The Beat by Burberry : Perfume Review

The dry, wonderful skin-scent Burberry Classic, the lightly sweet, summery, honeyed Weekend, the exuberant, succulent Brit and the lovely, warm and comforting Brit Red, are all favorites, quality mainstream scents, that have made Burberry a brand that is well loved among perfume lovers. Even though neither the fragrances, nor the packaging and advertisements can be described as groundbreaking, Burberry has built a solid and rightly faithful relationship with consumers, largely due to the consistent quality of their scents. I count myself among the many that have come to expect good things from this brand, so I was eager to sniff their newest offering, The Beat.

Now, as I mentioned a couple of months ago in an unrelated post, my first impressions of The Beat were not entirely favorable. In fact, I found myself quietly disappointed by both the juice and the packaging. Yes, the juice was indeed nowhere near groundbreaking once again, but on top of that, smelling it on the blotting paper it seemed downright generic. Since then I have had the opportunity to test the scent more leisurely at home, both on my own skin and on the skin of a couple of friends and my impressions have changed to its favor. The opening is strangely incongruent, featuring a mildly citrusy, slightly soapy and intensely clean breeze over something very obviously warm. The effect can be likened to a clean smelling mantle of ice draped over a burning heart. As you might imagine, this feeble construction disintegrates almost instantly, the cool, clean top quickly melting away to reveal what it never quite managed to conceal anyway: a warm, gooey center of interesting, spicy sweetness. Unfortunately, like a miniature dragon that was bred to be someone’s pet, The Beat will never really blow fire or snort clouds of brimstone. The farthest it will venture into misbehaving is blowing a bubble or two when it hiccups. The spices never really scintillate the senses and the warmth never manages to spread like wildfire. In fact, the longer it stays on the skin the more it fizzles out, becoming milder and softer. Half an hour later we are left with the attractive sourness of a green apple dusted with black pepper and an aromatic tea blend, still dry. Nice enough and strangely familiar, like the face of an old friend whose name you can’t quite remember. Interestingly, what’s surprisingly more pleasurable than smelling The Beat on oneself, is smelling it on someone else. No, really. In fact, smelling it on someone else comes almost as a revelation. A single spray is enough to have this little baby lazily bouncing from wall to wall like an echo. It radiates from afar with quiet allure, never being obtrusive, but rather slowly coming in and out of consciousness, always as a pleasant surprise. It feels like a shining kind of warmth when it comes from another, spicy, pleasant, kind.

The Beat comes across as rather unisex, not particularly feminine and certainly not traditionally masculine, comfortably falling somewhere in the middle. The warm, slightly sweet and spicy scent is rather comforting, definitely better suited to the colder months of the year. The bottle itself echoes the unisex appeal of the fragrance, shaped like a spirit flask adorned with the brand’s signature plaid pattern. Definitely not the type of bottle I personally crave to display on my dresser, but I have no doubt this well designed, attractive object will appeal to many, as indeed, will the juice within.

Images: www.burberrythebeat.com