10/18/12

Amor Amor (Cacharel)



With the Halloween season in full swing, it's time to take a look at one of perfumery's unintentional "creepy" perfumes, this one by Cacharel. It's none other than Amor Amor, an off-beat fruity-floral that I suppose qualifies as some sort of "lipstick floral," due to the waxy sweetness it exhibits in its heart. Bearing in mind that perfumistas take a generally dim view of fruity-florals (it's hard to say exactly why), expectations were rather neutral when I tried this scent. I liked its suggestive red bulb-bottle, wondered a little at the bloody looking rose-like flower on the box, the gothic lettering, and in the seconds before that first spritz, figured I was probably in for a standard sweet 'n sour aquatic. And then I spritzed, and smelled, and took a few minutes to think about what was on my arm.

The scent bears little relation to its packaging, which seems rather disturbing and industrial, and instead opens up as an unabashed fruit salad, with sparkling notes of mandarin, apricot, and apple. It's fairly well done, very fresh and light, with identifiable components. Eventually it blends into a chewy-sweet cherry, with darker berry and rose elements. The rose is synthetic and shrill, but tamed by the one-track mind of a scent that does "red fruit notes" as exclusively as this. Here they jockey loudly for the role of soothsayer, rounding roughly-hewn chemical contours with emphasis, not apathy. 

At the tail end is a sheer vanilla base with a dollop of cheap musk. Obviously intended for young women, I can't help but think this would go well on a sixty-something woman whose body has forsaken the concept of time, and bestowed upon her the gift of eternal sexiness, but I'm just extrapolating known variables from subjective experience.