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Beauty

Oriflame Volare Perfume

crystal roses

I am not the one to throw around statements beginning with ‘every woman wants’. Every woman is different, I’ve got no idea what all y’all ladies want – aside from less bullshit and more respect.

But.

Every woman wants a crystal rose on their vanity.

I’ve got three.

Okay, well, two. One of them is gold.

oriflame volare past bottles

My relationship with Oriflame Volare started by proxy – it was my grandmother’s favourite perfume to give to my mother. Since then the perfume bottle has gone through a couple of redesigns. I am not sure how many there were in total, but I believe the rose-shaped bottle is the third version. At least, it’s the third design I own. I’ve included the two previous incarnations of Oriflame Volare for reference.

classic oriflame volare

Together with the bottle, Oriflame has altered the scent. From where I stand, the third incarnation of Oriflame Volare EDP is lighter and easier to wear, but I know there are a lot of people out there who disagree with me.

oriflame volare

Volare EDP

As you might just guess by the shape of the bottle, Volare certainly has notes of rose in it. They’re on top for me, shifting to leather rather quickly, and then moving on to something woody. This is the perfume I wear when I want to play grown-up. It is a very ‘have to be in the mood’ scent for me. I have to really feel it to wear it.

amber rose

If you quickly flip through some Fragrantica reviews (old/ new), you will see that the scent of Oriflame Volare EDP is quite polarising. Some people hate it, some people love it. I find it classic and beautiful, undoubtedly partially influenced by the bottle. Though I like it and use it, I don’t think it suits me well.

volare forever

Volare Forever

One of the recent variations of Oriflame Volare. Still very rosy, but a lighter kind of rose. Whenever I scent this, I think of a big bouquet of white roses. This time around it shifts into citrus, and then goes into something a bit musky and a touch aquatic. Volare Forever is lighter and therefore easier to wear than the Volare EDP above, but still requires a certain mood from me.

oriflame volare forever

oriflame volare gold

Volare Gold EDP

Released to celebrate Oriflame‘s 50 year anniversary, Volare Gold has notes of peach, rose, and salted caramel. Again, you can certainly scent the rose, and I suppose the underlying sweetness that is so attractive for me in this perfume is peach.

I have a peculiar relationship with sweet perfumes. I love them – but they need to be, in my understanding, properly done. For example, I love nearly all Escada perfumes. They’re sweet as all fuck, but man I could bathe in them. What I would do for a bottle of Rockin’ Rio or Magnetism just about now, you have no idea.

And I love peach. One of my favourite scents is easily the least sophisticated one out there – Victoria’s Secret Love Spell, I’m looking at you. Again, I could just bathe in it.

volare gold

Oriflame Volare Gold reminds me of both Rockin’ Rio and Love Spell. It is heavier than either of those, with rose still being the main accord, but Volare Gold is indeed my favourite one out of the three perfumes in the Oriflame Volare line. It is a little too heady for the blasted heat of Moldovan summer days, but I can picture myself wearing it on a cooler summer evening, preferably somewhere close to a big body of water, or a gentle spritz or two to the Arctic conditioned office.

volare magnolia

Volare Magnolia

I have a teeny tiny bottle of Volare Magnolia, a limited edition Volare scent in the second incarnation packaging. My bottle – as any bottle out there, really – is old. Directly from it, these days I mostly scent rubbing alcohol in it. However on my body it opens up rather nicely. It is a very light scent, lightest of them all, and reminds me of walks under the blossoming trees during the warmer days of spring.

volare 15ml edp

Volare EDP 15 ml

Although supposedly the same scent as the Volare EDP above, this tiny bottle smells different. To my nose it’s much more powdery and quite ‘older’ than the rose-shaped bottle of Oriflame Volare EDP.

beautiful perfume bottles

Have you tried either of these?

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Beauty

Today’s Scent: Oriflame Cocktails & The City Party Queen.

oriflame cocktails and the city party queen

There was a time in my life in which I have, for whatever reason, decided it a brilliant idea to take pictures of products against a notebook with lined sheets. Let us not speak about this tragic period of my existence in detail.

… Though truth be told, I kinda like it.

Anyway, the scent.

To me, this is pretty much honey and lemon in a bottle, and I bloody love it. Everything about it – from packaging to scent – suggests otherwise, but it’s easily one of the favourites out of my rather vast collection of perfumes.

I know it’s cheap. It probably even smells cheap to many. Most people who sniff it, make a bit of a face.

I know it doesn’t last long.

I know the packaging is nothing to write home about, and the design is more that of a deodorant than an eau de toilette.

But I don’t care.

