Lucky You for Women Eau de Toilette by Liz Claiborne Review

Collage of Lucky You by Liz Claiborne and Lucky Brand and its notes, including poppy, water hyacinth, peony, and sandalwood.

I’ve seen Lucky You for Women denoted as a release from both Liz Claiborne and Lucky Brand. So which is it?

The answer, it turns out, is kind of both. Lucky Brand, best known for their Lucky You jeans, is a brand owned by the branding conglomerate known until recently as Liz Claiborne.

A white cup full of white lily of the valley flowers, also known as convalia, and large green leaves.

For that reason and for consistency, I’m considering this a release from Liz Claiborne. I think it makes sense. This is precisely a Liz Claiborne sort of scent, in the world of releases such as Curve Crush, Curve Chill, and Bora Bora. It’s a fresh and clean but not overly soapy designer perfume, a gentle aquatic floral. That sounds like a Liz Claiborne perfume to me.

But, for clarity, it’s also under the Lucky Brand umbrella. Hence the naming convention of Lucky You for Women and the four-leaf clover on the delicate pink glass vial.

Lucky You for Women is a fairly linear, mildly soapy, clean aquatic floral, with some signature early 2000s designer peony musk happening in the background. There’s a lovely unique floral note at the center. Other than that, though, Lucky You for Women toes the line, fitting in with all the other polite, gentle aquatic florals of its day.

When I spray Lucky You for Women, right away I’m hit by something that smells like lily of the valley, but a touch more aquatic and green….. mmmm….. water hyacinth! It’s a note I hadn’t smelled before, and it is truly lovely, delicate and watery.

A magenta lotus flower.

It reminds me of lily of the valley, yes, but also something like lotus or water lily. The closest note I can think of is the lovely lotus note in Hermes’ Un Jardin sur le Nil. Delicate, light, and watery. Almost herbaceous, but with a singing sweet white flower shining through.

The accord is supported and held together by star jasmine. The jasmine isn’t challenging or heavily indolic here. Rather, it’s a lily of the valley sort of pure, delicate, wind chime sort of white floral note, pulling the water hyacinth and aquatic accords together.

Fun fact! Water hyacinth isn’t actually a hyacinth at all. It’s actually a horribly invasive species of floating plant found in water bodies all around the world. It’s beautiful, but incredibly dangerous to ecosystems, destroying them far and wide. In a way its beauty makes it even more deadly to the environment, as people are reticent to throw it away for its seemingly harmless pretty purple flowers and green leaves.

A delicate lilac purple and white bunch of water hyacinth flowers with blue and yellow centers.

Therefore, against all hope, I hope genuine, wild-harvested invasive water hyacinth is used to make Lucky You for Women. And I hope they gather up all the water hyacinths in the world and distill them all down to perfume. They have such a lovely, fresh, clean, delicate fragrance. It really does feel to me like a greener, watery-er lily of the valley.

The perfume is even prettier than the flower. Let’s cut them all down and turn them into Lucky You, shall we? Props to nose Harry Fremont for this innovative floral note choice. More water hyacinth perfumes, please.

What a beautifully simple, fresh and sweet floral scent. There’s a bit of extra floral sweetness from the star jasmine, and no noticeable grapefruit to my nose, though I wouldn’t be surprised if a tiny touch of that sparkling citrus contributes to the crispness here.

The note pyramid for Lucky You for Women lists poppy — blue poppy, to be precise — but I’m skeptical. I grew poppies, decorative and entirely without opium, growing up. They didn’t have much of a smell, aside from a certain earthiness at their seed head centers. It’s quite faint, a bit earthy and sour, but really quite a comforting scent to me.

A Himalayan blue poppy flower with soft, wavy petals and a yellow center.

But I don’t get any true poppy note here. Instead, perhaps there is some fantasy floral molecule in here inspired by the bright flourishing wavy petals of poppies, but no true poppy flower note is here. But poppy just looks and sounds so good in advertising, doesn’t it? Especially when it’s rare and blue and plucked by dawn by mystical maidens on a rare misty Himalayan morning.

For a floral, this is a little soapy and a lot aquatic. Harry Fremont takes this perfume in the Olivia Giacobetti stylistic direction, avoiding soapiness by leaning towards a certain cool, delicate watery nature. Lucky You for Women is even more aquatic on me than something like Frédéric Malle’s En Passant or Diptyque’s Olene.

There’s a delicate dose of blue calones in here, with their melon-cucumber-fresh watery nuance. But that calone dose isn’t so loud as to be screechy or an insufferably bright marine blue. It’s just enough to remind you of a fresh, juicy watermelon — not an ariticial hot pink watermelon bubblegum, but an actual crisp, red melon.

A large glass jar with a spigot filled with cool, chilled cucumber water.

Hence, that soapy quality is thankfully much quieter here than in many other floral fragrances from this era. When it does feel soapy, the quality of Lucky You for Women is that of a pleasant mid-to-high-end foaming floral hand soap on display in a pleasant, small, and clean family bathroom.

The base of Lucky You for Women is an uninspired, typical Y2K mix of musk, sandalwood, and amber. It keeps to the background until a few hours in, when the fresh grapefruit-floral-green sparkle fades out and the pink peony filling has thinned.

As an Eau de Toilette, this falls on the lighter side, but it projects relatively well, with impressive volume and sillage. It will last at that respectable level for some three to five hours. For a delicate watery floral at this very reasonable price point, that’s more than good enough for me.

A tall wine glass filled with clean fresh water.

Simple, classic, inexpensive, innoffensive. This is one of those early-2000s scents that brings back hazy memories inspired by the de rigueur clean white floral aesthetics of the day. Lucky You for Women has something unique to it in the water hyacinth, but is nothing revolutionary. It wasn’t meant to be. It was meant to be a remarkably affordable designer vial of that clean watery floral aesthetic done well. And that it is.

This is a lovely watermelon-fresh gentle floral. It’s clean and Y2K nostalgic without feeling dated. It would still make a very appropriate everyday wear or office scent.

Lucky You for Women is much more aquatic than any perfume I’d usually gravitate towards, but I like how fresh, clean, and slightly green it is in its gentle foamy sweetness. I don’t think I’m the kind of person well-suited by this sort of fragrance, as fresh aquatics and soapy florals aren’t my favorite, but I just may have to keep revisiting this one.


Delicate pink glass vial of Lucky You perfume inscribed with Lucky Brand and a four-leaf clover, with a black rubber cap.

Where to Find Lucky You for Women Eau de Toilette by Liz Claiborne

You can find full bottles of Lucky You for Women EdT at Palm Beach Perfumes, The Perfume Spot, Jomashop, and StrawberryNet.

These are affiliate links. If you click on them and buy something, the seller pays me a commission, at no extra cost to you. You can learn more about them here.



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