Cabotine Eau Vivide

Living water is supposedly what eau vivide translates to from French. That is exactly what this perfume is to me. Salty, frothy, lucid ocean water! I have been wanting a true aquatic scent for a while. I have also been waiting to try the original Cabotine for a while but reviews have scared me off. I was afraid that it might be too intense or old-fashioned. I ended up coming across this flanker and figured what better way to dip my toes into the Gres waters than to try this literal aqua option. I didn’t have much to lose. It was under $20 for a 3.4 Oz on EBay. Ah-maz-ing! I am going to go ahead and echo what has already been said but I can’t help thinking that if this were packaged in some elaborate, oceanic mermaid bottle it would be flying off of shelves at double and triple the price. Picture it: a curved horizontal, frosted glass bottle in the shape of a mermaid tail with iridescent scales and Statue of Liberty green fins by some niche house or a house like Bvlgari. Or even a celebrity. My mind keeps retracting back to the cover of the children’s book the Rainbow Fish when I smell this. If that is how this perfume was presented, we would all be losing our minds. Youtubers waxing poetic. The coveted bottle that we would all feel pressured to have adorning our shelves here on Fragrantica. Trying to recapture our youth of Ariel crooning that she wants to be part of our world. All the while what you think that would or should smell like would be this amazing scent right here. I truly do think that companies, particularly perfume and makeup, make a huge buck off of our feminine sentimentalities. We get caught up in the aesthetics of mermaids, purses, unicorns, butterflies, fairies, crowns, moons, stars, eyes, ying yangs, etc. The totems of our youth and good old days. I am not above falling into the follies of packaging. The problem I find with most of them is the pretty bottles are failing to deliver the magic of what we really want. Usually, all of the quality is going into the gimmicky bottle and not the perfume itself. Not that the perfumers can’t make good, they usually won’t. Occasionally, there’s a really well done compromise like Cloud but that’s the exception and not the rule. Now, I do love a good bottle as much as the next one and I will admit that EV’s bottle leaves much to be desired and is extremely plain. I love the cap but the swirly, dizzying, seizure inducing design does nothing for me. Forget all that! As with most things in life, it’s what inside that matters. This is the bottled exhilaration of whimsical days spent at the beach as a kid. Ultimate🧜🏻embodiment. Yet this receives absolutely NO love whatsoever. Anna Sui wishes. I suppose there is just plainly an over-saturation of various options today so little gems like this tend to go unnoticed. Eau Vivide is the perfect balance of marine, floral, musky, fruity and woody. And she’s a salty B too. I personally really enjoy salt accords in fragrances. As is the rule with food also, too much can and will be nauseating. The salt here does a really good job of balancing out the sweetness. It’s one of those “dumb reach” perfumes for spring and summer. EV doesn’t go all sickly sweet or powdery in heat the way some fragrances can. Longevity is really good! I had to overspray but this lingered until I woke up the next morning. This isn’t really room filling but the projection is a little above average. I honestly feel a little silly for doubting Cabotine. This taught me a lesson. Cheap doesn’t necessarily equate to low quality. Cabotine has a polarized following. But now I want to try the original and all of the flankers!

The journey to this scent started with my love for Victoria Secret’s Aqua Kiss. I had to check the perfumes listed in the “reminds me of” and took note of which ones that I plan to buy. I chose this and Eternity Air and put them on my cart. But along my new fragrance world journey it took me 3 months of adding/deleting them in my cart before I finally took the plunge. I had to purchase other fragrances that piqued my interest more before I bought them. This came first in the mail today and Eternity Air might arrive next week so I excitedly opened this much awaited box. First of all this doesn’t really smell like Aqua Kiss. I get the similar aquatic vibe but they are not the same. Upon first sniff I got a blast of alcohol and after a few seconds I cannot help but smile about how right the reviews were down below. Reading the comments below I already have an idea of what this smells like and it is exactly how I imagined this to be. This smells like a when the ocean kisses the fresh breeze while sweet citrus flowers are wafting in the air. I can also smell a bit of salt, a tiny bit of musk but only for a fleeting moment and then they all blend perfectly... the total outcome is just divine! This smells so beautiful and it titillated my senses the way some fragrance I have never did. This is my first ever Cabotine and I am impressed. I totally love this and a total blind buy success! My heart is happy! The bottle looks cute in my collection. This is truly one underrated gem and I will definitely explore other Cabotine scents. I am also excited for my Eternity Air to arrive which I will review next.

