Product Review: Covet by Sarah Jessica Parker

If you are reading this blog and you have cable, chances are good that you've seen the ads for SJP's new perfume on the telly. Featuring a glammed up Ms. Parker as a would-be fragrance felon, the commercial tells us that she "had to have it". The ad is very much in the vein of Carrie from Sex and The City -- stylish, cute, and a little bit insane.

I'd read that this would be a strange and unexpected scent. Sexy. Dark. Gourmand. None of these are words that usually draw me to a perfume. Especially the latter - foody scents tend to go all fake and overly sugary on me, and spice notes and I don't really get along.

But of course, I had to try it (super-liminal messaging, anyone?). So just like the the girl in the ad, except minus the stilettos and the couture, off I went to seek out the jewel-like green bottle.






And what a bottle it is! I think it's so much more interesting and display-worthy than Lovely's bottle was. I'm not crazy about the cap, since it's not an actual lid, just a circle of molded plastic that fits over the nozzle. But lid schmid, what about the juice?

On the test strip, it really wasn't much. I couldn't pinpoint it... it just smelled like perfume, perhaps with a biting top note. True to the sales-girl's word, this fragrance really does need to be worn on the skin to be properly experienced. So I hesitantly sprayed some on my wrist. Much to my relief, Covet is certainly not a Big Bad 80's scent that punches you in the nose. In fact, I found it to be much more easygoing and likeable then I'd expected.

The top notes are bright, sharp, and fresh. The warm floral heart on my skin is gone in a flash, and I am left with a smooth, subtly sweet base. Whenever woods and amber are gently blended like in Covet, it makes me feel all warm and cozy. The chocolate is not sugary and high-pitched (hello Aquolina!), but rather lends a ... a toothiness to the fragrance. You will not smell like German Torte; Covet leaves just a hint of edible-ness. The listed notes include: wet greens, geranium leaves, Sicilian lemon, lavender, chocolate, honeysuckle, magnolia, muget, musk, vetiver, bois de cashmere, teakwood and amber.


For something advertised as a "fougère on estrogen", I didn't find it very masculine at all. I suppose the greeness of it at the start keeps it from being too feminine, but I certainly felt girly enough wearing it. While this will be a disappointment for anyone looking for something really extreme or weird, I think Covet will do very well with the masses. For one, it's a fragrance people can actually wear. Sure, classics like Shalimar or Poison are classics for a reason, but I can't exactly wear them to work or school and still feel like myself*. It's definitely a cool-weather scent, and its sexiness is that of a woman who is polished and confident, but who is neither a sultry sex-kitten nor a tempermental temptress.

To try out Covet for yourself ("You have to have it! Join the Navy!"), click on over to www.caseofthecovetedbottle.com, where you can check out all the various zany ads for the perfume, as well as order your own free sample while supplies last! Until October 15th, they'll also be running an interactive game/contest where you try to solve a whodunnit-style mystery surrounding the theft of a one-of-a-kind bottle of Covet. As if figuring out Who Framed Sarah Jessica wasn't enough fun, there's up to $10,000 in cash and prizes up for grabs. You can get new weekly clues as well as a chance to win even more prizes as the game unfolds on Covet's MySpace page.


If you're looking for a new scent for the Fall/Winter season, give Covet a sniff. It can be found pretty much everywhere... I've seen it at The Bay, Sears, and Shopper's Drug Mart so far.

Okay, off to read some papers and try to stay awake. It's like the whodunnit game, but instead of framing poor Carrie Bradshaw, the crime is subjecting me to intolerable boredom!



* As opposed to feeling like someone who wears blue sequined suits with mega-shoulder pads, who just found out that her daughter, the one who is in a coma, is not actually her daughter, but is instead her daughter's identical twin sister who was taken away from her at birth because ... Stay tuned next week, when Days of Our Overly Dramatic and Implausible Lives returns!