Allure Eau de Parfum Chanel perfume – a fragrance for women 1999
4199 Chanel Allure
wellblendedness is what I get from a flacon of eau de parfum acquired presumably 5 yrs ago. but my history with Allure goes back farther. since its inception as edt. 1996 eye bought a flacon of such accompanied with a beautiful booklet, explaining on doux-rose pages this was a ‘prismatic perfume’ without head-, middle- and basenotes. you got all at once. I loved the perfume (edt) and loved the booklet. well in 1999 I got the edp and have since bought I guess 3 flacons of that version. I clearly remember loving both. and now, as yesterday evening in response to what ‘olfactorista’ said about what a scrubber it had become, lying in bed I was surrounded by the most beautiful olphactory experience. yes it was a total-theatre experience. I was cloaked in figments of the loveliest scents. it is not so much these present itself each time in sharp defined contours but thinking and looking at and, once in bed, imagining and sensing, smelling what then these ingredients were they came clear above. peach, rose, jasmine, neroli, orange, vanilla, peony and magnolia. somehow the vetiver and cedar doesn’t so much come to the fore in my experience and I feel this is one (of many) of the ultimate feminine fragrances. about the rose: I am a great fan of roses, actually for me they are the queen of flowers and in perfume I love them in all incarnations. ladylike, as in almost all Chanel perfumes, the
fineries of the Rose de Mai of Grasse they use. yet I am the archetypal rose-oudh connaisseur: I lure in Dusitas Oudh Infini when I can, Ex Idolo’s Thirty Three, the Montales (I don’t ever do the Montale bashing, these are phenomenal perfumes with unbelievable sillage and projection with real oudh as well as strong roses used); then I love haunted roses as Domique Ropion/Frederic Malle’s Promise, al Waad with her frightening blast of cypriol and castoreum, clove-oil and the best of 2 species of rose absolutes, and Portrait of a Lady with the rose almost as if grown in a deep bourgogne, bordeau or nebbiolo, unneutered while they used ox-blood in the growth sub-rosa.
for ‘olfactorista’ then this supplementary description not for her to change her mind. every day I learn there are so much perfumes, so much personal sensations, so much different moments in which the perfume is sensed (as the gentleman VanniGodfrey clarifies). this perfume according to my tastes, is sheer genius as well in the edt as in the edp version and I am aware that the companies (what with LVMH and KeringGroup and KorsEnterprises and I don’t know how the hell these conglomerates are further called) only enhance a further “adjustment” = dilution = marketing technological stratagem and minimise performances of the perfumes under their ‘curation’, that they do this. on the other side the revenge of the perfumes lies in this: that flacons longer in once’s possession, macerate further (this I learned reading the findings of a Creed ‘Nez’) and, like wine and cheese (and antiques) only gain in richesse and grandeur. that a flacon with perfume can “turn” I almost never (but did) experienced. I have six flacons of Gale Hayman Beverly Hills, that devilish civet-rose-gardenia monster from 1990, and neither of them has ‘turned’ on the contrairy, their performance has only increased, which got to be a criminal offense. a ‘seasoned’ Allure will become a very precious, rich perfume for the ladies who lunch, and … me, the feminine man from the Netherlands.