A pending release from Amouage like Amouage Beloved always sparks a lot of speculation and interest. The vaunted Omani house, created to celebrate the tradition of Middle Eastern perfumery, has been responsible for some blockbuster perfumes: Gold, Jubilation25, Epic…and it would be easy to want to peg the house as ‘Arabian’ but, in my opinion, that would be incorrect. In hiring Christopher Chong as their Creative Director they employed an artistic talent with a global worldview who is pushing the Amouage concept beyond the souks and serails that so many of us (me) think of when we think of Amouage. Cultural bases are great anchors but it’s presumptuous to forget that creative inspiration can come from across the globe (and beyond). Honour took us into a Puccini opera and the Library series is specifically designed to, as the website says,”defy categorization”.
And now, with Amouage Beloved, we are lunching with a Bergdorf Blonde. But not the callow babes of Plum Sykes’s novel. This is a Grace Kelly/Dina Merrill scent, all elegance and refinement. It’s got that Golden Glow that all Amouage perfumes possess but here the glow is mellower, softer. This woman has been coddled and cosseted, yes – but she’s not stupid and she’s had a fair share of experiences that have left their marks – the marks aren’t severe enough to require “procedure” and they heighten her character. I wore Amouage Beloved four days straight and each day there was something quietly, elegantly interesting revealed to me. This is not a scent to give up its secrets in a screechy moment. You won’t find this blonde, drunk and stumbling, on the front page of the Enquirer. She has a deeply passionate side but it won’t be plastered all over the Internet. She belongs to an exclusive club where people keep their personal lives to themselves. Yet…every now and then, in the turn of a coiffed head or the flash of an eye you catch a beguiling glimpse of what the private woman just might be like.
I was surprised to find myself so captivated by Amouage Beloved. It’s not the spicy, walled garden beauties that tend to define Amouage for me. I was pleasantly surprised to be able to pick out the clary sage, even with the lavender sliding about therein. The quiet forwardness of clary sage may be why I find this perfume so restful, without being sedative. The vanilla channels the elegance of Guerlain’s Shalimar without smelling one bit like it. It conjures the vision of the elegant women of Jacques Guerlain’s time, while bringing that elegance into our new millenium. But she’s still wearing grown up clothes and her hair is brushed. No Walk of Shame for this woman. Ever.
The notes, from Amouage:
The aromatic top notes are dominated by the rose and the jasmine, with a blend of spicy white flowers in the heart. The leather and vanilla warm base is underlined with rich woods, resin and animalic notes, increasing the intensity of the composition.
Additional notes include lavender, clary sage, clove, chamomile, cardamom, ylang ylang, violet, everlasting, cistus, benzoin, olibanum, patchouli, cedar, sandalwood, castoreum, civet, musk, maltol and amber.
Amouage Beloved smells like all of this. And none of this. It’s perfectly blended, perfectly seamless. It’s pretty. It’s quietly compelling. It smells like gold and pearls. And a beautiful, privileged Bergdorf Blonde. Who knows quite a bit about Life.
So…..since this makes no sense at all and tells you nothing, why don’t I share a little bit with you? Giveaway Time! I’d love to know what you think about these notes – what do they say to you? If you’re note-phobic (or think you know too little), tell me what you think about the direction Amouage seems to be headed…..or just tell me why you want to try this!
photo/Beloved: courtesy Amouage
photo/Tiffany bracelet : I stole it (the photo, not the bracelet)
4 May/2012 4p CST. DRAW IS NOW CLOSED. WILL ANNOUNCE WINNER NEXT WEEK.
forgot to say i DON’T love the price….its prohibitive :-((((((((
Hope I am not too late..love the name(three of my kids have a translation of beloved in their names) love the bottle love the notes…
This sounds lovely, especially the leather and vanilla! My favorite Amouages so far is Memoir and Epic.
This sounds like it could be amazing. Or really not my thing. That’s quite a mix of different notes. The first part of their blurb sounds dreamy. The second part screams overload. But I’m not necessarily very good at determining what unsniffed things I’ll like. Would be good to try though!
I have been dying to try this since I heard about it -Amouage is one of my most favorite houses. Thanks for having a drawing, hope I win!
I’d also love to be entered into the draw, more for curiosity’s sake than anything else. To me Amouage is extremes – I either *love* something, or it is very not-me-get-it-OFF-with-dishsoap. This one could go either way, but the clary sage is intriguing….
