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tril111 – :
I have been wearing this since I was 16 years old. It has a delightful fragrance and I just love it.
RUsCictcotound – :
Reminds me of Autumn! Leafy and spicy. Very strong, I have the oil though. My best friend April Miller used to wear this in high school and got me hooked.
A little goes a long long way…
RED34 – :
I have HOPE and INTERLUDE bath oils to wear for longevity. I wrote to Frances Denney and the company practically swore there has never been a reformulation. I receive mailers from Denney. Both fragrances come in so many forms for layering. I wore HOPE in high school and INTERLUDE in my early years of teaching. Both are beautiful.
1burlak – :
Wow, this one is quite different from anything in my collection. It’s spicy in the opening. Reminds me of clove oil. Then it begins to soften & the woods peek through with some cinnamon & then comes in some vanilla. It’s very pretty.
Doesn’t remind me of anything else I own
grifin – :
On Ebay I was able to buy a 1.7 ounce bottle of Frances Denney’s “Essence of Hope”. I haven’t smelled “Hope” so I can only assume this is a more concentrated version of “Hope”. I have only one thing to say: stunning. That’s a beauty to treasure. It came in a frosted bottle, placed in a gold box. I need to try “Hope” but I am afraid I will be disappointed after smelling this one.
ika080 – :
So beautiful that it has nearly brought me to tears tonight. Maybe it’s my emotional time of the month…
Vintage. No fruity-floral here.
Spicy
Soft woods.
Powdery.
Soft rose.
A whisper of sweet.
It makes me think of vintage cosmetics. If I had ever had the chance to sit at the dressing tables of Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grabel, Bettie Page, Mae West and all of those classic vintage beauties, Hope is how I would imagine the scent would be, sitting there. Heavenly!
Dimon-Pokemon – :
I am proudly holding a new bottle of Hope – ordered directly from the Frances Denney website. Though the company has been sold and these are obviously not being made anymore – the bottle I received is fresh, vintage stock. Hurrah!
First of all, the comments about Hope being a gorgeous cinnamon oriental are absolutely on track. BUT. That leaves much to the imagination, particularly where Hope is concerned. The opening blast is quite strong, and I wouldn’t in any way describe this as typical cinnamon buns.
Having never smelled Woodhue, there is no way I can compare the two. My little nose detects no fragrance with enough in common for an apt comparison. Hope is UNIQUE.
The first spray nearly knocked me over, to be honest. We’re talking about lovely latex, powerful powder, bombastic baby wipes, and high pitched cinnamon. The total effect? Rather like that baby nursery I remember from childhood, complete with the ever present Cinnamon Renuzit air freshener. Whew. On fabric, this initial impression lingers for Hours, so I recommend first testing Hope on skin!
In just a few minutes the powerful first wave settles to an almost skin scent, which then lingers beautifully, longingly, for at least 5 hours. Gentle, haunting, and lovely, Hope is at once memorable and indefinable. I’ve truly smelled nothing like it anywhere, yet the aura is simultaneously familiar. Here are the notes I smell, though they do not in any way fully define the effect:
Cinnamon ( of course! )
Strong Powder – which softens quickly
Baby Wipes – ditto
Latex – ditto
Almonds or Marzipan
Anise
Sandalwood
Dusty Rose Potpourri – like a mere HINT of ‘Interlude’
and Carnation(!), which freshens the entire composition.
The overall aura would be different to everyone. For me, it smells a bit like inedible Christmas gingerbread – minus the molasses. Inedible because it also contains the rose scented powder from Grandma’s dressing table!
No molasses in the gingerbread means no balsamic notes. The song is in a higher register, more like snickerdoodles – with anise added. I don’t recommend eating these either, sweet and delectable though they are, because underneath lurks a bit of Grandpa. That’s right, I’m smelling an undertone of Old Spice!
All of these impressions put together are not adequate to help anyone make a perfect blind buy. Such a thing does not exist anyway. But I do hope those vintage lovers interested will obtain Hope while she’s still available. You’re unlikely to be disappointed, and CERTAINLY not bored. 😉
Recommended for adventuresome vintage lovers. <3
newnasya – :
This review is for vintage Hope.
