In my neighborhood Walgreen's are two shelves of perfumes, bottled plainly, with banners proclaiming things like, "If you like Giorgio, you'll love OdorGrenade!" For Drugstore Week, I decided to tackle one of these fragrances. I passed by the dupes of Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue, Juicy Couture, and Thierry Mugler Angel and went straight for the InStyle Fragrances "Impression" series for An Impression of Chanel No. 5.
I understand the desire for a deal. Heck, there's nothing I like better than finding a bottle of Guerlain Eau Impériale at Goodwill or getting a Caron half off at a discounter. I can imagine someone looking at a bottle of perfume and saying, "$100? For alcohol and chemicals? Why should I pay for the name when it all smells the same?" It's true that if you simply consider the value of the ingredients in a bottle of perfume, the markup is stupendous. Even factoring in the cost of manufacturing, the bottle, and the payment to the perfumer, someone is making good cash on a perfume that sells well enough to overcome the cost to market it. I guess there's a reason celebrities who profess to hate perfume (despite saying their perfume will be good — a non-perfumey perfume!) hustle to cosmetics companies to plaster their names on bottles.
But how good are these faux perfumes? An Impression of Chanel No. 5 is well named. On smelling it, I bet most people familiar with perfume will think, "This reminds me of something. What is it? Wait, it reminds me of No. 5." But they'll never confuse it with No. 5. The simplest description of No. 5 would be neroli lightened by a tingly rush of aldehydes plus a lovely cocktail of rose and high quality jasmine plus a skin-like drydown of musk and sandalwood. An Impression of No. 5 gets across the idea of rose, jasmine, and sandalwood bathed in a tamer dose of aldehydes that hints at Windex. Then it adds some powdered sugar and something a lot like pineapple.
The divide widens as Impression ages. An Impression of Chanel No. 5 stays fairly linear, shedding its No. 5-like characteristics bit by bit over a few hours to become An Impression of Vanilla-Rose Inflected Sugar. Then the whole thing collapses and vanishes. The real No. 5, on the other hand, stays complex and only gets better as it wears.
In short, an Impression of Chanel No. 5 is exactly what it says it is: an impression. But like holding a real Hermès silk twill scarf in one hand and a street vendor's polyester knockoff in the other, there's a real difference, no matter how many horse bits and chains the print shows. For a ten spot, an "impression" can be yours. Maybe that's all you want. In this case, you'll get what you paid for.
Instyle Fragrances An Impression of Chanel No. 5 is available in 100 ml Spray Cologne.
I think we have some women at the shelter where I work who wear OdorGrenade. 🙂 I just usually refer to it as the Ruining It for Everyone Else perfume. Or Gives Perfume a Bad Name and Makes the Average Person Believe They Hate Perfume perfume.
I need to go back to the store and re-sniff the Faux 5, just for the fun of being re-horrified. I remember when I was desperately broke several years back, and at the time thought No. 5 was my HG, and I thought maybe the fake one could tide me over. I took a whiff and knew it wouldn’t work. If memory serves, to my nose it didn’t even come close. (Luckily that year I was able to con someone into buying me the real thing for Christmas.) Some of the ones they do aren’t that bad– as in, comes close to smelling the same– but it’s interesting to find the ones they just can’t replicate. Anais Anais, of all things, was one that the fakers were never able to get down.
But someone brought up the Designer Imposters (I am thinking this line is just the same thing, new name?) yesterday, and Ninja, which I used to love. It was totally the opposite of what it advertised. It should have said “If you hate Opium, there’s a better chance you’ll like Ninja!” It was all the incense-y fun, without the kick-you-in-the-snout sillage. Of course, this was over a decade ago that I felt this way, so maybe I am tragically wrong.
Maybe the fragrances that fare the worst are the more complex, older perfumes, like No. 5, and the easy-pleasing scents are easier to replicate. Or, maybe the dupe companies try to dumb down some fragrances? I don’t know, and to tell the truth, the No. 5 dupe was the only one I smelled. I’d love to have someone who can really take a perfume apart smells the real v the faux for a handful of these and let us know.
That would be so interesting.
I suspect that your first thought is correct– that they just can’t recreate anything complex. I feel like the ones that do smell like what they were meant to duplicate, like Clinique Happy, you or I could probably concoct if we tried.
‘Odor Grenade’ made me laugh out loud – totally accurate description. I think the reason that the people who do wear it, wear TOO MUCH because their sense of smell has been nearly obliterated due to the grenade factor.
