Megan has moved away to a dream house in the Blue Ridge mountains with a man who is now her fiance, which is very exciting, of course, but also very sad. Her internet connection is not the best, so we mostly communicate via text message these days. However, the love of perfume and costume dramas has not waned for either of us, as evidenced by our text messaging correspondence from yesterday:

Kerry: Suddenly bored with my old lineup except for [ Miss Dior Cherie ].  I ran out of [ Chanel Chance ] Eau Fraiche this morning and was bummed out. Trying out [ Chanel Chance ] Eau Tendre,  [ Paco Rabbone ] Lady Million and [ Versace ] Versense to see if I want them in my rotation.

Megan: ( In [ the style of ] costume drama letter from a loved one being read by protagonist but narrated aloud ) I am happy to report I'm still wildly in love with Versace. But let me state the particular name of my interest so that I make plain my meaning; it is Bright Crystal – could it have been another? At another time or place perhaps, another was in my favor, but at present I can scarce remember a single scent beyond my brightest gem, full of sparkle, yet delicate & modest.

I am happily surprised at our reuniting in the country when the city had seen our love in ruins. Oh, I am the happiest of perfume wearers!

Kerry: Dearest Megan – I can't tell you how satisfied I am to hear this wonderful news! I have always been of the opinion that your Crystal quite suited you and was, myself, nearly ill when I heard of how the dirt and depression of industry had affected it so. Perhaps some of my former suitors could do with a bit of country air themselves!

Megan: Indeed, goodly done & LOL heartily!

I didn't realize it until I received my sample  in the mail, but sometimes, especially as the weather gets cooler and the air starts smelling like chimneys and burning leaves, it suddenly becomes necessary to smell like a sexy humidor.  I'll be the first to admit that I didn't think a humidor could ever be something I aspired to smell like, and although Decadence and Debauchery is extremely androgynous (possibly even erring on the side of masculine), there is something insanely sensual and untamed about it.

Years ago, my work commute made it necessary to drive past a line of tobacco warehouses that, in the summertime, saturated the air with a heavy sweetness that gave me a head rush by simply breathing, regardless of whether my windows were up or down. 

I've tried many other tobacco themed perfumes and oils over the past year and a half and they never seem to get it quite right. When I would see tobacco listed as a fragrance note in a perfume, I imagined it would mirror the smell hovering around those old tobacco warehouses, but they never delivered, instead leaving me with the dank, lasting, odor of cheap, stale cigarettes. Not so with Decadence and Debauchery.  There's no head rush in this bottle, but the aroma of sweet tobacco is here, carefully balanced with vanilla bourbon. Hints of violet leaves, resin, blood orange and bergamot round it out and give it depth. 

It is my expert opinion that this fragrance smells almost entirely like Debauchery and only a tiny bit like Decadence. I adore it – though I must advise – you should sample it first because it's not for everyone.

The packaging is 100% recycled materials and the oil itself is made from 100% natural ingredients. Visit the "For Strange Women" Etsy shop and your very own 7mL bottle can be had for $20.

Kendall Hart Slater
Kendall Hart Slater is not a real person, and although she is not the first fictional character to get her own fragrance, she is the first character from a soap opera to get her name slapped on a perfume. Kendall Hart Slater is the product of Erica Kane's traumatic rape on the soap opera, All My Children. It's called "Charm!" and it features notes of bergamot, black currant, orchid, Virginia cedar, and sugar. Fun fact: Kendall was portrayed by Sarah Michelle Gellar of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame from 1993-1995.

Jenna Jameson
Considering the size of this porn star's current empire, this shouldn't come as a surprise, but I thought Traci Lords would have beat Jenna to the the punch. I was wrong. Traci has Lords of Acid, Jenna has "Heartbreaker", which apparently smells like rose petals and raspberry champagne, not lube and latex. That's good, I guess.

Carlos Santana
Yes, Carlos has a men's and a women's fragrance, both of which are simply named after himself. I wish Robert Plant had a perfume instead, and that it was called "Valhalla."

Jade Goody
Remember that British reality star that died of cancer last year? Well, she has her own fragrance. It's called "Shh!" and apparently smells like citrus, a whole bunch of flowers and sandalwood. Aside from dying very publicly, Jane's only claim to fame was that she was a runner up on a reality show in 2002. This fragrance reportedly flew off the shelves for months after its 2006 release. Weeeeeeeird.

Danielle Steele
Finding out that Danielle Steele has a perfume on the market was a surprise, but not as much of a surprise as it was to discover that "Danielle" smells exactly like a Budweiser that was opened and left in the sun for two days. Here's a direct quote from Megan about this fragrance:

"It smells like my uncle."

