Mimosa Glow

Mimosa - 05, originally uploaded by Marie-Poppy2.

Early evening yesterday, I stepped into the drugstore to check my mail, and swept by the $19.99 shelf to find the tall frosted JLo Glow awaiting redemption from its place of non-glory. I thought I’d snatch it as a gift for my friend Tina, who loves spraying it on her hair and clothes (and it always makes her smell like she just washed her hair when she does). And right than and there, I decided to give it another try.

When Glow came out, I dismissed it as too sharp, too synthetic and too soapy to my taste. While this remains true for the first few minutes, I became pleasantly surprised when trying it on my skin for the first time in 8 years. In a world that sees a rapid life cycle for celebrity scents, JLo’s Glow is probably considered a classic by now, rivaled only by Sarah Jessica Parker Lovely.

What awaited me after the initial rash of synthetic orange blossom was something I did not expect. Although familiar, it took me a few minutes to figure it out… Provence! Shimmering mimosas, honeycombs and good old French milled soap. And a little bit of freesia too, which gives it just a touch of peppery greenness. And than a sweetness crept in, vanilla against mimosa, and I was in heaven for a few hours. By bedtime most of what I could smell was musk though, and that was the song I woke up to the next morning.

If Narcisso Rodriguez’s dry down resembles laundry detergent musk, Glow resembles whatever musk they like to put in milled soaps to keep your skin fragrantly “clean” for hours after washing. In that regard, the scent really is true to what it always claimed to be, starting from the ad copy, frosted glass that is reminiscent of a shower cell’s sliding doors and shaped like a yuppie shampoo bottle, to the image of Jennifer Lopez herself scrubbing all the ghetto-dirt from her perfectly carved abs and curves.