Lauren

This is THE perfume that got me started on my mad perfume obsession. It was my first grown up perfume and I got it for Christmas when I was sixteen. I think it's always been a sleeper of a fragrance, it seemed that it had more of a cult following. There is nothing out there like this scent. Nothing. I defy anyone to find anything that can stand in as a substitute for Lauren. I learned it cannot be done after years of searching for a replacement. And please if anyone can suggest a fragrance that you think can serve as a similar replacement, please pm me. Lauren (vintage) is the scent that started the fruity floral genre and yet its nothing like the fruity florals of today. The pineapple is a stand out in the top notes and blends amazingly with the sage and other florals. Pineapple sounds like it would be an odd note for a perfume and yet if it were removed something would be missing. Each note belongs together in Lauren. This is why everyone feels as though the new formulation has been butchered. It has. The new formulation smells like a soapy oakmoss bomb. I recently bought a vintage bottle from Ebay. God bless ebay. I only bought it, because I just could not find a perfume oil dupe that gets it right. For a long while I swore off wearing mainstream department store perfumes because I wanted to avoid the additives and chemicals in those perfumes. But for Lauren I had to break my own rule. I just couldn't deal with the sad copys of Lauren I was getting and I longed to smell this perfume again the way I remembered it to be. When I received my red narrow bottle with the gold cap, and opened her up to smell it, I was immediately thrown back to the moment when I first smelled Lauren and feeling that intrigue. Lauren is like the smell of potpourri in the home of a rich genteel man. It's this rich floral, pineappley, green, herbal, mossy, dream of a scent. Please oh please, Ralph Lauren relaunch this perfume to it's former glory. Bring it back so that everyone can see the beauty she really is.

"Little Ditty 'bout Jack and Diane..." Lauren is THE fragrance of GenX high schoolers in the late 80s. At least it was for me, coming from a mostly white affluent suburb in the northeast. I wasn't rich, barely lower middle class, but most of my friends were (think Molly Ringwald as the poor girl who had to make her own prom dress in Pretty in Pink). Several of my rich friends wore this and I absolutely loved it. It took me a year to get a bottle by saving up babysitting money, and once I did, I loved it and wore it nonstop (but I always felt like an imposter wearing it). Putting my issues aside, I absolutely love this fragrance and wish I could still get it today (pre-reformulation). This is one of those 80's scents which doesn't smell like a realistic thing in nature, but instead it's an abstract floral that simply smells like "Lauren." I suppose it's probably the specific blend of florals which are just so perfect, but in particular the carnation-lily mix with a sweet fruity quality over woods really makes this so nice. Like I already mentioned, it's been reformulated (drastically) and it's not the same scent. The two that I really swooned over in the late 80's were LouLou and Lauren. We really *wore* our fragrances back then and I imagine our classes in high school were a heady fragrant mix of so many big scents (the jocks wore Polo and that sh*t would choke you out). Perfumes, cologne and cigarettes must have always been in the air because we used to sneak smoking in the bathroom and outside and don't even get me started on my love of clove cigarettes.... :-) "Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone" "Oh yeah" He's saying "Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone" A little ditty 'bout Jack and Diane Two American kids doin' the best they can

So fresh and so green, green is Lauren, like the sun touching down on mown grass and boxwood hedges, warming even the shady perimeters lines with lily of the valley, and bursting open lilac blooms in early May. Now there is also...pineapple. A supporting note, right where I think it should belong (much like in Jean Patou Colony). It's there to make the greenery more juicy, tart, and bright, and I love this facet to Lauren, reminiscent of spurge or dandelion even. This genius move was courtesy of Bernard Chant, the maestro of "sculpting" perfumes, of "contouring," allowing elements to enter the space with perfect timing throughout development. Here, the elegance of Lauren is in its oxygen rather than in moody density. It moves into the dry down almost surreptitiously, no abrupt turns here, its just apparent after some time after some violets move into the picture and obscure the muguet and the titillating sharpness slowly reads more as "spice" than "bite", suggesting the silhouette of carnation and a musky cedarwood coda. This is all based on the vintage Warner 'Cologne Spray' version in my possession, as it has been expressed subsequent versions would be stripped of its character and it was believed by Luca Turin to be hollowed out, a "muguet pretender" as he put it. It was eventually discontinued altogether, with even newer formulations prior to ceased production going for a pretty penny. I was lucky to find this in an antique mall for ten bucks. My Chant collection is pretty much complete!

Lauren is one of my mom's favorites. She still has 7 bottles of the vintage from 1979-1983 as stocks set aside since she has more bottles of Diorissimo which she often wears as her number one perfume. I researched about Lauren and read reviews on its masculine qualities. Yes, it is floral but green and spicy which l love. I got a new bottle so my mom can test to compare it from her vintage bottle. She asked "what happened to this?" Then she got one from her well stored and well preserved stocks and opened it at last. After spraying l noticed what a beautiful and divine smell it emitted. The new bottle l got is inferior in quality and in strength. After reading her the recent reviews about it as a unisex fragrance in today's standards, she gave me her vintage bottle that she just opened. I was so happy to have the original. I sold the new bottle l bought. For more than two years now l started to wear scents for females that have masculine vibes aside from my men's and unisex colognes from 1900's-present. Lauren is absolutely one of the best classics created by the great Bernard Chant. In these days perhaps only 5% of the world's perfume wearers love or wear this. I am one of them. This is class and sophistication for a unique man to wear. Not at all old and dated. I got lots of good compliments from young and old, men and women. Only my mom knows what l am wearing. Thanks a lot mom.

I met my wife in 1980 when we were both 19 years old. We worked together for one year and became friends. Then we dated for one year, were engaged for nine months and got married. She wore Lauren when we were dating and that scent always made me smile. We were very happy together and raised two sons. Sadly, she passed away last year just before our 40th wedding anniversary. Cancer sucks! After the funeral when I was going through her dresser I found her half-filled bottle of Lauren. The smell of that bottle brought back a flood of happy memories and I started crying again. On what would have been our 40th anniversary I sprayed some Lauren on the felt back of our wedding picture that I kept on a table in our living room. Every time I went near that table I would smell the perfume and think of her. The scent was still strong on her birthday a month later and I could detect it two or three months later. Since the perfume is no longer available I will conserve that bottle and apply it to our wedding picture every year on our anniversary. I am now 64 years old. I hope that bottle will last as long as I do.