Harajuku Lovers Baby

I have so many wonderful emotions with this perfume! It was my first "real" perfume as a teen. I remember watching Gwen's "Turning Japanese" cover where she strolled through the Harajuku District of Japan dressed in a loli outfit (Gwen created the fragrances as a tribute/gift to her crew, and while this perfume set wasn't marketed as an "oriental fragrance" the marketing around it is pretty cringe looking back from the 2020's. That said, in the 90s, my blerdy-weeb-anime-teenage-self felt seen by a mainstream celebrity who I still love to this day!) I received the set for christmas that came with the matching solids and in a way that was equally cringe, I proceeded to correlate the perfume bottles to my group of friends at the time. I was "Baby" because it was the only figurine with curly hair that kind of resembled me, ahah. But I adored wearing this fragrance all through middle school. It made me feel mature and serious (yes, the irony of the title and the prominent baby powder note is not lost on me). It made me feel empowered, because I wasn't just wearing a fragrance, but through all the experiences and interests that led me to desire this one, choosing to wear it was a sincere and earnest expression of self. And I think, in this way, it was the first fragrances I wore wholly for myself instead of others (in my teens, fragrances were just something girls wore to smell pretty for boys). I wore it as an extension of that self and to this day, powdery iris notes are among my deepest olfactory loves.

So there I was, dashing out these Harajuku Lovers fragrance reviews with zero expectations of finding one I genuinely liked better than the scent of half the products in my bathroom...and then this —the last of the five—blossomed out of the vial like an ultra-feminine fairytale-princess enchantment. The rose is sweet and jammy, but also crisp and lemony from the bergamot. The heliotrope has a smooth, marshmallow-y almond/cherry undertone that rounds out the rose note to perfection. The white florals are like a cloud of fresh, creamy pavlova, with warm highlights of orange and vanilla. And the musk puts a dreamy, soap-bubble filter over the whole thing. It's like the lovechild of Lolita Lempicka and Love Don't Be Shy, and I'm a little bit obsessed. It's a total sweetheart scent; every part of it smells delicate and confectionary, in such a girlish and pretty way. It's an anonymous Valentine. It's Taylor Swift singing, " The lingering question kept me up; 2 a.m., who do you love? " It's Giselle from Enchanted, discovering she's angry at Robert, laughing delightedly, blushing...suddenly less naive than she was the moment before. (The only downside is that I get next to no projection from it at all. It seems to be an issue with the Harajuku fragrances in general; they smell strong enough on the skin, but they project poorly.)

I am such a big huge fan of baby powder scents. I can remember my grandmother wearing the original Heaven Sent perfume by Helena Rubinstein, and how I used to hug her just to get a whiff of her comforting, pretty perfume that had a kind of baby-powderyness to it...so I've been a big fan ever since. Harajuku Lover's Baby is such a wonderful, light, baby-powdery scent that on me, dries down to a wonderful powdery vanilla and although the silliage isn't that great, I still smell it close to my skin after 8 hours. This is a great, unoffensive scent one can wear to the office without offending others, and it's an intimate scent; someone has to be very close to smell it, and when they're that close, they're in for a treat...and so are you if it's a guy and he's cute LOL! :) As a side note, I am not interested in the dolls, I'm interested in the juice, so I went on ebay and bought a 3.4 oz tester for $20. Can't beat that for the price, especially when the teeny size are $35 for half an oz!

This scent is absolutely perfect!! I adore it and wear it probably more often than any other. Do you have those days when you're rushed to get out of the house? When you don't have time to say "Ok, which fragrance am I wearing today? What's my motivation?" (LOL) Well, this is the scent I wear on those days. It's just delicate, powdery and meek. When I want to smell good but don't have time to think/feel/ponder, this is my go-to scent. It doesn't put you in a "mood" or challenge you; it just smells nice. I also adore this because although it's soft and discreet, it lasts for hours and hours. For chicks who aren't into "perfume-y" smells it's ideal. It would also be ideal for a young girl who is just starting to wear fragrance. I don't think you can go wrong with this scent.

Takeasniff, you're definitely rigth! I love to wear fragrances that remind me of baby powder, expecially when I don't want to feel like a "femme fatale", but I want on myself that clean, musky, comfortable and powdery smell; that's what I'm almost always looking for in my everyday scents! Yes, I'm a big fan of powdery scent; this one has something more than the baby powder touch: some sweet and gentle floral note of rose, orange flower, jasmin and heliotrope that make Baby a more mature scent. I find it also longlasting on my skin, so that it can make me feel calm and relaxed almost all day long!