Perfume Review: Lalique Amethyst

I adored two out of the last three Lalique's releases, the chic almost-gourmand comfort scent, Le Parfum, and the sublime "mineral" vetiver, Encre Noir, and liked Perles de Lalique, which, although not especially original, was undeniably beautiful. And so I came to expect great things from Lalique and was excitedly looking forward to their latest offering, Amethyst. A road to disappointment is paved with great expectations. Amethyst starts with a truly enjoyable burst of blackcurrant juice, an explosion of sweet tangy-ness from a berry freshly squeezed between fingers. The smell of blackcurrants is forever associated for me with my childhood, summers at the dacha, my great grandma...I have been looking for a true blackcurrant fragrance which would be this radiant and only subtly sweet and, for a lack of better word, natural, for a long time. Unfortunately, a couple of minutes into the scent's development, the freshly picked real berries suddenly turned into plastic effigies, and the just as synthetic raspberry appeared, completely unwelcome, and added a syrupy and what I can only call "generic department store scent" feel to the blend. Worst of all, however, was the musk. I want to appeal to those in whose power it is to cease the production of fruity-musky scent to please do so. The combination of sparkling berries/fruits and the soft white musk might seem like a great mix, but it is apparently very hard to pull off in any sort of original manner. If you smelled one of those blends, you've smelled them all, and good ones are very few and very far between. I suppose, as fruity fragrances go, Amethyst, is not the worst. In fact, it is better than most. It smells like Mûre et Musc Extrême Light, if that makes any sense. If this is Lalique's nod to younger clientèle, I suppose, it might actually do quite well with the target audience. Me, I am sticking with Le Parfum and Encre Noir and am still expecting great new scents from Lalique in not too distant a future. Image source, cosmoty.de.