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Burberry Brit: modern English lime for cool weather
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Burberry Brit
I'll probably never love Burberry Brit, though I'll enjoy its particular "bestseller" charm for awhile. It's pretty, but it neither blows my mind nor makes me ache with desire. Maybe it's the equivalent of choosing to date the most popular girl in school just because of what she is. Maybe I'm that shallow. Then again, I'm not wearing green apple musk Light Blue or the ultraromantic champaca-sandalwood J'Adore just because they're popular. I didn't swoon over Brit when I first smelled it, and I still feel about Brit as I feel for Dolce & Gabbana (red cap), that it's a bit on the obnoxiously musky side for me, wooded, so sharp and dry, like a men's fragrance. Brit also reminds me of an English lime, a traditional cologne splash for distinguished ladies and gentlemen, only feminized with supposed notes of sugared almonds...sounds so good, like those toasted nuts you can buy on the streets of NYC - yum! But I struggle to find these notes and what I get is a coconutty-spicy Thai dish of some sort, sprinkled with peanuts and lime. It's really not that sweet a fragrance, and yet it's simultaneously fresh and heavy - piercingly sharp top notes juxtaposed with dry, musky woods in the base, subtly - stingily - sweetened with coconut milk. This is a handsome modern scent with earthy elements (the earth-toned plaid bottle works well for it) and a boozy "gin & tonic" feel, surely a trendsetting one (I smell Brit in the new Bath & Body Works Twilight Woods) and well-loved enough to be a new classic.
Brit is a very sharp scent overall, firmly in the Fresh Oriental family. The dry down is another paradox to me, like an imprint of a flower, similar to the dry down I find in Vera Wang Princess or Juicy Couture. However, the duration of the ride is aforementioned men's cologne and impressions of South East Asian cuisine, and vaguely, a sunny beach. All in all, Brit fits right in with the time in which it was born (2002), closely following Green Floral Oriental Guerlain Samsara Shine (2001) and arriving alongside Giorgio Armani Sensi (2002), followed by Elizabeth Arden Red Door Revealed (2003) (edited to add) It's also important to note the similarity to Christian Dior Addict (2002) which shares the sharp lime top notes with Brit.
Ah, but let me not forget to discuss the musk. The musk I find in Brit is a dewy, vegetal-coconutty tone, as I find in Naomi Campbell and Cacharel Noa, both born in 1999. At its core, it's the same kind of dewy skin scent as those two notable musks. To summarize, Brit smells like the meeting of dewy green musk and sharp green woods, made extra fresh with green lime. It's as green and fresh as wasabi and I can see how Brit comes across to people as "clean" (as in, your sinuses). I'm thinking it makes sense it's so green, if it's to follow in the path of Oh! de London, fulfilling the role of representing the culture of an entire nation with a clean and soapy, aldehydic-powdery, ladylike scent in the vein of Chanel N°19 and Balmain Ivoire. I love the crispness of Brit when it's cool out - it feels energizing. There's a reason it's in my current Top 10: this kind of bold, bracing sharpness is perfect for New York City during this time of year (or so I feel this year...each year is different). About those missing almonds: I got a great tip from a pal in the fashion industry who told me she layers it with a very sweet sugar fragrance to make it more "sugared almondy"...and it works!
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