What could be more joyful than the feel of sunshine on skin? M&S promises to have bottled up that exact feeling with its latest £12 Discover fragrance, and it’s drawing comparisons with a very popular solar fragrance, costing £99.
If you’re not already au fait with solar fragrances, let me paint you a picture: suncream on warm limbs, coconut-laced cocktails at golden hour, and a general happy holiday vibe. M&S is fully on board with this wanderlust perfume trend with Solar Fleur, a radiant new EDT from Discover – the own-brand range that’s become a huge word-of-mouth hit among fans of affordable fragrance.
Savvy scent watchers have already identified similarities to brands like YSL, Jo Malone London, Tom Ford, Diptyque and Lancome with previous Discover offerings, and I can confirm that Solar Fleur doesn’t disappoint in the dupe department.
It opens with a brief burst of mandarin (think freshly squeezed juice at the hotel buffet) then quickly deepens with soft, glowy notes of jasmine and creamy coconut milk. It’s a divine summer cocktail of a scent, and one already being tipped as an excellent affordable alternative to Phlur's gorgeous Golden Rule EDP, £99.
With Golden Rule’s key notes of mandarin, jasmine and coconut milk, it’s easy to see where that comparison is coming from.
To see how the scents matched up, I gave my wrists a generous spritz of Solar Fleur, then popped into my local SpaceNK to spritz on Phlur Golden Rule. The latter fragrance has additional notes of pink pepper, orange flower and vanilla cream, so it’s not identical, but the similarity is undeniable, particularly in the dry-down.
An hour after spraying both, they had settled as happily on the skin as, well, me on a poolside sun lounger.
I offered my wrists to a few colleagues and the olfactory resemblance was remarked upon. (One person actually thought I was wearing the same scent at first, although conceded Phlur was ‘a bit richer’.) But one thing was unanimous; all my testers would happily wear both perfumes.
I’d say the same. By the five-hour mark, Phlur had more depth and longevity (as you’d expect from an EDP rather than a EDT), but both lingered with that delicious, soft, golden-hour warmth.
And with a bottle of Solar Fleur costing less than your average hotel cocktail, it's definitely my idea of a happy hour.
