Ça Sent Beau
Kenzo (1988)

The scent of a canopy of waxy white flowers, water holding myriad life and all of it in various stages of evolution. Burgeoning life holds everything from emergency to decay and Ca Sent Beau manages to capture a wide spectrum. Anything which manages to capture extremes and beautiful deserves my appreciation, but it scent is also extraordinary and fascinating. It's one of those perfumes you either love or hate. Just like Kenzo Jungle. I love it. It is emotional and even romantic-not in an interpersonal way, but in it's particular shade of nostalgia.

A real invitation to succumb to desire. It's fresh, sensual, sweet. Ca Sent Beau for me settles into a soapy and fruity floral. Expensive and cleansed soapy. It's a very comforting scent...motherly almost. It gives me the same vibe as Avon Far Away. They don't smell the same but make you feel a feminine type of snug and offer a 'vintage' creativity that genetic scents lack. Like everything else in life: if you own it-nothing else matters. You are a Goddess. You can not be bothered by the opinions of others. Let others do the grey mouse act with their truly aquatic and fresh skin scents, and let us, the vintage lovers, have the honor of wearing, projecting-and indulging in the mystery of Ca Sent Beau.

The opening blasts heads straightaway to the floral - a rich and smooth floral concentrate, with a creamy texture. Orange blossom, tuberose - bright without and waxy or indolic character, muguet, and carnation the a main players initially. Later on whiffs of lilies associate with a pleasant rose. This is all a bright affair, with some tangerines and bergamot supplying added brightness. Later on a bit of cumin, coriander, and sone orris add a spicy side, but this is rather weak on me and never really takes off.

The base also tries to add a bit of another edge, but the patchouli I get is soft and gentle - a patchouli lite so to speak. There is a weak and discreet mossy note, together with an ambery woodsiness that is not particularly convincing in its depiction of cedar, but touches of sandalwood transiently appear. A cluster of white musks round it off.

I get moderate sillage, excellent projection and a an impressive twelve hours of longevity on my skin.

This is a lovely spring scent. Clearly proudly a floral concentrate mainly, it is composed of high-quality floral ingredients, and the other components remain in the background; many do not develop fully within the complex stricture of this olfactory piece of art. It is bright, smooth, with a floral sweetness that comes across as quite natural most of the time and that is never intrusive, cloying or sickly sweet. It is blended well, and the performance is excellent. Overall a good result. 3.5/5.

Ca Sent Beau may be the most challenging fragrance I own. I consider it a fruity-floral, but to simply label it as such is much too reductive. It is a real chameleon of a fragrance with several different facets, and each wearing will reveal these differently. Essentially, Ca Sent Beau is comprised of an orange/tangerine fruity floral accord sitting atop a fougere base, and there is a big amber note in the base as well. Sometimes, the fragrance feels well-blended and coherent; at other times, it can feel like you're wearing two different perfumes, and that the top and base aren't really speaking to one another. Every once in a while a sharp amber also weaves in and out, which I don't care for, but other times I don't smell it at all.

The 5-star review in the 2008 guide doesn't mention this, but I think Ca Sent Beau also shares a similar theme with Mugler's Angel, in that it is a feminine floral-fruity accord mixed with a more masculine fougere base, and it actually pre-dates Angel by 4 years.

It is not the easiest perfume to wear, but has been good for days when I want a more challenging fragrance.

Genre: Fougère

Notes (from OsMoz.com): Mandarin, bergamot, orange blossom, tuberose, plum, peach, orris, vetiver, patchouli, oakmoss, amber.

“Ça Sent Beau,” and so it does! This is one of those scents that has me sniffing again and again, puzzling over the source of its attraction. The structure smells much simpler than the listed notes suggest. Forget the tuberose, vetiver, oakmoss, and patchouli. I get sweet fruit (mostly orange), some indistinct floral notes, a bit of spice (cardamom?) and a lot of musk. The secret to Ça Sent Beau, I think, lies in its weirdly compelling blend of powdery clean and faintly grungy animalic musks. For some unaccountable reason, the clean/dirty tension in the base notes and the prominent orange keep reminding me of – are you ready for this – Kouros, but with none of that scent's provocative civet reconstruction. Ça Sent Beau's particular juxtaposition of orange and powerful musks also bears some relation to Caron's L'Anarchiste, though the two smell nothing alike.

In the end, Ça Sent Beau's closest kinship may be with powdery, fruity chypre scents like Yvresse (Champagne) and Kenzo's own later Kashaya, both by Sophia Grojsman. It seems less sweet than Yvresse or Kashaya, and the prominent musks lend it an altogether different balance. Those musks may also account for Ça Sent Beau's peculiar sillage, which carries for a great distance, but paradoxically manages never to seem loud. Ça Sent Beau is also one of those scents which makes no pretense of smelling “natural.” In its firm and positive embrace of the overtly chemical, Ça Sent Beau shares an aesthetic stance with many of the abstract fragrances from Comme des Garçons, and with countless niche offerings that followed. Unlike many, it remembered to smell good while it was at it.

For me, this should be renamed "Ca Sent Mal."

A sour tangerine opening and then a plastic nothing for the short duration it can be detected.

Turin of course loved it and gave it 5 stars with a moniker "tangerine fougere" and called it "trim and chic." Herman called it "juicy, fruity, floral and waxy."

I think it smells cheap and adolescent. It has a gazillion ingredients, all adding up to nothing:

Top: Bergamot, Mandarin, Musk
Middle: Tuberose, Muguet, Jasmine, Rose, Carnation, Coriander, Cumin, Orris, Cedarwood, Sandalwood
Base: Vetiver, Patchouli, Moss, Amber, Musk

My first and undoubtedly my last, Kenzo sample.

This is technically a fruity-floral. It is a plummy orange/tangerine draped with tuberose and orange blossom. But I suppose this is a floriental. I mean it's white flowers resting on a comfortable amber. And I reckon it's a fougère since it seems to have a dark, nutty coumarin base. Chypre? Yeah, there's bergamot and oakmoss.

I'm not even joking. What the hell is this? Fruit? No question. Perhaps orange, more likely tangerine. It's definitely floral. A bit of steamy orange blossom and a bucket of green, creamy tuberose. Amber for days (literally) spiked with patchouli. And the darkness---coumarin? oakmoss? Mix it up with a good measure of musk and you wind up with a languid slurry of a perfume. In tone, Ça Sent Beau is like a grand queen about 2 martinis into holding court with a gathering audience. A little tipsy, talking fast, one opinion to the next. An increasing flourish and emphasis that don't quite cover up the slurred speech. Mesmerizing.

And while this is a cousin to Prescriptives Calyx---tasty fruity chypre--- Ça Sent Beau replaces the straight-forward oakmoss base with a narcotic cough syrup base made of what seems like oakmoss and coumarin.

CSB's components are not so much potent as heavy, but the balance is perfect. Rather than calibrate the heavy with lighter elements, the cough syrup base adds some shadow to the density and makes it feel sultry.

I can think of four definitively syrupy perfumes that I like. Serge Lutens's Cedre (mothball syrup.) Lutens's Arabie (spice cabinet syrup.) Badgley Mischka's Badgley Mischka (simple syrup.) And Ça Sent Beau. I think cough syrup is my favorite.