Glossier ‘You’
While Glossier is predominantly a cosmetics company, I have gotten a decent amount of comments about Glossier's 'You' Perfume - and with skin scents as popular as they are, I was intrigued enough to get the discovery set of four (prior to the release of 'Soie').
'You' is marketed as a "your skin but better" "skin enhancing" fragrance, and I will say – it did indeed smell different on me than it did my mother and my partner, which was a very fun experience. On my mother, it was more light, fresh, sweet but citric-forward surprisingly while on my partner it settled into a clean citrus with a heavy lean of green. Unfortunately, mine turned out much more dark, the ambrox really coming through on my own skin to turn into a darker woodsy deep sandalwood-esque scent. I tested the perfume on cloth too instead of skin just to see, and it barely came off as a scent on its own, so that aspect of this fragrance was indeed a highlight! Truly a skin enhancer type of perfume.
For me, perhaps the ambrox/ambrette combo on my skin was too much, as it was the main thing I smelled throughout the rest of the Glossier line as well. While the 'You' core scent lightened throughout the ~4 hours of wear, I wasn't a huge fan of it on me personally and the other scents in the four-pack fell flat as they all had such a strong echo of ambrox. None of the 'You' experience particularly was unpleasant however; I DID go out to grab a coffee about 30 mins after spraying, and immediately got a compliment from the barista. She HAD to know what I was wearing – which is always a good sign! Overall, 'You' did feel like a ‘second skin’ type and brightened up a bit to more of my personal tastes as time went on.
‘Doux’ was the second one I tried and was less impressive as it immediately reminded me of my 'You' scent + Dossier's sandalwood scent; there was a very similar creamy yet white musky sandalwood tone and there was not much shifting throughout the wear time.
“Fleur’ is described as airy and luminescent, but again, on my skin, it had a similar muskiness to it that the others had. While the florals themselves were nice and I couldn’t pick out a particular dominating floral note, this was definitely not the airy lightness I was expecting. It again settled into that same deep musky sandalwood tone like the other two.
'Reve' I thought would turn out differently as a gourmand, but again was very similar to the rest and made me think that perhaps this is due to having the same base notes all around. Maybe it's just not a good fit for my skin!
The new You "Soie" wasn't out yet, (which I was sad to see now as rice notes can be very lovely), but looking at the overall notes list, I'm pretty sure the ambrox would overpower the rest on my skin like it did in the rest.
'You' is by far and wide the highlight here with the overall experience being quite varied and fun. I started with that one and found myself very impressed - to have the other three fall quite flat. 'You' is a strong purchase in my opinion, on its own or for layering, but the other three were not unique enough in their own way.
*Quality: 4/5
Originality: 3/5
Presentation: 4/5
Price: 3/5 *