If have to say so myself, even as a young girl of 12 I had the heart of a perfumista. The first scent of my own that my mother gave me was Frances Denney’s HOPE. I loved it and even though I was only a pre-teen, when I first smelled Hope I had that feeling of déjà vu or being transported to some other time, even though I had not yet lived enough life to have experienced any other time or place. As years passed I became more interested in the bottles that perfumes came in than the perfumes themselves, but I still chose “signature scents” along my journey to adulthood that seemed to serve as a kind of budding perfumista rites of passage. After I moved on from Hope there was Bakir, then YSL’s Opium, then Habanita. By then I was in my late teens.
However, even with all of the wonderful fragrances I experienced over the years, Hope was always in the back of my mind, haunting me. I would often think back to the time when, as a young girl I stood on the slate steps in front of my house watching the sun set. I had just applied a bit of Hope to my neck and had caught a whiff of it in the warm, late evening breeze. As years passed I would remember that moment and the sweet floral/Oriental richness of Hope. I often wondered if I ever got the chance to smell it again, would it be as wonderful as I remembered it to be.
Curiosity got the best of me, so last week I searched Ebay for vintage Hope, not wanting to risk being disappointed by one of the many new and possibly reformulated-to-death bottles available all over the internet. What I found was a vintage bottle with a completely glass stopper that contained what remained of ½ an ounce of Hope pure parfum that was dark as tea. Apparently, no one else was interested, so I bid and won. I received the bottle a couple of days later. As I unwrapped it from its 2 inch thick cocoon of bubble and Saran wrap, I could faintly smell it and my heart started pounding as I thought of how I was finally holding the smell of my childhood (and the seed of my perfume obsession) in my hands at the age of 51. When I finally reached the bottle and opened it, I swooned. Hope was better than I remembered and I suddenly realized that I had come full circle because every perfume that I have adored in these many years of perfume collecting (Shalimar, Vol de Nuit, L’Heure Bleue, and many more) was influenced by that first perfume experience.
andreyn777 – :
My small decant of Donna Karan’s Wenge arrived today…When I dabbed a little on my left wrist, it immediately took me down memory lane…This olfactory delicacy was indeed the sister of Hope…
Hope is definitely a classic fragrance that is woody, a tad smokey, incensy, spicy, floral and just downright sexy…It must have African wenge wood in it because that’s what grabs mah nose as soon as I take a whiff…
It is naughty but nice; spicy and floral, yet intoxicatingly tempting enough to wear either by day or night…
lydayfabs – :
Hope is such a unique fragrance! I wore it in high school and then ordered some recently 15 years later and it’s not reformulated at all, it’s just as I remembered. A very gentle oriental fragrance with a quiet undertone to it that is soft. I really think of feminine pipe tobacco if there is such a thing. The fragrance stays close to the skin but lasts all day. I smell a bit of floral in with that pipe tobacco. There’s nothing else like it that I have found.
valenkor – :
I was quite young shopping with my Mother and Sister and found this lovely perfume. I immediately brought it to my Mother’s attention. She, too, was enchanted with it’s elegant loveliness and purchased it for us. That was many years ago. When I learned it was still available, I ordered a bottle and can report that the years have not changed my appreciation for this under-exposed treasure of a perfume! While many heard of Frances Denney’s “Interlude”, the softer “Hope” never enjoyed the mass popularity of that time…but, I think it is absolutely a timeless classic.
fish – :
An unusual perfume: a quiet oriental. This was sweet and spicy in a subtle, barely there way. Discreet and intimate, it was perfect for moments made just for two.
karp24 – :
Hope has been around for over 50 years and it’s truly beautiful. It has a sweetness, but it’s not too sweet. Even has a tobacco-like note in it. Nothing else like it, in my opinion. The Frances Denney web site sells many in the Hope and Interlude range at very reasonable prices.