It was time for a spot of nostalgia over on Love At First Scent the other day. Jean-Paul Gaultier have just released a new Le Parfum version of Le Beau (actually an intense eau de parfum; go figure). So I decided that a review of the scent was an opportunity not just to talk about last year’s La Belle Le Parfum, but also to go right back to the 90s and discuss the original edt of Classique as well as Le Male. Here’s a link to the video: Jean-Paul Gaultier Le Beau Le Parfum, La Belle Le Parfum, Classique edt and Le Male edt reviews.
Love them or hate them, Classique (Jacques Cavallier; 1993) and Le Male (Francis Kurkdjian; 1995) have become icons of their time: ubiquitous to the point of becoming part of the scented wallpaper of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The latter is as chuckle-inducing as ever, with that slightly crude woody-lavender accord that was always an accurate and touching olfactory expression of a teenage boy’s fond wish for the appearance of some chest hairs. Classique stands up more respectably, perhaps because the abstract nature of its mimosa-honeysuckle-ylang heart now comes across as fairly sophisticated, in contrast with the less nuanced construction of modern scents.
‘Less nuanced’ would be an apt way to describe La Belle Le Parfum (Quentin Bisch & Sonia Constant; 2021): a steroid-enhanced musk-and-vanilla onslaught relentless enough to match the surgically-aided proportions of the bottle. And there’s certainly no shortage of steroids in the torso of Le Beau Le Parfum’s flacon, which perhaps explains why the scent (Quentin Bisch; 2022) is one of the crudest, most aggressive woody-ambers ever to have done a bench press. Both of them are fascinating, if depressing, markers of how mainstream perfumery styles have changed in the last 30 years, and of how crass and boorish high-street scents feel they need to be in order to attract the attention of potential buyers. The fig leaf on the Beau bottle is especially amusing (I use the word sarcastically), given that the scent isn’t the least bit interested in being discreet.
Persolaise
[Jean-Paul Gaultier samples provided by the brand in 2022.]
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