L'Eau de Liesse Courrèges 2022

Have you ever tested a perfume and it just sort of smells like perfume? Tell me you know what I mean. I had high hopes for the iris/heliotrope/macadamia combo, but I can barely detect any discrete notes at all. Just a generic musky-floral soup.

Top notes: perfume
Heart notes: a woman you shared an elevator with once maybe
Base notes: fragrance accord

This one is really really beautiful and an easy to adore day wear, all year around perfume.

Clean, nutty, creamy, resplandecent and elegant. Good vibes but smart and formal enough. Like your favorite white good fashion high quality cotton shirt, but transformed into a perfume. It makes you look cool but what is far more important, it makes you feel happy and secretly powerful.

Extra bonus for keeping it accesible. Moderate projection, lasts for 6 to 8 hours, depending on temperatures.

This one is confusing for me, I feel like I have a whole whirlwind of conflicting feelings about it at different stages. In the very immediate opening, I’m hit with really visceral images of a public bathroom, clean with lots of white ceramic, but still somewhat offputting. I get a heavy dose of baby wipe and powdery cherry or almond, which sometimes reminds me of the pearlized pink soap in public washroom dispensers or also the scent of a urinal puck. As soon as the spray dries on my skin it’s fine and actually kind of pleasant. The macadamia is interesting with the heliotrope, I get a kind of fizzy and spicy sweet cherry/almond with a hint of nuttiness. The iris is soft, warm and powdery. Together they give the feeling of dried and powdered Dr Pepper that is a little bit tingly in the nose. The sparkly and fuzzy quality reminds me of a cocktail with purple edible glitter in it. The neroli adds a little bit of a beachy wet vibe that balances all the other warm, spicy and powdery elements. I think of hanging out on a beach in Hawaii with my newborn baby, taking advantage of mat leave to get a good vacation in. I’m snacking on macadamia nuts and Dr Pepper and I just powdered his bum.

The musk comes in a little peppery after 10 mins. As the top notes fade, I get a lot more iris and so the baby powder vibe is turned up a notch, and things get a little less warm, though still cozy. I think you have to really be a fan of powder and cherry/almond to love this one. I am at times, but I’m not sure about how I feel about them both together and both being so prominent. I think I would have loved this 10 years ago, now not so much.

After the first hour things really get a lot more subdued. It’s objectively a nice smell, a cozy and clean sort of honeyed almond baby powder scent. So why do I have the urge to wash it off? I’m torn between being able to say that it smells good, but simultaneously not liking it at all. After a few hours, I’ve settled into it, everything is faint and nicely blended together, it’s almost like warm vanilla cake and baby powder. So in the end I leave with positive feelings. Or so I thought. The smell of it on my sweater the next day kind of makes me want to gag. I can’t explain it. I can’t even give it a rating I’m just too confused.

I don't find it as awful as some other very sweet and almond forward scents, but still this is too much for me.
I think people who like L'Instant Magic Eau de Parfum or Lolita Lempicka (2012) Eau de Parfum will like, maybe love this.
I don't find it a really 'happy' scent (Liesse means something like 'the sound of cheering' in French) either.
I actually find it quite gourmand. I can endure the smell, but I wouldn't choose to wear it.
I find it quite linear after drydown and therefore a bit boring and exhausting.
This is really about heliotrope which is very almond-like and I can't smell Iris or neroli which is strange, because neroli usually goes wild on my skin.
More creamy than powdery. Nothing 'fluffy' or 'airy'. Just smells like almond scented bodybutter.

the most almond heavy heliotrope I think I’ve ever encountered with a fun pairing of creamy macadamia nut with soft iris petals, bubbly neroli, and sunny aldehydes. This is clean in a powdery way, chic in a well dressed older woman way, and sweet in a warmly innocent way. A gorgeous rendition of almond without actually using the notes, nutty in a really soft and light way, and perfectly musky and sweet. A gorgeous scent!