clearly the newer one—I actually would say it's more like champagne, not in the literal effervescent way (see the Coco Mademoiselles), but in the sense that this Joy is light. Not weak, but light, the way I described the aspect of No. 5 that I could stand as "limpid." In my head, Joy is a beautiful sunset pink color, sheer, almost verging into red. The jasmine comes out the strongest for me at first, maybe with the slight presence of an aldehyde, but then, on top of that, the biggest, fullest, realest rose I've ever smelled in a perfume. If I get cut flowers for my birthday, I always save any roses in the bouquet and dry them. Jean Patou's Joy smells like a rose that is so fully blown that the petals fall apart in my hand when I try to pull it from the vase. Not decaying, not that far gone, but the rose's absolute full potential of bloom, and so vividly that I can see the texture of the petals. If you want to tell me there’s 336 roses in here, I will believe you.

On my skin, the rose floats there on top, on a bed of headier florals, for at least half an hour; in my notes, I jotted down that a spicy ylang-ylang "with a slight bubblegum connotation" (see Samsara for more on the bubbleylang) shows up then, and by an hour-twenty, the whole thing has come together, all flowers present at once in a sweet, soft, heady, slightly spicy, rose-pink glow.

[Sidebar: At three hours, Joy reminded me in some non-literal way of Murray & Lanman's Florida Water, also billed as "the Richest of All Perfumes" in the late 1800s. (Of course I got myself a bottle of an actual Gilded Age perfume they still sell today for $4, are you kidding me?) I've seen a lot of Florida Water formulas (which are still used today in various spiritual traditions), and I've mostly seen lavender, clove, and multiple citrus notes as the components, sometimes with rose, ylang-ylang, and/or cinnamon as well. Unlike many, many French perfumes, Jean Patou's Joy doesn't have any citrus top notes at all, so I'm not sure what I'm getting in common with Florida Water, other than the florals and a certain spiciness that comes out late in Joy's game for me. I'd like to think it's purely the "richness" that reminds me of the Costliest Perfume in the World.]

"Warm breeze" is a good way to describe Joy's drydown; it's not heavy or old-fashioned to me at all, and I can't specifically pick out musk at any point (clearly, this sample was made after real animal musk was banned in 1979; anything animalic still here would be synthetic). I barely get sandalwood—it's just gorgeous florals, and if you (I) haven't smelled the original Joy, you aren't capable of missing it. Now Smell This has a breakdown of how the eau de toilette and the eau de parfum differed as of 2008; I got the EdP. I don't feel like it goes from light to dark, but it does smell very lush and complex to me. It feels like it sings, and you know what? When I first smelled it, I thought it smelled like a number of things I'd tried recently, particularly Coco Mademoiselle L'Eau Privée. That glowing pink rose-jasmine-ylang-sandalwood combination—and then I realized, no, those perfumes smell like Joy. Joy is so iconic that it's used as a building block, a quotation, in so many fragrances that came after it.

And it's so, so easy to wear—in fairness, I haven't worn the heavier original formulation, but I'm not even sure I'd want to. This Joy is so easy and lovely and gorgeous—I've been wondering if I'd ever find my one signature scent to rule them all, and while Joy doesn't have all my favorite notes, I wouldn't mind if it became mine.

But here's the thing: they don't manufacture Joy anymore. You can still buy what's already been produced, for now, but as existing supplies sell out, it'll only get more expensive with time. Because someone bought the rights to Jean Patou's Joy for the sole purpose of not producing it.

You're about to get a second post about who did that and why.

Perfume discussion masterpost