Burberry Sport for Women

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Rounding off this dual of Burberry Sports is the counterpart for Burberry Sport for Men. The women’s version is also a sporty fragrance that lacks originality and depth. But hey, it smells okay. Burberry Sport for Women

In Bottle: Florals layered on sharp citrus and a much lighter ginger treatment than the men’s version. The florals are a bit sweet and fruity. The citrus is awfully strong which is where I guess the sport part of this fragrance is from.

Applied: Nicely vibrant sweet floral citrus with that initial sharpness from the ginger. The ginger is rather fleeting in this but it does hang around and give the fragrance a bit of spiciness as the florals deepen and sweeten the longer you wear it. Burberry Sport for Women takes a turn for the sweet, creamy floral side in its mid-stage as the magnolia note amps up and makes itself quite well known. This smells sharp and clean but still very feminine. It’s a nice sporty equivalent to the men’s fragrance as the two share some similarities but are adequately unique from one another. The final dry down is a pleasant sun-warmed woodsiness with a pretty sweet and creamy floral backing.

Extra: I actually like, by and large, Burberry’s fragrances. Brit was nice, The Beat is nice, Burberry London is good. And these, while unspectacular, are also good fragrances with a nice tempered sporty scent. I just think their bottle designs are rather hit or miss and so far they’ve been missing a lot.

Design: Pretty much the exact same design as Burberry Sport for men only the outer casing is white instead of black. The glass bottle held within the casing is the same red as the men’s version. I still don’t like the bottle design.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: mandarin, ginger, marine accord, fresh magnolia, honeysuckle, petit grain, solar notes, cedar wood, musk.

Again, it’s a sporty fragrance. This stuff is meant to be easily worn and meant to smell like this. I do like these two fragrances that Burberry has released though. They smell good. Not fantastic, not unique, but they are good smells that won’t be offending anyone any time soon.

Reviewed in This Post: Burberry Sport for Women, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Burberry Sport for Men

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There are two releases in this line. A Burberry Sport for Men reviewed in this post and a Burberry Sport for Women. Both came out at around the same time a little earlier this year. Burberry Sport for Men

In Bottle: Cool ozone note with a spicy ginger and a bit of citrus. Really nice. I actually like how this smells. In terms of sports fragrances, it’s done a bit better than your typical “slap some citrus and marine notes together and call it a day”. I mean, this slaps some citrus and ozone together but that spicy ginger thing it does is pretty good.

Applied: Initial flare of ozone and sharp spicy ginger with citrus. The citrus is quick to dissolve and the ginger is the one that lingers around a little bit longer. The ozone lends a clean sharpness to Burberry Sport for Men. The mid-stage is dominated by a woodsiness with a clean sudsy background. I’m thinking someone’s taken a bucket of soap into the forest and started scrubbing down all the trees there. The spicy ginger note rapidly deteriorates in the mid-stage leaving you with soapy woodsiness. The final curtain for this fragrance is a warmed cedar and clean musk. This isn’t going to break any fragrance records any time soon as after its pleasant opening, the mid-stage and the dry down are fairly formulaic.

Extra: As mentioned earlier in the post Burberry Sport has a men and women’s fragrance. The men’s is black and red and the women’s is white and red.

Design: The bottle is a tall rectangular prism thing that is black and red in color. It operates on the same kind of style as the Ed Hardy fragrances where you have a cover over the rather plain perfume bottle itself. I’m not a big fan of that kind of design technique for bottles because the perfume bottle contained within the other casing is almost always plain to the point of boring. As if throwing together a half-hearted outer casing can excuse them from designing a nice looking bottle inside. As is the case with this. I don’t find it to be an attractive look for the bottle.

Fragrance Family: Fresh

Notes: Ginger, grapefruit, wheatgrass, marine accord, red ginger, juniper berries, dry amber, cedar wood, musk.

It’s a sports fragrance. So the depth and level of originality is not going to be that high. However, Burberry Sport for Men does a good job incorporating that ginger note into the opening. It was a very attractive fragrance, for the little while that it lasts anyway.

Reviewed in This Post: Burberry Sport for Men, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Burberry The Beat

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I’ve been wearing The Beat almost every day for about four months now and I think it’s time I finally gave her a review. She’s pretty, though more coveted on the shelves than on my skin because she’s a very typical scent in that ‘smells so fresh and clean’ type of way.  What I mean is, I wanted The Beat–badly–when I saw it on the shelves. It smelled excellent whenever I tried it. But now that I own 50ml of the stuff, it’s a forgettable scent in how ordinary it is. The Beat

In Bottle: Pink pepper with a mandarin kick and a cedar underbelly. The Beat uses a light handed approach to cedar so that I can smell it but it isn’t overpowering like other fragrances that tend to blast the cedar out like some sort of Deus ex Machina of the perfume world.

