Ella

Ella is the kind of scent you want to love, the one you're sure it's a safe blind buy. The one I'd use if I was gifted but wouldn't buy for myself. And the thing is, no matter how much I like it, there's something missing. The picture is there, the intention to let go and disco till dawn, but it is all hidden behind a smokescreen. There's no intensity, no color; it feels diluted and kind of dull. There's a very promising start with honeyed jasmine and the touch of civet really makes the perfume shine. Mild aldehydes in the opening, a narcotic floral heart with moss and animalics in the base, that unfortunately doesn't last and hold on skin. Numerous tries have given me the same result, so maybe it's just me or maybe it's the way the formula was created. But I somehow think that if you want the feel of 70's decadent and glamour packed Acapulco, disco pumping until early morning, when you head to the beach for a skinny dip instead of home, you have to go big and loud. That's what the era was about. And Ella has the potential but it lacks the power. It's a very good fragrance, I can see and smell snapshots of its salty, animalic licking husky voice, but I wish Arquiste had pumped it up a bit more. Él on the other hand does feel a bit stronger; he is the tanned, good looking stud that went to Armando's Le Club drenched in Kouros, and later on went to the pool, got naked, had a quick swim and then got the sexy blonde. I guess that the blonde (Ella) wasn't really in the mood that day. None the less both are a very good try to revive a genre and era of perfumery made gold, but sadly forgotten. Edit: just the other day I was wearing Ella from a sample and I was somewhere that got pretty hot. Suddenly I started getting whiffs of a beautiful scent, looking around until I figured out it was me. I guess this blonde needs heat to warm up, and thus I think it will make a great summer perfume! Needless to say, I now have a bottle!

What a wonderful feminine sexy scent. It does open particularly floral, almost fruity with honey sweetness and sexy civet. I cant say the rose particularly stands out at all. The angelica keeps it bright and airy. Once it settles then a little smoke, ambergris and spice surface. The sweetness has eased off a bit. I love this stage. I can imagine this scent giving the impression that it is quite heavy by the list of notes. It is completely to the contrary but it has decent sillage and good longevity.

Ella is a big, vintage and animalic jasmine chypre. Fur-like, slightly smokey and earthy, worthy of an old Hollywood diva. Beautiful, grand and definitely old-school style.

The top notes smell like exquisite, fresh flowers, but there is a sexy, sexy, musky, jasmine drydown. Just the drydown reminds me of Fragonard's eponymous Fragonard parfum.

Brightly beautiful with fresh feminine glamorous floral, yet super animalic and musky. Surprisingly uplifting aroma with hint of intrigue from the cigarette note

I was pretty young in the mid-late 70's but I was aware of the differences between women and men and toward the late 70's I knew what sexy meant. This juice is a serious throwback to those late 70's when I learned what sexy women were like--when Saturday Night Fever was hot and Donna Summer rocked the radio. When disco/dancing was popular. I also remember what the beautiful women smelled like--they wore lots of musk and jasmine , sandalwood based fumes/oils and sometimes fancy department store/speciality store perfumes. This juice was my 1st blind buy and I somewhat regret it...not because it's not good or interesting but because it's just not me and while I love opening it up and smelling it in my closet, I don't think I'll actually wear it much...and it was $$$$. I do like that it's a time machine and can instantly transport me back to the late 70's but the scent isn't something that I can now identify with very much or necessarily want to smell like. I smell--jasmine, other white florals, expensive good quality european cigarette smoke with aqua-net hairspray, pantyhose, some very mild sweat-like body odor mixed with a tad of cat pee (civet) and musk. Is it interesting, definitely! It's not disgusting or awful, it's just so bizarre. It changes a lot too--at first it's more loud and fresh and jasmine/musk/rose/ambergris/patchouli then it goes kind of civet, cigarette smoke and aqua-net hairspray then a beautiful jasmine/musk/vetiver/rose/ambergris/fresh spicy something which is lovely and finally, the dry down is soft musk, jasmine a tad of vetiver and honey. It's wonderfully blended! It's really unique and when I'm in total perfumista mood it's great but I have to be in that really artsy/fartsy creative wild mood to wear it. I did spray it on my daughter who's in her late teens and it smelled so sophisticated on her and VERY grown up and SULTRY. It's interesting putting it on her because there's no more 70's reference because she's so new to the world...so I smell it with no historical reference and therefore get a different take on it. So I say don't blind buy but definitely SMELL THIS because it's pretty cool. I'm glad I have it but don't think I'll wear it much...so it's a mixed bag for me. Very trippy juice!

