One Thousand Scents

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Mix and Match 2: Body Shop Invent Your Scent

Although this line is, typically, pitched at women, the advertising material makes one weak stab at getting men to buy some of the component scents (or getting women to buy it for their men): one of the combinations, which they've named "Cool Male", is a combination of Beleaf and Citrella. Two things wrong with that: "Citrella" isn't the name of a guy's scent, and both of the scents are unexpectedly floral. They would have been better off pitching Altaro plus Zinzibar, which is all man and heroically sexy to boot.


Beleaf
Top: baies rose, cassis, bergamot. Heart: fig, muguet, rose. Bottom: santal, musk

I'm a little surprised that they're marketing this, even in combination, to men. It's not as masculine or even as unisex as you might expect: the lily-of-the-valley scent in the middle is stronger than I'd have wanted it. But it is fresh and green, and not sugary-sweet thanks to the fig note. I think men should be able to wear any scent they want, but I honestly can't see most guys spritzing this on and buying it.


Chymara
Top: mandarin, pineapple, berries. Heart: muguet, rose, white lilies. Bottom: woody, cedarwood, praline, musky, ambery

Bright fresh fruit in the top note, especially a gust of pineapple, but the whole composition rapidly announces itself as a floral-oriental; the rose, ambergris and praline leap up at you quickly. Extremely nice, not overly floral, and borderline gourmand; very simplistic, but then, it is meant to be layered.


Citrella
Top: pink grapefruit, kumquat, orangey, cranberry. Heart: gardenia, jasmine, pink freesia

I'd have thought they were going to make something really citrusy--a classic masculine/unisex eau de cologne, not unlike Dior's Eau Sauvage--but instead they took a shot at its feminine counterpart, Diorella (which the name suggests), souping the citrus up with flowers. The top is all citrus, reddened a little with that cranberry note--it almost calls to mind a more hesperidic Fruits Sauvages (the classic CSP scent). After that, though, the freesia takes over; the citrus remains, but it's an afterthought at that point.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home