They say lychees offer a kick start to a sweet new year. The Sugar Lychee perfume from Fresh Cosmetics may be what you are looking for this Lunar New Year. This scent contains a sweet fruity blend of sparkling citrusy notes that not only uplift your own spirits but the mood of those around you too. Sounds somewhat perfect for a festive fragrance to wear? Let’s snuffle it through shall we.

Fresh Sugar Lychee Perfume Review

We know Fresh Sugar range of eau de parfums tend to hit sweet and citrusy notes to all-time high; Sugar, Brown Sugar and Citron de Vigne to name a few. So you can imagine Fresh’s hopping on to the Lychee bandwagon is to bring more candies into their equation.

Lychee, Litchi Chinensis, is a tropical fruit grown mainly in China and South East Asia for its juicy, sweet flesh. It sends instant sugary and tangy syrup into your mouth when you bite into them and you can still taste the lingering sweet fragrance at the back of your throat after you’d eaten them. For this reason, they are a popular ingredient for summery, citrusy fragrances like this one – the Fresh Sugar Lychee Perfume.

Packaging

Those who know Fresh fragrances will know they don’t really carry the fanciest of perfume bottles. To what seems like a small lab flask, you enclose the tiny spray nozzle with a clasp metal cap. A sticker is all it takes to label on its brand and flavor.

Price and Size

Retails at SGD$80.00 for 30ml bottle at Sephora Singapore stores (they have 100ml sized bottles too).

What makes up the Fresh Fragrance Ingredients:

Top notes: Italian Lemon, Lime Blossom & Grapefruit

Seems like it is all sharp and zesty looking at the top notes, but no, not really. On a whiff, yes, you get an invigorating trail of acerbic and sour spice. But when you actually wear it, the citrus layer of this perfume becomes surprisingly weak.

Middle (heart) notes: Lychee, Freesia & Lotus Flower

Fresh Cosmetics isn’t the first that attempted with lychees as the main pull from the heart notes. The essence of the fruit is quite dominant on this level, so much so that it overpowers the peppery zing of Freesia and the meadow-y fragrance of the Lotus Flower.

Bottom (base) notes: Tonka beans, Sandalwood & Amber

Tonka beans have been compared a lot with vanilla beans and some perfumers even prefer the former because it offers more scalability when complimenting it with other ingredients. Tonka beans are both nutty and a little spicy.

If you are into scents, you know Sandalwood and Amber can’t go wrong with each other. The dormant earthiness of sandalwood can instantly be revived by Amber, and the same goes in which amber itself, liquid gold, can only be tamed by sandalwood.

Verdict:

We’d have considered our money better spent if Fresh Cosmetics could’ve at least invest a little on the packaging. A sticker slapped on a lab flask and you expect one to feel good about picking it up to spray like, seriously?

We have to give kudos to Fresh though, for quite the bottom notes here. The fusion of sandalwood, amber and tonka beans go so well together they seem to make up the main fragrance here. No doubt you can detect lychee as the core, the tropical drupe is still humbled by the efficacies of the woods and barks after you’ve worn it for a little while.

Because of the lacking presence of the top citrusy notes coupled with base notes coming in quite lasting and are so well put together, the Fresh Sugar Lychee Eau de Parfum is not exactly what you’d have expected of a sheer girly-girl sugary delight (not after you’ve put it on anyway), but one with a weightier sweetness and a woody undertone – like viscous syrup surging through a summery thicket.

So be warned – the first whiff you’d sampled from the rack may not really be what you get.

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