I really liked Ninja once upon a time as well. I also recieved the imposter version of Giorgio Red one year for Christmas and thought it smelled pretty good. Mind you, I was about 15 when I liked both of these so I will have to re-sniff on my next visit to the States – 20 years changes a lot of things! Mind you, I fell head-over-heels in love with Shalimar EdP that year as well so you never know…
I wonder what the dupe for Shalimar would be called? Persian Love Song? Mallomar? Persian Mallomar?
If you like Shalimar you’ll LOVE Taj Mahal.
Seriously, I’d love to see a list of all the names… I should go to the Parfums de Coeur website to see if they’re all listed.
Could be the makings of a fun party game….
But if you LOVE Shalimar… you’d best stick with Shalimar.
Yes! Exactly!
Wait????????? OdorGrenade is a real name. I thought that was a joke.
It’s a joke! Really!
That is awesome. Sounds like is should be marketed for men though: knock her over with an Odor Grenade!!
It is fun to seek out the good old cheapies. I think, for the abunance of very cheap No 5 in all it’s manifestations on ebay, I’ll stick to the real thing. As you say – it wears much better in the long run. The super vintage No 5 I have with totally burned off top notes smells like utter heaven after about 1 hour and lasts all day. …
But my fav cheapie fragrance is Chantilly. It always smells good and powdery with light amber and aldehydes.
I got a Chantilly bath set from my uncle when I was 12, and I Chantilly-ed myself out permanently with that one!
LOL I think I did this with number 5 when I was 14.
I hear you – that happened to me with the Coty Muguet. My sister and I both had a bottle. One time we were playing a “kidnapper” game and she held a washcloth soaked in Muguet over my face. To this day I can still only take tiny bits of muguet in well blended formulas, or it makes me feel nauseous.
Hilarious! (And kind of sad if you want to try Diorissimo.)
Yes, it is kind of sad in a funny way. I do have a small vial of vintage Diorissimo – I gave it to my mom who adores white flowers and also for whom a small vial will last the rest of her life. There are only a few “white flowers” fragrances I can really bear, otherwise, they all go to dear old mom. Just one less fragrance style for me to lust over.
I had one of those bottles of Chantilly that sprayed a continuous stream. I will never be able to wear it again, as I probably wore three lifetimes’ worth in a year. I feel sorry for anyone who was around me at the time– I was probably twelve or thirteen when I wore it, so that would have been classrooms full of kids and some long-suffering junior high teachers. I bet there are teachers that passed me just to make sure I didn’t come back to their class the next year.
Tea Rose was my junior high fragrance. It was such an ordeal trying to only get just a tiny bit out of the bottle to wear to school. But I still think I blew some people away – it is a big fragrance. It seems like you have a good history of classic aldehydes though!!
It sounds like we had the same experience!
Gosh, vintage No. 5 parfum is a little slice of heaven. I ACTUALLY WENT SHOPPING (GASP!) at Macy’s yesterday, and managed to spritz a bit of No. 5 edt… and was actually somewhat disappointed with it compared to that vintage parfum. Although it was still better than most of the crap on the shelves.
Indeed – the current is a bit more flat than the vintage. But you are right – still better than most of what is at a regular old department store. I find that most of the line of No 5 still holds up pretty well – the Eau Premier, of course, is very good. I just got into the Sensual Elixir which is a lot of fun. And the body products still smell nice. I don’t have all of them, but I did have a bar of soap that I really enjoyed last year. I’ve not been to the local Macy’s for a while but I suppose I’ll go in the fall to try out whatever is the new stuff before the holidays.
I think it’s always good to stroll through the perfume department in Macy’s from time to time, although it can be frustrating for the SAs (at least in my case) when I want to smell everything but not buy.
I’m glad you find time to squeeze a perfume counter into your shopping trip!
Chanel No. 5 is a staple … so I think I need to sniff this just to see the difference.
A co-worker of mine wears some awful Drakkar Noir knock-off to cover up cigarette smoke. Mind you, I’ve never actually smelled the original, but either way it’s a disaster. I brought him in a sample of Voyage d’Hermes & told him to get a bottle of it and spare the rest of us the agony of sitting in a cloud of cheap drugstore cologne.
Why wear the knock off when the real thing isn’t hard to find for cheap? Of course, Voyage is a world apart!
Not all can be found cheaper especially Chanel.And in this economy even the cheaper ones may be too expensive for tight budgets.
