Scentzilla!

Lily Lambert No. 11 is predominated by notes of soft gardenia and clean musk. Honeysuckle briefly shimmers across the top of it, but it dissipates quickly, leaving behind a tender shower-fresh white floral fragrance. Like the other fragrances in the line, it’s quite simple in compostion, but it should find some fans this summer as a result. I think it’s minimal lines and strong staying power will work well on humid sunny (and sweaty) days.

No. 44 contains the seeds of what is perhaps the most unique of the Lily Lambert scents. Berries seem to have brushed past swirls of smokey herbs. It’s a little surprising and wonderful… then slowly there’s plastic. Sand was SO right when she pegged 44 as the smell of Strawberry Shortcake toys. This scent quite quickly begins to smell almost like nothing at all on me but Strawberry Shortcake. It’s kind of a “skin” strawberry scent, I guess, and not for me, since I’ve no desire whatsoever to smell like a doll. Others may find it a fun walk down nostalgia lane, however, and on that count I’d say it would be a fun scent to sample.

The topmost water lily inflection of No. 55 feels cooling and refreshing. As the water lily fades, fruity notes begin to rise. The effect is… sigh, well… Kool-Aid. When I was little, sometimes my mom used to mix packets of different flavors together to fill our really big Tupperware pitcher, and it smells vaguely like one of her combos. I hate saying that, but that’s what it triggers in my mind, so there ya go: Mom’s mystery Kool-Aid.

No. 77 begins quite full, rendolent of juicy melon, pomegranate, roses. Sadly on my skin the scent becomes tinny, dwindling into an lax fruity-floral with warm wisps of a amber base. It’s very pretty, but wan, and does not carry through on the promise the opening makes to me. I do wonder how it might smell on other people, however, I also am unsure if anyone would really get much more out of it than I.

Lily Lambert scents are carried exclusively online by b-glowing. But like the dolt I am, I totally forgot to mention in my earlier review of the others that if you live in Portland they can also be tried at Blush Beauty Bar on NW 23rd.

So, in summation, the Lily Lamberts that get my thumbs up are numbers 11 and 66. The clean scents! Me! Who doesn’t usually cotton to those kind! However, I also recommend possibly trying the No. 22 out if you have the chance, because I think it will prove to be a happy fit for some folks.

Lily Lambert, No.s 22, 33, & 66:

Lily Lambert resides in Portland, Oregon, and engages a range of artistic endeavors, from painting to jewelry design, and most interestingly for me - perfumery. Ms. Lambert was mentored by Sarah Horowitz-Thran, who many of you many will recognize as the innovator behind Creative Scentualization. Today I’ll talk a little about a few of her scents, but I hope to get around to the rest of them later this week or next.

No. 22: If you are a fan (disclaimer: I am not) of Monyette Paris’ Coquette Tropique AND S-Perfume’s 100% Love, you are going to find much to like here. This style is not really my bag, but I can appreciate it as a rich tropical scent. So many fruity-florals seem wan or annoyingly saccharine, however this is not one of them. What I notice most on my skin is the pikake hovering gracefully above a coconut note that seems rich but not heavy. Awesomely, the coconut doesn’t smell like I went into my cupboards and slathered baking goods all over myself, which can sometimes happen to me with that note. (In fact, the “black coconut” in 22 smells a whole lot like the “black chocolate” in 100% Love to me.) Vanilla lies at the base, with strawberry and papaya accents on top. No. 22 is a fun pick-me-up for those of us in the Pacific Northwest who are getting tired of spring’s soggy greyness. It’s not my sort of thing personally, but I know someone else who it smells terrific on, so I’ll be interested in reading what the reaction to No. 22 is on some of the perfume boards. I suspect it will be a crowd-pleaser amongst fruity-floral afficianados.

No. 33: This reminded me so strongly of Lulu Beauty’s Gigi. In fact, I kept wishing it was Gigi instead, because I am absurdly in love with it. That is not to say 33 is not wearable. It is. I have to especially single out its french vanilla note as particularly exceptional - the french vanilla is of very high quality, and believe it or not, you really can smell that sort of thing. 33 is sweetly vegetal-musky, with just a stray wisp o’ smoke floating across its surface. Alas, there is supposed to be a sage note in the fragrance, which I did not pick up on. It kind of gets lost on my skin behind the other notes. I also detect something fruity-floral in it, which I am perceived as gardenia-pear, but I wonder if I’m not just thinking that because I’m associating it with my beloved Gigi. Actually, I probably am, so never mind. But um, please check out Gigi if you ever get the chance and spot it somewhere.

No. 66: 66 is described as possessing “a top note of fresh cotton, resting on the rich, sweet depths of mystical sage.” Oh pish-posh. That’s a fine bit of prose, but the actual aroma is much more ordinary and BETTER than that. It smell like reaching into a box of Tide and scooping it out into the washing machine. Lacy white trills of flowers happily decorate the Tide note, but never overtake it. I am not personally a big fan of clean scents (something about me feels excessively hygenic wearing them) but this is one I can really dig into. It’s very true smelling (to Tide) with none of those weird bleach-like or counter top cleanser mist notes I have unfortunately found in other “clean” scents. I can think of two people I know right off the top of my head who would LOVE this scent, and I’m kind of bummed out I didn’t get to see them this weekend so I could write down their reactions to it. This is a must-try if you are a fan of clean scents. Or fans of Tide - which I’m not saying to be a smart ass (well, this time at least.) I know some of you really have been hoping for a scent like that, and have been disappointed by other fragrances in the clean genre. It’s my favorite of the three I’m reviewing today, which surprises the hell out of me. Seriously, I don’t usually do detergent-y scents.

Lily Lambert fragrances are carried exclusively online by b-glowing. Currently you can get 25% off your purchases there by using the code instyle06. If you are scared to buy things unsniffed, b-glowing DOES have a sample program available for a small fee, so you can actually try some small samples (one time use ones only) to smell the line before you commit to a full size bottle. (Coupon via ¡Ombligo!, where you can also read a review of No. 44, if interested. Some brief impressions of a few of these fragrances are also written up at Pink Manhattan.)

Contest Winner:

Okay, so the winner of my mysteriously extra bottle of Compagnia Delle Indie’s Patchouly is… drumroll… Lisa S.! Congrats, Lisa! I will be contacting you shortly. I am actually trying to prepare for a move sometime soon across the river to Vancouver, Washington, so if you didn’t win or didn’t care for the prize, look for more contests if I have time. I figure if I start shipping some of my stuff away I won’t have quite so much to pack up. Hopefully.

One More Thing:

One more item, which has nothing to do with perfume, but rather with one man’s use of St. Ives Facial Scrub: “It feels like you’re washing your face with wet cement, and that’s exactly how we like it.” Heh. Boys are funny. Scroll down just a little, past the “Metrosexual” review to read the St. Ives review.

Image from lilylambert.com