![Sherapop]()
Sherapop
2
The Fall
Think you're getting a bargain when you find a so-called Guerlain perfume for $30? Think again. Aqua Allegoria CHERRY BLOSSOM is nothing if not a cruel joke on the sorts of people who congregate about the Emperor in his new clothes. I recognize that the revelation of this cruelty may itself sound cruel, but sometimes the truth hurts: those single-digit dollar bottles of radically reformulated SHALIMAR that began flooding low-brow drugstores some time ago were a sign of impending doom.
I wondered, with the launch of CHAMPS ELYSEES, what was happening chez Guerlain, but I still managed to keep the faith, for some time. Yes, I continued to acquire bottles scent unsniffed on the strength of the illustrious Guerlain family name alone. Sadly, the Guerlains all seem to have passed away. My beloved MITSOUKO appears nowhere to be found (I've tried now two replacements, the reformulated edt and edp, both of which are pale shadows of their namesake.) If you are looking for Guerlain-quality perfumes, as used to be available back in the twentieth century, I encourage you to explore the house of Parfums Nicolai.
As for Aqua Allegoria CHERRY BLOSSOM, this synthetic, weak, yucky pseudo-perfume is unbefitting even of a mass-market house, and that, it appears, is what Guerlain has become. I realize that in these trying economic times they're trying to straddle all market niches simultaneously--not unlike the fashion designers who have both haute couture and Target or H&M or JC Penney lines--but I'm afraid that the result in this case has been muddled, even disastrous. How, in particular, I ask sincerely, could any self-respecting perfumer have launched such a scent as Aqua Allegoria CHERRY BLOSSOM?
Is there an allegory here? I'd call it "The Fall".