Aliage

It’s hard to imagine today Alliage as a sport fragrance. For starters, are there even sport fragrances marketed to women today? And what is marketed for men is a synth wood/watery/metallic mess. That or a sweet, Axe/body spray dud. Well, back in the good ol 70’s, Lauder envisioned Alliage. A sport fragrance for the dynamic woman that loved the outdoors, exercised, and even in a sweaty environment, acknowledged the need to smell good. On a man? Simply dashing! Alliage works wonders for me. At first I thought that my bottle might have been changed by the passing of time (I have a 70’s bottle of Eau d’Alliage) but with subsequent wears, I realize that this is the smell of it and what Lauder envisioned. Alliage smelled today, is far more butch and masculine smelling than 99,99% of men oriented releases. It’s green, piney and leathery. It’s full of the herbal bitterness of wildlife, forests, countryside and even the coast. Pine, conifers and resins atop flashes of lemon and bergamot. Galbanum is BIG here. It’s the main star, with heavy and hefty doses of moss, musk and lavender. It is utterly refreshing and revitalizing, and I can’t help but wonder that Jean Martel drew inspiration for his seminal Paco Rabanne Pour Homme a year later. Alliage isn’t floral. It feels more like a cousin to Bandit and Cabochard in a more thumping American way. I can totally see a woman wearing it to a tennis match, a polo match or horseriding. There’s leather lurking underneath, with some heavy nitromusks, a very pronounced vetiver, and a gentle shaving cream accord that many I’m sure, appreciated well outside the sporting field. It’s dynamic, vivid, calming and luxurious all at once. The simple angular bottle with its ribbed silver cap fits it perfectly. Even as an edt, it boasts, like all Lauders, impressive tenacity and sillage. It definitely holds to a full day of activity, with a freshly bottled freshness I’ve come to discover hidden under its deep green and brown facade! Today, it works as a perfect masculine fragrance as well. It always did, but fragrance gender is more blurred today than it was 4 decades ago; today, the genderless quality of perfume is more celebrated. The sad thing is that 99,99% of younger (and not so) people today, would probably frown their nose at it and dismiss it as an ‘old lady’ and ‘old man’ smell. Bad for them, better for anyone of us who can appreciate it. 9.5/10!

Estee Lauder’s Aliage is a determined and admirable attempt to bottle sporting summertime and make it available all year round. As orderly and well managed as Centre Court on finals day, this is a fragrance marshalled with ex-military precision. The opening is a brisk moss lawn made brilliant by warm sunshine. There are hints of citrus and a slightly malted fruitiness that tries but never succeeds in deposing tart as the chief mood. This green persists throughout the heart and is without doubt the main accord, a definite resinous pine becomes apparent and then yields somewhat to vetiver. There is a distant spiciness and a definite element of powder, but these seem medicinal, belonging far more to the locker room than the beauty parlour. The dry down is more a three set match than five and seems to end quite decisively in a tie break that takes one almost by surprise. All in all Aliage is a miraculously summoned up ray of sharp sunshine available on any day. In the midst of foul weather we should all be truly grateful that such things exist. ************* This is without doubt a game suitable for mixed doubles. Notice Aliage has recently regained its missing ‘l’ and once again become ‘Alliage’. Sadly in so doing it seems to have lost much of its vigour and derring-do. Catch the old magic where and while you can.

Aliage, 'new' (May 2012 batch) vs. 'vintage' (poss. late 90's/early 00's) The older Aliage is so amazingly green, 3D green, like balsam/pine essential oil and camphor, forest air, a mulch/soil drydown, for more see my other review a few down. The new, when compared side by side, relies far more on woody notes than pine and green notes. Shockingly, I smell MORE oakmoss in my newer bottle (listed fairly high up in the ingredient list, as well as treemoss further down.) I can smell the oakmoss from top to bottom, as well as the fresh spicy nutmeg, rosewood, cedar, and vetiver, with a hint of peach. The lush, camphor green is present as a ghostly sidenote that occasionally weaves in and out, but does get stronger the longer you have it on. I actually enjoy my current bottle very much, as much as the 'old' Aliage, but this is an example of a perfume truly changed by reformulation, vs. small tweaks over time. Side by side they are not even recognizable as the same perfume. I read with interest Assiduosity's edit that Aliage is being reformulated yet AGAIN, this time I would guess not for the better, and I went to the Estee Lauder website for another bottle of one of my favorite perfumes before it is gone--alas they are already out of stock of Aliage, maybe waiting for the new reformulation to come in?

Very gratified to read TillyWave's review of this fragrance, because I was not aware that it had been reformulated. I used to wear this almost exclusively in the 1980s, occasionally switching to Prescriptives' Calyx or Joan Collins's Scoundrel (I know, I know, it was Revlon!) and when I recently purchased a new bottle of Aliage, I thought I'd gotten old stock or something. It smells like a very, very concentrated version of the old formula, but without the green, citrusy notes. The old Aliage was more aldeyde than chypre, as well. I still like the fragrance, very much in fact, but it's not the love affair I had with the original Aliage. Lots of reviewers (good reviewers, too!) are calling this scent "green," but TillyWave is right. If you had smelled the old version, this isn't the same green. The new formulation is spicy by comparison. The original was better.... significantly better, but this is still nice in a heavier, more subtle way. I miss the grassy notes. Miss them a lot.

I'm testing both the vintage and current formula today, wrist to wrist. At first speay, they're very similar, but the vintage version is sharper and greener. They start to show very different notes within a minute or so after application. The current version has noticeable wood notes and comes across as more earthy and a little bit soapy. They both have a kind of camphor/menthol note in the background, although it's more pronounced in the current version. I smell no floral notes in either. Yep, after some wear, the difference is very clear and they are two different fragrances. The vintage version is a green dominant chypre fragrance, and the current version is a wood dominant chypre-ish fragrance. I like both, but am more drawn to the vintage version because it's so very, very green. My husband likes the current version because of the wood and camphor-ish notes. Staying power is weak on the current version, but the vintage lingers quite a while and stays green the entire time.