Hello by Lionel Richie, (2019) by Dora Baghriche and Clement Gavarry

Yes, you read that right. Iconic eighties love song, “Hello,” has inspired a perfume. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember the priceless video that accompanied this ballad. Lionel Richie was an art teacher who had fallen in love with a blind student of his. His unrequited love made him sing a song around the corridors until some students told him that he “had to come and see what was happening in the art room”. Et Voilà! Blind girl had sculpted his head out of clay despite never having actually seen him. Romantic or what? My question is: how the heck do you make that into an eau de toilette? Well, rather successfully as it happens.

I bought my bottle from Home Bargains a year ago for the princely sum of £6.99. Thrifty as I am, at this price point I am willing to buy blind. As it turns out, it was money well spent and I quite literally had change for a bag of chips on the way home (but didn’t indulge). This is nothing ground breaking, for sure. In fact about four or five years ago the combination of pear and jasmine was so ubiquitous as to almost be a uniform. Funnily enough, this was made during that exact era, having been launched in 2019.

Hello is a delightful and airy floral that begins with, as you can guess, pear and jasmine. You can really pick out that pear note too, but it does give up the ghost eventually. Despite only being eau de toilette strength, it’s potent when it first goes on, but calms down a little after twenty minutes. It’s a crowd pleaser, meaning that it’s pretty much a safe bet as a gift, coming under the category of “good for wearing to work.” i.e inexpensive, not your all-time favourite, but certainly pleasant and pleasing.

With my eyes closed, I would have said this was a lot more expensive, or from one of the higher end Avon collections. The end of the song lets a few woody amber notes gently glide out alongside the last piano notes as Professor Richie sees his head immortalized in clay.

In conclusion, this is well worth the money and comes in a pretty embossed glass bottle with a white lid. If you see this anywhere, snap it up as its sudden availability four years after launch tells me it might be on the way out. It might not last All Night Long but at this low price point you’ll be Dancing on The Ceiling. I’ve been sitting on these puns since I bought it and I’m not even sorry!

Where to buy it

Get your thrift sensors on because this is selling out at the budget places. Rumour has it that it’s been spotted in TK Maxx too. Perfume Click has it for £10.35. 

Disclosure

I paid for this myself and I am sadly, not affiliated with Lionel Ritchie or his fragrance line. 🙁