Dreams // A New Perfume

True story: We popped into a little store to pick up a few needed things and ended up wandering around the new beauty releases for spring. Once back outside, unchaining our bikes and getting ready to take off a fragrance that definitely was not there when we first arrived now permeated the air. What is that?! We started sniffing ourselves but it only seemed to be in the air and no one in the store smelled anything remotely the way this smelled. I remember thinking Angel... Thierry Mugler Angel is that you?

We road off but a couple miles away we stopped because the scent was still with us and it caused fears that something we bought was leaking in our panniers. Thankfully nothing was but it only caused things to get more and more curious. Once we made it back to our final destination the scent had completely gone. That's when I remembered that I had held and tried to get a whiff of a new fragrance created for your hair while out shopping. The only thing was it smelled so different from the hauntingly lovely scent outside which I now had to find...

THE REVIEW >

The hair fragrance in the store was Mariah Carey's new spring release Dreams and from the quick glimpse I got was the same overtly fruity scent you smell everywhere nowadays. Completely different from the melodic scent we experienced outside. Still I decided to go look at the notes for Dreams and instantly knew I needed to go back... salted caramel, toasted almonds, tonka bean, honeysuckle. This sounded like floral-gourmand heaven and very similar to what was swirling around us outside. I also learned it's an Elizabeth Arden fragrance, the same as cult favorite Fantasy and the fleet of Juicy Couture scents. While my experience with celebrity scents is not a whole lot, I've found Arden's versions to smell on par with the fragrances they sell at counter.

A good floral-gourmand does not come out often so I went back only to find all of the Dreams fragrances gone. Pushing aside a few Killer Queen's there was one lonely eau de parfum left which came home with me. Spritzing a tiny bit on a wrist immediately garnered coos of oh now that's nice from others. As the day wore on it got better and better and 7 hours later it was still there, reminding me of something else. Kate Walsh's Boyfriend, breaking it out to compare the two, it seems on here I'm forever looking for dearly departed and discontinued Boyfriend in everything. Dreams has the same feel but without the dark plum and myrrh of Boyfriend. What Dreams leaves out is actually just as good as what lays inside. There is nothing pepper spicy, powdery or smoldering with incense. No berries or sugared plums. The floral notes, only a whisper.

When you first spritz it on you get the fruity and candied green apple.  It's a novel form which quickly shape shifts between a ripe pineapple, fresh cucumbers, a sweet honeydew melon and a Jolly Rancher which I'm guessing is the typically cool, metallic freesia mingling with everything else. Almost aquatic in this case, I liked how these freshened Dreams up to the point of perhaps wearing it on through summer evenings. Something my beloved Burberry Brit EDT would always have to be retired for. Then comes the good part of an almost honeyed amber note, warm vanilla, caramel which borders on a chocolate and a definite saltiness. Sometimes it's almost beachy and at other times, an alluringly edible, musky skin scent.

So happy I took a chance on Dreams and now can mark Lalique's L'Air du temps bottle (for display purposes only) off my wish list too.

Image: mam for Gave That