A fragrance from the same people that brought you Cobra. In other words, I knew what I was getting into when I plunked down my $6.99 for it. Or at least, I thought I did. Love Generation Fashion Victim was a pleasant surprise. Is it a fragrance that will change my life, or the way I think about gourmands? Of course not. Will I use it? Definitely. I might laugh at the bottle each time I use it, but there's a place in perfumery for humour . Not every perfume requires a Lalique bottle.
LGFV gets compared to Burberry Brit on perfume websites, and that isn't a crazy comparison. I personally think the vanilla is done better in LGFV. I can smell what I think of as jasmine, which tells me it is synthetic not natural (or I'd be unable to smell it). This is a very nice synthetic jasmine, with just enough indole to keep it from being too sweet. That's important here as LGFV is a very sweet perfume.
I love good citrus topnotes in a perfume. LGFV goes for plain orange rather than Mandarin or tangerine which can be tricky to get right without it smelling soured rather than sour. This orange is anything but sharp, it is more like the grated zest of an orange than the juice. The lemon also comes in as well-rounded and soft almost like limoncello. The sweetness of the vanilla helps soften the acidity of the citrus. The danger is that done wrong, you can end up with something that smells like orange oil furniture polish, and LGFV most certainly does not.
It's funny how I can be so adamant about what I dislike, and then find myself completely enchanted by a cheap, fruity fragrance I picked up at Marshalls on a whim. Ginger and pears? I'd have run a mile from the stuff had I known it was in there. Musk and sandalwood? With fruit?! This is why I like to make blind buys-to remind myself that I don't know myself as well as I think I do. I really have to work at remaining open minded because it is so easy to be swayed by my biases. I'm glad I gave LGFV a try as it is a light, lovely fragrance with decent longevity, even if the bottle is absurd.
Would I buy it again? Probably not, as it isn't something I can imagine appealing to me save for a few weeks each year at summer's end. LGFV won't ever be the sort of thing I reach for first, or would mourn if it were discontinued, but for the money it is an appealing fragrance that I wouldn't be embarrassed to wear-so long as the bottle remained out of sight.