Tommy Hilfiger
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The first spray delivers an immediate burst of tart apple skin and blackcurrant, cut through with mandarin's sweeter citrus glow and a green, almost sappy quality from the camellia. There's a crispness here that feels like snapping a fresh stem, slightly vegetal and alive, with the mint already beginning to cool the fruited brightness.
As it settles, honeysuckle emerges as the dominant player, its nectar-like sweetness tempered by grapefruit's bitter pith and a proper garden rose that smells of petals rather than potpourri. The lily adds a waxy, almost soapy cleanliness, whilst violet contributes a powdery softness that rounds off the sharper citrus edges without neutering them entirely.
What remains is a soft, slightly woody musk with magnolia's creamy lemon-peel character and the faintest whisper of jasmine providing a gentle indolic warmth. The cedarwood and sandalwood form a barely-there base, more suggestion than statement, leaving skin smelling like clean laundry dried on a wooden rack in summer air.
Tommy Girl is Calice Becker's masterclass in early-90s fresh florals, where she orchestrated a bright, slightly tart composition that feels like biting into a Granny Smith whilst standing in a dew-soaked English garden. The apple blossom and blackcurrant opening creates an almost effervescent greenness—not the aquatic dreck that would flood the market later, but something with proper botanical backbone. There's a fascinating tension between the mint and honeysuckle in the heart, where the coolness threatens to veer clinical before the honeysuckle's indolic sweetness pulls it back into wearable territory. The grapefruit adds an unexpected bitter edge that keeps the whole affair from sliding into sugary oblivion, whilst the lily and rose provide just enough traditional floral structure to anchor what could otherwise float away on its own brightness.
What's remarkable is how the cedarwood and sandalwood base—though whisper-quiet—manages to give this confection a woody skeleton. It's not particularly long-lasting or projecting, which feels almost quaint now, but there's an honesty to its construction that modern fresh florals lack. This is for someone who wants to smell clean and bright without announcing it from across the room, perhaps a student revising in a sun-dappled library or someone cycling through a farmers' market on a Saturday morning. It's unabashedly optimistic, almost naïve in its cheerfulness, yet Becker's skilled hand ensures it never becomes saccharine. A time capsule of mid-90s accessibility done properly.
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3.9/5 (171)