LIPSTICK ROSE

6/14/15

Rose. Violet. Musk. Vanilla. Vetiver. Amber. Grapefruit.

Boudoirs and violets and rouge, oh my!!!  Notwithstanding that while in general I have the directional capability of a zygote and it was a miracle that I passed through the birth canal during labor instead of somehow meandering up north (yes, I am THAT directionally-challenged), whilst testing this perfume, I was so uplifted and immersed that I trilled away to the car radio and drove well on past the place I was meant to be going.  And when I realized my error, I couldn’t have cared less, and kept on going.

Lipstick Rose is a 1940’s Hollywood temptress of a perfume and I feel like I should be YouTubing Victory Roll tutorials and stuffing into a corset. It smells like violet-laced cosmetic pigment and that you somehow stole a ride back in time to being a curious and slightly brash girl, delving into your 20 year old grandmother’s makeup collection when she turned her back for a moment and trying it all out for the first time, going very overboard and layering the products over each other in an effort to savor it all before wily Grandma turned around and it was forbidden again.  This was the era when people talked about rouge and dusting powder. These days there is a consensus on makeup needing to be formulated without smell, but this hearkens back to the days where you wouldn’t trust it if didn’t stink to high hell.  The powdery-boudoir violet accords are seductive and delectable in their flowery duet with the starry-eyed rose.  There is also an association with violet candies.  It evokes the colors red and purple to me.  Purple is what I use to describe anything with a lot of violet or iris and red is not for the rose, but for the sex, cause this lipstick juice is dripping with it.  It’s the Vogue ad of glamor; city lights and sleek cars and vroom vroom vroom on every level.  There is reason I can’t give it a five, and that is because it is very heady.  To wear it for the whole day causes me to lapse into a drunken-ish stupor, like I have overindulged on too much chocolate cake.  I prefer to wear this in the evening because Lipstick Rose was born from the night and of the night; a vampyr that wasn’t destined for daylight hours.  Save it for date night, ladies.

Rating: 4 Rita Hayworths reclining on a chaise.