Review of Stella McCartney, Stella

Flowers, flowers, flowers. This is such a soft scent, but do not expect to smell citrusy or "fresh" while wearing this. Even though it supposedly contains mandarin (a type of orange) scent, I did not detect this at all. If you want to smell feminine, soft and graceful, while running the risk of smelling quasi-mature, then you may want to try this one out. In my opinion, the rose and amber are the strongest scents in this one.

This is probably because they also used rose absolute in this formula. I wish they had mixed some aquatic water scents in with the rose, because then you would likely not smell like wilting roses but rather *fresh* roses after the scent mixes in with your body chemistry over time.

Maybe it is because they also have peony flower along with the rose. Keep it simple, guys -- it's all about getting the right combination of complementing scents. I don't think the peony flower complements the rose very well, but that's just my opinion. The peony lends a very "green" yet slightly stagnant smell to the rose, and adds a dimension which I don't favor. It's considered to be somewhat of a green note, and I think they were aiming to add freshness to the rose smell by mixing in the peony, but it just doesn't seem to work well, in my opinion.

If you have a very fresh, clean-scented perfume with strong aquatic notes, you may want to layer it on top of Stella, just make sure that your own scent doesn't have stong clashing flower scents in it like honey-suckle or magnolia, or any strong musks. The rose should be the dominant scent for this one. Examples of aquatic notes would be perfumes containing water lily, hosta, and/or osmanthus, sort of like how some Lacoste perfumes smell.