Would love to be entered in the draw! I am definitely not the woman you described, but would love to find out how she smells! And, exact opposite of Mals, the clary sage and lavender totally makes me take notice (in a good way).:)
Seamless and elegant sounds gorgeous! I was looking forward to Honour, but it killed me with the sweets. So far, Jubilation 25 works best for me.
Well, I’m definitely not a blonde (dark brown and curly) and I live far from NYC. But I visited almost exactly a year ago and have found myself thinking about it frequently over the last few days. Though I live in a small, provincial Town in Europe, we actually have a store that carries Amouage. So far, I’ve tried Honour and loved it! So maybe I’ll like this too, as it also has white flowers…Please enter me in the drawing!
I sort of like a bit of drunken stumble in my perfumes.
🙂
I love this comment, and agree wholeheartedly.
Amouage Dia is my favorite perfume, so I would be thrilled to try her new sister. I have champagne tastes and a grad student budget, so winning a sample would be such a treat!
Amouage fragrances are just stunning; elegant and classic, perfectly constructed. I find their scents to be feminine but never girly, sumptuous but never flashy; so tasteful and beautiful.
I would love to try this because I love the complexity of the notes but mostly because I want to be the woman you describe 🙂
There once was a Lady who nattered
‘Bout Houses and Notes and Topics quite scattered,
And though not a blond
Of sage she was fond,
The sillage was really what mattered.
Please enter me in the draw. Thanks!
Oh, THANK YOU for that limerick!!!!!
xoxoxo :Devil:
I would love to try this. I would love to find a deliciously elegant perfume that I like and that I feel I could live up to. I’m more of a natural earthy gal but would love to smell elegant! The notes sound beautiful. I too am usually more drawn to spicy wild orientals but having a smoother one sounds like it would fit nicely into my drawer. It sounds like a Grace Kelly kind of scent.
I’ve been excited about this one, but here comes mention that the lavender and clary sage stand out, and I’m suddenly worried. Eep. Both of those things? Hate them. Hate hate. Even growing in the ground.
Well, okay, I don’t hate the smell of lavender, but it does tend to give me these monstrous headaches (even, yes, growing in the ground). So. Leery of Beloved now.
I just came from NST where I read Jessica’s review of Beloved, which had me raring to try the scent – until I saw the price of the stuff! Then I remembered why I’ve never tried any Amouage scent: I can’t afford to like them. But one little free sample – that couldn’t hurt anything, could it? Put my name in the hat, please!
I just want to try this because I have never tried Amouage! All the notes sound great, and the base sounds lovely. I don’t know much about leather notes in perfumes yet, either (I am quite new to it), so that sounds quite interesting to me.
This sounds gorgeous!!! A bit disturbing to me, though, that the price quoted in Angela’s review on NST today is…wait for it…$430/100ml??? Yikes!!!! Not sure I like the way Amouage is heading in the price direction! Would love to try the Opus line, but those prices are prohibitive as well. I suppose Amouage is becoming more and more of a luxury line, which is perfectly OK…but more and more out of my reach.
I am wary of the lavender but the older I get, the more I want something comfortable and beautiful. That’s not too much to ask…
That list of notes is meant for lemmings… And your review makes things worse!
I hope it is not going to be a Bergodorf exclusive!!
I always wanted to be a Bergdorf Blonde, but, I’m more of a Kohl’s or Macy’s curly-haired auburn babe. I like pearls and gold (although I feel realllly girly in pearls) I love to smell elegant, and I always loved Miss Dior, so I’d probably love this.
Thanks for the draw, and the fab review.
Oh yeah, baby. Anything that smells like gold & pearls is something I want to try — and I find that there are a couple of Amouages that do hit that sweet spot.
I like how complex the list of notes are in a lot of Amouage products. And it seems in this one like there’s enough of a balance of savory and sweet, aromatic and floral, and woody/animalic to make it interesting from top to bottom. I always sit up and take notice when I see the triumvirate of Castoreum, Civet, Musk. Yeaaaahhh.
Note that writing “up to my uvula” is a sure way to make readers do a double-take and/or spew tea. 😉
Can beauty and elegance and serious olfacory experience
be combined and yet be scaled to our own real lives (at least to the more aspirational moments of our lives)? I want to know. I would so love to have a sample…………..Thank you.
I find the list of notes in all of the Amouage scents a little intimidating – “My, that’s a lot of stuff…” I think to myself. Yet the scents themselves are always compelling – even the ones I don’t want to wear are amazing, complex and gorgeous. I like where this house is heading and will definitely be sampling their newest offerings.
