Sheer Beauty Essence Calvin Klein perfume – a fragrance for women 2013

This edt wasn’t on my radar at all. I blind bought it based on a few interesting reviews here that intrigued me. PaulinaGillespie talked about being transported to an enchanted forest with fairies and unicorns. Beritskagen described it as a scent of sadness. Fragaria mused that she will wear this for solitary and introspective moments. Many others described it as fresh, airy, cold florals or like a foggy day in the mountains. An curiously disparate set of reviews, indeed.

It was with some trepidation when I took off the cap of the bottle and sprayed the scent on the back of my hand, hoping that I at least won’t find it nauseating. After waiting for the scent to dry, I took a sniff and…I loved it! But most amazing of all to me, Sheer Beauty Essence does smell like what the others have said. I keep thinking of Tolkien’s Elves, cold misty forests, and this feeling of indescribable sadness that was both strange and familiar…and then it clicked.

This fragrance makes me think of the “Arwen’s Fate” scene in the Lord of the Rings The Two Towers. The imagery of a grieving Arwen, shrouded in flowing sheer dark veil, walking under twilit trees, as this mournful haunting dirge plays in the background.

“But you my daughter … you will linger on, in darkness and in doubt, as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Here you will dwell, bound to your grief, under the fading trees until all the world is changed and the long years of your life are utterly spent.”

I’m sure Calvin Klein did not quite have in mind the elegiac elements of Tolkien’s work when they created this fragrance but this is what Sheer Beauty Essence evokes.

I’m not very good in distinguishing notes and describing smells. My scent vocabulary and olfactory experience is very limited. I describe fragrances (to myself) based on the mood, impressions, imagery and emotions that they conjure. But if I have to describe this edt using other fragrances I know, this is like a cross between Chloe edp and Lanvin Eclat d’Arpege. I understand Chloe has rose notes while Eclat d’Arpege has green lilac. I’m not saying that CK SBE smells like either of those two but it’s from the same family of fresh florals. Why it makes me think of twilight, mortality and a great civilization fading into the past is a mystery.