I don’t often enter giveaways. I have enough perfume, and when I enter a contest, I usually win. Besides, let’s face it, giveaways are usually engineered to buy subscribers or followers for influencers and review sites, with their requirements of, “you must be a registered reader” or “tag three friends to enter.” All that is slimy, and I’m not interested.

But recently I won a bottle of the brand new release from The Zoo, Smile & Shine, in a contest on Instagram that simply asked a question. After providing my address, the bottle was unceremoniously sent to my house; I wasn’t ever asked to thank anyone, post a photo, or review the fragrance. (Not even the slightest suggestion).

Smile & Shine Fragrance Review

Smile & Shine is not something that I would have ever purchased for myself; my forest witch/eldritch librarian aesthetic doesn’t support much sunny citrus. But it is a bit of technical wizardry, which makes it interesting to me, and remarkable enough to write about. I’m a fangirl of Christophe Laudamiel, precisely because of things like this perfume.

I once made homemade limoncello, at the request of my sister. The process turned out to be more enjoyable than the product, but a lot of things in life are that way.

Making limoncello involves taking a fuckton of lemons and delicately shaving the peel away from the pith. You want just yellow, no white. Depending on your individual temperament, this exercise will be either meditative or maddening.

I found skinning the lemons to be quite pleasurable. My Cancer Rising enjoys domestic tasks, my Venus in Taurus loves sensory input (and anything “cheffy”), and my Pisces Sun appreciates opportunities to be still and daydream. Curling the thin yellow peel away from the fluffy white pith liberates a lot of the oils, so the smell was resplendent.

Smile & Shine reminds me very much of cutting those paper-thin strips of lemon peel. It’s the most natural citrus oil smell I’ve ever encountered in a perfume. It’s at least as much lime as lemon, and also some grapefruit, but the overall feel is so reminiscent of handling all that oily citrus peel. It’s sharp, bright, and zesty. It smells supremely natural, leaving all other citrus fragrances in the dust as far as realism is concerned. If your aim is to smell like natural citrus, this will be your jam.

Even more impressive to me than the character of the citrus in Smile & Shine is its longevity. Youngsters who are accustomed to perfumes made of woody-amber aromachemicals droning on for days are going to scoff at what I’m about to say, and the technical merits of this fragrance will probably be lost on them. (Oh, how I lament the preoccupation with “performance” these days….) Given the fragility of citrus oils, the persistence of Smile & Shine is really impressive. It did begin to fade in intensity noticeably after hour two, but it held onto its pleasant citrus character for over five hours on my skin. Remarkable.

Smile & Shine doesn’t just fall off into nothing, or fade out into fuzzy musk either. It winds down gracefully into a just-right base of rich tolu balsam, grounded with a pinch of turmeric, which keeps it feeling like a refined scent all the way to the end. This is actually my favorite part.

Smile & Shine Details and Final Thoughts

I enjoy Smile & Shine more than I thought I would. While not my style for going out — who’s going out these days??? It’s definitely a mood lifter. I’ve worn it a few times when I had things to do and wanted to feel invigorated. It also layers nicely with some of my funky indie atmospherics.

There is one thing that must be noted about this fragrance. In order to preserve the delicate citrus top notes, it has to be stored in the refrigerator. My first thoughts were, I already have perfume in every other room in the house, now I have to keep one in the refrigerator? But that was just a moment of crankiness. When I was less mature, I might have thought selling a perfume that requires refrigeration was bullshit. But Christophe is very transparent about it — it’s on the product page of the website and printed on the bottle itself, and I’ve seen it on the product page of retailers as well. What would be actual bullshit is to sell it to people and NOT tell them, and just let it degrade quickly after they’ve already paid for it. So — if you aren’t willing to store this perfume in the refrigerator, don’t buy it. You’ve been warned. If you want to have nice things, sometimes you have to take special care of them.

Smile & Shine was created by perfumer Christophe Laudamiel for his brand, The Zoo, and released in 2020. For more information, or to purchase, visit The Zoo’s website.

Disclosures

I received the bottle of Smile & Shine as a prize for an Instagram contest which asked participants to describe symbols for a coat of arms for modern perfumery. The contest was open to the public. There was no request or suggestion from Mr. Laudamiel or from the brand for a review of the fragrance. I was not compensated in any way for providing a review. I do not have any relationships or affiliation with The Zoo or Dream Air LLC, and do not receive any compensation for sharing product links on this site.