Sounds like another great hit for them. Please enter me in the draw
BTW, would you tell Mr. Chong that I totally dig having a non-paired release. I know they have the male/female thing going, but without two, it lets you fully appreciate the one, and since we all borrow the boy’s stuff.
It’s nice to have just one come out, reeeealy! :Happy-Grin:
These notes sound awesome-most of the things I like all in one. 🙂 Can’t wait to try it.
From the notes it sounds like a very sensuous floral. I’ve never tried any of Amouage perfumes, so I can’t say what direction they seem to be heading as I have no reference.
I would like to try this perfume because I haven’t tried any of Amouage perfumes and would like to.
“It conjures the vision of the elegant women of Jacques Guerlain’s time, while bringing that elegance into our new millenium. But she’s still wearing grown up clothes and her hair is brushed.”
This is why I’d love to try this fragrance. I have been looking for that fragrance that fits where I am in life. My age, my experience. Something elegant, rich and mature. But not old lady and stuffy. No young fruity florals for me. I’m grown up and after a lot of searching, I’ve found my way. I can never tell what a fragrance will smell like just from a list of notes. But this may just be what I’m after.
Lovely review! I don’t quite know what to make of all of these notes–I’m a little skeered of some of them (civet and castoreum) but I do like clary sage–I have the essential oil at home–and it is Amouage, so my interest is piqued. And you say Beloved “smells like gold and pearls”? I’m reeled in. Please count me in for the drawing, even though I am not a Bergdorf Blonde type; more like a Lord & Taylor salt & pepper. 😀
My mother used to keep a picture of Grace Kelly, impeccably dressed in an elegant suit and white gloves and wearing a chignon, on the refrigerator door. Her purpose was to give her angular, boisterous, athletic, loud and often graceless blonde daughter something to aspire to. Sadly, it really didn’t work in my case. I’m still angular, boisterous, athletic, loud and graceless enough to occasionally fall UP the stairs, but I do comprehend how wonderful it would be to possess both natural elegance and studied chic. Maybe in my next life. 🙂
I have yet to find ‘my’ Amouage scent, although I definitely believe one is out there. I admire them, I like them, but so far, not enough love to make the investment in a bottle. Maybe this could be the one. Please enter me in your drawing.
I want to try this because Amouage! I mean come on. I have not sampled nearly enough of these. Love XXV, like 25 and the rose one I sampled and the musk attar I got like .25ml of….and have a whole list of others to sample. They’re completely out of my miniscule price range but I can get those little vials to last and last.
I love the sound of the base, animalic amber vanilla with resins, woods, patchouli…plus I love spices like clove, cardamon, etc. That makes the sound of rose, jasmine, ylang ylang much more approachable. And the clary sage and lavender intrigue me! Since it’s Amouage I know exactly what you mean by seamless; I don’t think I would have been able to list notes myself and it’s usually more about the whole picture and the ‘vibe’ of a scent. This vibe sounds so different but quite possibly in a very good and undeniable lovely way.
I admire so many Amouages and wear relatively few of them successfully, but you make this one sound lovely. I think what makes it seem approachable (from the list of notes, anyway) is the “leather and vanilla warm base” and the animalic notes to offer some contrast to the floral notes, which in some Amouages can seem too much, too sophisticated, too… something for me to feel comfortable wearing. “The quiet forwardness of clary sage” sounds perfect.
This perfume and its notes say “modern classic” to me… they really seem to be developing more of an image as a world-class perfume house inspired by many different cultures… I would love to try Beloved. Violet + animalic = yes!
Thanks for the lovely and very evocative review. This one does seem different from the Amouages so far, as with the first set of notes mentioned, it looks to be heading in a floriental direction- all be it a cool blonde one as indicated by the sage, lavender and violet. But as we all know, notes are mostly useless:-) I would love to try this one, exactly because of it being different to the other Amouages, which so far have not really been for me, although I so wanted them to. Thanks for sharing with us your view and your precious drops.
What strikes me is how un-Amouage this seems to be. That may be a good sign, that they are branching out a bit. But as someone who has longed for many of their classics for a while, I wonder whether I will like this as much as I do the others.
I know. It’s tough to let go of what we consider ‘Amouage’ – but I don’t think they ever meant to stay in the Arabian genre forever. And as I delve further into Arabian perfumes I find myself reexamining what my notion of ‘Arabian’ really is. There are some beautiful scents that are way lighter than the heavy, spicy frags I associate with Arabian perfume.
