When I saw Cartier Délices in my local department store, my immediate thought was: what a beautiful bottle! So I had to try it, and decided to get a tester so I could have a few sprays and see how it wore. Cartier Délices first came out in 2006 and was created by perfumer Christine Nagel, who also created Eau de Cartier, Si Lolita by Lolita Lempicka, and Theorema by Fendi. It's categorised as a fruity floral perfume, erring on the side of the gourmand (perfumes which feature 'food' notes, such as chocolate, sugar, edible vanilla or in this case, cherry), which marked a change in Cartier's perfume direction as it's clearly geared towards a much younger audience.

PACKAGING

Cartier Délices is modern and luxurious, and, as you'd imagine, it's beautifully packaged. It comes in a very square box in the traditional Cartier shades of blood-red and white: the eau de toilette is white with a red 'C' in the middle and red accenting at the sides, while the eau de parfum is red with white writing, accenting and 'C' design. It's very simple but also very eyecatching and classy. The bottle itself, on the other hand, is quite frankly a work of art and incredibly beautiful - it's shaped a little like the Dior Poison bottle, but more elongated and narrower at the base, and has strips of clear red extending from the top to the bottom. It looks both juicy and jewelled at the same time, if that's possible, and is topped with a wonderfully lavish top which looks like a piece of intricate Cartier jewellery. Perhaps predictably for a jewellery house, it looks as if a lot of attention has gone into the presentation of this perfume, and the whole effect is very tempting.

THE PERFUME ITSELF

Délices begins with a blast of cherry which on my skin was rather artificial-smelling, at times it was closer to maraschino cherries or those sickly sweet Cherry Drop sweets (remember them?) than actual cherry. It's not a particularly fruity or round cherry; I read in one interview with Christine Nagel that she wanted to capture "frosted cherry", whatever that might be - although perhaps I can see what she was getting at, as the cherry is thin and not very natural-smelling.

Close on the heels of the cherry is violet, which again, smells a little Parma Violety to me. Délices is strange in that these scents seem to alternate between fruity and candy-like, one minute natural, the next totally artificial - along with the violet and the cherry I get a definite hit of syrupy grenadine. It's not a nasty effect but it is disconcerting and makes the top notes oddly woolly and indistinct. The top notes are actually, to my nose, really rather similar to Coco Mademoiselle and Miss Dior Chérie: fruity and sweet, but a little blurry.

Délices slides with alarming rapidity into the middle notes - it only took about 15 minutes for the top notes to wear off, which is really no time at all. The whole thing goes very milky at this point, with the cherry fading away to be replaced with the floral notes of orange blossom. Again, it's still a little indistinct, but now the effect is warmer and more pillow-like; the violet develops further and a definite creaminess emerges.

It's very nice at this stage, and I must admit that I like the warmth and roundedness that develops better than I like the odd fruit/candy switching that was previously going on. The sillage (how much the perfume carries into the air around you) is negligible, both at this point and even with the top notes - this is a perfume which is discreet to the point of being almost weak, even after I'd sprayed three squirts of eau de parfum!

However, as with the top notes, the middle notes don't hang around for long - the base notes had definitely emerged after 2 hours. Délices develops further along the creamy lines it had been following in the middle notes: warm, smooth vanilla is the overwhelming note at this point, with indistinct and blurry amber at the edges which gives even more warmth and occasionally punctuates the sweetness with a more luminous scent.

There is something a little burnt-sugary about the basenotes which really does call to mind Miss Dior Cherie's popcorn/burnt note and Coco Mademoiselle's warm and rounded vanilla. After 3 hours I was surprised to find that Délices had turned a little soapy, which was unexpected but not unpleasant, and all traces of it were gone after about 3 and a half hours.

OVERALL

I like it, but it sure doesn't hang around for long! My main objection to Délices is how thin it is, and how quickly it fades and disappears. The actual scent is nice enough - fruity, young and bubbly but not cheap, with nicely understated cherry taking centre stage - but the fact that it's gone in 3 hours, which is no time at all, is ridiculous. I knew it wouldn't last long when one spray of the eau de parfum didn't really smell of anything, and indeed after 3 generous sprays of eau de parfum and 3 hours I can only smell a very faint soapy trace. I recognise that it's not a dark, woody or spicy kind of scent, and so it's going to have less staying power, but Coco Mademoiselle has good staying power (not to mention that it's just a lot more robust as a fragrance) and it's got a lot of the same notes and a similar composition.

The candy/fruit switching going on is very interesting, and I reckon that if you're a fan of gourmands, sweetness and fruit, this could well be something to interest you. It would be perfect for younger women or very warm, sunny days, as it's not heavy in the slightest. So in conclusion, I adore the bottle, and like what the perfume does, but I don't think it's original enough to warrant spending my money on it...particularly as you need to apply it so heavily that half the bottle might well be gone in a week! I also couldn't possibly recommend the eau de toilette as you must need to bathe in the stuff to get any kind of staying power.

PRICE AND AVAILABILITY

Frustratingly for a perfume that you might have to apply and reapply every few hours, Délices is actually very expensive - £76.50 for 100ml of EDT and £43.50 for 30ml EDP at the Perfume Shop. As with all scents like this, you're paying for the designer tag as much as the perfume itself, which is fine as long as you get your money's worth or the scent is particularly special. I just don't feel that Délices really fulfils either of these criteria that much.