Belle Âme
Les Abstraits (2022)

If you like Dior Homme, you may like this even more.

Because this is a dupe... that transcends the original.

Beautiful, masculine-leaning powdery orris, musk, suede-sandalwood perfume. This is Dior Homme (2005) with added ginger, spice, and prominent incense. Bespoke attention to detail, an intimacy that makes the wearer feel special, as though the perfume were made just for them, and a quality of inputs that radiates splendor.

The vanilla in the drydown is a bit overdosed for me personally (not overbearing, nor particularly sweet—it is the pillowy, tonka-inflected variety: earthy and “authentic”), but it dominates too much for my taste in the back half of the wear.

Marvelous perfume, great longevity, and this thing pulses off your body in a way that intrigues those around you without smothering them with sillage. Thine crop-dusting shalt be pleasing, if not wholly benign. This is first-rate perfume (if you like iris).

Without getting obsessionally deconstructionist, we know this perfume is a love letter in a sense—and in most ways it supersedes its object of affection. It is better than the Dior. I would wear it often if I owned a bottle. However, I would not buy it because it "borrows" too suspiciously.

Willem Anker from Beckett, Raphael from da Vinci, Steve Jobs from Xerox PARC, Nirvana from Killing Joke: these “influences” can be highly beneficial to the plagiarist, history shows. But I do like my computer mouse and I’m hoping to see Raphael’s first comprehensive exhibition at the Met this spring (I’ll never listen to Nirvana, nor read any more Anker, conversely).

Belle Âme is very good indeed, but Apple or Italian Renaissance master it is not. My guess is you will enjoy this if you like the style—you will enjoy it a lot. However, I will not give a dupe higher than “Neutral.”

Sometimes it's best to leave love letters unread, especially if they weren't written to you.

Iris lovers wet dream...just pure iris powder in all its glory. The iris and santal combo here is something else. This does not remind me of Dior Homme, even tho it has iris. But this is a step up from every iris i tried so far. Actually the iris here is more of the Chanel La Pausa iris, more rooty and moody. Luxury in a bottle.

Belle Âme by Les Abstraits (2022) is another fragrance that wears its creative director's heart on its sleeve. The entire Les Abstraits line comes from the mind of Eugen of the U Smells Good channel on YouTube (last name unknown to me), interpreted by industry perfumer Antoine Lie, whom he sparked a friendship with in his travels across perfume influencer-land. Standing apart from other YouTubers who ventured into their own perfume ranges by making something more high-concept and truly niche in approach (with hefty enthusiast-only price tags to correlate). Eugen did manage to impress most with his house debut scent La Douleur Exquis (2022). If that scent was his "I love Chanel Antaeus (1981)" fragrance, this one is clearly his "I love Dior Homme (2005)" fragrance; which on the second go around of "let's make my favorite designers but better" a tad more tiring. This one plays a nice tune, but the riffs are just a bit too familiar.

Now that's not to say this doesn't smell quality, because it absolutely does. For the price of $250 plus who-knows-what sales tax, duty fees, shipping, and whatnot, you will at least feel like you bought something on parity with an Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle at retail, and that's the bare minimum you can expect. This takes a powdery, woody, dry gourmand approach to iris much like Dior Homme under its original Olivier Polge spec, and to an extent the 2011 François Demachy spec as well. Key differences arrive with the switchout of cedar and vetiver for sandalwood and lentiscus, leather replaced with incense; all told Belle Âme has a more gulf-inspired theme, even with the lighter treatment of the gourmand materials like vanilla and cocoa. If this was sold more on the Montale price point than on the Amouage one, I could appreciate the mashup more. Performance is of course, a non-issue here in case you were wondering.

All told, my analysis may seem overly-comparative and reductive in spirit, but it's mighty hard not to be after smelling thousands of fragrances and being able to see the source inspiration clear like a beam of light from above onto the subject of the scent. Now, this is no slight, as it takes a sharp creative mind and a deft perfumer's hand to add a bit more life and graft more-expensive materials like a bit of real orris, into such a commercial perfume profile, then also give it a Middle East touch with a chef's kiss. All the waxing poetic and jazz hands I'll save for other reviewers that want to paint happy little trees in your mind with their words like Bob Ross, as that does you no good if you're looking for the facts and opinions. Hedi Slimane meets a Dubai market, but carrying too much of a premium for me to bite. That said, for the right person, this may seem all too worth it, I'm just too tired and a bit jaded to move past the highly iterative design this time around. Neutral.