As you've probably noticed- thanks to the excess of adverts everywhere at the moment (I'm getting a little bored of them to be honest)- perfumes are common Christmas gifts, and there are literally hundreds to choose from! I was perusing the beauty aisles in M&S today (I went on a 'Christmas shopping' trip and ended up buying myself more things than I got for other people- but that's a whole other post!) and couldn't resist sniffing lots of their perfumes (I get carried away...). I noticed that a lot of them smelled rather familiar- and after popping into Boots and sniffing some more perfumes, then getting home and scouring the internet I realised I'm not the only one. It seems M&S have taken some heavy inspiration from popular perfume brands to design their fragrances- some of the bottles even look similar!
Some examples:
M&S True Red and Hugo Boss Deep Red...
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M&S True Red EDT |
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Hugo Boss Deep Red EDP |
Both of these fragrances (which have very similar packaging) have fruity/citrusy top notes, middle notes of jasmine and musky base notes- they may not be identical but they are a reasonable dupe.
M&S Isis woman and Issey Miyake L'Eau D'Issey...
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| M&S Isis EDT |
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| Issey Miyake L'Eau D'Issey EDP |
Again, similar bottles and very similar scents- fresh, clean and lightly floral.
M&S Butterfly and DKNY Be Delicious...
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| M&S Butterfly EDT |
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| Marc Jacobs Daisy EDP |
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| DKNY Be Delicious EDP |
It doesn't take a genius to work out the=at Butterfly's bottle is super-similar to Daisy, but as much as the scents are similar, Butterfly has a lot of fruity notes which make it rather similar to Be Delicious too- either way this is another lovely scent- fruity/citrusy and light.
There a a few more that others have noticed, but I haven't scent tested them myself, including:
M&S Sensuale/ Chanel Allure
And of course Lidl's Suddenly/ Chanel Coco Mademoiselle
Now I don't know if any of these perfumes are absolute dupes- but they do all smell lovely and pretty similar to much more expensive perfumes, so if you're stuck for ideas for pressies M&S perfumes are well worth a sniff.
The perfumes are available from (larger) M&S stores- and on their website, and there is a great range of sizes- starting with tiny 10ml purse sprays at £3.50, and 100ml bottles, and gift sets for £15- so they are already rather budget friendly... AND the whole range is buy one get one half off! I rather like the idea of getting a selection of purse sized sprays as a gift, like a selection box of perfume :)
Do you know of any cheaper perfume alternatives? Let me know!
xGretalRabbitx
p.s. I've added a twitter button!- it took me aaages to work out how to do it this morning, brain was not in gear....
Thank you for the comparisons! It's funny when you see ones that seem to be such obvious ripoffs of others! Grats on the twitter button!
ReplyDeleteI know, at least in this case they all smell nice too! Sometimes I think look-a-likes try to sell on the bottle alone, they smell rank!
ReplyDeleteThanks, I spent ages trying to sort it out- turns out it actually was super-easy!- silly me :)
xGretalRabbitx