As much as I make fun of perfume PR for coming up with copy that has nothing to do with their fragrance sometimes there is a perfect match between copy and fragrance. Amouage Beloved is one of these cases. According to the copy Creative Director of Amouage Christopher Chong wanted Beloved to evoke “the elegance and complexity of the modern woman: strong, empowered, animated, in control.” This was the charge given to perfumer Bernard Ellena. With Beloved to be exclusive to Bergdorf Goodman in New York City this brought to mind the women described as Bergdorf Blondes. The original Bergdorf Blonde was the late Caroline Bessette Kennedy. Her color was maintained by going every 13 days to get it colored, reportedly at Bergdorf Goodman. The hair color would come to define a group of stylish fashionable women coming in to their own in the first few years of the twenty-first century. The best like Ms. Kennedy were as stylish as they were successful. Beloved is a fragrance meant to capture style and power and M. Ellena does a very good job of bringing this to fruition.

This is the first time Bernard Ellena has composed for Amouage and the majority of his output has been for other masstige houses but only with Van Cleef & Arpels Oriens in 2010 has he designed in the luxury end of the perfumed swimming pool. Despite being the brother to that “other” Ellena he clearly has his own aesthetic at play which shows that while perfume might be hereditary the style is not. I can’t imagine Bernard’s sibling coming close to making a fragrance like Beloved.

I think Beloved carries a sense of sophistication appropriate to its stated goal. When I wore it while testing I was impressed but I kept wondering if it was more my impression of what a modern woman would smell like instead of what a modern woman, herself, would want to smell like. When I was at the Sniffapalooza Spring Fling, where Beloved was premiered at Bergdorf Goodman, I spent a lot of time lingering near where most of the participants were testing it out. Based on the impressions I heard, it does look like M. Ellena has created a fragrance a twenty-first century woman wants to wear.

Beloved opens with an atypical, for Amouage, delicacy. A light application of rose and jasmine are not used to overpower instead they are used as contrast to a series of herbal notes in clary sage and clove bud. The sage in particular cuts across the floral notes like a laser beam. The heart turns more intensely, but again not as intense as other Amouage fragrances, floral. Sweet ylang-ylang and metallic violet dominate the heart before a resinous accord made up of cistus, benzoin, and olibanum add depth. The base is an animalic triptych of leather, civet, and castoreum. If it was just those three notes that would have thrown all of the good work done previously away but M. Ellena modulates those notes with a healthy dose of vanilla and sandalwood so that sweetness arrives at the end of it all.

Beloved has outstanding longevity and average sillage.

Beloved might be the most restrained Amouage fragrance made to date and that restraint might lead people to think this is a “dumbed-down” version of the great Amouage florals of the past. I would heartily disagree with that assessment as I think Beloved is an Amouage for that woman who sees herself as sophisticated as she is intelligent. Which makes Beloved the thinking-woman’s Amouage, even if her hair is blonde.

Disclosure: This review was based on a bottle of Beloved supplied by Amouage.

–Mark Behnke, Managing Editor

Editor’s Note: The book cover in the opening collage is of Bergdorf Blondes by Plum Sykes. It is a very funny semi-roman a clef about the Park Avenue women of NYC. I used it mainly for the title not as a description of the kind of woman who inspired Beloved. For that, look to the pictures surrounding the cover.  I do recommend the book though.