I am so excited to be doing the very first Royal Beauty Bag product review here at WWKD. The Heiress and I have been eagerly stashing up on bottles, potions and serums as used by Kate herself and are ready to subject ourselves to hours of research in the name of beauty to relay all of our completely unbiased opinions about the beauty products so you don’t have to. If you’re not familiar with our Royal Beauty Bag series, there’s more at the bottom.
A few weeks ago, I posted about how you could order samples of virtually any perfume you could dream of from LuckyScent. I ordered about 10 sample sizes to test out including Illuminum’s White Gardenia Petals perfume, better known to some as the perfume that Kate wore on her wedding day. Here are my thoughts…
Famous Kate Relationship: This is the perfume she wore on her wedding day and like most things which have gotten the “Kate bump”, once Clarence House released the details of her wedded bliss perfume, it sold out worldwide in a matter of minutes, creating a huge following for the small British perfumer.
The Product and Price: I ordered a sample size of the White Gardenia Petals from LuckyScent for $4 (0.7 mL) and regular pricing is $125/50 mL or $170/100 mL. While more expensive than your celebrity-endorsed scent du jour, it’s well priced in comparison with your other higher end perfumes.
The Packaging: Ew. Ew. Ew. I am not a fan of this bottle AT ALL. I don’t like the font, the bottle or the weird circle logo thing.
The Verdict: While I’m definitely not a perfume connoisseur, I’d describe the smell as very “Spring Garden” floral. When I put it on, I have to admit that I was immediately turned off of the smell as I don’t normally wear such sweet florals as this and when I made my husband smell it his reaction was “No, no, no, that’s bad”. I’ve learned to give perfumes a chance to see how they dissipate on your skin and I much preferred the smell which lingered. The smell was almost entirely gone in about an hour and a half which disappointed me. In all honesty, it reminded me too much of a grandma’s perfume… Dipped in sugar.
Overall, I have to say that it wasn’t what I was expecting. I was expecting something sickeningly sophisticated as Kate specifically chose it- but I have to be fair in admitting she chose it for a special day as a scent that she’ll be able to smell and be reminded of how wonderful of a day it was. I’d love to find out what her everyday perfume is as I imagine it would be something less sweet. To be fair, I normally wear non-floral scents so this was a new arena for me and I think it would be perfect for something like a wedding day or even as a fragrance you pull out for events in the summer but definitely too sweet for an everyday perfume in my opinion.
You can find others reviewing the perfume here:
- Grazia Daily’s review of White Gardenia Petals
- Styleite’s review of Illuminum’s White Gardenia Petals
- Beauty In the Bag covers Kate’s Wedding Day choice
New to the blog? The Royal Beauty Bag series features all of the products that Kate is known to use (or have used) to achieve the Princess look that we all want to emulate. We referenced Purple Daisies article to find Kate’s beauty regimen and then went out and purchased all of the products ourselves. We also had a giveaway to kick off the series- while closed, you can still check out all the swag we gave away at our Royal Beauty Giveaway Contest post.
Ahh, that’s too bad. I was afraid it would have the granny-ish smell! 🙁 I take comfort in the fact that it probably smells different on Kate’s body chemistry, which isn’t *fair* of course, but what can we do? 😀 I’d still be up for trying the other Illuminum fragrances and finding one that suits me!