Poker

This has really grown on me... I can't comment on the similarities with Chanel Chance, but this ML is a classy fragrance with versatility. For me it straddles the powdery and patchouli/chypre categories. The opening brings something like grapefruit, pepper and powder, then I get patchouli and musk which stays rather a long time, rounded off by pineapple. The pineapple makes it different from other similar scents, and it sticks along in the drydown. A friend who does not like mainstream scents and too ladylike ones complimented me on this fragrance. Decent longevity and sillage on me, I prefer to wear this in warmish summer weather, even with a bit of humidity in the air, a thumbs up.

This is an amazing dupe for Chanel chance, to me it smells exactly the same. I own Chanel chance too. When I go on a night out, I will spray myself with the original then take this dupe out with me in my bag to use throughout the night. This is a great idea as when I am out drinking I tend to get a bit "spray happy" and use lots of perfume, also just incase I lose it too. For this reason I am going to buy some of the other dupes for some of the perfumes I own as the are less than £5 each! They last so long, such good quality.

This one is absolutely gorgeous! Doesn't last very long but at that price, I can reapply as much as I want!

A very pleasant surprise in an otherwise unpleasant situation. The year was 2006. The location - Donington Park, Download Music Festival. This was the first music festival I'd ever been away to. I was really excited because I was going to see Metallica and Deftones and G'n'R, Evanescence, Marilyn Manson and a whole bunch of other bands I really like. But I hadn't been camping in about 10 years and really wasn't prepared for the heatwave that hit us whilst we were there. It was mid June, so coming on for the longest days and shortest nights of the year. Sundown lasted a couple of hours and with temperatures reaching 31°C, in an area completely un-shaded (and with our tents perched on top of a hill) staying in that tent beyond 7am was absolutely impossible. Cue me getting the worst sunburn I have ever experienced in my life! Now I'm dark haired and pale skinned. Typical Scottish/Manx/Celtic colouring. When I was younger I used to tan quite well because I was always out and about, but mostly running around. Rarely sat under a blazing, unsheltered, 31°C sun for hours on end. My skin just wasn't used to it. Not only was I peeling from the raw wounds all over my back/neck/shoulders/head, but I couldn't get clean because there was no way in hell that I was about to go and take a communal shower with a bunch of people I didn't know. (And funnily enough, the "just take a bunch of baby wipes with you and wipe yourself clean in your tent every day" advice, really wasn't cutting it. I felt minging!) Right then and there I made an executive decision. I told my boyfriend that the camping thing was a bust and that if we were going to be able to see any of the acts we were interested in, then we'd have to get a room in a nearby hotel and just travel in to the camp/music venue each evening. But of course, most of the hotels were already fully booked up by far more savvy festival goers than I, who had planned ahead with the perfect solution to dying of sun-stroke in a rudimentary camp-site. The only place I could find was at a Travel Lodge that was 10 miles outside of Derby. So every day we'd have to pay for a taxi to & from Derby train station, where the Download Dog Bus, would shuttle us to the festival and back again. Was it a pain in the hoop? Yes. Did it cost me a whole extra tonne of money I'd rather not have had to fork out? Absolutely. Was every penny of it worth the relief that I got from being able to lie in a bath of cold water for hours and go to sleep in a nice clean bed in an air conditioned room? OF COURSE!! Anyways, the perfume? You're wondering where the perfume comes in? Right well, when we decided to up sticks and go check into our hotel room, I decided that we might as well just leave all the tent, sleeping bags, inflatable mattresses etc there for whomever wanted to claim them. I couldn't be bothered to pack them all up and then lug them all back home via coach, then train, then boat & then taxi...all the way to my house in the Isle of Man. We told the people in the tent next to us that the tent was free to a good home; heck if they just wanted to use it as a storage room, go for it. But what I also forgot when we left, was that I'd brought some perfumes, deodorant and skin-care in a little cooler that I'd sequestered between the two layers of tent, hoping to keep it cooler and safer. I just clear forgot to take it with us. At this point I was close to being broke, after having had to spend an extra £600 on all this other stuff. I had no moisturiser, no cleanser, no SPF, no deodorant and no perfume. I managed to pick up some cheap skincare and deodorant from a small supermarket near our hotel, but I still needed a perfume. Yes needed. I always need perfume. I'm naked without it. But I wasn't going to go and fork out another £100 to replace my Jean Paul Gaultier & Body Shop White Musk. When we returned to the site to see the evening's acts on the 2nd day, we first went to the camp market to pick up a couple of hats, which we hoped would also help to keep the sun off of us. But next to the hat stall was a guy selling a bizarre combination of both head-shop legal-highs (well they were legal at the time, lol) and a bunch of these Milton Lloyd fragrances. I smelled a couple and decided that Poker was actually quite nice (and somewhat familiar) and totally worth the £5 price tag. As soon as I applied it (very liberally, because these fumes come with a pressurised spray mechanism like a body spray!) I immediately felt better. More complete. And the fragrance itself was genuinely pleasant. It took me a while to realise, but I soon clicked that it was a dupe for Chanel Chance which I had back at home. My mood improved straight away. My boyfriend said it smelled both familiar and nice. I also got compliments from a couple of people who were next to us, sat on the grass, watching Marilyn Manson. I was really surprised. I'd never heard of this "brand" before and probably wouldn't have bothered to buy it whilst we were there for the festival, had I not lost all my good stuff. I wore almost the entire bottle out over the next few days. When we got back home, it had about 2cm of juice left in the bottle and I was really impressed with its performance. I compared it to my Chanel Chance EDP and there was definitely a good similarity there. (I imagine it would have been a closer match to the EDT?) Of course it wasn't a subtly blended masterpiece and it had that screechy alcoholic opening that most cheapies do, but the fragrance itself wasn't terrible. That wee bottle of Milton Lloyd Poker got me through those few days spent trying to endure/enjoy the remaining time we had at a festival taking place in an uncivilised level of heat. It even opened me up to the idea of purchasing them again in future...although my most recent return to the brand wasn't exactly the joyous experience that I had with Poker. (For those who want to hear about a less than pleasant encounter with the brand, please check out my recent review of 'Spirit of Heaven', lol) I can't really add anything else about the notes or any of that jazz; this was 14 years ago and my greatest memory of that time was the searing pain I constantly had to go through as my sun-burn continued to make moving in any direction painful (don't even get me started on how devastating it felt every time my bra strap so much as moved a cm right or left on my shoulder/back!) But I do remember that 'Poker' was a life-saver and a very pleasant one at that. Morals of the story? Don't go camping in 31°C heat, when you have no means of cover or shade from the 20hrs of sun each day. Don't be unprepared for things that could ruin your enjoyment of an awesome musical festival line up. But also, don't knock all these cheapies until you've tried them. They might not be grade A class formulations, but they certainly have their place. And if wanting to smell somewhat civilised, in a field full of unwashed moshing, metal-heads ain't that place...then I really don't know what is. 7/10 would definitely try again.

A good and sweet modern Chypre, just fruity enough. Very well made. On me it’s citrusy and powdery, on a reliable contemporary patchouli base. Not a true outsider, but a confidence booster, just young and classy enough, you couldn’t imagine that it’s so cheap.