L'Homme Idéal Eau de Toilette
Guerlain (2014)

I am a fan of several Guerlains, which generally deliver good quality, masterful blending and reasonable pricing to an underappreciative market. Perhaps that is why Guerlain created Ideal - they were tired of mediocre sales figures for excellent fragrances, and chose to create a mediocre fragrance that would sell well. Given all the flankers of this, I'm guessing they accomplished this goal.

This is a pretty simple fragrance, a tonka and almond heart with little frills around it. A vague citrus note that fades within minutes. A bit of synthetic orange blossom that peaks out for 30 minutes in the early heart. A wisp of clean leather and cedar that you probably wouldn't identify if you hadn't read the notes first. No trace of vetiver even when I try hard to smell it. If you have ever eaten Vanilla Almond Puffins cereal, you know what this smells like. Pretty boring, not a great performer.

To be fair, it did grow on me a bit over several wearings. I learned to spray heavily (this won't choke a room no matter how much you use), and at around 4 hours, if your body heat is just right, there are some happy light wafts that might bring a smile. But Armaf Craze and Burberry Brit both cover the same territory with more imagination and at a lower price, so there really isn't a need for this.

It opens up with a burst of citrus with a hint of bitter orange and quickly moves into a slightly sweet almond accord. This accord does start to smell like a liquor when the tonka melds with the almond. It's slightly creamy and after a hour or two you can smell the woodsy cedar and vetiver providing the foundation of the scent.

Now this is a very light and subtle fragrance with not much projection or sillage. After two to three hours it's a skin scent and disappears quickly after that. This is one of those fragrances where it's so light you can spray to your hearts content and never be in danger of it becoming cloying.

All in all a nice scent let down by poor performance on all levels.

I chose this because we’re in the sticks and I don’t want to smell like a woman when I go to the shops.
And 'not smelling like a woman' is the best thing I can say about it.
Instead of the Ideal Man, this slick but fatuous bunch of chemicals smells like woody Amaretto trifle.
It should be called Le Jeune Idéal : that’s how grown up it is.

I find this to have the most ambroxan out of the line. that's what I like about it.

It's another nice but stereotyped male fragrance.

I was really excited to try this one. From looking at the notes it really seemed up my alley. Amaretto is one of my favorite liqueurs and tonka is always great. But this was really a disappointment. The opening really does nothing for me at all. It's simultaneously sharp and powdery in an unpleasant way. It comes off strangely floral and almost feels like an old woman's perfume.

After 30 to 60min as those notes start to die down I get to notice the almond and a tonka a bit more. But after such a sharp opening it's actually hard to appreciate them, like my nose has gone numb to it. Maybe if I could skip right to the drydown this would be wearable. But, I can't stand the opening enough to try this again.

My first thought when I sprayed this was that it was reminiscent of Valentino Uomo Intense. Sweetness with a bite that I guess comes from the biter almond and citrus. Tonka citrus leather, is the order I'd go here. Something hints at powderyness without fully committing to it. The more I wear it, the more I like it. At first I considered it a bit too sweet, but as the woody base becomes a bit more prominent in the heart it is quite nice. When the citrus burns off it unmasks the cedarish fake wood smell. This adds a bit of a nose twinge to the tonka to round this flavor out a bit more. The vetiver in the base also gives it a bit of a dryness that I enjoy. A bit more casual than the EDP. Sweet and contemporary, with a classy Guerlain drydown. Thumbs up.

A Bakewell tart is an English confection consisting of a shortcrust pastry shell beneath layers of jam, frangipane, and a topping of flaked almonds. With a glacé cherry on top.

Ideal?
Quite tasty with Tea for two ...

Good longevity on my skin 7 hours
Common dry down like most designers
Post 2010

I think this is quite sweet, probably from the almond in the Amaretto accord, although somehow I think of strawberries, and this makes me think of a similar accord I get from Paco Rabanne Black XS. Possibly the tonka and orange blossom are contributing to the sweetness too.

I prefer the EDP to this, but it is still a nice, good quality fragrance.

Beautiful almond and tonka fragrance...

I absolutely love the notes combination here. This fragrance has that sweet, nutty almond facet combined with the tonka bean aspect. The orange blossom also gives a nice, fresh aspect to it (especially when combined with the citrus). The leather and cedar round off the base here. It's a lovely lovely fragrance.

I see this one as very playful and laid back. It doesn't take itself too seriously. I also think that it would be a great hit with a lot of people. Nothing negative here. Just the right amount of gourmand sweetness and playfulness. I can see myself wearing this fragrance a lot. Refreshing and sweet, with just enough woody base and masculine aspects to keep it going. Extremely well made. I like it very much.

Intrigued by some of the reactions that this fragrance has evoked, comparable perhaps to a certain striped torso and a gold bar, both of which I find rather harmless considering some of the reactions they seem to evoke, I decided to smell it myself for the first time. In a somewhat uptight fragrance section of a shop with a history which may be reaching back comparatively afar as this perfume house. I have understanding for initial reactions wherein the scent comes across as pretentious. My first reaction literally was to shake my head. However, this association should apply primarily to the person, the character of the person who is wearing it. There I am in the store still, in another section, and I notice something. I must have sprayed a bit onto one of my fingers as I noticed that the scent has been following me. This may have been accidental, but it allowed me to better get to know the scent. I believe that this fragrance, perhaps because of its name, might be interpreted in ways which may not have been not intended. If you look closely, a somewhat hidden message is included on the box, stating that the ideal man does not exist. I would think that this indirectly means that this fragrance is what one makes of it. I imagined chunks of crystallised maple syrup being placed on a hot frying pan, with a little bit of an aromatic oil such as argan or sesame added. This imagination is then being deglazed with perhaps a concentrated herbal tea. In hindsight, said maple chunks may be in a frozen state. I am intrigued by it for being rather weighty and dense and yet also refreshingly sparkly. A fragrance which happens to convey a certain abstraction to me and this is something that I really like. I have to add that I have been testing the fragrance over the course of the past two to three weeks, even going as far as layering both main concentrations in order to try and recreate the initial experience that I describe here, where I sampled both as well and where I may have, at least partly, accidentally layered both. However, I may have overdone this so I may now have a better understanding for those who do not like it. Interestingly also, the frequently mentioned cherry element has appeared over time and I will have to see but there might be relevance to this because I do not particularly like their synthesised smell.

This smells like it's built around the same aroma chemical used in D&G La Force 11 (and maybe, from more distant memory, D&G The One for Men).

It's slightly less harsh here than D&G La Force 11, making it more wearable. It's not too bad to sample, but it's the kind of thing I think I would get tired of fairly quickly, too harshly chemical smelling.

Mixed in the the chemical-smelling woody amber base is a tobacco-type smell, which is bringing to mind D&G The One for Men, and which is a nice addition, but probably doing no more than making this one wearing bearable. This is one where I probably won't even finish the 1-ml sample.