I don’t know about you but I’ve always been pretty loyal when it comes to perfume – I tend to wear Tommy Girl in the Summer and Gucci Rush in the Winter with a bit of Joe Malone Honey Blossom and Nectarine when my budget allows.
Because of my fragrance brand loyalty, Mr Frugal has a pretty easy time as far as Birthday, Anniversary and Christmas presents go and I usually have a constant supply of my favourite perfumes.
Miss Frugal, who’s recently discovered a love of perfume, doesn’t have the same brand loyalty when it comes to perfume and she smells different every day thanks to her ever growing collection of fragrances and her unashamed used of my perfumes.
It’s thanks to her ‘sharing’ of my perfume that I found myself completely out of perfume with two months to go until my Winter top up gift on our Wedding anniversary. 😉
I was having a moan to one of my friends about my lack of perfume when she suggested that I try a smell-a-like perfume and mentioned the one at Lidl, Madame Glamour Suddenly, which is supposed to smell very much like Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle. I decided it was worth a try for £3.99 and headed along to my local Lidl to try it.
I mentioned how much I liked it in one of my Five Frugal Things posts a few weeks ago but thought it was worthy of a post of its own – especially when I discovered a few other perfumes that smell like much more expensive fragrances.
So after a little research, these are my three favourite budget smell-a-like perfumes….
Lidl’s Madame Glamour Suddenly (£3.99) smells like Coco Mademoiselle (£61.99)
I’m not one for reviewing perfume and if it wasn’t for Google then all I would say about this would be that it smells really nice. Thanks to a quick Google, I can tell you that what I consider to be a nice smell is actually a perfume with notes of bergamot, rose and jasmine. I’d never smelled the Coco Chanel perfume until after I’d bought this so when I first smelled the Lidl Madame Glamour Suddenly version so my first impressions were based purely on the smell of that perfume alone and I loved it.
It smells lovely on and it was strong enough that people could smell I had it on without being overpowering. It didn’t last for a hugely long time and I would say most of the smell was gone after t two hours or so but for that price, I’m happy to have a respray when I need to through the day.
I have since smelled the Coco Chanel version of this, shortly after spraying this one and I really couldn’t tell the difference. I’m not a fragrance expert but I could have quite easily believed I was wearing the super expensive Chanel perfume and not a £3.99 bargain bottle.
The verdict: I would definitely buy Madame Glamour Suddenly from Lidl again.
Next Just Pink (£8) smells like Ralph Lauren Romance (£39.99)
I love the smell of this perfume and it was actually the first perfume that I ever bought Miss Frugal because it was lovely smelling, long lasting and not too expensive. Oh and I know this is superficial but the packaging is really pretty. I had no idea at the time that it’s supposed to smell like Ralph Lauren Romance perfume but once I heard it was, I popped to Boots and smelled the Ralph Lauren perfume and it totally does.
The verdict: Considering I bought this before I even realised it was so similar to its more expensive counterpart I would definitely recommend this one.
M&S Butterfly (£6.50) smells like Marc Jacobs Daisy (£51)
This bottle is so pretty that I would buy it just for that and the perfume really does smell lovely. It smells very similar to Marc Jacobs Daisy but I can tell the difference ever so slightly – probably because I love the original version of this perfume and bought Miss F a small bottle for Christmas last year. She wears it quite regularly which is why I’m probably more aware that the smell is slightly different. It has very definite similarities though and I would imagine that most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
The verdict: A lovely perfume in a gorgeous bottle! It smells very similar to Marc Jacobs and is well worth the price.
Do you have a favourite cheap perfume?
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