New August Launches: Candy and Black Dahlias from Prada and Givenchy

Since I have a ravenous sweet tooth we'll begin with the sweets - Prada Candy.  I was very excited about this fragrance when I first came across the ad.  It was sassy, vibrant and fun, and with descriptors like 'Feeling gay, reckless, too.  Care free mind, all the time', who wouldn't want to enliven their life with a little bit of Prada Candy?

It is sold exclusively at Neiman Marcus, so as soon as I could I hustled to the nearest one and tried it out myself.  And the assessment?  It didn't make me feel overly gay or reckless, I'm sorry to say, and this was because the perfume was nothing more than ordinary.  It opens with sweet top notes (caramel the marketing claims, but that really just means ethyl maltol) and then moves into deep musks with a base of the powdery vanillic facets of benzoin.  The dry down is very beautifully rich due to the fabulous mixture of musk and benzoin.  While not as dynamic as the ad implies, if you like a sweet fragrance with a rich, gourmand oriental bottom, you may think about picking this one up.


While I was at Neiman Marcus I thought I would take the chance to sample another fragrance that launched there exclusively: Dahlia Noir by Givenchy.  Words that characterize this fragrance are dark, imaginative, mysterious, seductive:

Does the fragrance live up to its marketing?  It is definitely a deep fragrance that is not to be worn lightly.  You can immediately smell the top notes of rose, which are entwined with the heavy, multifaceted middle and bottom notes of iris, powder, patchouli, sandalwood and tonka bean.

Givenchy claims to have created a 'Flower Fatale' in their chypre floral fragrance, but mostly I just think they've create a 'Flower Soixante Plus' - a fragrance for the over 60s.

Both Prada Candy and Dahlia Noir by Givenchy have interesting aspects, but overall neither provides anything new nor exciting to the fragrance world.  I guess I'll have to keep waiting for my new fall fragrance ... remind me again, when does the Tom Ford Violet Blonde come out?