Lovely Sarah Jessica Parker 2005 Eau de Parfum

It's not an amazing perfume, but does it need to be? In a world of sensory overload sometimes I need a break, a kind of perfume "white noise" and that's what Lovely is to me. I find that when I'm recovering from a cold and I can't stand most of my usual perfumes because my nose turns them all harsh and screechy, I can still wear Lovely.

It's calm, acceptable, boring. Yes, boring, and in this rare case I don't mean that as a negative! Lovely is charmingly reliable and unadventurous in the same way a person can be, and to its credit it doesn't pretend to be otherwise. As a matter of fact, Lovely it stands out amongst other "classic" perfumes in that all her edges are neatly tucked away. It's hard to find fault if you can accept it for what it's trying to do.

Can you find art in the colour of cream, in the calm drone of white noise? Do you aim to be queen of the inoffensive?

I read Chandler Burr’s story of the ridiculousness of the making of this scent and an Hermès Jardin fragrance, and then, of course, was dying to try it. What’s funny, though, is that for all the attention centered on Lovely and the Hermès scent, I found them both to be first and foremost dull. I thought that I would at least find Un Jardin sur le Nil intriguing or memorable. 5 minutes after testing it, though, I could only vaguely even remember it, and never went back to try it again.

As ho-hum as Lovely is, I like that it’s a musk fragrance. Little wood, little flower, BIG MUSK. Enough musk that this could be a musk-in-the-title perfume if it chose to be. Soft, when used to describe musk usually means rounded and comfortable. This is soft like soggy. The cloying musk burdened with flowers and patchouli is all weight and no buoyancy. Also a bit like chewing a taffy ‘til your jaw aches—it takes effort and seems to go on forever. Still, if you like sweet, this is better than most candy-perfumes.

I bought a bottle of this years ago. I ended up giving it away as I felt that it just didn't work for me. Fast forward to 2019 and I decided to re-purchase another bottle and give it another chance but unfortunately, I ended up with the same result. I just can't bear it. Yes, I totally get the comparisons to Narciso Rodriguez For Her (which I absolutely love) but For Her smells smooth and expensive whereas Lovely is terribly screechy on my skin and smells so cheap to me. The musk is offensive and the entire composition is headache/allergy inducing. Even though it's a dupe, it pales in comparison. In this particular instance, I'd go for the quality of For Her over the wallet friendly Lovely. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

Before I came to the wonderful land of fragrance, 'Lovely' by SJP was my very favorite scent. It had everything that I required at the time - a lot of musk, not too sweet, not too feminine. Check! Let me grab a bottle of this and have done with it. Since I have learned how much else is out there, has been pushed back into the 'it's OK, but nothing fantastic' category for me.

Musk is supposed to be the base note here, but from first spritz it's mostly what I detect all along. After a few minutes I can smell some rich florals underneath, but I definitely do not get all of the listed notes on this fragrance. At the end I do also get some woody notes.

Still, I think the heavy musk would make it appropriate for a sexy date sometimes. Maybe the gents would like it as a precursor to some later in the evening romping.

All in all, generally 'meh' is my new reaction to this once upon a time old favorite.

I loved the bottle, but not the scent. It wasn't an offensive fragrance, but it was too predictable and common for my liking. It was also one of those fragrances where you have to push your nose onto your wrist in order to smell the scent. I think I expected a little more from SJP's first perfume, hence the reason why I was so disappointed.