I think Angela meant Drakkar specifically. What’s sad to me is that some probably wouldn’t think of looking for it online or in a drugstore and still go to Macy’s to buy it at whatever the full retail price is nowadays… even though online you can probably get 100ml for $15.
That’s it.
I don’t know about Drakkar I didn’t even know this was still popular.But, I think many people perfer to buy directly from say Macys because they know its good still fresh.Sometimes you buy online at a discounted site and it may not be good expired etc.Like with Annick Gouthal they have a short shelf life.So, perhaps that is why people buy direct they know its good and have some protection refunds etc. Also not every one wants testers especially if your giving as a gift.But, at least with this knockoff its say $1 not sure how much they cost.LOL But, perhaps in this day and age $15 may be out of peoples budget.It may not be much to many of us but could be expensive to others.
Drakkar Noir is relatively cheap, although when I bought my brother-in-law a small bottle for Christmas (my sister asked me to, in case you’re wondering), it didn’t quite smell the way it used to.
Wonder if he IS using the real stuff, and it just doesn’t smell right?
No. 5 is definitely an expensive one, but Drakkar should be around for a song if you know where to look!
But I think you have a good point: if you’re satisfied with the knock-offs and are on a budget, go for it!
The kids gave my husband some Drakkar years ago and I sniff it occasionally for old time’s sake. Reminds me of HS along with the Polo Green my son has.
I told my husband about this and he has asked me to track down English Leather, Jade East, and Hai Karate. I’m proud of him, though. I’ve been coaxing him into wearing fragrances again and he got mad when I took the Miller Harris Feuilles de Tabac for myself and he has made a nice dent in the Guerlain Vetiver as well. I love Coromandel on him and he tried out Sycomore recently, too.
Hey, you’re doing nicely with him! Good work!
I love the name Hai Karate.
An Impression of Vanilla-Rose Inflected Sugar doesn’t sound half bad, really.
Thanks again for another interesting and fun review. I’d probably want a sniff of something actually called OdorGrenade (Flowerbomb is close enough, though, right?).
I doubt I’ll ever try this Impression, but it’s very interesting to know how all the imposters stack up. I think when I was in high school I had an imposter version of Polo before scoring a bottle of the real thing.
I wonder what the Polo dupe was called? Rugby? Country Club?
Lacrosse. Croquet. The silly possibilities are endless, but I have no memory of it. I remember the tacky-looking bottle though.
It’s probably better that way.
OK, here we go with the names from Pd Coeur:
If You Like >> You’ll Love Our
WOMEN
Curious® by Britney Spears® >> 2Hot
Red® by Giorgio® >> A Little Sexy
Tommy Girl® >> Babe
Dolce & Gabbana® Light Blue® >> Capri Breeze
Calvin Klein® Obsession® >> Confess
Sean John® Unforgivable® >> Exposé
Oscar® >> Fairchild
Calvin Klein® Escape® >> Fly With Me
Vera Wang® Princess® >> Goddess
Daisy® Marc Jacobs® >> Prettiest!
Giorgio® >> Primo
GLOW® by JLO® >> Sensuale
Baby Phat® Goddess® >> Sexy Thang
Armani® Code® >> Stylin’
Victoria’s Secret® Love Spell® >> Swept Away
Calvin Klein® Euphoria® >> Tempt Me
L. L.A.M.B. by Gwen Stefani >> Too Rich Too Famous
Clinique’s® Happy® >> Wanna Play?
Juicy Couture® >> Yeah Baby
MEN
Ralph Lauren® Romance® >> Being Together
Ralph Lauren® Polo Blue® >> Big Attitude
Sean John® Unforgivable® >> Bring It
Davidoff® Cool Water® >> Fresh Xtreme
Claiborne’s® Curve® >> Game Changer
Armani® Acqua di Gio® >> Mascolino
Drakkar Noir® >> New York Nights
Abercrombie & Fitch® Fierce® >> Raw Power
Armani® Code® >> Smokin’ Hot
Calvin Klein® Eternity® >> Tahoe
Calvin Klein® CK Be® >> U-Two
Calvin Klein® CK One® >> U-You
Can I just say how much I love that they have a knock-off of VS Love Spell? You can get, like, 5 bottles of it for $9 when they have a sale. (I’m exaggerating, but not by much.)
