Bvlgari's Jasmin Noir & Chanel's Rouge Allure Velvet in #40 La Sensuelle

Here goes the third set of reviews/recommendations before Valentine's Day! The final pair up for reviewing is Chanel's Rouge Allure Velvet lipstick in the shade La Sensuelle (#40) and Bvlgari's Jasmin  Noir. 

Chanel Rouge Allure Velvet #40 La Sensuelle

Chanel's Rouge Allure lipsticks are special because of their fantastic clicky case. You know those cupboards that spring open and click shut when you press them? It's like those. You click the lipstick into a case, and you don't see the lipstick part of it anymore, just the bottom facet with the case enveloping it completely. Click here if you want to see the video of how this works. The bottom facet, as you see in this picture, is elegantly embossed with the Chanel logo. Really nice idea.

The Rouge Allure Velvet it a matte version of the Rouge Allure line. The colour is very luminous, but not shiny. It's exactly like velvet, the way it's rich in colour but not at all reflective. 

The Shade I'm talking about in this post is #40, La Sensuelle. This is a beautiful rich, dark fuchsia. Here it is on the lip blot, and impressively but not so great for showing you the colour, almost none of it came off onto the paper, and this was seconds after applying it! See to the right of it for the brushed-on swatch, a much better example of the shade.

... And here's what it looks like on the lips, after the blot! (The photo doesn't quite capture the richness, it's a deeper colour than this in reality, but the sunlight does odd things with colour sometimes. For the truest swatch, the brush-on beside the blot is excellent. Still, you can see how well it sticks to the lips!) I've tested this thoroughly, and this is the toughest lipstick I've ever had. It lasts hours longer than other lipsticks. It stands up to eating and drinking if you're still just a little careful about it. At one point, I was wearing this out to an event, and had no mirror - I was used to other lipsticks lasting poorly and couldn't stop thinking "oh no, my lips must be a mess, this is embarrassing." But when I finally was able to go check, they were perfect.

Bvlgari's Jasmin Noir

Bvlgari's Jasmin Noir is so lovely, so sophsticated and understated yet boldly feminine, it has to be my #1 Valentine's Day recommendation. This fragrance is a floral, but with a dark and romantic side. It has a great deal of gardenia, more so than Jasmine (despite the name), but it's wrapped around notes like licorice and woods and tonka bean, but none of these are obvious or overdone. Let's have a closer look...

In the beginning, this is a green, round, musky floral that catches you in the back of the throat. Once you get used to it, it’s really very nice. There are a lot of things at play throughout the stages of this one – woods, musk, floral accords, full-bodied tonka bean, etc. In the opening, it does resemble a man’s cologne, but with something disturbingly feminine and slightly floral in the mix (and something a tiny bit metallic, but it works). Gutsy move. It comes away from cologne territory as it softens and warms up a bit, showing us a slightly sweeter floral side with a twist of almond and anise that makes it like no other perfume. It almost feels like one of those perfumes people have made specifically for them. Feels like only one woman was ever meant to wear it... "And that's ME!" hundreds of women will say, lol. It transitions a bit, here and there, but this fragrance has a continuity that I find endearing, as much as it might tend to lean toward the green musky side in the beginning, or toward the floral side in the middle, or to the sweet side near the end (I like tonka bean as a base note because it has all the appeal of vanilla but with more body; it is less shrill). I wear this often, and sometimes it has gotten quite sweet and stayed sweet for quite a while after the halfway point, but other times it is kept in check, tempered by the different notes. Each time I wear it, it is a slightly different experience, but I always find it remarkable. I was surprised to have fallen for it so easily, practically from the first few seconds that I had it on my wrist, and I've been in love ever since! It's tied with N°5 for my favourite fragrance, though they're certainly not interchangeable. Different fragrances for different moods.

Jasmin Noir isn’t a bright floral. It is a rich, sumptuous floral with a musky twist that gives it a daunting boldness (incidentally, that is just how I would describe the fragrance as a whole: Bold). It may appear to be simplicity itself with its short list of notes, but the choice of notes for this fragrance was anything but simple. These particular notes clash and meld and play with each other in the most unexpected ways. The addition of almond was interesting because it is so subtle; you never smell the almond note, but it’s there, bringing this composition back down to earth when it becomes too heady. The licorice in the background, again, is subtle. It lends a certain melancholy to the soft, warm tonka bean note, allowing this fragrance to maintain that disturbing, beautiful twist of notes all the way through the development. The clash and play of these notes makes this fragrance one of the most distinctive florals I’ve tried in a while.

Something about this reminds me of a sweet, musky incense, just a few wisps of it. I normally do not love florals this much, but this one is so complex and edgy that I have to say, it WOWs me.

I want to mention something about the packaging too. Everything that would normally be plastic on any other perfume is in fact metal. The cap is a heady, beautiful metal piece with a circular black jewel in the center, and the neck of the bottle is metal too. It oozes quality, definitely a plus that's worth talking about. Also, this has been a review for the Eau De Parfum. It comes in an Eau De Toilette, but there are also just LOTs of flankers for this (Jasmin Noir L'elixir Eau de Parfum, Jasmin Noir L'essence, Mon Jasmin Noir, Mon Jasmin Noir L'Eau Exquise, Mon Jasmin Noir L'Elixir Eau de Parfum, the list is likely to go on over the years as they run out of good ideas, but I love the original) so be careful if you're looking to buy it, because it can get confusing. This brings me to a personal pet peeve. There's something about flankers that bugs me. It's like the company is cheapening the original by making so many versions of it to please everyone, tagging on these random additional words to the name. Less is more. Less is classy. Why can't companies accept that a given fragrance won't get the entire market, and just give the new fragrances their own names? If the fragrance is not worth its own campaign, why do they think it's good enough for their customers? There are still lots of nice flankers, but I wish they'd have their own names and bottles. When you get into variations of one perfume name, it gets ridiculous, and you might be looking for one and in the confusion buy the wrong one, because the name variation is so subtle and the packaging is all the same - just look at the list of flankers for this one! Sometimes, the original stands alone. Jasmin Noir EDP can certainly hold its ground.

Sorry about the rant...


I hope everyone enjoys Valentine's Day,

Have a great day, and thanks for reading!

A.