Mainstream Monday – Sniffing a Popular Perfume
Throughout the years, there have been Chloé perfumes I’ve enjoyed wearing (like the powdery Love, Chloé). I’ve thought that the brand has done a good job of matching fragrances to their image. This French fashion house has been around for ages and now leans more “rich, young California socialite” than it used to. Their more recent fragrances seem to reflect this but I feel like Love Story really strayed from what I think of Chloé as a fashion house. Chloé has a style and it’s almost like Love Story doesn’t.
Love Story opens with orange blossom shampoo. It’s heady but nothing about it is indolic. It’s scrubbed squeaky clean. It’s not listed, but Love Story seems to have a generous dose of peony and a soapy rose. There’s that “dewy green” that we come to expect from these sort of florals. There’s also something vaguely fruity, like marmalade. It wears as a clean abstract floral for hours. The dry-down is a lot of white musk and a sharp, synthetic cedar without straying from that clean abstract floral heart. The entire feel of this fragrance is clean, airy and feminine.
Take what I’m about to say with a grain salt. I mean, I’m the sort of person that dresses like an Orthodox priest masquerading as a ninja (AKA I wear a lot of super plain all-black everything that lacks any shape- the sort of things you’d think a cult would make you wear). My tastes aren’t flashy and I’m rather boring. Anyway, back to what I was saying. Love Story is almost painfully boring despite being a perfectly acceptable, pleasant fragrance. Perfume People tend to call perfumes like this “safe”. Love Story is the sort of perfume where we all know it was so safe, there’s no need for motioning by the umpire. It’s so unoffensive that it starts to lack personality. This isn’t bad. I just think of Love Story as a beautiful person that really doesn’t have much to say.
Notes listed include neroli, orange blossom, stephanotis and cedar. Launched in 2014. PERFUMER – Anne Flipo
Give Love Story a try if you like inoffensive, airy florals. Or perfumes like Bottega Veneta Knot Eau Florale, Guerlain Aqua Allegoria Flora Nerolia, Armani Prive Pivoine Suzhou, Jo Malone London Peony & Blush Suede, Yves Rocher Moment de Bonheur and/or the original Chloé. It’s a good fragrance for someone that is new to perfume or for environments that are a bit more conservative (like some workplaces, schools….you get the picture).
Projection and longevity are average. Actually, I was surprised by its sillage. It sort of “hovers” over the skin without ever being heavy. The bottle is inspired by the love-locks on Parisian bridges.¹ That’s rather adorable for a perfume called “Love Story” (in English and obviously appealing to an English-speaking market).
Love Story comes in a few sizes with the 1.7 oz retailing for $105 at Sephora and Nordstrom. It’s also available at discounters like Perfume.com.
Victoria’s Final EauPINION – Completely adequate soapy floral. It gives me no feels and I can’t remember what it smells like when I’m not wearing it. Then I wear it and I remember that it smells like the sort of shampoo/conditioner that popular girls wore in high school. And then I remember that I’ve moved on and they’ve stayed in town, living vicariously through their teenagers’ high school years. They seem happy though. Gah, I sure have projected a lot onto a fragrance that is completely adequate. Sorry. In summary, it’s a perfectly fine perfume but I can’t relate to it.
¹They’ve since been removed for being ugly and for posing structural damage to the infrastructure. (Article from 2015).
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Yes, yes and yes. I have a travel sized bottle of the non-Love Story ‘regular’ Chloe and it’s pretty much exactly the same, sans any rose, so let’s just assume I’m talking about the same thing. 🙂 I normally *hate* these kinds of scents, but for some reason, I genuinely like wearing this on occasion. It truly baffles me why. It’s my mannequin scent. Nothing to say… it’s just there… wearing preppy clothes. Staring.
That “hover” effect you describe is what I term “neon” perfumes. It’s a bright yet soft glow of scent; you can’t miss it whatsoever, but it’s not quite a spike through the head (a la Fracas, Poison, etc.).
I love that projection (ha!) you added at the end. Yes, absolutely this is sitting on every Popular Girl’s dresser.
I can’t explain this at all but I don’t mind Chloe. It’s a clean floral that isn’t really unique/memorable, YET I like it. I guess I like it in that way of “clean” that Americans seem to gravitate towards. I also wonder if I like it because it’s so unlike what I usually like…my mannequin drag 😉
Neon is truly the best way to explain these sort of scents! It is like a “glow” instead of the high beams of something like Fracas. I do like glow-y scents (a lot of why I like Hermes scents). In my mind, it must be difficult to compose something that can hover on the skin (and not too far, not too close).
Just really projected a lot onto this fragrance (who doesn’t deserve it). But, yeah, it smells “popular”. I don’t know if it is what high school girls wear now but I think Love Story would have been popular with popular girls back when I was in school.