[Gifted] During my first full week back at work back after Christmas, my monthly arrival of the Secret Scent Box cheered me up with it’s arrival. I’ve been wearing the three new fragrances from this box on and off through the week and have my thoughts on them all already. So let’s jump into my review of the Secret Scent Box – January 2020.
For those who don’t know, a quick run down on Secret Scent Box, it’s a monthly subscription box which is perfect for those who like to trial new fragrances. There’s two versions of the box, one for Men and Women. There are three different fragrances each month from a mix of high street brands and at different price points. The fragrances in each box tend to have different vibes, so there’s usually something to please everyone, but there’s never been a fragrance arrive that I’ve felt like I couldn’t use – even if they wouldn’t be a fragrance I would usually buy. Each of the vials contains around about 25 spritzes, I’m a little heavy handed with my perfumes so I find I get 3-5 uses from my samples but I do know some people only use.
I’ve found a few new favourite perfumes from this subscription and treated myself to one in the sale I’d fell in love with through the box. The box that it arrives too is nice and small and isn’t packed with waste, but it still makes a nice package if you wanted to gift a subscription for a few months to a fragrance addict. Each of the fragrances also come with a little card of information on notes with a picture of the bottle so you know what to look out for in shops if you wanted to purchase another perfume.
Hugo Boss The Scent Absolute For Women
I did a little “ooh” when I saw this was inside, Ben loves the aftershave of this and they’ve recently released a women’s version to accompany the fragrance. This leans a quite spicy and whilst it softens in the day to reveal some warmer notes, but I do think if you’re not okay with scents being a little more unisex/masculine then this one won’t be for you as it does linger pretty strongly as a spice for a few hours. The notes listed are honeyed peach, coffee, vanilla and vetiver – the vanilla reveals itself through the day but the most noticeable note is the coffee. What I like most about this perfume is that it doesn’t have many notes but mixed together it feels like there’s so many more notes! The wear time on this is pretty good after about 10 hours I can still smell lingering coffee and vanilla.
Ted Baker Woman Limited Edition
More of a budget perfume is this one from Ted Baker, the notes on this couldn’t be more different to the Hugo Boss, it’s very light and airy. The top notes of this are Green Tea and Ginger, I can definitely smell both of those, more so the freshness of the green tea but there’s a slight edge of the ginger peeking through. The mid floral notes are the most noticeable through the bulk of the wear of this perfume for me, again they are fresher florals of lily and jasmine. The base notes are listed as amber and sandalwood. I like the scent of this perfume but I don’t find it has the best wear time – I think if this was a body mist it would me a bit more forgivable but after about 3 hours it’s disappears on me, but it’s a very very light fragrance.
Elizabeth Arden Mediterranean
This is such a classic fragrance from Elizabeth Arden but I don’t think I’ve ever tried it before. I can remember this perfume coming out as Catherine Zeta Jones was the spokesperson for it. This is another more budget perfume – from Elizabeth Arden directly it’s more expensive but it’s not hard to hunt this down for less than £20.
This is like a summer holiday in a bottle and the name of Mediterranean is absolutely perfect. The first note I noticed was the citrus which was noted on the card as Sicilian Mandarin, there are other fruity top notes of peach and plum. The middle notes are florals of wisteria, orchid and magnolia. There are warmer base notes of amber, musk and sandalwood however I only get the slightest hint of them. This has a decent wear time, not the greatest but not the worst, but I can still smell it lingering after about 6 hours.
I think I will love this during spring so I’m going to hold off using this more until then.
And that’s all – I think I will use up the Hugo Boss fragrance pretty easily this month, it’s the kind of fragrance I love at this time of year. The other two I’ll be saving for more sunny weather which we will hopefully start seeing in the next couple of months – or saving them for when we go to Madrid in March when it should be fairly warm! If you’re interested in reading through older boxes you can find my previous reviews of the box here.
Let me know in the comments if you have tried any of these fragrances before.
Secret Scent Box January 2020 edition gifted in exchange for consideration of review. Reviews of fragrance and thoughts are based on my own experience.
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This looks like a really nice fragrance subscription. I like that you get 3 scents at a time.