Stick to the day job Britney! (Britney Spears: Curious, Eau de Parfum)

Member Name: Emily_09

Product:	Britney Spears: Curious, Eau de Parfum
Date:	09/11/09 (16 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Not too expensive

Disadvantages: Tacky bottle, smell, too sweet

Although I love Christmas, what I don't enjoy is stressing for hours over the perfect gift to buy someone. I don't mind so much when it's for close friends and family but I hate buying those compulsory, polite presents for people that you don't know very well so usually dread it when it comes to Christmas time at work.

With this in mind, last year, when my boss decided that, due to a lot of people being a bit strapped for cash, the best thing would be to do a 'Secret Santa' for all of our presents, I was secretly very pleased. Not only would I only have to stress over one present for someone at work, my own present would have had much more thought put into it than before.

So off I trotted to work on the last day before Christmas, clutching my box of lush smellies and quite proud of my lovely wrapping (if I did say so myself). I was pretty excited as I picked my own present from under the tree, feeling very Christmassy and promising myself that I wouldn't open it until I got home.

When I eventually got home and tore off the wrapping in eager anticipation, what I was greeted with wasn't so exciting. I immediately felt a bit disappointed when I saw the familiar 'Britney Spears' logo on a black box with blue and pink spots and recognised the favourite fragrance of my 12 year old cousin straight away. It was a bottle of Curious, Britney's first fragrance and not only was it a bottle of the type of perfume that I'd always associated with teenagers, but it was a half used bottle of Curious, in a box that had already been opened.

Now I know that Christmas isn't all about the presents but I did feel a bit miffed that someone had obviously given me one of their cast offs! I decided not to let it get to me, however and stood the perfume on my shelf, just because the bottle matched my bedroom.

The perfume comes in one of three sizes, 30ml which mine was, 50ml, a slightly bigger version, or 100ml. The bottle is light blue in colour and is transparent so that you can see how much perfume is left inside, much to the misfortune of whoever was my Secret Santa! The bottle is quite wide and flat and mine had a little pink heart charm around the neck which was quite pretty. The larger bottles come with a perfume pump attached that makes them look a tiny bit more expensive, but overall the bottle looks a bit cheap and you can tell straight away that it's a celebrity perfume.

So my perfume sat on my shelf for about a month, until one day I realised that I'd run out of the perfume that I'd been using so decided to spritz a bit of Curious onto my wrists for a bit of fragrance. Immediately after spraying the perfume I was met with a sickly sweet smell that felt a bit overpowering.

Hastily I rubbed my wrists together to try and calm the smell down a bit and went out the door in a rush. I really wasn't keen on the smell at all, I was conscious all day that I smelt sickly sweet to everyone around and wouldn't have been surprised if I'd had flies buzzing round me! The fragrance did wear off pretty quickly and improved a little over time, however I still wasn't keen and couldn't wait to get home to wash it off.

I obviously didn't buy the perfume for myself but after looking up the prices I can see why it's such a popular fragrance with young girls. A 30ml bottle only costs around £10 and increases in price as the size increases, with 50ml costing around £15.00 and 100ml about £20.00. The prices aren't bad at all but I'd definitely rather pay a bit more for a fragrance that I like.

Needless to say, I didn't use this perfume again and gave it to my cousin, although it had probably gone off a bit by then as who knows how long it had been open for! Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against Britney and am not just slating this perfume because I hate her as I'm sure some people do! It's a good fragrance for young girls who like sickly smells but it definitely wasn't for me, or my Secret Santa for that matter!

Summary: 1 star