Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir Perfume Review

I think this perfume may have been my most coveted. I finally purchased it in late Spring last year when Jo Malone was running a crazy offer on their website where you could use a lucky dip grabber to get yourself an extra item when you made a purchase over £40. You could cheat the system and I ended up with another 100ml perfume for free included with the purchase of the Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir perfume.

Just like the majority of premium smaller brands, Jo Malone isn’t accessible within less than an hour and a half from my home – therefore it’s tended to be a brand that I’ve encountered when I venture to London. However I like to wear perfumes a few times, testing on the counter before I commit to purchasing them. And my stints between trying this perfume always had long pauses in between. When I saw that deal I decided to just take the plunge and purchase this, despite it being probably over a year since I had last given it a sniff.

I was so impressed with how this was packaged, Jo Malone is at the slightly pricier end of the spectrum (although it’s not as expensive as I do remember), but this was packaged so nicely. There is a striped butter yellow and black ribbon which matches the box that the perfume comes in. Once the ribbon has been pulled  you can see the reverse is “just because…” written on the back. A lovely touch if you were giving this as a gift, or in my case a present to me, from me, just because.

As soon as it arrived last Spring, it was not as I really remembered – it was darker, and spicier and my immediate thoughts were “I can’t see me wearing this that much until Autumn and Winter”. That was certainly the case as it sat gathering dust on my perfume shelf in my old house. Once I’d unpacked in November, and sorted out a smaller collection to keep on hand on my vanity, this one made the cut and I started putting it to the test properly.

My favourite ever scent is Tom Ford Black Orchid – a perfume I’ve never reviewed in it’s own right on my blog, but one which often ends up as a level for comparison with similar scents. This one gives off the same kind of vibes for me, dark and sexy, where this one differs is the pomegranate notes do give it a juiciness – but still retains the dark, sophisticated deep tones without being sweet.

Jo Malone list the notes alongside Pomegrante of this perfume as, pink pepper (definitely detectable in the spiciness), Casablanca Lily, guaiacwood and patchouli. I find that the Pomegranate is immediately obvious but as it dries down and develops through the day – the other notes come out more, the woody notes in particular, so much so at times it feels like that a borderline-masculine fragrance.

The thing that has disappointed me the most on this is it’s longevity. For a perfume that costs £47 for 30ml, I expect a perfume that smells and lingers on me through the whole day. By the end of a work day I find it’s very very soft for me to notice and my nose definitely isn’t used to this fragrance to know that I’ve just become accustomed to it by now, like I have others such as Paco Rabanne Olympea. I would expect with this should I have worn this on a cardigan in the days past to pick it up and still faintly smell it’s trace – but it’s gone long before it’s competitors last.

I wouldn’t normally say this, but if you’re unsure about this perfume I recommend trying the Aldi version. My mother in law picked this up and when I saw her over the weekend, she asked me to smell her (knowing I had this perfume) and I immediately knew that it was a Pomegranate Noir themed perfume (admittedly, I knew she was going to tell me it was from Aldi!) but as something she bought for work I thought it was pretty damn convincing and no-less nice than the original.

I think because I’ve always had this brand pinned mentally as luxurious – and the fact it’s accessibility to me isn’t easy, I’ve had it on a high pedestal, and my expectations were very high for this perfume and I lusted after it for at least five years. Despite my initial disappointment, I’ve come around somewhat – it’s a nice perfume, and I’ll happily use it up, but it’s not one that I think I will be repurchasing once it’s done.

Have you tried Pomegranate Noir or any of Jo Malone’s other fragrances?

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