Azurée

I just received 2 bottles of EL Azuree via an online order direct from Estee Lauder. I bought it based on description, as I love and adore all EL frags so far, and anything lemony I adore. After letting it settle and come to temperature (it is -7 celcius here in Canada today) I can honestly say that I am 100% in love with this fragrance, and will sell off my collection of other lemony/green frags because I have finally found my Holy Grail of spring/summer perfume! the first few minutes after spraying are quite lemony but the background is green and earthy, and starts to shine through within 10 minutes or so. At the 1 hour mark, I find it more balanced and the green and earthiness come out. It is also becoming richer and fuller, slightly floral and quite delicious! I will spray some on my husband, as he is always 2 degrees warmer than me, and I know he will be loving it and using it, so I have a separate bottle just for him. I wanted to buy it now while it is still available in the Classics collection for a good price $84 cdn, because I learned here on Frangrantica that EL is re-releasing this and others as "Legacy Collection" with a huge triple price markup and a reformulation again, which, I dont want, my bottles are batched at 2023 code, and this mossy lemony chypre is absolutely what I have been seeking my whole life! I tried O de Lancome, too lime/harsh and masculine for me, and JL Scherrer, the edp is so synthetic and causes me to sneeze for 5 minutes, Paloma P, not green enough but good, (husband finds it too floral, I find it gets pissy on me if oversprayed.) Cabochard now has no depth too cold, so disappointed with that. I was getting by with Chanel 19 edt since 1978 as a young Miss, but now poor longevity and high price, plus hard to get and I dont like the poudre version with the fake musk. I read the reviews for Azuree here, and put in an order. Can't wait to get a couple more back-ups before they replace it with the Legacy version, as this will be my Spring/summer fragrance from now on! Thank you all fellow Frangrantica reviewers, I feel complete!

I haven't smelled the original Azurée, but this 2019 version is a truly lovely scent in its own right. A mossy, leathery chypre, it is old-fashioned in style (in the very best way). I adore a good chypre, and while I cite Knowing and Private Collection as the definitive Estée Lauder chypres, I can now add Azurée to this line-up. Azurée is a warm yet dark chypre, bringing to mind dappled shade under a tree in summer. Its dark leathery base and bitter herbal notes are offset by bright, fresh fruity notes, the olfactory equivalent to sunlight diffusing through shadows. Azurée opens with bright citrus, followed closely by aromatic basil, a mild fresh start to the herbal accord that permeate this scent. I get something akin to melon too, aquatic and slightly sweeter. The witchy artemisia creeps in, typically bitter and green. The leather emerges here, akin to a worn vintage leather jacket, soft and non-animalic. Alongside the bitter herbs, it very much reminds me of Grès Cabochard, but is more refined. Some powdery florals balance it out, adding some mellow sweetness to temper the artemisia-leather accord. The mossy base develops seamlessly in the background, giving body to the chypre. A lovely rendering of oakmoss is present, and a cloud of patchouli adds earthiness. It becomes softly woody and musky as it dries down, with grassy vetiver in particular evident here. It fades to a musky, mossy skin scent with leather lingering until final fade. Sillage is strong and longevity is long-lasting. It is unisex in the manner of old-school chypres, and is transeasonal - autumnal in particular. Well-blended, well-composed and beautifully-balanced, I have fallen in love. Estée Lauder do a great job of staying true to their original formulas, and keeping high-quality perfume affordable. I hope this won't be discontinued in favour of Frédéric Malle's revisited version (significantly higher in price), but I might get a bottle just in case while I can. