Les Parfums Matières - Fleur de Thé Karl Lagerfeld 2021

I bought this fragrance as a blind buy for a good price because of the positive reviews - 15 euros. Unfortunately, I don't agree with the general perception of summer freshness and tea.

After a natural and lemony opening, my nose is quickly taken over by rather sweet-floral notes, with an old-fashioned powderiness early on and everything smelling rather generic. The refreshing and natural aspects of citrus and tea, which I was looking forward to, are subordinate in the drydown, whereby the tea note is even more present for me.

Generally speaking, after a while I had the feeling that I had sprayed myself with a synthetic-smelling wood fragrance stick liquid a la Rituals or similar. The scent made me sick relatively quickly and I dread to think of being sprayed with it on a hot day.

As a relaxing or bedtime fragrance, I also find the drydown too synthetic and sweet. Even the fresh opening and the hint of green tea don't make up for that, so I don't bother with the rest. Thankfully, the fragrance composition gives up the ghost relatively quickly, but to my chagrin, it did quite well on the skin.

Actually, I am someone who doesn't think much of classic gender roles or correspondingly assigned fragrance profiles and I try to steer clear of them, but - thinking classically - Fleur de Thé would not be a fragrance that I would recommend as unisex without hesitation due to the unstoppably spreading powdery-sweet florality (Fleur>>>Thé) and the too short-breathed freshness... (it is not declared as such).

So if you want to give your Elisabeth Arden Green Tea Signature Scent a little change, go for it. Otherwise, exercise a little caution before buying.

I find comparisons with LV Imagination or Gritti Pomelo Sorrento latently presumptuous :D, although the latter has a similarly bad H/S. Better put the money for this fragrance in the piggy bank if your search for a cheap alternative has brought you here.

PS: The bottle is beautiful!