Purple Fantasy
Guerlain (2000)

The opening notes is a fresh-fruity blast, peaches, apricot with a touch or bergamot, and enhanced by an overarching but thin layer of Japanese sencha green tea, with a slightly roasted kocha tea and a Darjeeling vibe shining through at times. A pleasant start of the purple voyage.

The drydown brings on sweeter moments, with jasmine in the foreground and given depth by a coconut aroma that is lashed with a woodsy undertone. There is an attempt of sandalwood hat is too bland and synthetic to excite one's olfactory receptors. In the base this mix shifts to develop a more sweetish-creamy character. It is never intrusive or restrained and exudes an overall well-behaved elegance.

I get moderate sillage, very god projection and a splendid fifteen hours of longevity on me.

This spring or autumn scent - good for day and for evening - is well crafted and performs convincingly, but the ingredients are of a somewhat too generic nature and lack colour and vibrancy. Still, pleasant and agreeable it is indeed. 2.75/5.

Lately things don't seem the same.... I saw this in its purple gauze pouch and Apres l'Ondee bottle and I bought it, unsniffed, as a gift for my wife. We both wanted to love it and both ended up liking it, and she only occasionally wears it. The purple here evokes--to me, an almost grape-like accord or perhaps a grape hyacinth note..... There is a Earl Grey-like opening with apricots and jasmine, anchored by sandalwood. Very nice, but like Champs Elysees, it feels a little unfinished, open-ended. Am I happy, or in misery? Other than the gorgeous purple bottle and the grape hyacinth note, there is little to invoke the color purple, nor is it especially fantastic--I mean, this should be Jimi Hendrix in a bottle, right? But, as I often say, even Guerlain's average scents are way better than most other house's best efforts.

Definitely not as high quality as other Guerlain scents. Smells extremely sweet in an aging way on my mother, so she gave her bottle to me. On me, it smells like sharp jasmine tea. Not especially sexy.

Perfectly nice, very polite, but like Brielle, I was left uninspired.I like a rose and sandalwood blend well enough but... I want more than this from Guerlain. If I smelled this blind I would think it was lovely and gentle and a jolly good creation from a massmarket perfumer like Coty. I mean - this is what a celebuscent really ought to smell like, as opposed to the ghastly fruity hairspray things some of them put out. So to sum up: not terrible, but not good enough for Guerlain.

Florals, tea, woods, a touch of citrus, and some spice; where does all of it go? Nowhere! This was such a disappointment for me, I cannot even say. I had tried so hard to purchase it when it came out and here we are 9 years later still not able to find redeeming qualities with it. I hesitate selling this, keep hoping that I will one day have an awakening of sorts, but I guess I will have to let it go.All the notes seem to vie for attention at the same time, I could not really discern the head, heart and base notes, but I did not even enjoy the intermingling.

Does a Purplebird love a Purple Fantasy? There must be some truth to color analysis because the answer is, yes!This sends me to the rafters. An exemplary apricot and sandalwood fragrance. I am sniffing every molecule off my hand. Opens with a fragrant note of green tea with jasmine, coupled with osmanthus and apricot (I describe both notes because they both occur support eachother.) There must be an exotic coconut note working some magic in this formula. The whole is buoyed by a perfect, elegant sandalwood base. I can hardly describe how adddictive this is. It just grows and blossoms as one wears it. The quality is evident. This is deep and three-dimensional. Wouldn't you know, this is hard to find? Why do I have to fall for a perfume that I cannot buy? It was was created in limited edition in 2001 by Jean Paul Guerlain, and reissued in 2005 in Paris. I can only locate a tiny one-ounce bottle of EDT concentration. Purple Fantasy is a dream come true. But, like most dreams, I wake up, and it eluded my grasp.