Burberry Brit Sheer Eau de Toilette by Burberry Review

I’m learning there’s more than one kind of soapy scent.

There’s fragrances that smell like bar soap, vintage, French-milled, gentle. There’s laundry detergent/freshener/softener smells. There’s nondescript bathroom air freshener aromas. There’s shampoo, which can be divided into further categories: men’s, women’s, children’s, and dog shampoo. And then there’s liquid hand soap, the kind that comes in the cheapy transparent pump bottle with the picture of the clownfish on the inside.

On me, Burberry’s Burberry Brit Sheer is smack between children’s shampoo and clownfish hand soap. It’s the sickly-fruity-sweet shampoo the popular girl in 5th grade wears, which her mother sometimes sneaks pumps of to remind herself of her own days as 5th grade popular girl. It’s the generic fruity clean scent of their bathroom, with its Glade air freshener. And it’s the smell of the unscented clear liquid Softsoap hand soap standing at their sink.

I’ve never smelled a more distinctly shampoo-like fragrance in my life, with more liquid-hand-soap nuances. I can practically taste the glycerin.

The edible arrangement of nondescript tropical fruit notes is bang-on. The hint of quintessential early 2000s floral musk lingers in the air like a familiar old acquaintance taking up all the space in your bathroom with her five hundred bottles of hair products. If this came out today from some smaller niche house as a self-aware nostalgic scent with a name like “2007 Bathroom”, I think people would buy it.

I don’t understand why someone would want to smell this much like shampoo, but it’s genuinely a cute, very clean, and inoffensive tropical fruity smell. The fruits and florals are all well-blended and pleasant. If you’re unafraid of soapy scents and you like the notes and the clean bathroom vibe I’ve described, go for it.

This fundamentally isn’t my sort of perfume. But as far as shower fresh fragrances go, Burberry Brit Sheer is excellent. This is fruity-fresh and incredibly clean. Crisp, fresh tropical highlights of lychee, yuzu, and mandarin orange all on a bed of nondescript pink florals.

I have no idea what the pineapple leaf in the notes list is supposed to smell like. The hints of lychee, yuzu, and mandarin orange are clear enough, a bright and tropical fruity spray distinguishing Burberry Brit Sheer from so many competing fruity-floral shower perfumes. It’s not overwhelmingly citrusy, more of a general clean fruit-shampoo aura with a distinguishable hint of lychee and a side of bright yellow extra juiciness.

At its heart, Burberry Brit Sheer is filled in with pink peonies and peach blossoms. I’ve also seen sweet pea and rose (as well as grapes and amyris wood) mentioned in the notes by some sources. Still, nothing about this really feels dominantly floral to me. Sure, the vague pink floral perfume-y vibe is here for structure, but there are no dominant floral notes jumping out as a main point of the concoction on me. I’d believe there’s a bit of peony in here. Maybe even some sort of fantasy floral molecule that reminds someone out there of peach.

(Much like the nectarine blossom note in Jo Malone London’s Nectarine Blossom & Honey, peach blossom is a vague made up fruity-floral note imagined as the scent of nearly-unscented flowers.)

But, really, this isn’t distinctly floral in any way on me. Just a little bit peony-pink in its depths.

I honestly don’t get much pear at all here as a distinct note, but it fills in the body of the fruity shampoo vibe, allowing it to continue beyond the brief life of the juicy top notes.

White musk and nondescript white woods make up the base of Brit Sheer, allegedly. All I get is fruity fresh shampoo through and through until the perfume is gone after a few hours. The closest thing to something this fruit-shampoo-ey I’ve smelled since is Kayali’s Eden Juicy Apple | 01, that splashy early 2000s apple berry body spray of a perfume. The girl who gets dressed in the Brit Sheer bathroom would definitely wear Eden Juicy Apple.

Much like Burberry Brit Rhythm for Women and just about every other Brit flanker, Brit Sheer has nothing to do with the original Burberry Brit. The only note in common is pear. It’s more distinct in the original Brit, crisp and green, but in sheer it’s more of a general fruity filler in the body of the scent.

Burberry Brit Sheer is incredibly crisp, deliciously juicy, and fruity-fresh in its first moments. The juiciness is only realistically fruity for a minute before dissolving into a smooth liquid hand soap or shower gel. The clean shower gel and soap scent lasts a few hours and evaporates smoothly in an entirely linear fashion.

Because the fruitiness is only really dominant for a few moments and the florals are background structure, I don’t quite know how to classify this. I almost want to call it an aquatic fragrance. It doesn’t smell like stereotypical fresh watermelon-blue calones, but it’s soapy in a way that draws a picture of water and bubbles. To me, that aquatic soapy freshness is what defines Burberry Brit Sheer more than any sort of fruity or floral accord.

There’s something about the smell of Burberry Brit Sheer that reminds me incredibly much of the kind of Softsoap liquid hand soap that comes in the pump bottle with the clownfish in it. No matter how I try, I just can’t shake the association.

This is a soapy, airy, fresh sort of fragrance. It’s a great fresh-out-of-the-shower scent for feeling clean, refreshed, and ready for the day. It’s polished and professional, perfectly acceptable for an office or any other sort of environment.

Burberry Brit Sheer isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s clean, soapy, and inoffensive. If you like the notes and enjoy fresh soap scents, you’ll really enjoy this one.

Where to Find Burberry Brit Sheer Eau de Toilette by Burberry

You can find samples and decants of Burberry Brit Sheer EdT at Scent Decant.

It’s also available on ScentBird, a monthly fragrance decant service.

Want more? You can find full bottles at Scent Decant, Palm Beach Perfumes, The Perfume Spot, Jomashop, and StrawberryNet.

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