If you’ve ever thought that the plastic flowers that adorn the bottles of Marc Jacobs’ popular fragrances Daisy, Lola and Dot were more than slightly OTT, you may want to turn away for the rest of this review. With his latest feminine fragrance, entitled ‘Decadence‘, Jacobs has pulled out all of the bottle design stops and has fashioned a flacon that resembles one of the designer’s much sought after handbags, capturing the familiar shape of his bags. After all, what is the ultimate accessory next to fragrance? Here the designer bag and the designer scent combine to create something that will have the eyes of many fashion fans bulging and their mouths shouting “gimme”! As the press release says, it’s “the ultimate statement maker”, and a statement it certainly makes.

Decadence, the fragrance, was composed by Annie Buzantian (Puredistance I & Marc Jacobs Dot) and is billed as something “glamorous and indulgent” and “impulsively luxurious”. The whole thing seems aimed at a more serious audience and isn’t as youth-courting as Jacobs’ earlier fragrances. In an industry where only the young matter, it’s good to see something that isn’t aimed at tweens, but Decadence is far from mature and appears to simply offer an alternative to the wishy washy bottles of clean florals that saturate the market. But just how decadent is it?