Tommy Girl (1996)
by Tommy Hilfiger

Tommy girl is derided for being cheap and ubiquitous, but to my mind, easily available, relatively inexpensive and brilliant are a perfume trifecta.

I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but I see TG as an evolution of the eau de cologne concept. EDC has long been prepared with various elements of citrus (fruit, rind, leaves, flowers, branches), culinary herbs that combine well with citrus (rosemary, lavender, basil), perhaps some other flowers (chamomile, rose, jasmine) and eventually musk. EDC works because when you wear it, the refreshing, bracing feels doesn’t require a day’s commitment (it doesn’t last long) and because you could easily want to drink it. The same could be said of TG.

The citrus/wood/floral portions of an EDC are of a piece, literally, as they all come from citrus plants. That same feel of tart woodiness is found in TG, but in this case, it’s more along the lines of the proudly synthetic metallic flower of Lauder’s Dazzling Silver. The shiny tart floral is encompassing enough to fill the place of the whole citrus gestalt of an EDC. The analogue to cologne’s herbs is an infusion somewhere between black tea and a verbena tisane. Others have called the floral in TG bright or glowing. To my nose, the metallic tang along with the tea’s smokiness makes the flower a bit grim, a bit dark. Its only light is like something radioluminescent under a black light.

Despite Hilfiger marketing’s straight-faced insistence on notes of nominal botanical Americana (American wildflowers or some such garbage---I had thought Tania Sanchez was joking) TG is an abstractly beautiful synthetic perfume. Chemical doesn’t mean fake. This is only an ersatz floral if you call it a floral. To me this is a marvelous, successful piece of synthetic perfumery.

30th June, 2011. (Last Edited: 5th July, 2011.)

I love this scent! And I HATE the name Tommy Girl! Okay, Tommy I can see because it's Mr. Hilfiiger first name. But girl implies the it's some giggly little bubblegum scent produced for the pre-pubescent consumer. It is none of the kind. This is a sophistocated fruity tea rose fragrance. Hence, I now dub thee - Tommy Woman!

15th May, 2011.

Like Nile_Etland, I also bought this blind after reading Luca Turin's five-star review in PERFUMES: THE GUIDE, which said (I'm paraphrasing) "It's tragic that such a great fragrance has suffered so much for being affordable." My bottle of TG arrived today, and I'm not disappointed. When I smelled this after it first came out, I was probably too young to appreciate the true feat of a tea well done. But after developing a better love of fragrances, and a massive obsession with tea, I LOVE this fragrance--I love its tangy, clean feeling, and the soft honeysuckle in the heart. This will be a regular for me in summertime--and I might even get my husband to try it out, since it would actually be quite nice as a masculine as well. (Clearly, I'll have to hide the bottle from him so he doesn't see the name--Tommy WHAT?!)

On a side note: I had this shipped to my office, and when I got it, a gaggle of my twenty-something coworkers gathered around my desk to test it with me. We all agreed that it took us straight back to middle school, listening to bad R&B blaring in dark gymnasiums during school dances. 1996/7 surely marked the high point in the teen fragrance market...

28th April, 2011.

This was my very first perfume which I think I received as a birthday gift when I was 12. I still have the original bottle but the juice is almost all gone. Now that I'm older I must say that it's not really my type of fragrance. It's a little too citrusy and rosy for my liking. The scent however is extremely long-lasting.

When I was in my teens I wore this all the time, partly because my high school boyfriend was called Tommy and I thought wearing something called Tommy Girl was kind of cute. But now this perfume only has bad memories so I haven't worn this for a very long time.

26th April, 2011.

I've given Tommy Girl subsequent wearings from my own bottle, and must admit that my initial experience with the scent was misleading. It was from a tester bottle that had been sitting on a shelf under hideous lighting at Kohls, and the juice inside must have been old and a little off. Reflecting on what I smell now - Tommy Girl is very nice. Instead of the stale chemical tea note that I sniffed before, I'm getting a very clean blackcurrant and green tea accord off the top. This rapidly (as in within ten minutes) opens into a simple, jasmine-fueled white floral breeze, which continues for several hours in a linear fashion before fading away. There is, oddly enough, nothing blatantly feminine or "girly" here. The tea and currant are rich and realistic, and the florals never overpower the construct. In fact, the edibles simply recede and compliment the floral heart and base. This kind of evolution reminds me of the remarkably simple progression of lavender to vanilla in Pour un Homme de Caron; the deftness of Ernest Daltroff's hyper-realistic lavender as it moves to floral-tinged vanilla is mirrored in Calice Becker's composition. For another comparison, I would add that the clarity of Tommy Girl's notes is on par with that of any Creed I've tried in the last year. A surprisingly successful unisex offering from Hilfiger.


...

19th June, 2010. (Last Edited: 6th January, 2011.)

I bought this blind having read LT's review in The Guide, being of the opinion that even if it was as naff as it's name I could afford to bin it if I didn't like it. No problem - it's a lovely fresh optimistic fragrance, suitable for any age-group, and I love it.

11th June, 2010.