Rouge

Best pick up in a long while. Very similar to BR540 - ever so slightly less sweet and resinous, more earthy and vanillic. I doubt anyone would be able to distinguish the subtle differences without smelling side by side. Performance does not match the original, but far exceeds expectations for frags at the sub $20 price point. I prefer this softer projection and intimate drydown. Unfortunately, blind buying is the only option, as there is no way to sample such a cheapie (in the US), but if you know that you enjoy BR540 (and surrogates), the risk is low. I'm getting a back up.

While I don't particularly care for it, my niece loves BR540. So, after reading reviews throughout the year that kept mentioning how this is very similar, I decided to purchase a bottle for her when I purchased a bottle of another fragrance for myself from the same brand. Outside of the obvious reference to the name, I didn't have much confidence that this would really smell like BR at all, but surprisingly it bears more than a passing resemblance and shares many of the same notes, unfortunately not listed here. For starters, like BR, there is saffron in this. It is very lightly done and always in the background. This is also ambroxan heavy, which to me comes off woody, and it also shares that ambery burnt carmelized sugar note. I don't smell any flowers in this, but I never could in BR either. This is not as heavy as BR though and wears almost like eau de toilette or eau fraiche of that fragrance, though it projects lightly and lasts for hours on her skin. Of course, there is no comparison as far as quality, but this is far from as bad as I thought it might be. There is nothing synthetic smelling here, aside from the ambroxan, which is heavily in BR too. My niece likes this a lot, but of course if she had to choose between the two it would be no contest - BR would win every time. She said that there is a little bit of magic in BR that is lacking here. But since BR is too expensive to wear casually, she likes that she can use this for that purpose and save the BR for date night with her husband and more special events. Overall, this is a good budget alternative.

Another boring clone of BR 540. So annoying 😵💫

Good gracious, I can’t handle this style of fragrance. Apparently this is a dupe to BR540 which I had no ‘privilege’ of smelling. I smelt Instant Crush though, which is also supposed to be in the same style, and this one does smell like that one - definitely at the earlier stages. Sure, one realises the risks of blind buying, but still it’s annoying when the risk materialises. It’s not about how much I paid for it, which wasn’t much, but what do I do with it now? Sheer waste. I wish they had a discovery set for their Black Label collection. I could have bought a bottle of something else that would be to my taste (not likely though, looking at the rest of the series). But what is this even? I’m okay with all the notes and accords, except for the animalic. But it does not really smell skanky in any sense. Or is this how musk can smell when it’s animalic? Or is this amber when it’s overloaded? Rouge does not even have that warm spicy accord, which is usually a red flag for me when it’s dominant.