Applied: Pink pepper, sharp citrus and cedar immediately on application with the citrus sticking it out for a respectable amount before fading as it lets the cedar settle in close to the skin. This cedar that sticks to my skin plays a major part in not  overwhelming me with the cedar-y goodness. As The Beat ages, it grows softer, a little more floral with a brush of tea and a gentle smudge of iris layered over bluebell. It makes The Beat smells very fresh, very spring and summer with how bright and cute and vibrant it is. The dry down is a typical affair, with that close to your skin cedar blended in with an earthy cleaned-up vetiver.

Extra: The Beat is perhaps most well-known for having fashion’s “It Girl”, Agyness Deyn, be the face for the fragrance. It’s supposed to evoke an edgy, hip, alternative young audience. They got one out of three right so that’s okay. There’s nothing edgy or alternative about The Beat. It’s very pedestrian. Lovely, well-behaved, but ultimately pedestrian.

Design: The Beat’s bottle design does much better than Burberry Brit (that tartan brick of a thing I can’t seem to stop complaining about). The bottle is a nice clear glass with the Burberry tartan. The juice inside is a very lightly toned pink and the cap is a pretty metal affair with a dangly bit hanging off the side of the bottle with a metal plate that reads “Burberry” on it. Cute, lovely little bottle. Definitely not something I’d be tempted to build a wall  out of like Burberry’s other design.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Bergamot, mandarin, pink pepper, Ceylon tea, cardamom, bluebell, iris, white musk, vetiver, cedar.

Funny that the tea came through so lightly in this fragrance because if it had been a little heavier, I would have been a little more in love with The Beat. But as it is, it’s a good “standing in the elevator” fragrance with a well-behaved cedar note.

Reviewed in This Post: The Beat, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Burberry Brit

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Burberry Brit, for me, is the fragrance a high school graduate who’s just decided she’s too good for a body mist and wants needs a perfume. Something a little more complex, something with a hint of maturity, and something that costs a little bit of green. Brit is a smooth woodsy gourmand with an impressive wear length that’s a couple dimensions beyond a body spray.Burberry Brit

In Bottle: Sharp citrus and vanilla almond. I get the lime right out of the bottle as it’s sitting up top but there’s also the woodsiness sitting there too. The woods are actually trying to trick my nose into labeling this scent as spicy. Despite all this, it is unmistakably a gourmand scent to me as the almond and vanilla will refuse to make me think any other way on that front.

Applied: Striking flair of citrus right on impact, it takes a few minutes but the citrus dissolves into this fruity, juicy pear and almond mix that carries the fragrance until the vanilla comes up. Brit’s vanilla doesn’t pull any punches, it’s sweet, domineering, and unapologetic. It amps up and mixes with the almond and eventually drowns the pear until all I get is vanilla, a touch of almond, and that tricky spicy but-not-really wood note. I’d have to say the wood note is what’s really saving this fragrance from being a vanilla single note. It adds a much needed and much appreciated depth that stands its own for hours with the vanilla. Overall, Brit is a warm, smooth vanilla fragrance with a wood base. A well-done and very young gourmand.

Extra: Over the years since the first iteration of Brit came out, there’s been three flankers; Brit Sheer, Brit Red, Brit Gold. I have only smelled Brit Sheer, which to me is a much sharper, citrus treatment that somehow managed to be even more inoffensive than the original Brit and I have always considered Brit to be quite agreeable already.

Design: I absolutely hate the bottle design for the Brit bottles. Big, heavy rectangles of clear glass covered in Burberry’s signature tartan. It was a tremendous let-down and the design, to me, seemed like an afterthought. It looks tacky to be honest. Holding the bottle feels a bit like holding a tartan striped brick. The cap is a plastic cube, forgivable in many instances, but it hurts the bottle design here even more. I can see they maybe have been going for the simple angle but missed it and landed in plain and utilitarian. This is one fragrance I think would really benefit from a bottle redesign.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Lime, pear, almond, mahogany, vanilla, tonka.

The original Brit is one of the more iconic and recent gourmand fragrances. With an inoffensive and pleasing vanilla note this should satisfy anyone looking for a more up-scale and complex vanilla scent than a body mist.

Reviewed in This Post: Burberry Brit, 2008, Eau de Parfum.