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03/04/2013
Sherapop
1239 Reviews
Sherapop
Very helpful Review
7
La vie est banale...
For years, I was convinced that Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt would make the perfect couple, because they both looked like mice to me. Alas, it was not meant to be, I suppose. They are both married to other people and breeding like rabbits, but who knows what the future may bring?
Since I am not the biggest Julia Roberts fan to begin with--indeed, I find her quite annoying for some inexplicable reason--I was not all that excited to get my nose on the new Lancôme fragrance, LA VIE EST BELLE, of which she is the representative, although her teeth take up most of the ad.
I recall having read that Julia insisted at some point that no fruits be used in this, "her", fragrance. So it looks as though the marketing data won out in this case, because the composition opens with a fruity-floral pink patchouli complex very similar to many other recent launches. Or perhaps we can say that Julia's preferences were not vetoed, since LA VIE EST BELLE doesn't really contain any fruit. Whatever may have happened, this creation does indeed seem very similar to a variety of recent pink perfume launches, including La Perla J'AIME, well except that the big musk is missing here, and the patchouli is rather low key--at least by recent standards. The listed flowers are jasmine, iris, and orange blossom, but it's probably hedione along with other abstractions.
LA VIE EST BELLE, however, morphs swiftly into another twenty-first-century hackneyed fragrance phrase: that pseudo-woody, pseudo-ambery "stuff" which forms the base of way too many perfumes today. It smells an awful lot to me like ambroxan, as in Le Labo ANOTHER 13 or Juliette Has a Gun NOT A PERFUME, and even has a tinge of what I have been thinking is oud in all of the oud-named perfumes, but perhaps I've been misidentifying it all along?
All in all, LA VIE EST BELLE rolls a few trends into one bottle of pink liquid (that being one of the trends), and does not appeal very much to me at all. Abstract fruits, abstract flowers, a dash of patchouli (probably the only thing natural in the entire composition--but only because there is no cheaper synthetic substitute), some pseudo-woody, pseudo-ambery stuff, a somewhat sugary opening with a more unisex or even masculine middle stage and, as a grand finale, the opening sweetness making a come back in the drydown. Not for me.
Lancôme redeemed themselves to some extent in my eyes by launching La Collection a few years back, proving that they could produce seriously good perfume. With this new bottle of gobbledygook, they've regressed to their former mass-market ways.
Since I am not the biggest Julia Roberts fan to begin with--indeed, I find her quite annoying for some inexplicable reason--I was not all that excited to get my nose on the new Lancôme fragrance, LA VIE EST BELLE, of which she is the representative, although her teeth take up most of the ad.
I recall having read that Julia insisted at some point that no fruits be used in this, "her", fragrance. So it looks as though the marketing data won out in this case, because the composition opens with a fruity-floral pink patchouli complex very similar to many other recent launches. Or perhaps we can say that Julia's preferences were not vetoed, since LA VIE EST BELLE doesn't really contain any fruit. Whatever may have happened, this creation does indeed seem very similar to a variety of recent pink perfume launches, including La Perla J'AIME, well except that the big musk is missing here, and the patchouli is rather low key--at least by recent standards. The listed flowers are jasmine, iris, and orange blossom, but it's probably hedione along with other abstractions.
LA VIE EST BELLE, however, morphs swiftly into another twenty-first-century hackneyed fragrance phrase: that pseudo-woody, pseudo-ambery "stuff" which forms the base of way too many perfumes today. It smells an awful lot to me like ambroxan, as in Le Labo ANOTHER 13 or Juliette Has a Gun NOT A PERFUME, and even has a tinge of what I have been thinking is oud in all of the oud-named perfumes, but perhaps I've been misidentifying it all along?
All in all, LA VIE EST BELLE rolls a few trends into one bottle of pink liquid (that being one of the trends), and does not appeal very much to me at all. Abstract fruits, abstract flowers, a dash of patchouli (probably the only thing natural in the entire composition--but only because there is no cheaper synthetic substitute), some pseudo-woody, pseudo-ambery stuff, a somewhat sugary opening with a more unisex or even masculine middle stage and, as a grand finale, the opening sweetness making a come back in the drydown. Not for me.
Lancôme redeemed themselves to some extent in my eyes by launching La Collection a few years back, proving that they could produce seriously good perfume. With this new bottle of gobbledygook, they've regressed to their former mass-market ways.
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