'If I told you that I love you, would you hold it against me?'
My father wrote this note to my mother, which he ran in the newspaper and signed 'Love, Relentless.' — Tory Burch
Love Relentlessly is a new-ish fragrance from the Tory Burch fashion and lifestyle brand. It was developed by perfumers Domitille Bertier and Yves Cassar, and its "charmingly youthful" composition is a "modern chypre" with notes of pink pepper, pink grapefruit, lemon, pear, raspberry, lychee, rose, orris, jasmine sambac, patchouli, amber, sandalwood, vetiver, cedarwood and tonka bean.
This list includes quite a few notes that I normally avoid, but nothing that irks me as much as the grammatical errors in that promotional copy: the vague pronoun reference of "it" and the dangling "which" (did her father run her mother in the newspaper?), not to mention the story itself, which more than a few of you found pushy rather than romantic when we announced this fragrance a few months ago.
So: I'm annoyed by the writing, I don't care for pear or lychee or pink pepper, and I don't covet any Tory Burch clothing or accessories. Her aesthetic, which has been described as "bright and poppy and relentlessly optimistic,"1 is a cleverly updated mash-up of Lily Pulitzer, David Hicks and J. Crew, i.e., not my style at all.
However, Love Relentlessly is perfectly pitched for wearers of Burch's $225 Reva flats (the ones with the huge goldtone medallions) and sporty separates. It's a pink-smelling, pink-tinted juice in a logo bottle. It has fruity and flowery and sugary notes. It's sheer yet long-lasting, and it smells sort of like a walk through a candy shop. Its opening is a sweet-and-tart mix of sharp lemon and grapefruit with a touch of something powdery. (I actually like this phase of the fragrance.) Then it goes more sour and orange-y, like a piece of hard candy that would make your mouth pucker a bit. The dry down is a familiar strawberry-and-vanilla confection that harks back to Estée Lauder Pleasures Delight (although it's much more muted here) and has been showing up more recently at the perfume counter in things like Coach The Fragrance. The woods and patchouli in the base are very clean and sheer.
So, while it's not at all my type of perfume, I can recognize that Love Relentlessly is likely to sell very well as a spring fragrance for Tory Burch fans and other shoppers who want something sweet yet fresh. It seems well-made for what it is (and since Tory Burch's fragrances are handled by Lauder, that's not really a surprise), and although it's a little overpriced, it still costs less than a pair of those flimsy shoes. Go for it, Tory fans, if you're interested.
Tory Burch Love Relentlessly is available in 30 ($68), 50 ($86) and 100 ($115) ml Eau de Parfum. A 6 ml rollerball is $28.
1. "What Is It About Tory Burch?," New York magazine, February 8, 2016.
I smelled this..
No go for me
Money Saved
It’s a new poetic form? — haiku-like!
my second haiku for the day..even though the syllables are off 🙂
Maybe I’ve been watching too much Good Girls Revolt and reading too much Steinem lately, but something about the incessant *youthfulness* of women’s perfumes is really troublesome to me today! Remove every inch of body hair, plaster yourself in makeup to bring back the youthful glow, and smell like a candyshop–because little girls are desirable (and there’s nothing creepy at all about the implied power dynamic).
I totally agree. Also, I thought the scent was screechy, sour and relentlessly synthetic.
I agree, its ridiculous. 🙁
I agree! I wonder if there will be a whole generation of young women who will only know perfume as candy coated fruity pachouli popcorn crunch. with sugar on top
I keep hoping the pendulum will swing back. I think there’s also a smaller population that prefers things like Le Labo Santal…so let’s hope for the best!
100% agree. I’m a relative newcomer to perfume, and one of the things that put me off for so long was definitely the relentless youthfulness aspect you mention here. For a really long time I just assumed perfume and cosmetics weren’t “for” me.
M: had the same first twitch response to the PR copy.
Thanks for the support, all! I was afraid I was being a party pooper in my grumpy, feminist way.
MR, no, not at all!!!
By reading this review, it already gave me cavities 😉
Dose that sound like my kind of fragrance and I doubt we get the brand here in Denmark..so money saved 😀
No, it’s not your type of thing! Stick with your CdG Grace Coddington! 🙂
Whenever I heard that a scent is a “modern chypre” my first thought is that it definitely is not a chypre!
heard should be hear
I don’t know what “modern chypre” means anymore, either! A decade ago, things like Sisley Soir de Lune and Rosine Folie de Rose were modern interpretations of the classical chypre composition… but now, it’s just anything that includes a citrus note, a floral note, and a patchouli note, I guess.
YES. It’s so dang confusing…
So tell us what you really thought of the fragrance, Jessica. 😉
I loved reading this even though I knew going in that this wouldn’t be for me. Just a guess, but I think the buyers of this fragrance are buying the TB name and care little or nothing for the actual juice (well, unless it smelled like Secretions Magnifique).
Ahem, yes. But I’m sure that nothing I say will in any way affect the sales of a fragrance like this, right?
I agree: it’s for the fans, in the same way a celebrity fragrance is for the fans. The fragrance is pleasant enough and it fits the brand image, so it does what it promises to do. Better this than an overhyped $250 niche fragrance that smells like anything you’d sniff at Macy’s…
First laugh of the day: the grammar. Her poor mother being run in the paper. The horror.
Thanks Jessica!
The perfume sounds booooring. And I agree with Marjorie Rose on the creeptastic element.
You are welcome. 🙂
Lone dissenter here! I have not yet smelled the fragrance and now I want to try it based on your description. I probably won’t buy it but I am curious enough to at least smell it. I don’t care for back stories and Tory Burch is just a name and I don’t have any other associations with it.
We always welcome polite dissent here, P! 🙂
You’ll be able to spot it easily enough…let me know what you think!
I received a sample of this from Sephora a few weeks ago. I actually wore it once, but I can’t remember what it smelled like. I thought the review would jog my memory, but nope. Sorry, Tory.
Oh no! That’s never a good sign, is it?
I had never heard of Tory Burch, until she came out with her first perfume. I didn’t think it smelled like candy. On me it turned sour, the way Light Blue does. I also thought it is not interesting enough for the price. Thanks for the review, Jessica. I like be able to find trustworthy reviews on perfume that I can readily find.
Light Blue is sour on me, too…but it smells good one of my friends!
I didn’t know who TB was until every other young woman on the NYC subway was suddenly wearing those shoes, and I had to figure out what I was seeing. There are some interesting articles about her out there, in any case.
I actually quite like Tory Burch for apparel and accessories, especially at deep discounts during flash F&F sales 😉 But her beauty and perfume lines have been rather underwhelming. Pretty but largely forgettable.. I have tried a sample of this one, but don’t remember much about it.
I sniffed and sampled one other from this line…Jolie Fleur Rose. It was dreadful. That Fleur family seems like a knockoff of the Aerin line, anyway…
I’ve never found Tory Burch’s stuff to be of much interest, with the exception of one pair of shoes that I found at Nordstrom Rack. They were still too expensive for me, but they were kind of weird in a good way. They were heels with a chunky heel that had a metal dragonfly up the back. And they felt like they were made out of cow hide with the hair still on, but dyed burgundy.
I googled them and found a picture:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/a0/3b/2e/a03b2e7ee4ba86c69e3f0386cb4aef6b.jpg
those are magnificent!