One time I was out shopping for a new suit because I had a big presentation coming up for work and I wanted to look more important than usual. For some reason, this proved to be a nearly impossible task.  After visiting about 10 stores that did not carry ladies' suits at all, I went to a mall department store that will remain unnamed ( it rhymes with "Budson Helk") , and was offered assistance by the single saleswoman working the ladies department, a woman who was at the very least 80 years old.

It's important to know that even when I look my worst (which isn't often because I'm vain and therefore extremely vigilant about that sort of thing) I still look like I am in my mid 20s even though I am a few years older than that.  After explaining my need for a knock-out executive suit for an upcoming presentation, this woman proceeded to take me around the ladies department and show me a bunch of suits that were TOTALLY PERFECT for someone attending their 40-year-old daughter's second wedding.  Budson Helk did not make a sale that day.

The point of this anecdote is to illustrate how much I generally despise things that are age-inappropriate.  Sometimes, such as the case in the aforementioned suit incident, the inappropriateness stems from something being far too old and matronly for the wearer, but in a majority of cases, things that are age-inappropriate are such because they are far too young for someone. Examples include:

• a woman in her late 40s wearing a halter top and daisy dukes ( this is not really appropriate for anyone) 
• a 32 year old wearing black lipstick to work and making everyone call her "Raven" even though her actual name is "Mandy" and she works as a file clerk, not as a Hot Topic cashier
• everything Bret Michaels ever wears (although I do greatly admire his ability to calm a bitch down)

Perfume, like clothing, can also be age-inappropriate (See: Moon Sparkle).  Not so long ago I was a real stickler about age-inappropriate fragrances, but something inside me has dramatically changed in the past couple of weeks, and now I am not only obsessed with them, but I also have an urgent, insatiable need to own as many of them as possible before summer arrives. 

It's not that I'm some kind of wet blanket when I'm wearing a fine, well-constructed, adult fragrance. One friend of mine has even said that hanging out with me is like "having a stick of fun shoved up your ass and lighting it on fire," which is the best compliment I've ever received and also 100% accurate. However, a sophisticated fragrance, even if it's sexy, will not give me the same shamelessness needed to make the most of a summer night out that J-Lo's "Glow After Dark" might give me.

As a result of these life changing epiphanies, as the weather gets warmer, my fragrance collection will be expanding with perfumes no one ever expected to see on my dresser. They will be fruity, boozy, sweet, sticky, and plastered with the names of pop stars. When I'm out and someone asks me what I'm wearing, my answer might be "Beyonce Heat."  If it is, there's a good chance that they will make snarky remarks about my fragrance choice just as soon as I'm out of earshot, but I'm okay with that.  We'll see who's laughing when I'm having a pineapple-scented, 3-way-dance-floor-make-out party and spilling a Tequila Sunrise all over my dress and they're waiting in line for the bathroom so they can pull their ill-fitting Spanx out of their ass.

Not long ago I asked everyone what fragrance smells like the 80s to them and got a whole bunch of really fantastic answers, including some really obvious ones that I had completely forgotten existed. After a lot of agonizing decision making and lost sleep, the many scents of the 80s were reduced to 5, mostly because I just needed the number to correspond with the number of days in the work week.

There was an overwhelming number of you that named Electric Youth as a quintessential 80s smell and I could not agree with you more.  I distinctly remember dousing myself with that fruity, watery fragrance at a friend's house (I never had a bottle of my own) and feeling like I needed to go to the mall immediately so that everyone could smell me and know exactly how totally awesome I was. Plus, I'm pretty sure I was wearing my denim skirt with the cut-out heart backed with white lace that day, and that's the sort of thing that needs to be seen by as many people as possible.

Anyway, many years later (last week, actually), I found that what little Electric Youth remains on planet earth is $15-$30 plus shipping, which is way too much money for some really old, and almost definitely underwhelming cologne spray. I am also positive that every hot pink coil in every bottle has long been faded and now just looks like a really long, stiff, pig's tail floating around in a bottle of urine.

In spite of all of this, there is no way I could leave Electric Youth off the list because then this list would be a lie. Instead I decided we could relive those magical years by simply watching the Electric Youth video and allowing it to transport us to another time and place, even if only for a few, precious moments.

Electric Youth was not exactly Debbie Gibson's best song even when it was new, and I highly suspected that it didn't hold up well over the past couple of decades. It became crystal clear to me very early in my viewing of this video that this song is a real shitstorm, and what's worse, it's a really catchy shitstorm, so I woke up the following morning with this turd of a tune stubbornly stuck in my head. I tried all kinds of songs to get it out of there, and nothing worked until I tried Waterloo by Abba, which I am still humming to myself, even now. However, even with all the risks involved, you absolutely cannot NOT watch this video, if for no other reason than the choreographic horror that begins at 2:16. 

