Bond No. 9 Fashion Avenue

Bond No. 9 is a favorite house of mine and today I'm test-driving Fashion Avenue. Like most of the niche perfumery's line-up, this is named for a New York neighborhood. The names are charming, but I don't always get the connection. What does Fashion Avenue smell like? Well, the perfume is very unusual. I showed it around to some better noses than I and it always evokes a response of, "That's unusual." One perfumista I gave it to liked it in the bottle but refused to put it on. I thought that was odd. I've known this woman to wear three or four scents at once.

The bottle was left out in the open and she came back to it. Not once, but a couple of times. Sniff. Then she finally took the plunge and put it on. "This really grows on you," she told me. "I like it."

I like it a lot, but it is a bit off-the-beaten-path for some perfumista's who have a certain ideal perfume in their mind. I looked up what the company says about this perfume and it reports that this scent is a blend of mimosa, ylang-ylang, and black currants.

It's one of those unusual scents that doesn't seem mysterious, it's more like something that you haven't seen before. I guess that's what Fashion Avenue is all about, new things, different things, the latest style. I suppose it's a floral, but mimosa is a very un-flowery floral aroma.

I'd classify it as light but not wishy-washy (some light scents are just too meek for my taste), different but altogether winning. There's something very well constructed about these notes.

If you're just so tired of all those mixed-drink scents on the market right now and just don't want to wear the bouquet-of-flowers scent, try this.

Burberry Brit

This was a great surprise. I ended up buying some Burberry Brit because of a lot of reasons, most of which had to do with a gift card, and also because I wanted something different.

It seems like it's been all about fruity florals lately. A fruity floral scent can be a lot of fun (OK, a few of them make you smell like a peach smoothie) and they're definitely very youthful and trendy, but I like a lot of diversity in my fragrance world.

Burberry Brit is a nice Oriental fragrance and there is a powdery base to it from orris root. At least that's my interpreation, I'm no nose. But it's a great scent because it shows that Oriental fragrances don't have to be heavy. This stuff is light and actually seems summery to me.

The bottle is sort of weird, it's all plaided out like the Burberry company is wont to do. At first, I found it a bit jarring but I've put it on my desk and looked at it all day and it looks less overdressed to me now.