Aqua Allegoria Mandarine Basilic
Guerlain (2007)

This used to be one of my absolute favorite scents, and I do still like it, but the infatuation has waned.

A synthetic blast slightly edges out pleasant scents of iced green tea, juicy and zesty mandarin, and crisp, herbaceous basil. The basil is delicious, but turns a little Tulsi (Holy Basil), bumping the sweet quotient. It's cooling, but amber warms it up a notch. I still enjoy it during warm weather as a cooling spritzer. Oh, and I wouldn't call this a feminine exclusive. It's definitely wearable for men-fresh, crisp, cooling, and balanced in sweetness.

I liked it before, but I went totally crazy about it this spring. A scent of grapefruit is my favourite scent to smell, but the tangerine has always been my favourite fruit to eat. I associate their scent with Christmas, childhood and all that's good and joyful. This perfume contains a lovely lovely tangerine, juicy, sweet-ish and soft, with some beautiful basil to add some character. You can feel some tea underneath the aromatic blend of citruses, too. The mandarine/tangerine/orange blend stays for quite long on my skin. A beauty and a joy. This time I left the store with a huge grin on my face and a travel spray in my hands, while silently hissing "my precioussssssssssss".

I don't get mandarin, I don't get basil, I don't get anything pleasant, it's like a really harsh bleach product for cleaning floors.

Herbal, with a flowery "thing" in the middle. Smells like an old-fashioned cologne from the last, turn of the century. Citrusy floral, reminded me of a Crabtree & Evelyn type scent, from years ago...
The tea is a heavily iced, cold tea accord. It also begins to smell like a fragrance from the 1980's as it progresses. I can't put my finger on it, what perfume it reminds me of...

The amber accord is rather dry, faint, and more woodsy than many I've tried. Guerlain needs to concentrate on better releases and not create so many, of this series...

The opening is nice with juicy orange and soft florals. The citrus starts to fade fast in strength, giving way to the more feminine florals and a dry herbal note. Probably the basil.

There's nothing to dislike here as far as the scent goes. It's all nice and agreeable but nothing exceptional. Feels casual but the ingredients do smell of good quality. Probably best for summer heat and I will say it leans feminine.

Average projection for 3-4 hours and the skin-scent lasts for 6-7 hours.

Just like the title there is mandarin and basil. The basil is particularly nice in that it smells more like the leafy cooking basil than the dried herb, so it has that sappy quality to it. The tea makes it more feminine, but it's fairly enjoyable. Nothing I'm excited about, but not bad.

Aqua Allegoria Mandarine Basilic (2007) is a nearly there fragrance for me. I like it more than Aqua Allegoria Pamplelune (1999), and I can appreciate both of them for capturing moments, snapshots of what was happening in perfumery in their release years, and memorable moments for people wearing them, and for other people around them - but they lack the effortless grace I prefer in perfume. They're loud, bombastic even; especially Pamplelune.

This mandarin and basil version has the feel of an aquatic fragrance that I think captures the market trend of its time, and in keeping with that, has an unrelenting reliance on the bankable aroma chemicals that were making the rounds. These aquatic aroma chemicals are not necessarily a deal breaker, but they have to be handled with more care than they were here.

The opening salvo of this worked fairly well, and it was in thumbs up territory for the first few minutes before it became clear that things were not going to work between us.

Pleasant orange opening with basil and an ambery woodsy drydown, but generic and synthetic-synthetic. Limited sillage and projection on my skin with three hours of longevity.

Average. 2/5

Um, really? I guess I just don't like these weird synthetic explosion perfumes.

There's a shock of hedione brightness on top and a ton of salty calone, which quickly veers off in a plasticky, eggy direction, while a very sweet, very artificial-smelling mandarin orange drowns in the chemical spill, with only sweet green tea to try to keep it buoyant. The basil hides beneath the salty eggy plastic, giving hints at Acqua di Gio's salty herbal basenotes, but it's all lost in a weird plasticky chemical stew.

Aside from the Guerlain name and completely different tastes in perfumes, I'm not sure why people like this. For a similar exploration of salty plastic synthetics, I'd recommend Bond No 9's more compelling Coney Island. If it's weird sweet post-modern outer space citrus that you're looking for, Happy for Men is amazingly better than this, and if you just want to smell like oranges, there are dozens of traditional citrus Eau's that should satisfy your needs much better than this. Honestly, unless you're such a Guerlain completist that you need everything they've ever done, good or bad, I'd skip Mandarine Basilic entirely...

This fragrance triumphantly incorporates the critus and herb qualities, and offers the freshness that one would expect from Guerlain's range of lighter fragrances.

Definately one for the warmer days, although can be a gents evening fragrance regardless of season.

A light, fresh and delicious fragrance which delivers exactly what it promises.

This is a lovely citrus - fresh, sweet, with loads of green notes to stop it being cloying. Definitely a feminine scent.