Thanks for taking on the daunting task of looking those up for us. There are some older, Ninja-era ones that I want to find the names of. Like I just remembered I had the fake Lauren, and was know to clear a room with it. (I have stories.) Wish I could remember the name. At another slacking-on-the-job interval I will have to look that up.
Fairchild would have been the perfect name if it weren’t already taken.
In my confusion, I thought Fairchild *was* the name for the Lauren knockoff, but upon checking it was the one for Oscar (as I said still in production). I had the Lauren one as well. I remember loving it almost as much as the real thing, only I missed my square burgundy bottle on my dresser. But this was when I was in jr. high and I swear, I could tolerate any perfume back then. Nothing gave me sinus problems, headaches, runny nose, naught. So I bought high end as well as cheap (whatever I could afford at the time). I think it was when I bought RL Safari in college that I had my first painful and sadly disappointing reaction to a fragrance.
That’s too bad! I’d hate that.
Thanks Joe- that was fun! I think there might be some sad sacks whoasked for U-Two and got U-Too. shux. (and when I read Yeah Baby- I hear Mike Myers as Austin Powers…)
Me too!
Joe, this list slays! I’m reading it in a coffee shop in Billings and laughing out loud and getting looks. I wonder how many margaritas were consumed in coming up with these names.
Thanks, Joe. Along with OdorGrenade, this made my day.
U-You… really? I like Raw Power best. But Game Changer is funny too.
Game Changer is pretty danged funny.
I don’t know… I think I like “Bring It” best.
They are all a source of endless hilarity. In trying to find the old 80’s Designer Imposter names, I stumbled upon the Bellasugar website:
“With Exposé, Babe, and Yeah Baby, DI allows you to recall a ’90s girl band, a movie about a pig, and Austin Powers.”
True!
I agree… “Bring It” is hilarious. But “U-You” is pretty damn silly.
when we were in Crete back in June I bought some fake Angel and fake Kenzo Flower. The latter was lovely but faded so fast I went and bought a bottle of the real thing on ebay. The former was better than the original ! Softer, quieter, fluffier – more like Cherub perhaps, than Angel. I wear if for work quite a lot and still consider that 3 euro very well spent 🙂
Hey, maybe I’ll have to try that one!
Odor Grenade! Another NST Classic!
Odor Grenade smells so full and luscious, it totally activated my Buy Node.
…and credit cards exploded from your wallet.
Oh, thank you thank you thank you for that remark! I almost choked over here, and my SO actually came out of our bedroom to see why I was laughing so loudly. *wipes tears fom eyes*
Angela, all three versions of No. 5 parfum, edp & edt are actually variations on the same theme of Chanel No 5. Each highlights a certain aspect of the formula. Neroli is a very minor player. The primary top note is the aldehyde & it’s what made No 5 so revolutionary for it’s time.
OsMoz has a nice pyramid for No. 5 & Wikipedia has an excellent article on it with references.
As far as “impression” scents go…wear what smells good on you I say. A cheap scent usually smells “cheap” & doesn’t last but how are these that different from run of the mill “flanker” scents.
Right you are about No. 5–I’ve participated in many a discussion about which version people prefer (I like Polge’s elegant EdP, personally.) I’d wager the neroli plays a role in each concentration, though.
Crikey Angela – you have hit the final frontier in perfume reviewing. You’ve done vintage, you’ve done drug store. You’ve done mall. You’ve done Goodwill. I love it!
The decision as to whether to buy cheap or expensive in any product has to be faced almost daily.Shall I get the no-name tinned tomatoes, which might contain lots of water, or the expensive ones? And so on. I’ve learned that with bedlinen and towels it’s best to get the best quality you can afford – it really will pay off in the end. But yesterday I bought an eye shadow brush, and b/c I’m fairly loyal to Clinique, looked at theirs. But I ended up with one from Natio (a locally owned company) for under half the price. They looked the same to me, but we shall see. Maybe the Cliniques are made of better materials and would last longer? But I thought I’d be a mug to pay $AUD33 when I could get what I wanted for $13.
The internet now makes these decisions easier in the perfume world. You just don’t need to pay full price any more, generally, unless it’s niche de la niche. I just love the democratising (or do I mean levelling?) effect the internet has had. Some people say that it’s sad to see the death of real exclusivity and luxury, but heck, you can still pay silly prices for LE crystal bottles if you want. And if you don’t want to wear what every one else is wearing, you can go vintage, and (usually, not always!) still come out ahead.
What’s not to like, as they say.
