Burberry Brit Burberry perfume – a fragrance for women 2003

Despite the marketing, there is nothing here that feels particularly British or modern or traditional or clever. There is no secret wry twist waiting for you: Brit is a straightforward yet masterful composition of sweetness, not entirely like something edible, but like the smell-but-don’t-eat of toy scents for children.

At first whiff, Brit made me acutely nostalgic for the house up the street where I’d play with the sisters growing up. I asked one whether any of them wore Brit, but she doesn’t know. I wonder whether I’m smelling Brit exactly, or just the general sweetness of a house of girls and their pink plastic toys. This sweetness has the pink timbre of dolls with scented heads, of little blush-pink castles, of ponies with strawberries drawn on their hind quarters. Brit is an unapologetically sweet pink scent that reminds me of the scent hovering around such toys in some houses. It is not glaringly artificial any more than most other designer perfumes, but the unrealistic, doubled-over sweetness is something the nose knows it could never meet outside the slightly stuffy fantasy worlds of carpeted rooms strewn with tiny plastic stilettos and sandals.

As for the actual notes: Brit opens with a distinct fruity sparkle of pear and hint of lime, with the rest of the fragrance built of pure almond-vanilla sugar. Fresh without being soapy or calone-heavy, that breath of pear keeps the overwhelming punch of sweetness from getting altogether too stuffy, and by the time it’s gone, you’re acclimated to the sweetness, and it has sunk into your skin, lilting and adjusting to match your pitch, letting go of its most overwhelming qualities.

At the same time, the fruit in the opening is what lends Brit her most plastic shades of pink and her scratch-and-sniff facet. The opening makes you think of a Barbie convertible, but that’s also the most interesting thing about it. If not for the slightly tacky oversweetness, Brit would be utterly forgettable.

Within a few hours, the plastic doll artificial fruity aspect fades away some, leaving a drydown that smells like pure almond-vanilla icing on something like a big dripping chunk of monkey bread. Brit performs quite well, lasting all day into the next on me, with hints lingering past 24 hours, and she projects well within the first eight hours at least. Despite her sweet simplicity, I can tell that she is crafted well, designed to be loud and purely inoffensively sweet and last, all with the notes all consistently sticking together. I can see what makes this a classic, paired with its cultural positioning in the early 2000s, and it is deserved.

The reviewer before me gets it right: this really is a sincere perfume. There is no clever trick, no niche sleight of hand, no olfactory legerdemain; you get exactly what’s in the pyramid, sweet on sweet on sweet. She is the most nauseatingly saccharine fragrance I have tried, but plenty of people have the stomach for her; I just don’t. Brit is genuine, sincere, and unapologetic in her dollhouse sweetness. I find it cloying, and such sweetness is not to my taste, but that is alright. Many will love her.