Very Good Girl

What the house names

Carolina Herrera announces four materials: a redcurrant and a lychee at the opening, a rose at the center, a vanilla and a vetiver at the base. The house files the fragrance as floral fruity and gives the vetiver as the surprise of the formula.

Redcurrant and lychee

The red currant brings the tartness, the lychee an exotic sweetness with a petal facet. The house calls the opening mischievous and exotic. That fruitiness moves the line away from the cocoa gourmandise of the original, built on almond, coffee and tonka bean.

The rose at the center

The rose holds the center and gives the fragrance its direction. Carolina Herrera calls it seductive and makes it the dominant material, where Good Girl rested on jasmine and tuberose. It carries a fruity facet that rejoins the opening.

Vanilla and vetiver

The base sets a warm vanilla against an earthy, woody vetiver. The house presents that vetiver as the contemporary counterpoint of the formula, a material more often used in masculine perfumery, and credits it with the woody end of the trail.

What the label declares

The ingredient list is a coded list: it names no raw material, only alcohol, water, fragrance, the regulated allergens and two colorants. It therefore confirms nothing of the olfactory announcement.

The allergens draw an outline all the same. Limonene, linalool, geraniol and citral hold the floral and citrus share; isoeugenol pushes toward carnation; coumarin brings almond and hay; alpha-isomethyl ionone carries the powderiness.

The colorants CI 14700 and CI 60730 have no smell: they dye the juice, echoing the lacquer of the bottle. Butyl methoxydibenzoylmethane is a sunscreen, there to keep light from altering that shade.