DID YOU SEE IT? DID YOU?! Who the hell signed off on that? How many takes do you think they did of little Debbie doing that move before deciding the one you just watched was the perfect one? Yeah. I may not have obtained any actual Electric Youth perfume, but having viewed the evidence at hand, I feel with an immovable certainty that the perfume was infinitely better than its corresponding song and video.

Normally I write my content way ahead of time and schedule it to post at 7am every morning, which could give one the impression that I am up and writing about perfume at 6am like a crazy person. I am not, but if someone did believe that I was I would be completely flattered that someone on earth thought I was capable of doing anything coherent at 6am.

Anyway, today's post was not written ahead of time. I had every intention of posting something this morning instead, but I thought that it would be better if I went out first for a quick perfume smelling expedition, which morphed into an all-day event that included Megan and Megan's mom (who's in town for the week), and being a stereotype of my gender, I also bought some shoes because they were on crazy sale.

But look, I'm home now! And here it is – my final review for the Amazing and Obscenely Affordable Vol.1 review series:

PERFUME NAME:
Moon Sparkle

PERFUME HOUSE:
Escada

PERFUMER:
?

YEAR:
2007

OLFACTIVE FAMILY:
Fruity. They claim Floral Fruity, but the Floral is a lie.

DESCRIPTION:
Its top notes are strawberry, black current, citrus and red fruits. Heart notes include freesia and sweet pea, and questionably, jasmine and rose. The base notes are raspberry, sandalwood, musk and amber.

CONCENTRATION:
Eau de Toilette

MY EXPERIENCE:

The first thing you need to know is that there is absolutely nothing classy, elegant, or refined about Moon Sparkle. If you are looking for something to wear to the symphony or your grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary, this is definitely not the perfume for you.  If you are looking for something you can wear to work, this is also not for you unless you're a sex worker, a candy store cashier, or depending on the venue, a bartender. It's low brow, it's for teenagers, it instantly makes me think of floozies, and frankly, it's a smell that should have been born a body spray.

Now I need to tell you that I FUCKING LOVE MOON SPARKLE. This fragrance, which smells like really sugary berries and passionfruit in a way that makes me crave Jolly Ranchers, is a guilty, age-inappropriate pleasure that falls into a category of perfumes that transport me to some time and place where I am a different person and I am club hopping on a really hot, humid, summer night. When I smell it it's as if I've already had about four cocktails and a couple of shooters and my girl posse and I are on our way to our 3rd club. My strapless mini dress is out of sorts and I am drunkenly trying to fix it in time to smile at an oncoming group of dudes that I am SO sure ALL want me and holy shit, where the hell did I put my lip gloss? OMG, seriously, where the FUCK is it?!! Can I borrow yours?! HURRY UP!!!!

If you are over the age of 23, this fragrance can only be pulled off with any trace of dignity in the summertime, when the smell of sugary fruit is a more than welcome alternative to the body odor of passers-by.  I would not attempt to wear this at ALL, EVER, with anything that remotely resembles office wear, not even business casual. Don't you worry, though. You'll have plenty of places to wear this stuff. You can easily pull off Moon Sparkle at:
 

• A tropical resort
• Someone's crazy house party
• A rave
• The club
• The bar
• Disney World
• Home, by yourself

Now, if you think you can handle the demanding conditions to which you must vigilantly adhere in order to enjoy Moon Sparkle without consequence, make sure you go big. Get the 3.3 oz. bottle, and when you spray it on, spray it on with reckless abandon. Treat it as though it were mosquito repellent and you're lost in Southeast Asia; leave no bare skin uncovered.

You can go to the store and pay retail for the 3.3 ounce bottle which would be $70 and really silly, or you can poke around online and find it for around $30.

Oh, and don't forget to tune in next week for Perfume Time Machine: Scents of the 80s!

The results are in! Megan and I now know what scents defined the 80's for you, and we've even managed to whittle the list down to 5 scents. They will all be reviewed during the week of March 15th, after I have journeyed long and far to exotic places, cultivating samples of rare and precious scent relics so that you may relive the glory or the horror of your youth via internet perfume reviews. In the meantime, I'll be providing you with equally valuable content that will be useful and impress upon you my vast knowledge of global economics.

I know that we are still in the midst of a recession and perfume collecting is an expensive hobby. If you are not careful it will consume you.  I have, on more than one occasion, actually thought to myself something along the lines of, "If I only eat dinner 3 times next week, this bottle of [expensive perfume name] could be mine right now!"  I am not alone in this; other collectors will tell you similar stories, and I'm pretty sure the Santa in today's photo was, in fact, a fully employed, well-adjusted perfume collector with a home and a family up until just last month. You see, that bottle in his hand is not booze or urine as one might suspect, but actually his very last perfume flacon.

