Reviews of Red Door by Elizabeth Arden

I don't know what note there is in Red Door, but, to my nose, it comes off as really retching. I get no individual notes – just a noxious conglomerate odor. And my skin isn't to blame for this one – I get the same offness straight from the bottle, on paper, on my skin, and on others' skins. Putrid – and to make matters worse, it is powerful – two sprays would fill a small gymnasium and last twenty hours. Maybe I got a sample gone bad.

An overbearing SA at David Jones sprayed this on me when my friend and I were borwsing the store. We both were horrified by its strong, sickly scent, and my friend demanded that I keep away from her until I got to a bathroom to scrub it off. Even then it remained on my wrist, giving me a headache by the end of the day. A completely overpowering perfume, that along with Thierry Mugler's Alien is the only one to truly repulse me.

Ergh. "I don't like it" *in voice of Andy from Little Britain*...Aweful stuff. I can;t say that its particularly sweet, but it has an aweful sickly presence...I used to think it was ok, but then my Ancient History teacher went overboard with it...Then after, the more she wore it, it seemed, the smaller the class became...Room-clear, is what Red Door is.It'd be ok if it wasn't strong and sickly!

My mom wears this so well! She always gets compliments. I'm not very good at identifying scents yet but it smells really clean and reminds me of a warm breeze. All my mom's clothing smells like it too. However, RD smells like plastic crap on me, plus I am allergic to it and I break out in hives. It's definitely not for some folks.Mixed feelings on this one!

This is actually one of my favourate perfumes, but I am getting a bit suspicious as it is always on sale at ridiculous prices. For this reason I am always a bit embarrased to say what I am wearing when people ask me as I think it has a reputation as being a bit "cheap!" (I know thats snobbish!) I always get compliments on it. Anyway, it really smells great and has good staying power too.

I inherited my bottle of Red Door from my mother who found the scent too heavy. But Dad liked it (he bought it for her); A male friend of mine loves it on his wife; but when I wear it in the car on our drive to work, my husband has to wind down the window to curtail an asthma attack! Once the punchy notes settle, this perfume is good for work wear - no reapplication necessary.On those mornings when you're late ad there's no time for a shower, Red Door is guaranteed to hide the the BO or big-night-previous-on-the-booze odor. (In fact, one day I caught a mother in the shops spraying a tester of it all over her stinky 8 year old son!) Once on your clothes (eg. a sweater) it can retain the scent for the next wear without going stale - bonus!

There are some perfumes where I only only need ONE whiff and I recoil because it seems like I am smelling a roomful of musty elderly ladies who are having some 50 year high school reunion. This is definitely one of those perfumes along with many in the famous Chanel line. This perfume is way too strong and overpowering. Absolute turn off!

All I can say is when I was younger and I'd come, I could taste red door in the air, and my mom left hrs before! Overbearing and cheap...

I don't know if it's just me or what, but Red Door just screams here I come from a mile away. How can a perfume be so strong? I like strong bold scents. Maybe it's the sourness, yes it's the sourness. It does have a nice aroma, maybe if I just used a little semi squirt? No, still to sour.

Whilst I should hate this fragrance, (80's rose based and that horrible bottle), I don't hate it when I smell it on my Wife. GO figure! Don't be put off by the bottle. Give it a go but if you buy it, don't tell people what your wearing.

As more fragrance samples wet my wrists, I am learning that rose notes are quirky with my chemistry...on rare occasion, there is a dewy sweet velvet petaled blossom that comes alive when I wear it, HOWEVER, the rose in Red Door is NOT one of those blooms. It goes bitter/sour on me - and VERY cloying.

No, no, no, no, no! You should not be able to smell someone coming from 10 blocks away!

Sexy and more European styled than most fragrances today. Red Door is full-bodied and long lasting. I miss having this one in my wardrobe.

This is one of those very late 80s-early 90s fragrance affairs that seemed perfectly right until it suddenly seemed so very wrong. Come the mid 1990s, fragrance trends changed, fashion trends changed and Red Door just seemed like such an anachronism all of the sudden. I don't even really recall what I thought of it before then; I know I used to wear it regularly as a young professional so I must have considered it suitably savvy, and I remember being gifted with it several times and being perfectly fine with it until - see ya! I just one day decided I hated it and banished it from my fragrance radar. Fast forward many years later to about nine months ago, when I was at a family function and just could not ignore how fabulous an in-law of mine smelled. Her scent? Red Door. Well, like many others d'un certain age these days, there are those moments when I long for the old days of fragrances with a capital "F," the strong stuff that contains neither fruits nor aquatic notes nor genuinely sweet and gentle flowers, and in this spirit I obtained another bottle of Red Door for myself to see how time had treated it. The verdict: quite nicely, thank you. It's much spicier and cleaner than I remember, almost as though it's got a big stephanotis thing going on, which it does not. And the red rose profusion - you know, compared to a lot of the far more sour and dour rose scents that have launched since Red Door, the rose here smells positively honeyed (honey is one of the heart/base notes) and really, really lovely. Overall, this is an ambery rose with accents of sultry tuberose and spicy-clean orange blossom. The peach and plum in the topnote can be a little much but dissipate pretty quickly. I have to say I'm really pleased to rediscover this fragrance; it still has its charms even after all this time!

I understand that in the United States Red Door has sort of a bad/cheap reputation. Smells a bit synthetic. But this happen to be one of my 10 favorite fragrances. It's scent was created at a time when American scents were all about being sexy, and RD delivers: warm, voluptuous, exotic and fun. Take care not to overdose thought.

This fragrance is awful, it is Jergens meets Dial for an afternoon tryst. Tinge of the funeral home, but too soapy to detect. So overly detergent that it reminds one of the freshly scrubbed church-lady types that assault you with an overly "clean" smelling cloud of fragrance. Bottle is uncreative and square, looks unsurprisingly like a red door, typical of the 1980's era in which it was produced.