Estee Lauder Sensuous: fragrance review

The scent of Sensuous is rather clever, even if not particularly ground-breaking, balancing all the ingredients and chords in an effect that would make you feel, like one reviewer said, "the victim of your own fragrance snobbery." We tend to bypass mainstream releases in favor of niche, and yet there are some mainstream releases which make us wonder what we have been neglecting, or viewing with unwarranted contempt, and Sensuous is one of those scents.

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Sensuous in 2008 was moving the boundaries from already well known Estee Lauder floral notes towards an opulent oriental woodsy-amber concept, to praise the beauty and sensuality of women all ages. The fragrance was created in cooperation with the nose Annie Buzantian of Firmenich, who composed it of sensual lily notes, magnolia and jasmine petals in the top. The heart brings aromas of molten wood and amber, while the base introduces sandalwood, black pepper, juicy mandarin pulp and honey.

Lightly spicy and quite creamy, the original Sensuous gives me a warm, soft, just right impression of lightly scented skin, in a way paying homage to the creations of Lutens (though less spicy-sweet), but also winking in the direction of Tom Ford's personal favorite Santal Blush, which is also a very creamy and smooth skin scent if you let it dry down. The sandalwood is what is most prominent on my skin, totally a creative attempt at giving that old mainstay of perfumery a valiant effort, but quite effective and very indulgent; it's skin-like at the same time as it's clean and polished, perhaps with a distant whiff of smokiness in the background.

The advertising campaign for the original Sensuous was actually talking about "molten woods", which is as good a term as any fantasy line, I guess, to capture that titillating balance between straight-faced earnestness and blurted out seductiveness. People still pick perfume in order to appear more alluring, there's no use in denying it. So Lauder embraced it, but in a quite classy and clever way, which should teach the market a lesson or two.

The way to do that was to employ several different spokes models (actually two well-known actresses, the pleasantly mature and established Liz Hurley and the not-so-ridiculed-on-U.S-soil Gwyneth Paltrow; and two supermodels, Carolyn Murphy and Hilary Rhoda), dressed in an identical white man's shirt in various stages of decency. The move is clever in a double whammy way: men's shirts, as worn by women, not only offer a morning-after visual code that the public has been conditioned to interpret in exactly this way thanks to endless movies utilizing the trope, but also an androgynous way to borrow the "better" qualities of the masculine gender in the public perception and stereotyping, i.e. self-confidence, assertive disposition, a devil-may-care regard for others' responses. So in one single decision, Lauder and their creative directors managed to appeal to a woman who is both strong enough to not care about men's weighing of her value, but also attractive enough to have men in her life in a sexual way.

The next installment in the Sensuous line came in September 2010, more fittingly season-wise, in the countdown to Christmas. Sensuous Noir is indeed a rather dark fragrance and my personal favorite in the triptych.


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Boss Nuit pour Femme: fragrance review

I sometimes ask myself what does it say about a particular fragrance if I'm not even temped to seek out a sample of it, but eventually get to try it because one ends up on my lap anyway. Usually it's time-honed experience suggesting the jus looks unexciting; and most of the time it ends up getting me bored to the point of having my eyes glaze. The Boss range of fragrances (with the possible exception of Deep Red) continues to induce yawns from me despite my appreciation of the razor-cut "sharp" pants, the impeccable trim-fit men's suits in endless variations of grey, the double strap monk shoes or  the office-and-cocktails appropriate suiting dresses of the fashion brand. Boss Nuit pour Femme is no different, an innocuous peachy floral (with a hint of fruitchouli) and the standard ersatz blanched (rather than "white") florals in the heart to give an impression of "clean" elegance, in the spitting image of its ambassadress, Gwyneth Paltrow and her "clean obsessive compulsive living".

The blonde celebrity has been said to prefer it among her rather large perfume collection (of whom we became savvy through her interviews), but doesn't the point get diluted by her being sponsored to promote it? Besides, unless you're a lady who lunches, is Gwynnie the yardstick against which you measure the va-va-voom allure and intelligence your chosen perfume should radiate? I didn't think so.
Boss championed the concept of "the little black dress" for the release (surely an American stereotype of "dressy & elegant" by now) reminiscing me of Avon's Little Black Dress fragrance release (which is perhaps superior in comparison), but the ambassadress is better envisioned in crisp whites, the way Estee Lauder had brilliantly cast her aboard a sailing boat for their fabulous Pure white Linen perfume.

Boss Nuit pour Femme has mediocre sillage and rather poor lasting power and these two characteristics can be the kiss of oblivion when applied to a "safe" composition, rendering the whole as exciting as watching paint dry or having the telephone catalogue read to you to sleep. Clearly these are formulae not in risk of athazagoraphobia, i.e. the fear of getting forgotten.
The jasmine note doesn't come through in Boss Nuit pour Femme, leaving the task to the lactone of the peach and the moss (Evernyl?)/synth wood components to carry the torch. The "aldehydes" mentioned in the official notes are played down to only hint at scrubbed soapy lather rather than the intensity of brightness of classic aldehydics fragrances like Chanel's No.5 or Lanvin's Arpege. Although advertised as an evening fragrance, as suggested by the name as well, this is the perfect wallpaper scent for casual mornings/afternoons. Boss Nuit pour Femme is not totally bad in itself, just utterly blah; a drop of water on the window pane on a day of heavy rain. But judging by the continuous presence of Bright Crystal (Versace), Chanel Chance Eau Tendre, Gucci Premiere et al on the market, this "peachy shampoo genre" is here to stay…

Although I didn't have high expectations from Boss (the let down of Guerlain's thin and wan Limon Verde from last summer's Aqua Allegoria launch is colossal compared to this), it's disheartening to see that playing outside one's safe zone is strictly verboten in mainstream.

"I probably have around 50 [perfumes] at home, some I just like for the bottle, some I wear all the time": Gwyneth Paltrow Digs Fragrance (and Boss Nuit)

Gwyneth Paltrow, the celebrity face of the new Boss Nuit fragrance, shared during the Boss Nuit breakfast event that she has always been into scent; by the time she was 14 she was already addicted to Anaïs Anaïs, then graduated to Calyx and Coco by Chanel, and still remembers her mother's scent, the fresh jasmine Quadrille by Balenciaga. Now she says she "prefers something a little more complex". Hard to imagine something more complex than the original Coco which came out in the era of baroque orientals in the mid-1980s, but one has to throw a sales pitch when they're fronting a fragrance campaign, don't they!

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Still Gwyneth comes across as pretty honest when she says that she does believe in a fragrance wardrobe: she doesn't only wear what she advertises, as claimed by other celebrities when promoting a specific fragrance. She also gives the reasons why she does keep a perfume collection, stating that the beauty of the bottle is enough for her to keep a few of those approximately 50 scents around and that with some others it's a "going steady" relationship. Her love for perfume has ben long, teaching her through the years the value of some perfume etiquette: Her daughter Apple "sprays herself head to toe, though I'm trying to teach her that less is more. Me, I just spray a little on my left arm, press it against my right arm, and then dab behind my ears."

Apart from a complete aversion to anything perfumed during both her pregnancies, when she says "I couldn't even stomach the smell of orange juice from across the room, let alone flowers or fragrance", Paltrow used to be the face of Estee Lauder Pleasures, following Elizabeth Harley and Carolyn Murphy, and of Pure White Linen and Sensuous by the same brand. Paltrow now goes for Boss Nuit by night, which she deems "feminine and alluring" (but appreciates that it feels "like an extra something, rather than a perfume pouring off me"), though she adds "that could be because of the branding - good job guys."

Read more about Gwyneth's beauty secrets on the Telegraph.