As with many other Oriflame scents, the top notes disappear pretty quickly, and you’re left with the middle ones – honey in this case. I like honey, but I’d never thought I would enjoy it in a fragrance, probably because my usual fare has always been something ‘milk-and-honey’ themed.

As unsophisticated as Oriflame Cocktails & the City Party Queen is, to me this fragrance is pure happiness in a bottle, much akin to Victoria’s Secret Love Spell. They’re nothing alike scent-wise (Love Spell is all peach), but they both share a lack of complexity and both are equally successful in putting a smile on my face.

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Beauty

Today’s Scent: Love Chloe Eau Florale.

I had a small size of this, and gave it away after a single spritz.

I don’t know what it is with me and this perfume, but it grated on my nerves like nobody’s business. My cousin, who usually loves green tea notes, wasn’t a fan either, and I couldn’t really smell any green tea in there at all.

On the other hand, my opinion of this seems rather unpopular, because my father loved it and said something along the lines of probably gifting bottles to several female acquaintances. And the person I gave the sample to was happy with it as well. For me, though, it totally didn’t work. Odd, because it’s got both powdery and white floral in it, according to Fragrantica, something that I easily fall for.

Read more Today’s Scent posts here.

(Image credit: Fragrantica.)

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Beauty

Today’s Scent: Guy Laroche Fidji.

guy laroche fidji

When I read reviews of Guy Laroche Fidgi on Fragrantica, it’s all summer, beaches, palms, and all other islandy fun. After all, the fragrance is called Fidgi.

For me, however, this is a late autumn to winter scent, and it’s also very grandmotherly. As in, it’s one of my grandmother’s favourite perfumes, so I associate it with her and with long evenings and newspaper reading and family gatherings in the living room.

My use of Guy Laroche’s Fidji is more sentimental rather than pure personal enjoyment. Grandmother wasn’t a huge perfume wearer, so I can pretty much remember all the occasions she used it on. Occasions is a wrong word, though, — sometimes she’d just have a day where she’d decide to wear perfume.

It’s a very homey and grown-up perfume for me. I wear it occasionally, but I don’t think it particularly suits me. The bottle I have is rather weathered – it belonged to my late grandmother, actually. There’s not much left, as you can see. I will use it up and keep the bottle for personal reasons — and also because I’m a hoarder who keeps empty perfume bottles, because they are all pretty, oh so pretty.

Definitely a warm, grown-up scent.

Read other perfume-themed posts here.

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Beauty

Scents I Let Go.

Perfume is a very individual thing. Even if you tried the scent more than once, ergo purchased a sample or spritzed it in the shop countless times, you still risk disliking it later on. Perhaps you switched body lotions, or cut meat from your diet, or changed climates. All these can alter how perfume opens up on your skin, and how you perceive scents overall.

My main problem with perfumes lies in falling for top notes. These evaporate quickly, and what remains doesn’t always open up on the skin as I’d expected it to. That’s basically what happened with these four.

more by demi

MORE by Demi

(Awkward reflection is awks.)

This is one of the more expensive Oriflame perfumes, and I coveted it for the longest time. I loved the sample, and I loved the MORE product line – particularly the hair spray. It was heavily scented, but I really enjoyed this fragrance in my hair. Finally I broke down and bought the bottle… only to find out that it no longer opens up on my skin to my liking. It felt too ‘grown up’, stifling, and dusty. Off to a new home it went.

dancing lady hypnotic night

Dancing Lady Hypnotic Night

I sampled this and totally fell in love. Then I received a full-sized bottle as a gift with purchase, but ended up giving it to my aunt. Every time I’d visit her, though, I’d scent it and feel a bit envious, so eventually I bought another bottle with full intention to wear it and keep it and love it. Sad to report that I’d since then worn it three times max, and every time it annoyed me. This bottle found a new home as well.

oriflame london

London

I feel like the goal of this perfume was to produce something that was both fresh and traditional. The end result, though, was a rather generic soapy scent that did not impress me at all. I bought this with a large discount together with other products. This was a blind purchase, and although it was deeply discounted, I still regret it. Passed it on.

P.S.: My father quite enjoyed the shower gel from this line. 😛

sparkle in paris

Sparkle in Paris

I only tried this in a dry tester on an Oriflame catalogue page. The scent was pleasant, and it was discounted, so I thought it would be a good every day scent for me. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I tried using it once or twice, but it would cause a headache in me, or at the very least annoy me to no end. It stood on my vanity for the longest time, and eventually I passed it on to my flatmate. It opens up very well on her, and doesn’t cause headaches in me at all. Perfume is the oddest thing, isn’t it?

(Credit for Sparkle in Paris product photo.)

(Everything bought with my own money. This is not a sponsored post.)