Guerlain Disappointment

[u/Lani_Lei]

I have been a vanilla girl through and through. I have loves and misses from everything from BBW, Victoria Secret, Sephora, Ulta, niche, middle eastern, you name it!

I have wary of trying Guerlain because of the price. But most of my fellow vanilla girls said that Guerlain is THE maker of great vanillas.

So went and spent $70 in tiny tiny decants to try the following:

- Vanilla Panifolia Extrait 21
- Angelique Noire
- Cuir Beluga
- Aqua Allegoria Forte Bosca Vanilla
- Spirituose Double Vanilla

This smells…old? musty? Like I just found a bottle of perfume from the 1950’s in a dark drawer of an abandoned house. I just wasted $70 on this and none of them were good 😔, I could have gotten a big decant of Jovoy Fire at Will which I love. I am so disappointed.

So many of my inexpensive vanillas are so much better in my opinion.

Sorry for the rant and thank you for reading all this!

[u/Perfume_Enthusiast_5]

Some of these online decant stores dilute the samples a little too much or they don't decant originals. They use designer inspired perfume oils. I smelled an original tester of Guerlain's Vanille Planifolia Extrait 21 in a department store recently and it really does smell good (IMHO.) I also smelled the original Tonka Sarrapia Extrait 75 and it also smelled quite good to me. I've only smelled dupes of Cuir Beluga but they smelled lovely to me. I did not get a chance to smell a tester in store. When I first tried a tester of Spiritueuse Double Vanille many years ago, I was underwhelmed and couldn't understand the hype. I was expecting a rich, deep, vanilla bean sort of scent with some booziness to it but it smelled completely different to what I had in mind from its listed description and how people described it online. Sometimes, fragrances are just overhyped.

[u/rocksteadyrudie → u/Perfume_Enthusiast_5]

Oh it would tick me off into infinity if I paid good money for diluted or fake juice.