In 2020, I got a small bottle of Tory Burch’s Knock on Wood (2019) and a sample set of Taylor Swift’s Wonderstruck (2011) and Wonderstruck Enchanted (2012).
So far, for 2021, I have gotten three perfumes: a mini bottle of Michael by Michael Kors (2000), two sample vials of Chanel No. 5 L’eau (2016), and a small bottle of Wonderstruck.
The Knock on Wood fragrance is spare and interesting. It took some time to grow on me. I think, that like Just Like Heaven, it is something that will be important to me and that I may want again in future. It isn’t strong so I’m not afraid to splash it on. It reminds me of walking amongst the rebuilt industrial sections in Fort Worth, those restaurants and coffee shops they’ve made with reclaimed wood, and that paved trail by the Trinity River.
Knock and Wood and Just Like Heaven have very different notes, but they’re both very similar in how they smell so clear and direct, nothing cloying or mysterious about them at all.
I ended up enjoying both Wonderstruck and Wonderstruck Enchanted. I regretted selling my travel size of Wonderstruck I purchased back when it was first released without giving it a chance. Now that I’ve lived with it for a while, I like it. It has a little more mystique than the Tory Burch scents, but it very much has a clear, direct quality.
I’d like to get a small bottle of Wonderstruck Enchanted at some point. The fragrance intrigues me in how it smells somewhat winter-y. I read some comments that it smells unisex, and I can see that.
Michael by Michael Kors was what I remembered from the perfume strip ad in 2000, but I wasn’t able to connect with it. I’ve used about half of the mini-bottle and put it aside to come back to, to see if I can connect with it at a later time. It does have the creamy floral notes that I have always loved above all else. I don’t know if it’s that something is “dated” about it or if it doesn’t work with my body chemistry, but I don’t feel like it suits my style.
Oddly, the only fragrances I have felt truly comfortable wearing out in public are the very recent releases, Chanel No. 5 L’eau and Knock on Wood.
Chanel No. 5 L’eau ended up smelling nothing like the perfume strip ad in my recent copy of Elle. The notes that captivated me from the ad are not in the perfume. It made me wonder if there was some mistake, and the ad was actually for the original Chanel No. 5. There was a much more effeverscent, sharp, champagne-y, challenging quality in the ad that the perfume lacks. It smells like a very polite, inoffensive remake of a vintage fragrance, shaving off all the sharpness and challenging bits that would make it exciting to wear, but still having enough to it that I’ve been very curious to get a bottle of the original Chanel No. 5.
The two that I am curious to try now are Lancome’s Poeme (1995) and Paloma Picasso (1984). I have never smelled either of these perfumes, ever. I was really curious about them when I was a teenager, and they’ve been on my mind lately– the latter because there are so many ads for it in my 1996 Mademoiselle magazines.
Sunlight-Colored Roses 