Cherries are my favorite fruit and I’m always looking for interesting cherry-themed candles, perfumes, bath & body products, and even food. Today I’ll be comparing three fragrances based on this wonderful fruit: Hilde Soliani Una Tira L’Altra, Tom Ford Lost Cherry, and Montale Intense Cherry.
I blind-bought a full-size bottle of Una Tira L’Altra. When first applied, the scent was strong, fake candied cherry, and that disgusted me. I let it ride for fifteen minutes but then had to go wash it off. Stay tuned – I’ll be coming back to this one in a moment.
A few days later, at a Nordstrom counter, I took the opportunity for some generous testing of Lost Cherry on my right arm. The scent was very much a sharp, true, slightly sour cherry…really delicious, with something darker in the undertones that kept it good, and not too candyish. This is $335 a bottle, though, which was excessive for me personally.
Upon returning home that day, I decided to test Una Tira again, and sprayed it generously on the left arm. Surprisingly, when the candied cherry note had died down, it was almost identical to Lost Cherry, and of course at a more attractive price point. After this apples-to-apples (or perhaps “cherries-to-cherries”) comparison, there seems no point in buying the Tom Ford fragrance, although it is more readily available than Una Tira at the big department stores and at Sephora, if that makes a difference to you. I know some people don’t like to patronize independent shops.
Today I pulled out my Montale spray tester of Intense Cherry and gave it a go for the first time. This fragrance clearly has cherry in it – but it is not a “cherry fragrance.” I can smell the jasmine and rose, and the vanilla is (to me) very strong, and the fruit scent is interwoven in there somewhere. An hour after application, I was mostly getting vanilla and jasmine, whereas with Lost Cherry and Una Tira, the smell of the fruit itself stayed sharp and fresh for a few hours.
In any case, cherry to me is a spring/summer scent, so this was mostly experimentation in anticipation of spring 2020. But I’m glad I got it all sorted.
And back to Una Tira for one more thing: wearing it with I Profumi di Firenze’s Caterina de Medici created a beautiful, ethereal, summery scent that was greater than the sum of its parts. When spring rolls around again, I’ll be testing Una Tira with other florals to see how it goes. This may become the base fragrance on which I build all of my future scent wardrobe!
The Diva Lair 