Oops that didn’t work.. I responded to your comment below.
I know what you mean, I spend a lot of time making these kinds of decisions, too. For instance, I think it’s important to buy expensive shoes, bras, and coffee beans, but I skimp on lipstick and socks.
OK, I have to confess here. When I go on vacation, I usually pick up a bottle of those PdC wannabes. I’m notorious for losing and/or leaving things when I travel, and with airline restrictions being what they are these days, I leave my good stuff at home and grab one of these from a drugstore when I get to my destination. What I don’t use, I leave behind, hoping one of the room cleaners will help themselves, if they like.
We don’t tend to take very high end vacations. Ours usually consist of beach time and dinners at the local rib shack. If I were planning a theatre trip to NY, however, I’d probably rethink my postion. But for what we usually do, the not-so-fabulous fakes work out just fine.
Well, and it’s not so much what you wear as how you wear it sometimes, right? I think if someone overdoes an amazing classic perfume that it’s worse than someone wearing a subtle but cheap scent. And I’ve always said that I’d rather wear the cheapest thing ever than nothing at all. When I was dead broke in my twenties I wore Avon perfumes that I bought 2 for $12, and I’d do it again if I had to. (But I won’t! Ever! Because unless my house burns down and takes my perfume collection with it, I’m set for life!)
Yes, I agree about sublte but cheap.
Avons can be quite good. What really disappoints are the cheapend versions of classics, like Emeraude or Norell or Tabu. If I had to live on a diet of that, I’d rather be wearing nothing. But I could live on Avons or faux perfumes. I bought tabu recently at K-Marrt, out of curiosity. I threw it out, literally in the bin. I didn’t want it, and I wanted to save someone else from it too.
I couldn’t do Tabu either just too strong for me.
It’s especially sad when you know what they once were.
Some of those old Avons are genius, I think.
Hey, that sounds like a fun way to try a lot of different scents without commitment!
As a fellow Aussie I know what you mean. I just got back from a couple of years in North America and it really makes me sad how limited our range is and how most things are at least double the price, with cosmetics and perfume sometimes triple the price.
Still.. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to using designer imposters. I remember them as a teenager (our families would often bring them back from holidays in Bali). Some of them do come close to the real thing.. but it’s only ever fleeting. Then the nasty alcohol/shampoo stage arrives and then it’s completely over in about 45 min.
Yep. A comparison of, say, the Clinique or Estee Lauder websites in the US and Australia makes the price differnece for identical prodcuts quite obvious. I often buy Clinique online now (except at GWP time). Even with shipping its substantially cheaper.
You are ringt about the designer imposters not lasting. I was suprised Angela got as long as she did out of her Faux 5.
Oh boy, sorry for typos.
Oh boy, sorry for typos.
I had no idea the selection was so limited down there! That’s too bad. If I ever visit Australia, I’ll fill my suitcase and pay you a visit.
When I was a very broke high-schooler, I wore dupes of Obsession and No. 5 simply because I couldn’t afford even a teeny bottle of the real thing. Sprayed lightly under clothing, it wasn’t the same but was good enough for someone with silver spoon perfume tastes and a paper plate budget. 😉
Now I own ‘the real thing’ of frags I love and find a way to squish them into my budget, but I do sometimes still sniff the ‘If you like X, then you’ll love Y’ bottles and some of them aren’t too bad. The one claiming to be close to Angel is actually pretty with much less patch for those who are put off by Angel’s heavy-handed patch-ness. And I’d rather young ladies try to wear the classics even if they can’t necessarily attain the original quite yet than to slather themselves in celeb fruit cocktail/nondescript blur of flowers that smells like everyone else.
The Impostors line is a far cry from Klein, Dior, Chanel etc. But some of them aren’t too bad as fragrances all their own and better than some of the tween dreck that’s out there.
AS: Your final point is a good one: that you can’t compare these to the originals, but if they go head to head with the latest celebu-fruit-salad, they might have significant merit.
AS, I HATE Angel. But I sometimes enjoy those knockoff versions – seems like they’ve smoothed out the weird funky angles that make Angel so horrid to me.
They are a great way of getting the concept of a perfume, and that’s nice. Someone else mentioned that the Angel dupe is good, too! I’ll have to try it.
Do you think it is easier to dupe a gourmand fragrance than one containing distinct notes like No.5?
It seems, to me at least, that the discount fragrances do a better job with gourmands and orientals than anything else.
