Well… at least it’s not another fruity floral.
Hanae Mori smells like a marshmallow. “But Ari,” I hear you saying, “marshmallows are delicious! What sort of heartless harpy could hate on marshmallows, unless they’re 60 feet tall and possessed by the spirit of the destructive deity Gozer?”
Cutest marshmallow-possessed-by-demon EVER!
But the marshmallows I am thinking of are not your standard puffy white blobs of deliciousness. Hanae Mori is closer to kosher marshmallows, which do not contain any gelatin and come in exciting colors to disguise the fact that they do not taste all that much like their gelatin-containing counterparts. Kosher marshmallows are more obviously sugary, and I swear that Butterfly’s hyper-rich sweetness is a spot-on representation.
Butterfly is sweet. Really, really sweet. Should I just come out and say it? Overly sweet. Butterfly certainly smells good, but it does not smell like a perfume. This would be an excellent competitor for the hearts and minds of Pink Sugar lovers, but Butterfly is outrageously priced and is therefore far out of reach for the average tweenage budget.
If you ask me, Hanae Mori is marketing this all wrong. Take a good $30 off the price, slap a couple more butterflies on the bottle, and watch the Hannah Montanas come running. (Is that still a current reference, by the way? For the life of me I can’t keep all these new 15 year-old celebrities straight. Who the hell is Selena Gomez?)
BUT SERIOUSLY SELENA GOMEZ WHO ARE YOU
Butterfly smells better than Pink Sugar, and could easily take its place as Sephora’s best-seller if Hanae Mori would realize who their actual target audience should be. The high-brow customer that they seem to be aiming for would probably never wear such a juvenile perfume.
SCENTS OF SELF 
I feel much the same about HM. I came across a spray sample in a swap (because, seriously? I’d never heard of Hanae Mori and wouldn’t have gone looking for this thing) and carelessly spritzed it – okay, ONE time – before heading off to work.
It smelled delicious. I got very little done that day, to be honest. I kept fighting the urge to giggle. How often do I smell like dessert?
And although I have a very soft spot for this dessert-in-a-bottle, I feel far too aged and decrepit to wear it in public. I still get the sample out every now and then, if it’s a pajamas-at-home sort of day, but that doesn’t happen often. I did buy my teenage daughter a set of five spray samples (they’re evvvverywhere on ebay, cheap), and I just enjoy it on her on the rare occasions she feels like wearing perfume and isn’t in the mood for DK Gold.
Hi Mals! I suspect anyone over the legal drinking age is too decrepit for Butterfly. How rare it must be these days to be a young girl who prefers Gold to Butterfly! I wildly applaud her (which is no doubt a result of your) good taste.