I'll skip to the end: I relate to Burberry's latest fragrance, Burberry Body, just as much as I relate to the mostly naked Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in the ad campaign. This tells me that although I'm an avid and rabid user of the makeup line, the perfume manages to push all the wrong buttons for me and make me cranky, even if it's not the worst thing on the shelves of Mainstreamia.
Robin of NST described the peach-freesia opening of Burberry Body as feeling "like taking a spike to the brain" and she's right. The first few minutes or so of wearing the eau de parfum is magnificently awful with the faux freesia, fake green freshness and a plastic peach room spray note that it really makes me question the sanity of the Minnesota teenagers who participated in the focus groups that unleashed this horror on us. The acid green freesia dies too-slow a death and leaves us with a sort-of-rose over sort-of-amber with a lot of generic musk.
Eventually the dry-down of Burberry Body becomes a pretty standard vanillaish musk that isn't very sweet and has a familiar woody touch. It's wearable and I can see the appeal for a certain age group that doesn't know better and was never exposed to fragrances beyond Sephora, Victoria's Secret and B&BW. You'd think that with their budget, prestige and huge number of fans the people of Burberry would have aimed a bit higher to create something worthy of Rosie and her perfect body. Sadly they didn't.
Notes: absinthe, peach, freesia, rose absolute, iris, sandalwood, cashmeran, vanilla, amber and musk.
Burberry Body ($55, 1.1 EDP) is avaialble at most department stores and from Sephora.
Photo of a Burberry Body billboard by Jason In Hollywood.
I loved your review! It made me laugh!
ReplyDeleteEspecially because I heard about the hoopla of the free sample that was offered some months ago and when I actually sampled in a department store, I didn't understand what everyone was crazy about! It's a terrible scent!
This stuff turns totally smelly on me, it's really gross!!
ReplyDeleteUgh - this (and the sheer mist) give me horrible headaches :( I like the scent, but cannot handle it given the headaches.
ReplyDeleteMinnesota teenagers? Ouch. The teens I know - here in the culturally diverse and yes, very hip Twin Cities MN - have more sense than to hose down with this cloying mess. Yes, even our dear babysitter, who hails from the mid-state iron range has the decency to show up in Bronze Goddess.
ReplyDeleteMy description of Burberry Body is simple. SCRUBBER. *Shudder*
ReplyDeleteBefore I started to read your review I've told myself: "Let's see what Gaia thought about this perfume". And after I've read it-I was relieved.
ReplyDeleteWhen I've tried it-I was running very fast home to wash it away from my hand, since I couldn't bear the smell!!!
Yeah, let's not drag the good name of Minnesota through the alluvial mud on this one. They focus grouped it on teenagers? Teenagers. Really? Teenagers. My job brought me in contact with zillions of them, and though they're lovely individuals, perhaps with a lot of their parents' money to burn, why would you target a luxury perfume to them! It calls into question what I thought about their beauty line.
ReplyDeleteI was so pleased that i was not the only one to hate this perfume . i sprayed it once quite liberally and honestly nearly died when going out for lunch the smell was intolerable suffocating i felt as though i cudnt breathe felt as though it was inducing a panic attack after awhile it mellowed but i would get a waft of it and want to vomit . when i got home no matter how much i washed it wouldnt come off . truely awful , chemical burning headache inducing distaster.having said that there is something about the perfume i love but it gets overided by this floral sharp note that i cant shame shame because i so wanted to like this perfume
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