I Smell and Review the New “Extreme” Version of Rihanna’s Favorite Perfume

Welcome to Tynan Sinks’ fragrance column, Smells Like Trouble. As Review2Coupon’s resident fragrance connoisseur, Tynan will be sharing the scents that linger on in his mind, and nose, and clothes.

By now, we don’t need to review the power of celebrity in the beauty space. Pairing stardom with beauty is more commonplace than ever, and shows no signs of stopping. Where once, celebrities were expected to simply have their name attached to a fragrance, we now see them creating makeup, hair, skincare, and supplement brands.

What I’m more interested in is a celebrity’s power in proximity to beauty. What happens when the general public gets wind that their favorite celeb likes a certain product and then clamors to get it? We saw this happen with Audrey Hepburn and Givenchy L’Interdit, as well as Princess Diana and Quelques Fleurs. These celebrities may not be officially pushing the scents, but simply knowing they wear them is enough to move units.

As it tends to do, history is repeating itself with the fragrance Love, Don’t Be Shy by Kilian.

Extreme will be familiar to those who wore and loved the original, while being a little more approachable to those who are intimidated by fragrances that lean so sweet. On my skin and to my nose, the two scents are strikingly similar. The addition of rose in Extreme is noticeable, yes, but it does feel like a more nuanced edit than a full reimagining, which I can appreciate. Many flankers often feel like a new scent entirely under the same name of something else that was originally very successful, but Extreme shows you where it started and where it wants to go.

What I like most about it is that it didn’t bastardize its original concept for the sake of paletteability to a wider audience. It is still sweet, and still very much still in the Love Don’t Be Shy family.

If you love the original, you’ll probably want to smell Extreme, but depending on your tastes, you may not need to buy it. It expands on its original thought without changing direction completely, which will please some and may not be quite enough for others. The integrity of the original is still there and, the differences, while being nuanced, are noticeable. I think it’s a really exciting take on flankers, franchises, and sticking closely to what you know.

The beauty industry is largely fueled by scarcity and newness. The scarcity of the original Love, Don’t Be Shy brought about the newness of the Extreme, and if history is any indicator, this scent is about to be impossible to get your hands on, even without a celebrity name attached to it (officially.)

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