Briefly: Victoria Beckham perfumes

Cinnamon covered these pretty extensively a couple of weeks ago, but since I am nothing if not a follower I had to pop for the sample set and put in my two cents.

First off, I get the idea of Luxe packaging, but frankly I would have been just as happy if they saved the hemp pouch and extraneous stuff and just sent me the samples for 1/2 the price. You can save the showmanship for the actual product.

I can’t really say that I am a huge fan of VB in any of her incarnations. Not that I have any negative connotations to her- my godchild was pretty gaga over the Spice Girls when she was five and that was fine: I found their stuff infectious in a good way, with a positive message about girl power so I could sit through a car trip from Beverly Hills to the Getty and back with a gaggle of her pals singing along and not want to kill myself.

Brentwood Getty. Getty Villa in Malibu might have been pushing it.

The later Victoria was the unsmiling fashion plate known as much for her outfits as her scowl. I am assuming that the unsmiling thing was a fashion choice and likely for the best: if she went around with the grin on her face that I would have waking up next to Becks and his Abs every day the haters would no doubt hate that much more.

Well, on to the scents (stealing from Cinnamon here for the descriptions, which are in quotes.)

Portofino ’97: “Calabrian bergamot, black pepper, crisp white sheets suffused with incense and amber, patchouli and vetiver lingering on the skin of a significant other.” I only get the briefest of the caramel opening that Cinnamon mentions (and that is quite wonderful) before BergamotZilla stomps in and starts knocking down buildings with it’s tail. Satisfied with laying waste to the coast it curls up on those crisp white sheets for a nap, doubtless dreaming of kicking Mothra’s a$$. I like citrus, but not this.

Suite 302: “Black cherry, red peppercorn, rose centifolia, violet, musk, papyrus, black leather and tobacco leaf.” Unlike Cinnamon I get almost zero cherry out of this, except mixed with the tobacco. As a matter of fact it’s practically a sense memory of a pipe tobacco my Dad favored, which may have been cherry flavored. Looking it up I think it was called Borkum Riff. It does get leathery which is a good thing. It doesn’t really do enough for me that I need it though, I can always add some of my default go-to Cherry (SL Rahat) to some Knize Ten. Which I may just go and do right now..

San Ysidro Drive: “Passion fruit, pink peony, ocean air, rose, saffron flower, agarwood, black amber, vanilla and possibly incense” It’s fruity, it’s ozonic, it’s sweet, and I should loathe it with the white-hot intesity of a thousand suns. Oddly, I don’t. I don’t know what it is in there, but there’s something that makes this a little skewed, a little odd. When I first heard the name of the scent I thought it was weird: San Ysidro Drive is a sort of back road that runs from Benedict Canyon up through the BHPO area (served by the BH Post Office, but part of the city of Los Angeles) and is lined with very nice, but hardly palatial houses (think the house the mistress lives in in “Shampoo”) up to the back entrance into Beverly Park, a clutch of mega-mansions in a guard-gated valley south of Mulholland where Shaq, Sylvester Stallone, and until recently the Beckhams hung some of their many hats. San Ysidro Drive is well named- seemingly conventional, but with secret passages that you’d have to be clued in to find. Probably my favorite.

Now, none of these are necessary to my continued existence in the way that perfumes used to grab me (and still sometimes do.) The price points ($200 for 50ML, $290 for 100) is sort of in the middle (and isn’t that sad) of the pack for designer fragrances. I get the impression that Ms. Beckham wasn’t just sitting in Portofino or Mayfair or Bel Air enjoying an Ozempic and steam smoothie while someone toiled at these- they clearly have her point of view.

It just isn’t perhaps mine.

These are available at her website, including the discovery set of all three scents in luxe packaging for $30, which is where I purchased mine. Photos are mine and the interwebs.