Sheer Beauty Essence
Calvin Klein (2013)

This perfume is really lovely. It's sweet and airy and very feminine. I get mostly lilac, pear blossom, peach, rose and peony. Sillage and longevity are moderate. If you're looking for something highly feminine, this is a good pick.

My contribution to Basenotes today will be to review a flanker of a flanker, then.

I haven't tried Sheer Beauty, though I remember Beauty as a potent and clear-as-a-bell non-indolic jasmine, and something more literally floral and less abstract than I would have expected from CK.

And along the same lines, I couldn't imagine what CK would do with a lilac note - lilac is so sweet and heavy and old-fashioned and not CK. It turns out they turned the pear WAY up to lift and balance the sweetness of the lilac and rose. The pear has a juicy freshness to it, though the composition doesn't veer into sharp or sour territory, and is smooth and soft-ish in its impression.

I say "ish", because if this is an EDT, I'd find any higher concentration to be unwearable. Given the potency with which it came out of the bottle, I applied only one miniscule spray six hours ago, and it's still going as discernible pear/lilac/musk. With the name and its lovely pale purple color, and the fact that it's called an EDT, I came to it thinking it's going to have an airy feel. And I think that may be the impression it gives to others who smell you in passing, but the fact that they can smell you...There's definitely some craft going on to convey "airy" when it's actually kind of a beast.

Mostly, though, I'm inclined to be supportive of it because somebody dared to use lilac in a slick, modern scent! The result is maybe a little shampoo-ish with all of that attenuating pear, yet it's attractive in a familiar way, too.