Quest for the Best Love Spell, Part 1: The Missing Note
The original Love Spell formula was created in 1999, and is still sold today - making it one of the longest-running Victoria's Secret fragrances.
But have you heard of the *mystery* fragrance note in Love Spell - not listed on the bottle, the Victoria's Secret website, or in fragrance forums?
Like many Y2K teenagers, I couldn't get enough of 
Love Spell Eau de Toilette - the flirty combination of peach + cherry blossom had me in a chokehold (sometimes literally, if I sprayed too liberally after gym class).
I eventually forgot about this fragrance, but rediscovered it again as an adult - and while I still loved the original formula, I noticed there was something sour + "salty" to it. Becoming curious, I began to research what might be causing this.
When reviewing the list of notes from Victoria's Secret, none of them seemed to be a possible culprit for this distinctively "acidic" feeling:
- Cherry blossom
- Peach
- "White jasmine" (previously listed on older bottles, but not currently listed on newer bottles/the Victoria's Secret website)
So to further test, I bought multiple bottles from different release years - and sampled on both my skin + paper tester strips. Regardless of formula/concentration/release year, I found that each bottle's juice produced the same "salty"/sour/"acidic" olfactory sensation - so I knew it wasn't caused by the "sweaty" nature of my high school gym class, as I'd originally believed.
Then one day, I read InStyle's interview with Mark Knitowski - the Senior Vice President of Product Innovations at Victoria's Secret. In this article, he revealed to InStyle that grapefruit is part of Love Spell's notes! This seems to explain the sour-yet-"salty" impression, i.e. "citric acidity", I couldn't figure out before.
No more guessing: the distinctively sour + "salty" Love Spell mystery note has been solved! 🙌
Despite this confirmation from an official brand representative, grapefruit still isn't listed as part of Love Spell's notes on Victoria's Secret website, on Love Spell fragrance bottles (vintage OR recent), or as part of the fragrance pyramid on any other popular online fragrance forums - until we added it this year on EssenceVitae's database.
While I generally enjoy grapefruit notes and citrus notes in general, the citric acidity here is too sharp for me - and I've noticed many other reviewers feel similarly, even if the grapefruit note wasn't previously known. But Love Spell's unique blend of cherry blossom + peach is still addictive - and I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to give up the nostalgia and memories that come back when wearing it.
This has led to my current mission: finding something that gives a nod to the ✨original magic 🍑🌸 of Love Spell✨ - with less of an acidic "bite".
Victoria's Secret has released many Love Spell flankers since the OG first debuted (see below), and similar fragrance profiles have also been made by other perfumers. So I hope you'll join me on this "quest for the best Love Spell" - as I test the flankers + dupes of this popular fragrance, and how they compare.
Gourmandgrl
