La Petite Robe Noire 2 by Guerlain, 2011

Let me start by saying I don't like usually like sweet perfumes. When I sample new releases endorsed by female entertainers, I've come to expect the smell of some kind of candy emanating from the bottle. I imagine they are supposed to be fun, cheerful and upbeat. They aim to warm the heart and comfort the soul in their nostalgia for a sweeter, more innocent time. But every time I smell that familiar sugar smell, my heart sinks a little, which is the exact opposite of the effect they are trying to elicit. Really, another one? I think to myself. Do people really like this stuff? Who are they? No one in their right mind would want to smell like this. The truth is, I don't like cheerful and upbeat people. I don't trust them. I assume they are fighting for their sanity against some horrible inner demon they cannot face. Their saccharine smile hides rotten teeth. Their approach is at best unrealistic, at worst profoundly stupid and dangerous. I feel similarly about sweet perfumes. I feel oppressed and suffocated by them. They force themselves upon me. They insist that everybody get along when we all know they don't but it's okay. Occasionally, a sweet perfume comes along that I can trust. It has a natural sweetness. It doesn't particularly care if I like it or not. It's not being sweet for me. It just is. La Petite Robe Noire 2 is such a perfume. There's a cooling lemon candy top-note which gives way to a sweetness that never becomes sticky. The enduring green facet keeps it from sliding into caramel territory. It smells like bubblegum if bubblegum was a product of nature. Out of the three models of little black dress released thus far, this is the only one that I feel remotely comfortable in. If the idea was to create an indispensable wardrobe staple that you can throw on without thinking, I believe they've succeeded with this one, and I'm a man.

This is one of those scents where what I clearly smell doesn't necessarily match other reviews. On me, LPRN2 is very similar to Creed's Original Santal, a huge syrupy-sweet maraschino cherry/grenadine smell with red cinnamon and spicy green hues and a sweet richness underneath. But, while the Creed is highly concentrated and fairly linear, Robe Noire 2 has a lot of signature Guerlain elements fading in and out over the course of the day, making it a bit less rich but much more dynamic. To start, that cherry/cinnamon syrup note is paired with a very clever pine note and the immortelle that smells like spice-drenched liquor that Guerlain loves to use to make things smell boozy. The hyper-sweet boozy woods soon come together into something that smells to me like a cocktail, like some sort of gin/grenadine cosmo. This mixed-drink effect fades as that signature Guerlain sweet pea note makes an appearance, briefly giving the illusion of L'Instant Pour Homme drenched in cherry syrup. Things go a bit downhill from there, as the clever spices and greens make way for marshmallowy vanilla, giving the perfume sort of cherry-Kool-Aid-mixed-with-vanilla-ice-cream feel that's kind of cheap and disappointing after the cleverness preceding it. Then, everything blends more seamlessly together into a sweet syrupy red smell that mostly reminded me of Joop. As a person who really doesn't want to support the current candy/marshmallow gourmand trend, I've been struggling to decide between a thumbs-up and a neutral review, but I've really enjoyed the first few clever hours of LPRN2, and the later smells are still decent enough, though I secretly suspect that this is the kind of hyper-sweet candy scent that could be truly awful on a bad day. So thumbs-up it is, but you'd better be in the mood for a better-than-average candy scent or else a rabid Guerlainophile to really appreciate this one.