Farmacia SS. Annunziata dal 1561 Vaniglia del Madagascar and Social Creatures Frankfurt Kitchen

FARMACIA SS ANNUNZIATA DAL 1561 VANIGLIA DEL MADAGASCAR: For starters, the name of this perfume is entirely too long. How in the h*ll are you really supposed to answer should someone ask you what perfume you're wearing?

"Oh, this? It's Farmacia SS Annunziata dal 1561 Vaniglia del Madagascar. You like?"

Halfway through, the other person would have already died of boredom. Or impatience. Or both!

But as for the scent itself -- it's a very nice vanilla, and if you've read this blog previously, you'll know that "very nice" and "vanilla" rarely meet face to face in any of my posts, but Vaniglia del Madagascar manages to butch it up just a bit with some tart lemon and a smattering of parched amber notes.

That doesn't mean that Vaniglia del Madagascar is a masculine scent. Au contraire! It's just not as cupcake pretty as Indult Tihota, or as wistfully sheer as Guerlain Bois d'Arménie. There's a dry, almost sawdust quality that hangs quietly in the back that keeps the mix from overturning the dessert cart and making a mad dine-and-dash for the door.

The official notes include florals, as well, but they appear to be present as fillers and smoothers, so you aren't going to get a big old lungful of gardenia to go with your pound cake this time around. Scent notes: lemon, floral notes, amber notes and Madagascar vanilla.

To my nose, this is a dry, satisfying vanilla scent that's pretty much the same six hours later as it is when it first comes out of the bottle. There's much to be commended in simplicity, especially when it's applied to vanilla perfumes.

I wonder how the Farmacia Vaniglia compares to the Serge Lutens Un Bois Vanille, which is also supposed to be a dry, woodsy vanilla scent . . . ?

SOCIAL CREATURES FRANKFURT KITCHEN: I'm not as forgiving of tea in my fragrances as I am of vanilla (see: Parfum d'Empire Ambre Russe), and Frankfurt Kitchen is chock full of the stuff, which makes it a non-starter in my book.

I'd like to be more generous and talk about the scent's potential redeeming qualities even in the face of its tidal wave of tea, but there's not much else about it that I find particularly redeeming. I can say this, however -- if you like fragrances that smell strongly of tea, Frankfurt Kitchen might be your match made in heaven.

Listed scent notes: tangerine, orange, peppermint, cocoa, coffee, osmanthus, blackcurrant, vanilla, honey and cistus. So how does all that combine to create tea? I have no idea. I think it's the peppermint in combination with the fruits, honey and osmanthus. It reeks of a pot of sugared Orange Pekoe with a candy jar of peppermints on the side.

The peppermint lingers, but does manage to tone itself down by magnitudes as the hours go by, though that still leaves us with the sugary, watery tea. By itself. And no interesting embellishments.

If purchasing a Social Creatures fragrance is something you feel you absolutely must do, Rebel Ambush and Utopian are both superior (imo) to Frankfurt Kitchen in both concept and execution. But hey, two out of three aint bad.