Also, many people over the past week have been approaching me with perfume questions but they have been prefacing their questions with, "This is probably beneath you, but…"  Let me take this opportunity to set the record straight: the only perfumes that are beneath me are ones that smell bad. Its bottle, store of origin, and socioeconomic background are not part of my judging criteria. My hobby is focused on my olfactory senses, so it would be ridiculous to claim to be a perfume collector and then pass judgment on a fragrance by anything other than whether or not I like the way it smells. A beautiful bottle is always a bonus, but never a requirement. The juice just needs to smell good.

All that being said, this week will be a Themed Review Series, and the theme is "Amazing and Obscenely Affordable Perfumes Vol.1"

This series will only include perfumes that are favored, so if you're a fan of my ripping things to shreds with cat piss analogies, which I hope you are, you may be a little disappointed this week. However, I plan on replacing that disappointment with priceless knowledge and by the following week you'll be fresh and ready for the imminent bitchfest that will no doubt accompany at least part of The Scents of the 80's.

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Oh. One more thing. Archives are still broken, but I'm working on fixing that real soon like.

Compared to some perfume collectors, my stash is modest. Compared to the average person on the street, I have every perfume ever conceived of in the space time continuum. In my defense, my purchases are all calculated, each perfume serving a specific purpose. Some of those purposes include:

• Making me feel rich while I'm grocery shopping
• Ensuring my perspiration smells like fruit so strangers will think I'm magical
• Keeping people's attention during work-related meetings
• Confirming that life is devoid of all hope as I'm crying alone in my bedroom during week 4 of my birth control pill pack every month
• Alleviating the symptoms of spring fever
• Boosting my self-esteem by eliciting compliments from total strangers

and obviously the most important of all:

• Exponentially increasing my chances of making out with someone really hot

Given that the aforementioned purpose is usually pretty high up on my list of priorities, it makes sense that I have more perfumes that serve that purpose than any other, and even more sense that my personal Holy Grail of all the fragrances I've worn is the one that has brought me the most success in that department.

So, here it is. My Holy Grail of fragrances:

PERFUME NAME:
Miss Dior Cherie

PERFUME HOUSE:
Christian Dior

PERFUMER:
Christine Nagel

YEAR:
2005 ( reformulated in 2007 )

OLFACTIVE FAMILY:
Chypre Fruity according to fragrantica.com but I'm going to veto that and say it's a Floral Fruity.

DESCRIPTION:
Top notes include wild strawberry leaves and something called "green tangerine". I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as a green tangerine, but I appreciate the sentiment. The heart notes claim to be caramel popcorn, violets, wild strawberry, and pink jasmine. The base is musk and patchouli.

CONCENTRATION:
Eau de Parfum

MY EXPERIENCE:
I am not looking forward to the day I look 35 (which at the current rate I am aging should happen when I'm about 46) because that will be the day this sweet, intoxicating smell will officially be age inappropriate and I will have to retire it. This fragrance is clearly marketed to the hip, modern gal in her early 20s to early 30s as evidenced by its fruity, carefree scent and this commercial directed by Sophia Coppola:

While I'm not much of a bicycle rider and my French, though persistent, is really fucking terrible, this young lady and I clearly share the same MO: Making out with hot dudes then immediately flying away with a bunch of balloons, allowing everyone in town to see our underwear.

This fragrance is criticized by many as not being "sophisticated" enough for the Dior line, but those people are missing the point of this fragrance entirely. The name of this fragrance is Miss Dior Cherie after all, not "Matronly Dior" or "Dior Spinster".  

Miss Dior Cherie is a joyful blend of sweet, ripened berries and a hint of soft, romantic flowers – probably pink ones ( definitely not violets, as claimed in Dior's description). This fragrance comes dangerously close to being a gourmand scent, which based on my scientific research is a positive attribute for me and about 70% of the heterosexual male population. 

This perfume smells like warm, sunny days free of obligation, silk bows, heart-shaped lockets, reckless abandon, and someone who has really shiny hair. The dry down lasts for quite awhile and remains faintly sweet, but that faint sweetness comes with a tart, woody accord that prevents it from turning into maraschino syrup. This aspect is especially appreciated in the event that you still need to smell good when you…you know…wake up in the morning.

I wear it often and for many reasons: when I need to lift my mood, when my outfit is particularly well accessorized, when kittens are cute, when pink is for girls, when the sky is blue, when rainbows have colors and because of its track record of success, when I need to achieve a minimum of second base with a hot guy and subsequently fly away.

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THERE'S STILL TIME TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY!

The prize you receive probably won't get you any hot action unless you're going for the 70+ set, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to win! All you have to do is leave a comment on any entry on this website and you will be entered in a random drawing to win a gag-inducing miniature bottle of Shatimar – err, I mean, Shalimar. The winner will be chosen on the evening of March 4th and announced on March 5th.