After searching for nearly a year, it's finally mine! Temps were high when it arrived a couple of weeks ago and I thought this would be a perfect, light and refreshing summer fragrance but I was wrong. The scent was unremarkable and it disappeared on my skin within a short time. I put the bottle aside, more than a little disappointed; however, this morning it's rainy and cold and I've tried again, inspired by the announcement of the 2 new flankers to be released in 2014. A cool weather aquatic! Who knew such a beast existed (outside of Mugler's Eau de Star, an aquatic patch-bomb which I adore)? I'm telling you, colder temps make this one blossom. A salty, ozonic-fresh aquatic with powdery roses and resinous cedar, as if you're making an autumn visit to a beachfront home bordered by a cedar forest and a rose garden flush with the year's last blooms. I'm three hours into this wearing and the fragrance hasn't faded. As I walk through the house there's an outdoorsy fresh sillage trail that's keeping a smile on my face. Little development so I'll call this one a linear fragrance but that's a plus in this case -- no disappointing drydown -- everything you sniff first remains truly "Vivide". A stunner!

This one last and projects on me better than the original Cabotine. I didn't expect a citrusy salt breeze perfume to be able to survive a full workday. Very well done! I sometimes smell similar scents on people (hardly any fragrance is original today when every house feels obliged to release copies of each other's work), but Cabotine Eau Vivide would be worth 2-3 times its small price. The House of Gres has all my respect, I've tried three of their works so far and all are masterpieces. Their scents are surprisingly cheap and very good quality compared to their price. It opens with citruses then settles into salty marine breeze. If someone likes Womanity's salt water but cannot handle the full composition (why? It is so amazing) try this. Here the creamy fig is replaced with aromatic citrusy freshness. A wonderful and very cheap choice for summer, lasts longer than expected, even though I am full of perfumes I'm considering ordering another bottle.

Oh I love this little beauty so much! Finally a great, not too overwhelming summer scent that is not a citrus cocktail! It starts with beautiful salty accords, fresia and lemon zest,not very noticeable, just making the whole composition so fresh! It is easy to wear and to like. I adore it. Unfortunately my significant other does not like it, so we have to part our ways. If someone is interested, he is 31, blue eyes, blond hair, great sense of humour :) Just kidding. I wear it when he is not around. Longevity is quite good, last more than 4 hours on me, and for this friendly price I can spray it again and again as many times as I want. Love love love! Oh, it has nothing to do with the original Cabotine, except the similar bottle design.

I really enjoy this one! It is an easy go to fragrance when you just want to spray something on. Not that it is boring, it's not. That might be why I reach for it so often...it doesn't smell like anything else that I own and smells very fresh and a bit floral. Eau Vivide does smell very aquatic maybe even a bit unisex, but there is a detectable floral note there that keeps it feminine and appropriate for evening wear too. It seems to fit almost every mood, whether it is running errands, working out or just a date with my girlfriends. I wouldn't call it sexy but she could work for any other situation.

A blind buy from an Amazon 3rd party seller, my 1st Cabotine fragrance and I am not disappointed. I'm in love with the variations on the bottle design and wish I could afford one of each of their scents. I'm a fan of salty sea scents with Giorgio Ocean Dream being a long time favorite. Cabotine Vivide is much more powerful with stronger silage, more floral notes, an on me, less development. My first wearing I didn't notice any changes as the hours went by but the longevity is tremendous. I need a light touch with this one. I do like it and plan to use it often.

More than a decade since I've reviewed this gem, and it is still among my absolute favourite freshies. The performance is still incredible for a fresh scent, although I'm aware that my bottle is now more than ten years old and I should be finishing it and get a new one, since they don't stay good indefinitely, but this is really great quality. Fresh but not screechy, a friendly, mild and enjoyable scent.

This is very watery, like inhaling the sea breeze. It almost makes you feel the water touching your skin. I think this is what I wanted Acqua di Gioia to smell like. It's not lemonade'y like Acqua di Gioia. Eau Vivide is a truly marine scent - and the sea is warm, the day is super relaxed and there is a sense of quiet happiness. It really makes me feel happy, even in the middle of November.

I am an unrepentant pushover for all Cabotine flankers with their gorgeous floral caps and will gladly pay the full retail (gasp!) price when this finally reaches the U.S. market.

The Cabotine flankers rarely disappoint me. Eau Vivide is exceptionally salty, but in a pleasant, just emerged from taking a dip in the ocean way. Vivide isn’t a perfect 50/50 mix of salt and flowers like my beloved Cabotine Floralie. The flowers are here, though very faintly. This wears well on a trip to the beach on a hot hot day with the car windows down, flying along the road. It is strong, long lasting and great value for money. Try layering Eau Vivide with a Lemon or minty EDT for a fresh variation.

Not usually a category of scents I'm drawn to, but the notes intrigued me. Eau Vivide is a beautiful aquatic floral, fruity-sweet but not overly so, with a salty finish. Strongly reminds me of Liz Taylor Violet Eyes. Probably the cedar/peach/rose at the heart. Highly recommend. Fresh and inoffensive, but NOT boring!

