roses and tragic lives: or, a nice cheap scent

This week, I am focusing on rose-centered fragrances in an attempt to get you excited for my Rose decant giveaway. Roses and more is a surprising scent in many ways. The first is price—it appears to still be in production, yet it can be easily found on the interwebs for 3.99! Now, if you’re like me, you may sneer and sniff at anything with a price tag that low—it has to be crap, I hear you saying in my mind’s ear, dear reader. But sniff again—this time, sniff the fragrance—and I guarantee what you smell won’t say ‘thlree dollah…!’ This smells expensive, like good natural materials went into it--and decently priced synthetics.

Second, yes, it’s a c-list celebrity scent, (I checked the official website and it didn’t even seem to have a full list of Presley’s fragrance line-she’s got at least five other perfumes besides Roses and More—clearly, boosting her brand’s returns is not the first thing on Presley’s mind in the morning) but one with a heart and a genuineness to it, and honestly, for 3.99, you are lucky—no blessed—to find something that smells as good as this. I wish it were more intense, since I can hardly smell, a few spritzes, and really have to lay it on to get anything, but what is there is lovely.

 

It is a soft, ever so soft, girlish rose with a bit of lemon riding on the the top blended with other flowers—presumably the ‘and more’ component of the title—I get violet, lilac, maybe gardenia, and a bit of light musk and woods. The drydown gives me the purest moment of rose. But it doesn’t smell  suspiciously like something else—or rather, like someone else’s fragrance—only like a delicate, pale, dewy rose. I think it is very lovely, and would be a quite attractive addition to anyone’s wardrobe for those soft, contemplative moods.

I read a really interesting article in The Week about Elvis’ ‘sleepovers’ with nubile young things, and the article struck me as sad; he seemed like a sort of lost boy of sorts, like MJ in a way, a figure who never really finished living his childhood and was stuck in this virile body. This fragrance is like the female mirror image of Elvis’ sort of sad stunted sexuality. It is erotic, but also girly and very Southern feeling, and sort of like a princess trapped in a too-perfect walled flower garden (a HORTUS CONCLUSUS, in fact!) Maybe I’m projecting too much, but that feeling I get about this perfume makes it extra evocative for me. In this context, its low price is just another facet of some sort of obscure tragedy….

 

 

 

 

 

 

Credits:

stock ‘fume foto from: perfumesnow.com

Priscilla from: http://www.librarising.com/astrology/celebs/priscillapresley.html

elvis from http://img27.imageshack.us/i/snapshot20090916225550.tif/