I keep having to remind myself that the chances of my using a whole 100ml of Ella are slim to none, because it's just such a delightfully retro-diva perfume that every time I smell it from my 1ml dabber sample I want to press 'buy'. It's a floral chypre with a slight aldehydic shimmer at the top followed by rose & other florals underscored by dirty honey (which I can understand some would read as 'urinous' or 'ripe garbage'). There's definitely a hairspray plus cigarette-ash-effect too, although I find it hard to tell whether I conjured that up from memory to go with a genre of perfume that stylish 'older' women (25+!) used to wear when I was a teen & about 90% of customers in bars & clubs smoked. This was not the style of perfume I myself would have been interested in so I can't put my finger on any particular 'source perfume'. Maybe a 90s/early 00s Gucci scent? At the same time as feeling like something of a period piece, this is undeniably very beautiful and wonderfully proportioned, it's at once silky and faceted, super elegant but also a bit skanky. It's also very powerful, with strong sillage & longevity. When I do wear it on skin, though, its in-your-face glamour & projection means I feel unusually self-conscious about how it reads to others - it wears me. I'll continue cautious testing for now.

Definitely reminds me of Agent Provocateur but without the coriander, which to me has always made AP a little too harsh/dry to enjoy. I typically don't enjoy feminine chypres that much - they don't smell bad to me, per se, but it's a genre that I just don't feel I've ever really "gotten." Ella is the first chypre that has actually smelled kinda sexy to me. Will have to keep trying this one. Revisiting later: the civet at the top is still a little too much for me, but the drydown is just lovely and I still maintain that this is in the same "sexy mature woman" category that La Panthere Edition Soir and Jasmin Et Cigarette fall into for me.

The initial notes of Ella are quite surprising to me and the impressionis one of a whole lot of disparate smells rushing to form a whole. At first, I detected a whiff of something dislikeable which I'd say goes away after a couple of minutes, leaving behind a wonderful elegant, female chypre sillage. If I decide I can put up with the strange cacophony at the beginning, I may spring for a bottle. There is no significant animalic note that I can detect in this perfume, and the chypre base is round, rich, yet soft and intimate and faintly sweet.

Dirty dirty dirty. A bright flower opens on animalistic base. The civet is no joke here, though as it dries down, the slightly hay-like vegetative notes also stand alongside with animalistic base. Heavy as the beginning is, the bright white flower is like the light at the end of the tunnel, you can sense it coming your way and suddenly you've been pushed into broad daylight. The dazzling white slightly getting creamier and sweeter, finally blend in the muddy base.

I wanted this to be dirty. It's not. On me it is very clear, crystalized florals with a hint of honey. It is light and clear and bright. Pretty but very subdued and elegant. Amazing how fragrances differ! I would consider this a great wedding scent on me. Nothing dirty about it. Test if you want sexy and dirty.

This is nice, had a good and dirty opening, definitely got a civet and rose feel off this. I hope someone I know will wear it. I wouldn't like it oversprayed and at a movie, but more intimate maybe after some aerobic exercise that got it cooking a bit on the skin.

I guess I don't have the body chemistry for this one as it only smells like excrement, plastic, and a weird, sweet powder smell. I had to scrub it off my wrists as it was starting to make me gag. I love so many perfumes from Rodrigo Flores-Roux, but this isn't one of them.

This smells like a wet animal that was doused in sweet florals. I guess that's the point.

This certainly is a step back in time and is reflective of scents of the late 70s /early 80s. The opening marketing set behind Ella though is somewhat of a miss for me. A disco in Acapulco, lights flashing, champagne-soaked skin -- not to my nose. Ella is definitively a sultry floral fragrance though, opening with lucid jasmine and rose and then smouldering down into a humid skin scent (not one that is close to the skin, but one that smells like it), salty, fleshy, delicately sweet and hotttttt in a very seductive come-hither way without any loud solicitation. Perfectly attenuated civet is really the hallmark here that extends the familiar invitation without words. It reminds me a little of ELDO's Jasmin et Cigarette, without the stale ashtray note. There is even a mineral-like element that feels a little metallic (perhaps this is the flash that Arquiste is talking about), but it's a brushed silver, not polished gold. The post-disco marketing reference however, to stealth panther-like seduction under a silvery moon is on par. I love the white bottle with its retro font. It's perfectly ovular and fertile, clean and feminine and contrasts well with the seduce-you-before-you-know-it scent inside. As much as I love dirty jasmine scents, I won't be adding this to my collection as somehow that metallic note tickles the back of my throat (angelica, carrot seed or a synthetic constituent of civet?). I had this same reaction to the metallic accords in Mugler's Womanity too. Ella is an expertly blended fusion of notes that culminate into a feeling of arousement more than a perfume or cosmetic, and is a must have for covert seduction. Just try to resist her.

