Un Bel Amour d'Été
Eau de Parfum, Parfum d'Empire (2024)

To my nose, this is a big, creamy tuberose with added bright and fizzy notes like lemon soda and ginger ale. There's no tuberose listed though so I suppose it might be the other floral notes giving that effect. It's a very tropical vacation type of scent without the typical coconut note. The sillage is extremely heady white florals with an almost gourmand (vanilla?) aspect while the scent closer to the skin has more of bright notes that turn dangerously plasticky. Perhaps the "plasticky" effect comes partly from the ambrette, which feels oddly cool and inorganic for a musk substitute? I don't get any of the (unlisted) animalic notes like cumin and civet mentioned by previous reviewers - this is not at all an animalic scent but sensual only because of it's vulgar overdose of heady florals. In reality it rather has a repulsive effect on my wife - she was shocked by the scent trail I'd left around the house from just a couple of small sprays from the sample and says it's starting to give her a headache (I can hear her sneeze in the other room as I'm typing this). I get it - I don't particularly enjoy being in this tropical floral cloud that I can practically taste at the back of my throat either. In theory, I can see a resemblance to my beloved Carnal Flower in the enormous, potentially headache-inducing, lush white floral with added cool "green" notes, but in theory only. In contrast, Un bel amour d'été is as diurnal as Carnal Flower is nocturnal, and its composition feels almost "upside down" to me, like it has no base, nothing animalic or resinous or woody to ground it on the skin, just those bright and transparent vaguely plasticky notes at the bottom and then a very heavy top. A scent for rare occasions like beach parties where you will quickly sweat it off or wash it off in the sea - I wouldn't recommend wearing it indoors at all as it's such a sillage monster.

I’m locked in a moment of pure physical ecstasy. The golden orange glow of the sun on bronzed skin salty from seawater and sweat. Coconut and floral suntan lotion. A fruit cocktail gone a bit warm in the sun. The scents of flowers on a warm breeze. It’s a moment in time, a beautiful and sultry summer day full of sensorial and physical delights that you don’t want to end.

Oof, ok, focus Nathan. Let me try to do this before I pass out. First to get out of the way are some notes I’m definitely picking up that PdE doesn’t mention, namely cumin and civet. Be it known that Bel Amour is a lot more raunchy than breezy summer frivolity. The cumin and the civet add palpable and magnetic body odors to the perfume that are acting like pheromones. The animalic purr is loud, lascivious, and ready for fun. Champaca starts the perfume, golden, sweet, fruity, and unctuous. The civet makes its first appearance alongside, immediately making me think of Jicky - yes, it’s that loud and sexual. Then the heart - ugh, the gorgeous beating heart of this perfume. It’s the most beautiful thumping muscle of gardenia and ylang-ylang. The gardenia presents as its typical rich, sweet, creamy, white floral self, but here it calls heavily on its coconut facets while staying bright rather than deeply nutty or milky. The yellow floral of the ylang-ylang is pushing its fruity and banana notes, starchy texture, and highly tropical characteristics. The cumin swings in and out, adding plenty of raunch to the innocent florals. The dry down to the base keeps the purr, thump, and beat going. Thank you, Mr. Corticchiato, for consistently not ignoring your dry downs. The sandalwood and vanilla base is just as energetic as the top and heart, and carries the creaminess and earthy spiciness very well and very convincingly.

Ok, enough about all that - back to smelling, back to buckling at the knees in ecstasy, back to losing myself in the memory of a languid and tryst-filled summer. What a stunner of a perfume.

This has been described – by the perfumer himself – as a suntan oil and flip flops kind of beach scent, while Luca Turin thinks it is a midway point between Jicky and Fracas. Going out on a limb here, neither of those are particularly accurate. To the first point, this is no suntan oil bit of fluff. It is a serious piece of floral perfumery – big, classical, sensuous. To the second, the dirtiness that Turin identifies as Jicky-esque is more the moist, body odor-ish roundness of cumin than the sharp, herbal (and dare I say masculine) civet that is the secret to the Guerlain. In truth, Un Bel Amour d’Été comes shockingly close to vintage Songes by Annick Goutal, specifically the eau de parfum version, with a side swipe of the spicy-milky tuberose bread pudding that is Alamut (Lorenzo Villoresi).

But there are key differences. The first bright, creamy explosion of tuberose and gardenia (for a few minutes, this is clearly a stunning gardenia recreation) is far more savory – saline almost – with a bready nuance that smells like the apricot-jam-slathered sandalwood of Jeux de Peau, a clear departure from the grapier nuances of Songes’ jasmine and ylang notes. Further differentiating it are a greenish ‘snapped leaf’ note, something that smells like red modelling clay, and a coarse apricot note so resinous it feels like the last, thick dregs of a carton of peach juice that burn your throat as they go down. The cumin and turmeric notes are also more audaciously spicy.

But in all honesty, it is more like vintage Songes than not. The opening is as momentously floral, powerful to the point of being pungent, and it is also similarly intensely cuminy. Both are extremely sensual – beads of glossy lady-sweat popping out and then drying on the surface of Carmen Miranda’s skin under that Bahia style dress. Though Un Bel Amour d’Été does finally swap out Songes’ creamy sandalwood for a lactonic (but also strangely dry) vanilla, there is always the overriding impression of a densely savory floral bread pudding soaked in second day lady sweat and wood.

As a Songes devotee, I am bowled over by this, but even I am sensible enough to know that there really is no justification in me owning more than a sample of something that, while not note-for-note derivative, is similar enough to an older model. Objectively-speaking, however, Un Bel Amour d’Été is more modern, richer, and honestly, probably better constructed than Songes, and it may be an option when my vintage bottle (with real sandalwood) runs out. I am impressed that there are perfumers like Marc-Antoine Corticchiato who are unafraid to play in waters so crowded by monsters like Fracas and Songes. It must be like trying to create a spicy floriental just after Coco and Opium came out.