Jennifer Lopez Love and Glamour (2010): American Pragmatic Prettiness {Fragrance Review} {Celebrity Perfume}

The latest JLo fragrance, Love and Glamour, was created by perfumers Honorine Blanc and Harry Fremont of Firmenich. It illustrates, more than Jennifer Lopez's bio, a way of life imagined and researched, into which one will be able to best integrate the perfuming gesture...

Notes are Italian mandarin, guava and nectarine pulp / a heart of water lily, coconut orchid, orange flower absolute and jasmine petals / sandalwood, sensual musk and amber.

While the list of notes feels déjà vu on paper, Jennifer Lopez did stress that creativity was a goal,

"Making the bottle, creating the packaging, creating the campaign -- it's all so much easier than creating the juice. You always want to create something signature -- that's always kind of what I'm pushing for when working with Coty. You want it to be a combination that people have never smelled before. It's always an exciting time, because the sky's the limit and it can go in any direction."

This direction is an assessment of the busy American way of life and the practice of daily multi-tasking, especially for women.

The singer is known for her first fragrance which was a hit, Glow. It is easy to diss a celebrity fragrance as pure marketing and fake appearances. In Lopez's case, her fragrances are generally very good, much more so than the bling-rich bottles might let you anticipate. Her trademark olfactory signature, which runs throughout her scents, is a musky trail which is particularly well-balanced - even enthralling.

Love and Glamour is no exception. This is a citrusy, musky perfume with floral overtones. A light creamy peach sweetens the mix. As the composition dries down, it reveals a clean woody facet making you think of fresh, white pine. The composition comes across as effective, as well as feminine and sensual.

"Effective" for an American, masstige fragrance generally means long-lasting and with a measure of serious diffusive power. This results in a Love and Glamour scent, which is both delicate and hard-pouncing.

The musk is ethereal, but the citruses remind you of citric acid more than a grove of lemon tree tops swaying in the breeze. Clearly, this eau de parfum is not meant to invite you to daydream but to function as the perfume-arm of your daily shower. It smells exceedingly clean. You can depart from your home in the morning knowing that you will smell as fresh as a lemony rose - probably all day long.

If this pragmatic aspect is not poetic, the perfume however smells great; "Great" in this vague yet unambiguous American sense filled with enthusiasm and positivity. The fragrance is designed to project, not to lure you into sticking your discerning nose onto your arm to spy a host of arcane nuances. This does not mean that the perfume lacks subtlety. Fineness it does contain, but wrapped inside a mainstream American cult for clean-as-a-whistle perfumes. If you want to smell of a style which is as identifiable as Bauhaus architecture, you can turn to the scent of American Pragmatic Prettiness.