Cherry Marmelade

Occasionally, I enjoy cherry shaped gummies. I like the texture. This smells like it. Artificial. Like it contains unpronouncable stuff with a lot of strangely placed letters and a number here and there. But it could be worse. It didn't make me take a step back or looking how to get it off. It's childishly endearing and a bit sticky. Something a tween would need badly and something you wouldn't mind smelling in her company.

Cherry Marmelade embodies exactly what I had always feared would one day happen to Roger & Gallet: generic gourmand fragrances. This one is overwhelmingly feminine-coded, which, to me, is often a bad sign in perfumery. Relying solely on stereotypically feminine notes and blending them together is often the surest way to end up with something cheap and almost ridiculous. It's important to understand where the brand comes from. Roger & Gallet has a rather prestigious heritage (they often highlight their historical connection to the cologne supposedly worn by Napoleon) and has earned genuine credibility among fragrance enthusiasts. Their 2017 eaux de toilette and colognes were little affordable gems, offering diverse olfactory landscapes that were often compared to the work of L'Artisan Parfumeur. However, Roger & Gallet thrives in the mass market (in France, the brand is found primarily in pharmacies and para-pharmacies), which inevitably subjects it to aggressive commercial pressures that shape its creative direction. Their recent Wellbeing Waters, while almost all excellent, have leaned heavily toward freshness and broad appeal. On top of that, the brand still struggles with its long-standing reputation as an "old lady perfume" house, largely due to the overwhelming prominence of its iconic Extra-Vieille / Jean-Marie Farina cologne. It therefore seemed almost inevitable that they would eventually venture into gourmand territory. So while I completely understand why these new releases exist, and sincerely hope their target audience enjoys them, I can't help but regret how creatively and technically underwhelming they are. To be perfectly clear, Cherry Marmelade smells exactly like the budget household cleaning products I grew up smelling throughout my teenage years at my mother's house. My brain therefore associates this fragrance with the pollution created by dirt that needs to be cleaned away. That's the whole problem: nothing here feels alive. There are no beautiful plants, no aromatic herbs, no majestic trees—just fake cleanliness, cloying sweetness, and generic character. To make matters worse, despite being sold through pharmacies and para-pharmacies, where one might reasonably expect something gentler, Cherry Marmelade delivers the unmistakable migraine-inducing quality so common among bargain-bin gourmand fragrances found in supermarkets. In short, this is a poor and unsuccessful release. I can only hope this once-prestigious house will find its creative spark again, otherwise it risks becoming nothing more than a faded shadow of its former self.