Weekend Update

This weekend I found myself at Bath & Body Works, and was pleased to see that they have some new stuff there. I looked at their holiday scents for this year and a line of mostly body products they have called Tutti Dolce.

Their holiday line is called The Perfect Christmas. It includes candles, sprays and assorted decorations. The scents include Tree, Winterberry, Christmas Cookie and Spice (at least I think those are the names; the web site only has Tree). They're all pleasant, but there might be better scents out there this year. Tree was nice, but heavy on the cedar - I'm sure I could find a better pine scent. Winterberry was the most interesting - the typical berry note, but seemingly with coniferous tone, like a piney Christmas-tree type smell with a berry like note behind it. I might actually get that one. Christmas Cookie and Spice are both pretty predictable, with Christmas Cookie being the more pleasant of the two.

The Tutti Dolce line is basically a line of gourmand scents and body products. All of the scents are dessert scents (probably inspired by Jessica Simpson's Desserts line). They're all pleasant. The scents are as follows: Crème Brûlée, Lemon Meringue, Sugar Wafer, Angel Food Cake, Cinnamon Frosting and Chocolate Fondue. My favorites were Angel Food Cake and Cinnamon Frosting (even though I don't think I detected any cinnamon in the latter; that and the fact that they smelled much the same, with Lemon Meringue standing out from the rest). Sugar Wafer was the only one available in an eau de toilette, as far as I could tell. The scent from the creams, which are very rich, stayed on my hand for some time, but it didn't smell as rich and gourmand-y on my skin as it did in the jar. I think that if you like a subtle, light foody scent, then you'd probably like this line.

Incidentally, as I was writing this I clicked on Bath & Body Works' web site to check on the names of the lines, and was surprised to see a couple lines of products that I did NOT see in the store: Most importantly, the Jeff Leatham line of candles. It must not have been at the store I visited yet (Broadway & 4th, I think). I'd really like to smell those candles, though, because the names and descriptions look quite interesting: Green Carnation, White Arum, Lotus Fruit... They look great, and their packaging implies that they're meant to be of the same quality of the Henri Bendel candles and BBW sells, which are spectacular; moreover, the scent descriptions imply that they're complext blends. So I can't wait to see that line. I'd also like to see the Henri Bendel body collection, which I didn't see at the store. I wonder if the scents come off as good as the candle line. Another line on the web site that I don't recall seeing at the store was the True Temptations candle collection (although the name sounds familiar. From the looks of it, just another line of food scents, but sometimes those can be good. Scents like Butterscotch Icing and Cinnamon Coffee make it sound tempting indeed.

Another place I dropped into over the weekend was Pottery Barn, where I smelled their scents. Since I haven't been there in forever, I don't know if anything is actually new. I know, however, that I've seen Citrus Cassis and Paperwhite before, and I love them both. This time around I also saw Fresh Cut, which I quite like (I think it had notes of lime, cilantro and grass, if I remember coreectly), and Cranberry Spice, which was simply wonderful. In fact it might be the holiday scent to use this year. It even seemed to have pine notes in it, which makes me wonder whether I simply am smelling pine notes in all these cranberry fragrances. (I don't think so, because I don't get that tone from The Body Shop's Cranberry oil, which I love too--it's a very deep cranberry smell, and seems to have notes of grape in it. It's much better than most cranberry scents I've smelled.) I may decide to get the Cranberry Spice candle--my roommate had one of their candles before - Moon Grass - and it proved, unpleasantly, to be very strond and effusive; so I have high hopes for the Cranberry Spice as well.

And that's the scent Beep for today.