A Guerlain for the masses, La Petite Robe Noire EDT is either a crowd-pleasing, fresh cherry dream or a synthetic, headache-inducing scrubber. Its lighter touch compared to the EDP makes it versatile, but polarising enough to make a blind buy risky.

Dark Robe chases Guerlain's La Petite Robe Noire - that flirty, sour black-cherry-and-liquorice gourmand over powdery vanilla. It nails the cherry-forward signature, but renders it flatter and sweeter, losing the subtle tea-and-almond nuance that gives the original its slightly medicinal, grown-up edge.