Wednesday 14 May 2014

Familiar Fragrance?

Love the heavenly scent of Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle, but don’t care too much for the price tag? Then read on...


As with most things in life, when it comes to fragrance, I have champagne taste and a beer budget!   Oh yes, almost every perfume I take a liking to, comes with a reasonably hefty price tag – and I don't think I’m alone when I say my favourite at the moment is Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle.

That being the case, I usually have to wait for birthdays and Christmas to top up my expensive fragrance supply.  I don’t know why, and maybe some of you are the same, but perfume is just one of those things that I can’t seem to justify buying for myself, especially when the price tag is in excess of £50.

But it’s not just fragrance.  So many of my favourite products are, shall we say, on the expensive side, and it doesn’t help when everything seems to run out at once.  This week alone, I squeezed my last drop of cleanser out of its tube, my mascara decided to dry up, I have (at the most) another day or two’s worth of foundation left, and worst of all, my Coco Mademoiselle bottle is well and truly empty (and my birthday’s not ‘til November!)

Then, as if to rub salt into my wound, a colleague swept by my desk the other day wearing, yes you guessed it, Coco Mademoiselle.  I actually got up to follow her to the photocopier, so the divine fragrance could hit my nostrils for just a little longer (not quite as sad as it sounds, I did also have some copying to do myself).  So, chatting whilst we copied, I complimented my colleague on smelling so wonderful, to which she replied ‘oh yeah, it’s that Eau Nude by Next’. What?!  Actually, (and perhaps subconsciously as a result of having just been enlightened), I did notice that the smell wasn’t exactly the same as Coco Mademoiselle, but it was pretty damn close - it certainly had me fooled.

You know what happened next... yes, I went shopping on my way home from work and bought myself some perfume. But instead of a £50+ price tag it was just £7.50 for a gorgeous little 30ml bottle of Next’s Eau Nude.  I just bought the small bottle to try, in case it didn’t smell the same on me, but I will definitely be going back for the 100ml version, which costs just £12.  After just a week of wearing Eau Nude, I've already been told several times how nice I smell, and had comments such as 'oh, are you wearing Coco Mademoiselle?'... not just me then.

As with most cheaper perfumes, the smell doesn’t seem to last as long as the more expensive stuff, so I find I need to carry it with me to refresh the fragrance once or twice during the day.  However, at a fraction of the cost, if Coco Mademoiselle is a fragrance you love, but like me, you can’t actually bring yourself to splash out (or wait for Christmas), this very reasonably priced alternative is well worth a try.  The bottle’s a really pretty and stylish design too. Well done Next!

Another of my favourites at the moment is Chanel's Allure - If you  happen to know of a good copycat version of this one, I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks for reading  :-)





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