Beauty editors review Charlotte Tilbury's mood-enhancing perfume and have complex emotions
You may not need scientists to say that the product you love makes you feel good. But if you want to hit the "order" with rhode's new blush or Charlotte Tilbury's new perfume, there are studies proving the general mood-boosting benefits of a good purchase. Clinical psychologists have found that setting up skin care and beauty rituals can have a positive impact on mental health, while skin creams and make-up applications can have a "therapeutic" effect.
Charlotte Tilbury's first perfume line-up, released this spring, "Add to Cart" lines a step (or spray) beyond a family of dopamine hits and favorite scents Six perfumes, entitled "Emotional Scents," have been calibrated to link specific scents and specific moods. In other words, according to the brand, the flower fragrance spray of that love frequency can make you feel more amorous, and the fragrance of Joyforia can enhance your sense of happiness and joy.
Influencing emotions through fragrance is so hot in beauty right now. One new brand, Neurae, has developed a range of creams, serums, and eye rollers informed by neuroscience where the scent of each product activates neurotransmitters responsible for specific emotions. Charlotte Tilbury's perfume is certainly a laboratory coat that is not adjacent, but offers an interesting promise: attitude adjustment in a bottle of perfume.
In the crowded field of new perfumes, it's a promise that intrigued me (a big time scent hound with even greater emotion). So earlier, I wrote an honest review of Charlotte Tilbury's new perfume, how they work, how they smell, and how they really make me (and others
simply put, 6 sprits of Charlotte Tilbury fragrances make me feel a certain way).1 We are not responsible for the content of this website. The lineup includes More Lust (intoxicating musk scent), Love Frequency (wood-meets-floral scent), Joyphoria (warm floral scent), Magic Energy (wood-meets-citrus scent), Calm Bliss (aquatic floral scent) and Cosmic Power (spicy amber scent).
In more detail, the Charlotte Tilbury team partnered with the International Fragrance and Flavors (IFF) organization to use a proprietary algorithm to select so-called "emotion-enhancing molecules" that activate when paired with certain ingredients.
In laboratory settings, perfumes stimulated feelings on their labels — most often. The most effective scent according to an internal survey is magical energy, with 98% of testers reporting that the scent boosted their mood. The testers who wanted love in the bottle were not the most satisfied: 84 percent of testers who wanted more desire and frequency of love found that the fragrance made them feel not just in the mood, but in the mood.
In TikTok, it was only a fraction of the time that Charlotte Tilbury's perfume changed hearts and minds. The results varied from person to person, from fragrance to fragrance: some creators found the energy, joy and even desire described in the bottle.
Blind lab testing is not exactly the same as a real-world test drive where unpredictable events and emotions overwhelm even the strongest scents. So we tested the Charlotte Tilbury fragrance in 2 ways.First, I asked the editor of Marie Claire to respond blindly to the scent by sharing how the scent felt without looking at the label's atmosphere. (You can see the whole experiment on our Instagram.Then I also chose the three emotions I want to tap in my life — energy, calm, and joy — and the corresponding shah for several days over a long period of months. I wanted to see if these fragrances could not only change my mood at the moment, but also contribute to a lasting outlook.
I wore each perfume on the day I knew they needed the feeling they insisted on the bottle. Magic energy was my caffeine substitute on the weekend, when I bounced from an early morning Cannes film interview with Helen Mirren and Elle Fanning to my sister's bachelorette party. I also canceled my plans and sprayed it every time I saw Netflix kick in (which was most Thursday up to Sunday night on my test window
Joy's warm flowers were a shortcut to (temporary) happiness when I was piling up days of doctor appointments and budget chats with my husband — that is, when I was sunny). This is the place I expected to be in the mood not to be. And the gentle bliss was the scent of the wind at my designated weekend and the end of the day: the one I sprayed when I felt tired and just wanted to cool down.
We were able to see, spray by spray, why Charlotte Tilbury associated the scent profile with certain emotions. Joyforia flowers are reminiscent of grasslands mottled in sunlight; magic energy is easily the best citrus fragrance in my repertoire now, with the exhilarating effects of the first spritz. But at the end of the month, I could not say that these potion-like bottles worked lasting magic. The day things went wrong (I'll spare you the details), taking the smell on my wrist wasn't enough to get my emotions back, and SSRI might be more effective. They were fun to wear, but I can't definitively say they changed my mood.
Both scents and emotions are very personal. Forた150 - an unimportant price for a 3.4oz perfume - you want to know you're tapping into the emotions you're paying with each spritz.
Some of Marie Claire's editors who blindly reviewed Charlotte Tilbury's perfume found instant connections without reading the label, while others felt the notes did not match the feelings on the bottle. (For the full thoughts of the team, see the video review on Instagram.
In my case, I was drawn to Calm Bliss's seaside-meets-musk scent with notes alone, and coastal clean fragrance helped me relax before it became a bottle-shaped scent (and setting) and it helped me know what I was in. So stopping by the sephora or Charlotte Tilbury counter and trying out each scent directly is the shortest route to finding what's worth to you. Or you can gamble and order the brand's fragrance sampler kit.
Investing in Charlotte Tilbury's perfume may be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy (or a placebo effect). When you're prepared to feel more sexy, fun, or calm by looking at an aura-embossed label, you might coax yourself to experience those emotions while wearing the relevant fragrance. In some cases, our favorite perfume will make you feel like a better version of yourself already when you spray it.
If you want a shortcut to heightened emotions—you test fragrances in people to make sure they're on the right frequency—Shah Beauty editors like me can tell you which products we enjoy, but can't tell you how we feel. It is not.
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