I’m becoming a bit of a perfume obsessive! The bottles on my shelves have increased dramatically in the last 12 months. In all honesty I’ve gone from having three regular perfumes, to having around 15 different options. The latest addition to my collection is the La Vie est Belle fragrance from Lancôme.
Originally launched in 2012 with Julia Roberts as the face of the campaign, Lancôme says that the perfume “is a universal declaration to the beauty of life” (don’t you just love the copy that accompanies perfumes, I often find it so creative)! What is different about this particular scent, is that it has been created with only 63 ingredients. I know that 63 ingredients sounds like a lot for any product, but perfumes typically have about 120! Lancôme says that the reduction in notes is to focus on quality and not quantity.
Olivier Polge, Dominique Ropion and Anne Flipo, who are three French masters of perfumery, created the perfume – their aim to create a fragrance that encapsulates a fragrance of ‘joy, smiles and freedom’. Lancôme didn’t want to create a perfume that was ordinary or edgy, just something feminine and pretty.
La Vie est Belle comes packaged in sparkly pearlescent box but inside you find a unbranded curved bottle, which is just simply finished with a grey ribbon. It does have the tiny Lancôme rose on the spritzer though, which is a nice touch. It’s quite a sweet scent, with floral notes tied with vanilla and praline, but it’s not too sweet that it feels like something aimed at a young audience. If you like to know the official scents, the top notes are blackcurrant and pear, the middle is made up of iris, orange blossom and jasmine with a base of tonka bean, praline, patchouli and vanilla.
La Vie est Belle starts at £45 for 30ml and you can pick it up in all the usual beauty stores, including Boots here.