I thought a long time before purchasing Ella and lived with a sample for a while. I like modern chypres and this is a really good example. The most dominant element to me is the lovely florals of rose and jasmine and the whole scent has a very honeyed aroma, which I find seductive and sexy. There is a light cigarette scent - lighter than Jasmin et Cigarette par ELDO - and not something I would have noticed had I not been looking for it. It is musky but not skanky at all - I find the musk mid-way between clean and raunchy. It is dirtier than Narciso Rodriguez but cleaner than many niche offerings (Papillon's Salome is my favourite dirty musk). This scent appealed to me for the following reasons: - It works in the summer. I find summer offerings are often disappointing and deviate too far from a style that feels like me. If you like something with a bit more complexity and heft, this blooms in the heat and was inspired by it, without becoming cloying. - I like the journey the scent takes - florals, honey, musk. It has enough complexity to be satisfying while feeling resolutely modern. - It is sexy but clean enough for daytime wear. I have owned my bottle now for a few months. The packaging is beautiful - the bottle has a lovely weight, the round shape is very elegant and it sprays in an extremely fine mist. I do not love all of the scents from the Arquiste line: this and Anima Dulcis are my favourites but I appreciate the marketing/inspiration with history, bibliographies and tableaux to help convey a sense of the world. Good for: sultry summers.

This a very nice and pleasant modern chypre.The DNA of its predecessors-Aromatics Elixir,Genny,Scherrer,Diorella... is there,only this is their polite, well-mannered younger cousin. I guess that I was expecting a little more edge to the 70ies Acapulco beach scenery.Ella is pretty and elegant,beautiful just as its shiny white bottle,and gone after 2-3 hours.I have to bury my nose to my arm to smell it , even on my clothes. I think that it is worth a try for those who love chypres buy find the "oldtimers" too strong and demanding. However,it is surely great too see that a perfume like this is made today with all the restrictions endangering this category.

When I read that this perfume have a chypre and cigarette accord and was an hommage to disco I have to have it. I really like ''illicit'' notes (cigarette/tobacco, rum, whiskey etc...) in perfume. By the way I'm not a smoker or an alcoholic. For me thoses notes give a little thrill to a perfume. Jasmin et cigarette by Etat libre d'Orange is one of my favorite perfume. In Ella, the cigarette accord is really more discreet compare to Jasmin and cigarette. I adore it.

She's spectacular. Got a bit from a friend and it blew my mind. This blend of notes is pretty magical. Angelica and carrot seeds produce a sweet sexyinnocent mix with rose. Wow. What a gorgeous blend. I'm actually beside myself with wonder. So ultra femme. All of the above is based on the first five minutes of wear. I suspect I'll love it start to finish. If that changes I'll update. But I doubt I'll change my mind. Getting a bottle asap.

Powdery Dirty Musk. I unfortunately do not like this perfume on me😬 I think it maybe the ambergris and civet that are giving me a smell of underlying urine🦨 Also I feel it so so powdery that it ages me, and smells kind of dusty👵 It's like a lighter version of White Diamonds. The sillage is moderate as well as the longevity. I think there are better niche chypre perfume options that don't age the person. No Zodiac Trio for this one

wow , as a mexican i am so proud of this juice is pretty awesome i just love it , ella is hot AF and well she is a bombshell an amazonian girl on acapulco tan legs for days and confident. so good i love it , i don't think i can pull it off just like tom ford black orchid this is for a strong woman nothing fruity in this fumes pure sexy, awesome, don't care attitude

Inspired by the glamorous night clubs of Acapulco in the 1970s, Arquiste Ella for Her is not for wallflowers: cannonball tree flower, patchouli, ambergris, and honey are ignited with a hint of musk. Don't be surprised if it leaves your pulse points fluttering like the music in a disco.

Oh yes, this is a definite vintage scent. It has that Charlie-esque quality to it, but tenderized and made a bit more modern. The jasmine and patchouli concoction is blunt but the honey sweetens and balances it all out.

As a recipient of a well preserve bottle of vintage Halston Classic, I'm intrigued by the notes in Ella and must get my hands on a few ml satisfy my yearning to test her!

Opening: freshly opened jar of pickles. Very sharp. Drydown is beautiful.