With some perfumes, you know from the first instant. Although I am a tremendous flirt who can declare perfumes bottle-worthy that I know in my heart I never intend to buy, I am not so fickle that I don't know the difference between temporary smitten-ness and true love. Mostly. I mean, I am getting better.The terrific Angela from Now Smell This sent me a decant of S-Perfume 100% Love last year sometime. Unfortunately for 100% Love, I was already 100% gone on the Vol de Nuit parfum she included in that care package as well. Between that and Jolie Madame (also in the care package--if you don't already know, Angela has flawless taste), I had no time for 100% Love. It went into box o'samples sometime last January, until I fished it out a couple of months ago.
100% Love contains notes of red fruit (a jammy raspberry and/or red currant, perhaps), green sap, rose, incense, and black cacao. It's a powdery fragrance through and through, but not at all coy or grandmotherly. This smells like baby powder for adults, a soothing and sensual blend of notes. (Note: This does not smell like actual baby powder.) If it really were a powder, it would be finely milled and expensive, perhaps with a slight shimmer, and would beg to be applied by a Caron puff. The sweet sharpness of the red fruit comes through at the top and provides a jammy undertone that turns deeper and darker as the incense starts to develop. The rose is prominent through the full development, blood red but also slightly green. It reminds me a bit of the rose in Diptyque's L'Ombre dans L'Eau, if it were tricked out like a lady performer at the Moulin Rouge.
I put this in a category with two other perfumes in this powdery genre I love, Iris Poudre and Parfum Sacre. Iris Poudre is graceful and sophisticated iris, Parfum Sacre is hauntingly melancholy deep powdery spice. 100% Love is deeply sensual and comforting. I can't help thinking that this is the sort of scent you'd want your love to think of as yours and yours alone.
And so, I declare this bottle-worthy. I declare this is love, one-hundred percent. Heck, make it a thousand! I'm not at all surprised to find that 100% Love was created by Sophia Grojsman, who created a couple of my other favorite perfumes: Prescriptives Calyx, which is a staple in my perfume wardrobe, always, and Coty Exclamation, which, although cheap (in price) and available in drugstores, rivals some of the best soft orientals out there. Only one point of confusion: I notice that the year of creation for 100% Love is noted as 2003, 2005, and 2007, although I haven't seen the list of notes change. Don't break my heart, 100% Love! Don't go changing! (Good grief. I have taken leave of my senses.)
*image from Barneys (P.S.--Does anyone else look at the shape of that bottle--especially the cap--and think Love's Baby Soft? If the juice were pink...it would be close!)
