Bel Ami 
Hermès (1986)

Bel Ami is Vito Corleone!this is a powerful fragrance that demands respect and oozes quality;it falls in the same class as Cartier Santos, Chanel Antaeus every man over the age of thirty should have one of those greats in his collection. one of the first fragrances i fell in love with at eighteen.this scent is sophisticated testosterone in a bottle that will bully all your other fragrances. it is a leathery chypre such as Bandit,Derby.it is like warm sexy skin,sexy in a warm,clean and classy way.a true gem for everyone who can appreciate a strong masculine scent.

The perfume starts off with a burst of citrus like a classy chypre - lemon,bergamot,sage and rosemary.it then moves to a classic floral heart as it begins settling with notes of basil, jasmine,and carnation,and finally settles into a leathery woody chypre base comprised of patchouli,leather and oakmoss.the key attribute to Bel Ami is the great compositional balance,where a styrax driven leather accord rests harmoniously on a chypre foundation laced with a deft blend of herbs and florals. sometimes it's more spicy, sometimes more herbal.this certainly isn't for little boys,it's a perfume with strong character.absolutely awesome fragrance.Double thumbs up!

Bel Ami is one of the better leathers. Its radiance is supple and sweet but it has a woody and bitter core.
Leather is a power scent, but unlike the biker jacket with its black toughness Bel Ami is more sedate. It's a soft brown leather which feels rather complacent, all monogrammed slippers and dressing gown. If you compare Bel Ami to Fahrenheit (which the same perfumer wrote two years later) you can see how staid this is. Bel Ami: the boon companion of rich old white men.
(This is about the vintage, not the Jean-Claude Ellena version.)

This is so much like Creed Royal English Leather, just not as dirty. But side by side Id have a hard time guessing which was which. Maybe more oak and less orange in the Bel Ami. But its an old broken in dirty leather smell I get. Good staying power, and just right amount of projection and sillage. I love it and use it now that my Creed REL is gone and discontinued by creed. This will replace it.

Hermès Bel Ami (1986) is one of the single highest-praised leather fragrances for men in the fragrance community, if not the single most-praised in all creation. The fragrance received an IFRA-required update by Jean-Claude Ellena to address the quantities of some of the items in the fragrance (like oakmoss), which changed some of the tone as a result, but the resultant reformulation is still excellent, even if not on the level of depth or potency vintage die-hards came to love about the original version penned by Jean-Louis Sieuzac. With that kind of incalculable hype powering the insane aftermarket prices on the original "shaker bottle" production runs and subsequent square-shouldered "second edition", the scent is one of the few examples of a "unicorn" that is ironically still in production, because every "vintage guy" getting into the game wants to prove their worth by having a bottle too, since the old pillars within the hobby sing a near-siren song of praise about it. Is this stuff really that freaking good in vintage? Well, yes and no, depending on one's tastes. The cold hard truth is you just plain have to enjoy this kind of masculine "petrol leather" creation, the result of the isobutyl quinoline "leather note" found in older leather scents like Knize Ten (1924) English Leather by MEM (1949), Aramis by Estée Lauder (1965), and Avon Clint (1976), applied to a chypre base. Bel Ami simply was one of the deepest, spiciest, and most potent of it's ilk when it released, the peak of the genre if power is your desire, and even the Jean-Claude Ellena reformulation is no laughing matter in that department. My guess is Équipage (1970) was a really tough act to follow, so Sieuzac just chose to a different take on leather altogether, resulting in one of his most-iconic contributions, outside his involvement with the creation of the "barrel note" in Dior Fahrenheit (1988) two years later.

Bel Ami opens familiarly to those acquainted with the tannery leather vibe: harsh bergamot, bright lemon, aldehydes, and clary sage bring all our eyes forward to the oncoming storm. Bel Ami diverges from past leathers in this genre by not getting mucked down by dandy florals like Knize Ten, English Leather, or Aramis, nor does it become particularly woodsy like our bargain friend Avon Clint, but instead goes into cardamom, a spice Hermès has played with since the first Eau d'Hermès (1951) by Edmond Roudnitska, and still played with all the way as recently as Hermèssence Cardamusc (2018). Patchouli and vetiver make a bit of a show in the middle with a twang of Iris to round things, but that deep, rich, abyss of leather shows up not long after the hammer drops and that sets the tone of the scent, and what drives all the vintage guys crazy. Pure unadulterated isobutyl quinoline tannery leather over animalic styrax and amber become the par for the course, resting on an academic chypre base of sandalwood, oakmoss and labdanum. There is a touch of vanilla to keep things from getting hairy, but it doesn't jump out to me, with the whole affair being immaculate in blending. Sillage is apocalyptic and longevity is until the end of days, making Bel Ami a winter weather warrior. If you do get a vintage bottle, it will probably outlive you unless you use it every single day. Some of its more hardcore fans with cash to burn actually do this, increasing scarcity and driving up the price even more, making that unicorn horn on the forehead of vintage Bel Ami look more like the leaning tower of Pisa by the minute. Bottom line here is this is a spicy, ultra-masculine, and ultra-mature leather scent that is the holy grail of many Generation X guys who used this when it was new, or just guys in the over-30 crowd that discovered recent production at their nearest Nordstrom. The hype is deserved here, as Bel Ami is a benchmark in the masculine leather genre, even enjoyed by a few particularly daring women who love animalic scents with self-control. A flanker penned by Jean-Claude Ellena also exists in the form of Bel Ami Vetiver (2013), which is a greener, but also more animalic take since it adds civet to the mix.

If all of this sounds too daunting for a colognoisseur of more modest means, fear not, for the modern interpretation merely dials down the depth of the chypre base within regulated tolerances, but otherwise retains the basic leather, spice, and citrus character of Bel Ami. Many older vintage guys have what may seem to be an unhealthy fixation to the onlooker with the presence of oakmoss in their scents, preferring as much of the thick, woodsy, slightly sweet, and pasty (in large enough quantities) odorant as possible in their favorite creations. Tastes are subjective and often the result of acquisition through years of exposure (like beer), but if you don't fall into this category of person, my recommendation would be to try the newest form first then work your way backward to older formulas when convenient to sample. Moschino Pour Homme (1990) is often compared to Bel Ami, but goes in a slightly brighter, more dandy, and more lewd direction with lavender, mace, jasmine indole, rose, and carnation on top a nearly-identical base, and used to be considered a cheaper alternative to Bel Ami until it was discontinued. Honestly, modern Bel Ami still compares favorably to it, and perfumer Roja Dove in particular has paid homage not once, but twice to this scent with two of his own super-ridiculous "haute parfum" creations in the form of Puredistance M (2010) and Roja Dove Fetish Pour Homme (2012). If you like leather scents already, this is one rare example where I actually encourage a blind buy, and although I do still roll my eyes some at the hysteria over the vintage productions of this, I understand their madness. If you had to get bent out of shape over any fragrance, Bel Ami would not be a bad choice, and is not only the best leather scent Hermès has ever created, but is in the top of the crop. Bel Ami isn't the end-all be-all Hermès fragrance, but another example of why the house has such a fervent fan following in fragrance hobbyist circles.

Modern version... This has bright notes of citrus, vetiver, sage, and basil on top. Nice and crisp, in fact. Second phase going into the middle I get styrax, patchouli, amber, and carnation. Then, the leather smacks me in the face. Kind of that new pair of gloves or winter coat smell. Oddly, as that begins to mellow I get something of a reminder of fine lipstick. Way later I am treated to a skin-base of vanilla and coconut. I give this three and a half stars. One of the better masculine 'fumes that works on my old lady skin.