Lemons and flowers floating in the salty ocean. It’s not sour or acidic but it’s not particularly sweet either. It’s just very fresh and subtle. I think I will save this for hot days. It’s chilly at the moment and the vibe is a bit like an icy cold ocean and I get quite a dry rose in the dry down BUT! I suspect it will shine when my skin is warm and the weather is better!

After a harsh opening, it smells mainly of cedar, with just a bit of salt spray. I think it makes a nice fragrance for a man or a woman who does not want something very sweet. But while I love marine accord, too much cedar will give me a headache, and frankly I have been waiting years for the woody scent fad to pass. I can handle a very little, and sandalwood is lovely and has long been used in fragrances (and I like sandalwood!) but very wood-forward scents, especially those that feature cedar, like Vivide does, make me sick: headache and swollen sinus-sick. While it opens with citrus, I would not call it a citrus fragrance; I think this straddles the line between a woody fragrance and a marine fragrance. People who like one or both might like this. I smell only briefly and not consistently, the other notes listed. I would never buy this again.

I do love many Cabotine flankers and the original, and that is why I purchased this as a blind buy. The initial blast is very pleasing to me; however, it soon turns to straight up powder on my skin, and that is one note that rarely smells good to me. That one note keeps me from enjoying many otherwise enjoyable fragrances and tends to produce a headache. I'm not sure what creates the powder note -- musk?cedar?freesia? Oh, well. I will just enjoy the other Cabotines.

I'm new to perfume in general so I can't get super technical. The Cabotine Eau Vivide smells very much like a unisex fragrance with a light floral touch. Very light and definitely a day fragrance. Barely detectable even after spritzing. Not sure if i like it as after sniffing it on application there's a sharp smell at the end that makes me retch.

Ugh! It’s giving me laundry powder vibes. I was hoping for a lovely soft aquatic but all I’m getting is floral laundry powder which I detest in a fragrance. Maybe I’ll review again in the summer.

A pretty, floral, salty breeze atop an attractive cedar base--very salty, light lily of the valley, small amounts of juicy peach. If you like that salty inky type of fragrance, this is good! It's blended nicely together, where you can pick out a few notes, but it also has a coherent personality as a fragrance. Not a big projector, but it does wear nicely on a windy day, and it lasts a decent amount of time on skin. 4 hours of noticeability, then a soft pleasant skin scent. This is very unisex imo.

Its unisex scent. Eau Vivide is very blue, cold navy, fresh, aquatic and little spicy with a hint of musk. Im almost anosmic to it, I smell it only for few minutes on clothes longer, during the day at all. Longevity is weak to moderate but sillage is soft and close to skin on me. I enjoy it and use everyday on this summer but won, t repurchase. If it only would be more potent.

My favorite aquatic. Not saying a lot, since I don't usually wear aquatics. Sounds like an ad: I don't usually wear aquatics, but when I do, I wear Cabotine Eau Vivide! This is fresh and lovely without that harsh chemical note typically found in aquatics. Smells like salty flowers. Perfect in extremely hot weather. Tends to screech in cold weather.

it smell really good!!!!!! it's like sea breeze together with some unknown sweetness. I used it daily in the summer! However, this fragrance seems go bad easily? I don't know is it my method of keeping it or is the problem of the fragrance but I keep it in drawer with other fragrance and only this one go bad after several months.

Very aquatic, very fun. This perfume can definitely be worn by a man. The scent could last a little longer, but projects pretty well. Lighty floral, slightly sweet, very salty, on a nice Woody base. A great tee shirt and jeans worthy scent at an extremely low price point.

Wow! This is what I call olfactory orgasm. The bottle has just arrived and I will be an eternal fan that's granted. Reminds me a bit of a successful marriage of Arden's Mediterranean and LV Coeur Battant. But don't shoot me if I'm wrong ... :-)

This one has become my new favorite fragrance. It has the perfect composition and I just love aquatic scents. I can ́t understand how anyone can dislike this wonderful aquatic.

CAUTION DO NOT TRY! A near to throw up! The smell is nauseating LITERALLY! Wonder HOW this perfume got approval of gres house! Dont PURCHASE, DO NOT EVEN TRY IT .....

This is a super light airy, somewhat flowery scent on me. I really like this in the spring time before it gets too warm out.

Soft, little bit solty sea wind. Romantic summer scent, on my skin lasting 8h, perfect for edt concentration

I don't particularly find this masculine. It smells like floral laundry soap. It's pretty. Strong though...

My favorite summer aquatic. Clean marine salty spray, unisex leaning feminine.