The differences between high end chocolate and low end Hershey’s (well, usually there’s much more vanilla) don’t seem as extreme, to my nose.
I can usually tell a difference in quality materials between the discount orientals and my favorite standby’s, but call me a slut for spice, I still really enjoy most of them.
“A slut for spice”! LOL! I’m glad I read that this morning. Good to start the day laughing and choking on your coffee. 🙂
That’s an interesting idea! Maybe they are easier to dupe, I don’t know. Lots of the cheaper fragrances are gourmand, that’s for sure.
Years ago, Consumer Reports magazine reviewed fragrances for a Christmas issue, which I thought was a perfectly stupid idea, and still do. (Their panel of trained noses reviewed a number of department-store scents and declared Gio to the “the best”, which is like saying that royal blue is the best colour.)
They also tried Chanel No. 5 in, if memory serves, a couple of formulations, probably EDT and parfum, and also tried one of the knockoffs, and claimed that the knockoff was not inferior to the real thing and possibly even better. Seriously.
This would have been probably ’92 or ’93, not long after Gio was launched. Anybody have a garage full of back issues?
I have an online subscription to CR, wouldn’t buy any appliance without it… wonder if they’ve got old issues in the database? I’m gonna go see.
Sadly, it’s not there. Probably too old.
Too bad! It would have been fascinating.
Oh boy, that would be a fascinating article to dig up and then dissect.
I have seen those Designer Impressions in my Walgreen’s, too, Angela, and I did actually sniff several of the bottles. The No. 5 was probably one of the most ridiculously sideways of the ones I sniffed, and the Beautiful knockoff was hideous, I thought. The Angel knockoff, though, was surprisingly nice – probably because I really, really hate Angel’s chocolate-patchouli-sugar thing. The DI version was less-of-everything, which is probably why I liked it.
Mals, I do love the original Angel, but the dupe was really nice, too, and smelled more like the original than the “light” Angel Innocent version does. I thought it was a very nice gourmand/oriental all on its own and would make for a pretty winter perfume.
And I don’t remember which Chanel No. 5 knock-off I had way back then, but it was wonderfully good with giving the aldehyds a pretty good run before they faded out, and wasn’t fruity even to the dry-down. It wasn’t precisely No. 5, but it was pretty.
Joe, that’s it exactly. I’d rather my daughter run around with a portable (and not terribly expensive) perfume that tries to be decent rather than a lot of the celeb frags that don’t even bother. I know it won’t stay tucked in a drawer or on a closet shelf despite my advice and will probably not survive without being captured a few times by her brothers, so something small, pretty and that won’t drop everyone in a one mile radius with horrid sillage is good. Though I have to admit that I do love Lovely as a celeb frag and it isn’t too expensive, so I’d happily spring for a bottle for her to wear when she’s old enough to regularly wear perfume.
Lovely does deserve its name. It’s really nice, and I could easily see it being a gateway fragrance to a world of good perfume.
People keep bringing up the Angel dupe. I’ve got to try it!
Laugh out loud funny:
“An Impression of Vanilla-Rose Inflected Sugar”
I guess that would be a little obscure for Walgreen’s….
I went by the Walgreen’s today and spritzed my back of my hand with the Impression of Angel. Because I’d liked it on a piece of paper back in February, I tried it on my scarf too. On the scarf, it smells *delicious* – berry vanilla candy. Super-sweet and intended to give preschoolers several hours’ worth of sugar rush, but not entirely unpleasant. On my skin, though, it’s hideous: the patchouli really stands out. I mean, it’s like Drakkar Noir got drunk on cherry cough syrup and fell into a bin of cotton candy – really, truly hideous, just like Angel. So on second sniff, it’s probably truer to the original than I’d thought.
I picked up several of the other scents and sniffed them, but that was pretty tough to judge by – a lot of the originals, I don’t like, so “impressions” of Light Blue and Obsession and Juicy Couture are not going to do me any good.
O.K., so maybe the Impression of Angel isn’t so great.
I had the same problem with the Impressions–to the “if you like” part I generally thought “I really don’t like it much” and that was that.
Anyone remember the imitation Christian Dior Poison from back in the day?
My sister and I used to get the body spray metal tubes of that and others I cannot remember at our local drugstore. I do remember the colors of the tubes and caps though. Gosh, now that I think of it, that was pre-junior high for me! I can’t stand anything even partially resembling CD’s Poison today!
Isn’t it amazing how taste in perfume changes–especially from junior high?