That being said – the Amouage classics are gorgeous!
xo :Devil:
The clary sage is what caught my attention. As far as I know, I’ve only ever encountered the note in Lonestar Memories, but I loved the feeling of spaciousness it evoked. It was a lovely, haunting experience; unfortunately, the leather went sour on me about 20 minutes in or I’d own some. There’s a huge schwack of other notes listed that I’d like as well: clove, cardamom, rose and jasmine, cistus, sandalwood, really just about everything in there works for me, and I’m impressed that Mr. Chong can take everything but the kitchen sink and make it reserved. Impressive.
Personally, I have yet to sample any of the Amouages, this sounds like a great place to start.
OOoooh, lovely! Your description makes me want to wear it, but the notes, it kinda sounds like everything but the kitchen sink. Intriguing.
I totally agree – and yet, it works!!
xo :Devil:
Don’t know quite what to make of the notes, but “seamless” and old-fashioned elegance sound pretty good. Count me in!
Leather…you had me with leather. I’m currently obsessed with the leather note and upon seeing this new perfume, it shot to the top of my “omg I gotta try this pdq” list. I love so many from Amouage it’s hard to imagine not loving it. I’ll find out soon enough, I’m sure! Thanks for the draw.
you’ll have to let us know what you think of the leather note in Beloved. It’s subtle – but you can parse it out!
xo :Devil:
Musette,
What a gorgeous review! This appeals to me for the shallow reason that you mentioned Dina Merrill, and I’m a Dina, too. 🙂 I’m a brunette Dina, but I certainly aspire to her elegant life and experience in the theater. (Like Dina Merrill, I’m an actress.) The list of notes contains some that I like, some that I’m not familiar with (clary sage), and some that I’m indifferent to (vanilla), but I’m very curious to try it. Please enter me in the drawing. Thanks!!
Have not tried any Amouage, but almost bought one of their amazingly expensive candles…
I haven’t had the chance to try any of the Amouage, yet
even if it’s considered a shift in direction I would be glad to try it
thanks for the draw
Every time I read that Amouage is coming out with a new scent, my bank account lets out a huge groan. But like with just about every Chanel release, I’ve gotta try it.
Nice review, Musette! Can’t wait to try this.
My reaction to the notes is that there certainly are a lot of them. There are a few that make me wary. Everlasting, castoreum and especially maltol all have the potential to smell pretty disagreeable on me. However, it’s an Amouage and I have considerable faith in their ability to pull together wayward notes in a way that’s completely satisfying. As for Bergdorf Blonde, it couldn’t be farther from my actual persona, but I’ve always enjoyed the shape-shifting power of perfume.
What a fabulous review, Musette! I would love to be one of those slim, elegant blondes but am stuck with being a…curvy, earthy brunette. It would be fun to pretend though. As my finances don’t match that of the ladies who lunch either, it’s probably just as well that I haven’t explored too much Amouage – I might find a Holy Grail and that would be great/awful at the same time. :Amazed:
My Big 3 Amouages are Jub25, Epic and Tribute Attar – okay my Big 4 (Ubar) – I actually get by pretty cheap because I prefer the bath and body products for Epic and Jub. And Tribute – well, let’s face it – you don’t need a lot! So I’ve lucked out! Ubar, though, is FB all the way.
xo :Devil:
I couldn’t be too much farther from a Bergdorf blonde if I tried, but I’d love to give Beloved a sniff. I love clary sage, too. Used to put the essential oil in my bath for an extra-soothing soak.
I don’t think I have ever tried any Amouage. This would be a good one to try in my book. I am a huge fan of rose and jasmine. Sounds like a nice fit for spring.
A you mentioned, any new pending release from Amouage is an excruciating momentum of impatience and desire to discover them asap. I am huge fan of Amouage and the comparison with Guerlain`s releases ( big fan of the house too) was fascinating. Cant wait to try it!
I’m one of those who always looks forward to Amouage new releases. I’m always hoping for something as gorgeous as Jubilation 25 or Lyric. I would imagine this is a thick and velvety perfume. The white flowers (when Amouage does white flowers, it does WHITE FLOWERS; Honour was tooooo much for me) part is a little scary, but hopefully the rose-jasmine will balance it out.
Sounds very elegant! Thank you for a great review!
You are welcome. I know what you mean about ‘thick’ – and this one isn’t thick at all!
xo :Devil: