I don’t normally do perfume reviews, especially since I already have a favourite that I wear all the time: Chanel No 5! But there’s something so magical about perfume: the beautiful bottles, the exotic notes, and the luxury of havig something expensive that you can wear everyday, pressed or dabbed onto your pulse points or spritzed around you like an aura.

Scents are such an emotional thing for people. A whiff of the perfume your mother wore or the scent of cut grass can take you right back to childhood, or on the other end of the scale, being stuck on the London tube system in Summer… A torture only Londoners understand, perhaps.

So I thought, why not? Let’s talk about perfume! There are loads out every year, and these are a few that I’ve sniffed lately on passing through department stores that liked. I’d love to hear what you think, do you have a signature scent?

I decided to use photographs of the ads that go with the scents, since I didn’t have pictures of the bottles I’d taken myself. Plus I love the way that perfume companies create a visual of what they feel their perfume evokes through their ads. Perfume ads are like little fantasy stories.

Givenchy Live Irresistible

As you can guess from the ad, this one is a feminine scent, floral notes dominate with a touch of spice. The top notes are fruity, with juicy pineapple predominating, the mid notes are spicy rose with amber accord notes in the base. The scent is all about playful, happy, bright things, and I think this one is a really nice twist on the Givenchy stable of perfumes. Although it all seems kind of girly, this isn’t overpoweringly so, it’s not necessarily a young scent, I think.

Givenchy Gentleman Only 

Is this a cheat because my boyfriend wears it? Perhaps. But I don’t care, it’s delicious and I love it on him! Plus, I really like the ads with Simon Baker doing chivalrous, gentlemanly things. While the top notes are a masculine flower scent, bergamo, this is the flower used in Earl Grey tea! Can you get more old fashioned gent than that? But it’s not fusty at all, the mid notes are spices and the base is sandalwood, so it smells warm, inviting and has a little sexy kick. It’s delicious. The new Absolute version of this is one to look out for too!

Giorgio Armani Si

With Cate Blanchette as this perfumes icon, the mood is beautiful, sophisticated, intelligent and all woman. A scent for a woman who knows who she is. And I love it. It smells a bit like class, that inimitable way that a woman can wear a simple outfit and look chic or expensive without making any apparent effort. It’s quite a complex perfume, ingredients wise, with fruit and flower notes at the top, Sicilian bergamot, mandarin oil and liquer de cassis, but it’s certainly not fruity. Floral in it’s mid notes, with rose de mai absolute, neroli absolute and Egyptian jasmine absolute. And then rich, wood base notes of chypre, patchouli, amber and vanille absolute. So there’s a lot there, but it’s not overpowering, it’s more a warm scent. I like it.

Giorgio Armani Acqua Di Gio

So, I know that they market perfumes to us as being male or female, I actually tend to ignore that. A scent is not intrinsically male or female, someone out there decides that it is. And some mens perfumes are too delicious to be left to the boys! This one I think is nice for men or women. To just sniff it, it smells rich and dark, but also like fresh water, which I love. It has those notes that seem so typically male at base, things like amber or herbs like coriander, but they work as well on men or on women and though you won’t notice it, I think, there’s a lot of floral notes here.  Bergamot, neroli, green tangerine, lemon, lime, jasmine on the top, the mid is all about herbs and citrus with nutmeg, coriander, “marine notes” and persimmon, and timber tones at base, amber, patchouli, oakmoss, and cedar. So how exactly do they get it to smell like cool ocean and sun?

Calvin Klein Euphoria Gold

I was given a tiny little purse sized edition of this as a sample, and I love it. But I didn’t realise that it’s actually a limited edition! You can still get it, and there are other scents in the Euphoria range as well. It’s description is that it’s fruity and oriental, with jasmine and cumquat at the top, honey and sandalwood in the middle, and musk at the base. I can’t honestly say that I detect all of those notes in this one, but it does smell oriental to me, and I like the way it elicits something warm, rich and empowering on the body.

Jimmy Choo Flash

Finally, this one. I felt like this was a bit of a cash in, because everyone has their own scent now, right? And it feels like Jimmy Choo has about a million perfumes. But some of those cash in perfumes turn out to actually be nice. And I think this one is. I love the way the image is kind of bold, glamourous, hinting at stardom and Hollywood. It’s fun. It kind of smells a bit like soap to me, it’s a strong scent, but not over the top. Pink pepper, tangerine and strawberry are at the top, with tuberose and white flowers and then powdery woods at base.

What perfumes do you like? Are you someone who likes to have a signature scent or do you collect loads of them?

If you liked this post, you might like my interview HERE with makeup artist and brand Daniel Sandler.