Guerlain Shalimar Parfum Initial Review

 I've ignored a good many flankers and most of them seem to be the Shalimar flankers. I've never had the burning desire to try a good many of them but then fell in love with the Ode a la Vanille flankers long after they were discontinued. But I bit the bullet and tried out Parfum Initial.

Parfum Initial upon first sniff does share some of the Shalimar DNA but I didn't understand why it had the Shalimar name attached to it. I didn't smell the vanilla in Parfum Initial and I did expect vanilla to play a roll in a more scaled back version. I find that the citrus smells a little goofy to my nose and I'm not quite sure if I enjoy it or not. Even the musky parts are a little goofy but I was reminded of Le Labo Labdanum 18. Labdanum 18 has that fizzy, Coke like funky type of musk. Parfum Initial could realistically be more of a flanker to Jicky than to Shalimar. 

I found that I really do like Parfum Initial where it falls into love category. What mostly kept me from trying it was the fact that it was discontinued for quite a while and at this point, I can't go sinking a whole lot of cash on discontinued perfumes nor wild goose chases.

The reason on why I said that it was discontinued for a while is that it looks (according to the Guerlain website) like Guerlain did bring back Parfum Initial. But it looks like that it's part of the Les Parisiennes line up under the name L'Initial. from whatever information that I could find was people where saying that it was almost exactly like the original Parfum Initial. I am taking it with a grain of salt due to the fact. Reformulations happen for various reasons and not always for the better. Since I don't have a decant of L'Initial, I can't say how close it is to Parfum Initial but if it's almost identical, I would have considered a bottle since I do love Parfum Initial. The price point is what is holding me back. I'm the type of person that can't exactly justify a $280 for a little over 4 ounces of perfume anymore. The last time I spent that much was on a bottle of L'Heure de Nuit. Loving the Les Parisiennes bottles but not the price tag though. Maybe when things get much better than I can consider a bottle but I'm not in a position to spend a shit ton of money on one bottle of perfume and I've probably spent more than I really should have this year on perfume.