Love and Grace

Hello Fellow Perfume Aficionados,

Many serious perfume lovers out there won't even give a second thought to mainstream fragrances. These days, mainstream fragrances are often celebrity fragrances, ones that have been formulated for mass appeal and annual sales in the tens of millions of dollars.Very often, these fragrances are cavity-inducing amalgamations of fruit, flowers, and a grade of vanilla that can best be described as something resembling vanilla blossom-scented Lysol, or a bottle of artificial vanilla flavoring. Maybe, if you're between the ages of 12 and 16, you find fragrances from Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, and Rhianna appealing. If you hang on every move Beyonce makes, chances are, you wear one of her fragrances. Unfortunately, in the eyes of many a perfumista, fragrance is one area Queen Bey does not excel in. Sure, she's an amazing performer, but to quote one of my fragrance loving friends, her signature scent, Heat, smells like "unwashed lady parts and canned peaches."

So, where does that leave a line like Philosophy? In my opinion, the company's skin care and fragrance products are mainstream, since they are available in department stores like Macy's and Nordstrom, as well as at Sephora, and at a mess of e-tailers. Moreover, the brand is the star attraction at QVC, where it is flogged endlessly by bubbly show hosts and animated company reps who manage to succeed at selling fragrances, unsniffed, to the home shopping customer.

Philosophy has been around since 1997. It started as a niche brand of skin care, and expanded to include fragrances, and scented bath and body products. The line was originally available at Barney's, but the company's founder, Cristina Carlino, wanted to reach a broader market. She left Barney's, hooked up with QVC and the rest, eventually selling her creation to Coty about two years ago.

Amazing Grace is Philosophy's signature scent, a light, easy-to-wear floral/musk blend that launched a genre of inoffensive, anti-elevator scents that don't enter a room ten minutes before you do. It was followed by Pure Grace, a soap-and-water type scent, and Falling in Love, a blackberry-vanilla-musk confection. From there, the line has morphed into the "State of Grace" and "Love Stories" franchises, with entire wardrobes of scents, and coordinating body products.

Amazing Grace came along at an interesting time in the fragrance industry. It was released post-CK One, when the market was flooded with lighter, unisex scents that were the antithesis of the in-your-face fragrances released during the 1980s. at first, I found Amazing Grace to be too floral, but I believe the formula was tweaked a bit to make it lighter and muskier.

The subsequent Grace scents include Pure Grace, Baby Grace, Inner Grace, Eternal Grace, and the latest, Living Grace. In the Love category, there is Falling in Love, Unconditional Love, and Love Sweet Love. None of these scents are groundbreaking; in fact, some of them are dead-ringers for other scents already on the market. Pure Grace is an exact duplicate of Clean Ultimate; Inner Grace, Lovely Sarah Jessica Parker; Eternal Grace, Issey Miyake; Falling in Love, Trish McEvoy No. 9. At first, the similarities bothered me, but the truth is, the Philosophy scents are well done for what they are, and a better value for what you get. If you love to layer your scents, you can buy liter sizes of shower gels and body lotions from QVC, and 4 ounce bottles of the fragrances for less than $100. These days, when you can't get an interesting niche fragrance for less than $150, scents like these from Philosophy make great staples when you want to spritz with abandon without worrying about breaking the bank.

My favorites are Amazing Grace, Pure Grace, Living Grace (lily of the valley, neroli and musk), Baby Grace (a single note linden scent), Falling in Love, and Unconditional Love (black currant, vanilla, musk). The scents are interchangeable and easily layered with Amazing Grace and Falling in Love body lotions. If you want a wardrobe of no-brainer scents that don't smell like the typical mainstream celebrity and teeny-bopper scents, Philosophy might very well be the line for you.

My former collection included these scents, as does the one I am in the process of creating.

With love and fragrant wishes,

Nava