Lychee Mousse

Oh my goodness! This was my signature scent from 15 years ago! This fragrance has been discontinued for years so its extremely rare to come by, but I managed to snag a full bottle of it on eBay last week for around $200 (yes, it was a splurge!). The scent is truly special, it was part of a perfume collection inspired by Chef François Payard's decadent desserts. I remember reading about the background story and notes of this perfume on LuckyScent when I was 20 years old and couldn't resist ordering a bottle of the lychee mousse perfume for myself. The fragrance is a delightful and delicate combination of lychee, roses, white chocolate, and raspberries, and each note is distinguishable and very realistic. The opening note is a burst of freshly peeled, juicy lychee, followed by the fresh, bright scent of real red roses with hints of red raspberries. Finally, it settles on a milky and creamy white chocolate base. The fragrance is so deliciously realistic that it's almost edible! The combination of all the notes is simply beautiful! When I wear this perfume, I feel feminine, sweet, flirty, and a little sexy. It's like indulging in a luxurious dessert made of freshly picked lychee, while bathing in a tub of white chocolate milk with red rose petals strewn around. The scent is fruity, floral, creamy, and sweet, and it's incredibly well balanced without being overly sweet or cloying. Once the scent dissipates, a very delicate sugared rose scent is left on the skin. Overall, I'm thrilled to have been reunited with this perfume 15 years later, its such a rare find. A beautiful dessert in a glass bottle!

Lychee mousse took me a couple tries to love, but I really do enjoy this fragrance a lot! I tried the lychee/rose combo in indults Manakara and there was something off, as much as I wanted to love it because I love tihota, Manakara smelled wrong on my skin... Well Lychee Mousse was everything I hoped Manakara would be and then some, it has chocolate as well and it gives it a sweeter, more balanced feel. So far I am very impressed with this affordable line (Mankara is $250 for 50ml and this is in the $50 range). I have all three in my collection and really enjoy all of them- a gourmand lovers dream! Great niche line, I just wish the bottles were labeled, although its easily solvable with a sharpie marking at the bottom of the bottle. Unfortunately, they all look exactly the same, but they all smell different and amazing in a unique, sweet and niche feeling way- not macy's counter way, despite the low price. I highly suggest a sample of anything Payard, which can be purchased at luckyscent.com . Enjoy!!!!

At first this EdC smells sweet, lemony, and fruity, but within minutes a citronella or verbena note creeps in and dominates for a short time, after which it dries down to a light, sweet, chocolate raspberry scent. At no point do I smell lychee, but the citronella does persist, probably as a component of the rose accord. After an hour or so, I smell some white musk in the base. For about three hours there is a reasonable amount of sillage, after which there remains a vanilla-lemon-musk skin scent that’s actually quite nice. For an EdC, strength and longevity are not bad at all. I could wear it, although it wouldn’t be my first choice. If you like citrusy, fruity, gourmand musks, this might be just the thing.

Payard Lychee Mousse is quite true to the name. I can smell really sweet, juice lychee upon application. A bit after, I can smell a faint cassia hint, which somehow helps to amplify the lychee smell better. As it warms up on my skin, it smells quite sugary, good thing is it’s clean-sugary so I can stand it, but the cassia smell occasionally screams and makes me feel a bit uneasy. The dry down is just sweet sweet-nothing. On the positive side, it’s not aggressive and it somewhat makes me think of nice teenager sweet perfumes, simple and cute; however I just don’t find Lychee Mousse perfume enough and sorry it’s not my cup of tea.

Got a chance to visit FC Chocolate Bar in NYC and tried the Payard dessert. Let me tell you, I wasn't ready for these super sweet treats at all. Everything I tried was super high in sugar. I had a hard time finishing up even just a tiny cup of chocolate mousse. Same thing with the fragrance too. This Lychee Mousse is so piercingly sweet with sugar coated raspberry, fellowed by floral lychee, and extra sweet and smooth white chocolate. Rose water? Yeah right. It must have been drown in syrup somewhere and I couldn't smell it. So anyway, I was sugar high for the rest of the night, and I stopped eating sweet stuff for days.

I am sorry for such an obvious thing to say here but this has too much lychee and reminds me of Turkish Delight without the delight. It's a little foody and fruity but it's lacking creaminess and depth. If only they could throw in a little more nuttiness, a little more creaminess and lay off the lychee just a little, I think it would be perfect.

Upon application, I thought that I was going to like Payard Lychee Mousse. Sure, it was fruity and sweet, but it smelled kind of nice. Within minutes, the whole thing degenerated to some sort of bottom-of-the-jam-jar mixed fruit scent. By the drydown, it smelled rather stale. I have a bit of experience with lychee in perfume, from the houses of MOR and Kiehl's, in addition to a lychee and magnolia body spray from the now-discontinued Naturally Victoria's Secret line. This perfume from Payard does not really smell like lychee to me. Instead, it smells like a jumble of abstract fruits--at the bottom of a jar of jam about to be tossed. Payard appears to be primarily a chocolate company, but this scent does not smell like chocolate to me. I gather that the offerings of this "house" are modestly priced, so perhaps the explanation here is that the ingredients were cheap. The designer is the acclaimed Calice Becker, but she should probably strike this one from her resume. Perhaps Payard should stick to chewable confections?

Just a sweet boring insipid lychee/rose water scent, with hardly any lasting power. I can see the comparisons to Manakara, which I wasn't a fan of either but at least with that one you get a fragrance withsome punch and depth. This bores me.