Frugal Frags #2: Fall picks

My perfume goddesses, Gwen and Kay of perfumeniche.com, are sympathetic (to a point) about my eternal search for a satisfying, if not fabulous, budget fragrance. I can't argue with the you-get-what-you-pay for principle, though I find some designer products egregiously overpriced.

You too might be scouting for a pleasing but not pricey scent, so today's windows hold a new assortment. (See the first Frugal Frags post for the initial list and readers' contributions.)

As the days shorten and chill, my fragrance mood shifts. A few drops really do act as therapy. Kay's latest list suits all hemispheres. All suggestions below are available as decants at Gwen and Kay's perfumeniche.com site. I haven't listed full bottle price because of variation among vendors, but none of these are pricey. Maybe for the next fragrance post I'll give them an unlimited budget, which kind of scares me.

• Vetiver by Guerlain: "Green, grassy and fresh"
• Encre Noir by Lalique: "Vetiver, licorice and woods"
• Tocade by Rochas: "Rose and vanilla"
• Omnia by Bulgari: "Spices, tea and sandalwood"
• Diva by Ungaro: "Spices, rose, honey, moss"
• Aromatics Elixir by Clinique: "Floral, leather, woods, moss"
• Sensuous by Estée Lauder: "White floral, woods, amber"
• White Diamonds by Elizabeth Taylor: "Classic chypre, floral, warm and woody"

and three by Etat de Libre Orange:

• Bijoux Romantique: "Coconut, woody vanilla"
• Like This: "Citrus, spice, immortelle"
• You or Someone Like You: "Mint, rose, grasses"

Kay also gave a nod to several Yves Rocher fragrances, Comme Une Evidence Green, Vanille Noir, and Monoi Eau de Vahines, which she calls "the best beach skin-scent".

I'm warning you off one I named in the first frugal frags post: Sarah Jessica Parker Lovely. A drop in quality (to which commenter hummingbird5 alluded) happened each time distributors changed after the original, Coty Prestige—but the precipitous plunge came when the most recent, Lovely Distribution Inc., stepped in.

You can see the difference; note the pinker juice in the the Lancaster bottle. Lancaster was the second distributor, and a step down from the original Coty product. The greyish juice sold by the current distributor (bottle at far right, Lovely Distribution), has been described by furious customers as "a total absence of any scent but alcohol."

An e-mail exchange with a well-known online vendor confirmed what I thought. He would not quite call the LD product a travesty but said "certainly the Lancaster version is better."

The silver lining in the Lovely cloud is that I resolved to find other frugal buys; warm thanks to Kay for sharing her expertise with us.