Miss Dior Originale - is it my pregnancy hormones or does it smell like cat piss

[Philoslothy]

Before I get flamed, I have sprayed it and smiled with great enthusiasm to my children. However I am practically heaving from the smell.

Is it my hormones or is it a really bad perfume?

It's your nose. We all smell perfumes differently, and you associate it with cat piss. It is a great classic though so lots of people perceive it differently.

Always when I sniff Müller Thurgau wine it makes me think of cat piss. I can backtrack that memory to a hot day in the Rhine valley, vineyards, steep stairs, feeling close to fainting with thirst and exhaustion, and lots of cats.

I am not sure whether cat piss is right, maybe I have sprayed too much. I can hardly breathe because of the smell. I feel very mean, they thought I would love it - and that is the impression I have given

Nah it's not just me, checked and lots of professional wine tasters smell cat's pee in Müller Thurgau and Sauvignon Blanc too, and there is a specific compound responsible for it. Often sulphur in small quantities is responsible for off notes - I think some people smell grapefruit aromachemicals in perfume as cat's pee, and I heard that some chemist developed sulphur-free fruit aromas so that more people would smell them as intended.

My sense of smell and taste were hyperacute when pregnant, I could not go near fishmonger's, a whiff of bleach made me heave and could suddenly taste salt in my favorite chocolate. So it could be that you are abnormally perceptive right now!

How about a sneaky swap? Miss Dior Originale can be daunting, they probably meant to get you Miss Dior Cherie, now confusingly called Miss Dior iirc... (Smell it first of course - it's fruity and totally different but the bottle is very similar.)

No they meant to get this one, I bought one of my daughter's the other miss dior and she chose this grown up version for me

It is a great classic, but chypres can be difficult.

I've started liking quite a few difficult, grown up perfumes that I initially disliked. Put it away for a bit, spray a tiny bit on a handkerchief (not on skin) and give it a few tries. There are quite a few things in MDO that can smell daunting: aldehydes, green notes, traces of leather, mossy notes... If this doesn't work, I think it's time for your DDs to learn that buying perfume for someone else can backfire, as everyone has highly personal likes and dislikes...

It has died down a little, I think that perhaps in a effort to cover my disappointment when I saw what it was, I may have sprayed a little to liberally.

Although it does smell like a cheap coty perfume that my Mum and grandma used to wear.

. Before I became pregnant with DD (now 4.4), my absolute favourite scent was Chanel Sycomore. Delicious, dry vetiver. I could have drowned myself in it, I loved it so much. Pregnancy hormones put paid to that and seem to have permanently tripped something in my nose/brain, because I still can't stand it. In general I now find vetiver to be a harder note to cope with and on some days find it disgusting. First world problem, I know. But it does annoy me!

Ever since i saw a MNer refer to it as Misty Whore, I've never been able to think of it without a snigger.

Chypres can smell grannyish. They were a dominant perfume family in their day and there were cheap dimestore versions too.

For the longest time, I associated Mitsouko with musty furcoats And Ma Griffe smells like beige underwear But I've started to appreciate and wear quite a few chypres.

Assassin vetiver is a strong note, it tends to dominate. It could also be that there is a strong undercirrent of Iso E Super in Sycomore (cannot remember exactly). I've grown tired of its use as a basenote and any perfume that boils down to Iso E Super (you can smell it relatively pure in Molecule 01 by Escentric Molecules - it goes on for ever) will never be worn again by me.

I couldn't stand perfumes when I was pregnant but have returned to normal

Careful with the enthusiasm though, there is a risk of getting this every Xmas, birthday and Mother's Day for years if you overdo the enthusiasm.

It was the other Miss Dior (Cherie?) that DH bought me, I felt really ungrateful, but it really did smell like the smell Tom cats make when they spray.

I have been out to shovel horse shit which appears to have mellowed the smell even further. Am now smelling rather delicious.