Never Judge a Perfume by Its Bottle: Four Good Girls, One Bad Prejudice

If you follow me on Instagram, you probably already know that I have a weakness for perfume bottle design. For me, it is part of the whole experience of wearing and collecting fragrance. If a perfume comes in a bottle I find beautiful, it has a much better chance of making me stop, reach for the tester and, in particularly dangerous cases, buy it.

I know. Superficial? Maybe.

But everyone has their weaknesses. Mine apparently involves alcohol and essential oils kept inside pieces of glass pretty enough to make me temporarily forget that bank accounts are finite.

The problem is that the opposite is also true. If a bottle does absolutely nothing for me visually, there are times when I do not even get close enough to smell the fragrance. As a filtering system, this is excellent for my finances. As a way of discovering perfume, perhaps slightly less so.

Case in point: Carolina Herrera Good Girl.

I have never really understood the famous stiletto bottle. It is instantly recognizable, obviously, but aesthetically it has simply never been my thing. And because the bottle did not attract me, I somehow managed to ignore an entire collection for years.

Until yesterday afternoon.

I was in a perfumery and finally smelled a few Good Girl flankers. The result was mildly inconvenient: four of them went straight onto my wishlist.

A quick disclaimer: these are first impressions, not full reviews. I tested all four fragrances on skin yesterday, so consider this a first encounter rather than a final verdict.

Very Good Girl Eau de Parfum

Sweet, playful and immediately likeable. Of the four, this was probably the least assertive on my skin, but that opening lychee accord did exactly what lychee usually does to me: it made the whole thing feel bright, juicy and slightly addictive.

It may have been the “weakest” of yesterday’s four quick tests in terms of impact, but apparently that still was not enough to keep it off the wishlist. I am nothing if not consistent in making life difficult for my own bank account.

Very Good Girl Elixir

And this is where things became dangerous. Cherry, almond and tuberose is an almost offensively effective combination for me. I had somehow managed not to smell this until yesterday, which in retrospect was probably financially responsible.

Now I have smelled it, and unfortunately it has become a necessity. A completely unnecessary necessity, obviously. We are still talking about perfume, not antibiotics.

Good Girl Jasmine Absolute

Put the word jasmine in the name of a perfume and you already have my attention. The bottle was the remaining obstacle. Yesterday I demonstrated tremendous personal growth, ignored the shoe and actually smelled the fragrance.

Annoyingly, it was very good. A rich floral gourmand, and easily the most persistent of the four on my skin. I sprayed it in the late afternoon and could still smell it the following morning. For a first impression, that is the kind of persistence that gets noticed.

Good Girl Blush Elixir

First of all: it is pink. We are already starting from a position of strength.

Of the four, this was probably the second most persistent on my skin after Jasmine Absolute. It was also the one where the almond accord felt most recognizable to me, wrapped in that soft floral-sweet Good Girl language that apparently I should have investigated years ago instead of sulking about the bottle.

The Painfully Obvious Moral of the Story

Never judge a perfume by its bottle, Linda.

I knew this already, obviously. Apparently I just needed four Carolina Herrera fragrances to actually practice what I preach.

Have I overcome my dislike for the Carolina Herrera Good Girl bottle? Absolutely not.

Have I added four shoes to my wishlist?

Unfortunately, yes.

If you also tend to judge perfumes by their bottles, La Bomba is another good reminder that questionable packaging can still hide something worth smelling.