hortus conclusus

I really like J-lo’s Deseo . I know we are supposed to scorn celebrity fragrances until they convince us otherwise with some exceptional quality or other, but I have liked this fragrance from the get-go. You know how a pineapple’s acidity makes your tongue tingle in that weird way that only pineapples can accomplish? Well, Deseo makes that same thing happen in my mouth when  I smell it—isn’t that strange? It is pineapple on me, but not in a bonne belle type of way. It is pineapple in a difficult, acidic, slightly green, sour sort of way. I really love the composition, actually—lots of painful pineapple sitting atop a lovely chypre structure, with a little green coconut thrown in to make consumers realize (if they haven’t already, the dullards) that it is ‘tropical.’ I don’t think of this as a ‘fruity floral’ at all in fact—more of a sour chypre. And then, there’s the bottle. I LOOVVEE this bottle. At first, I thought: tacky. Then I thought: hey, it’s kinda cool how it is desi...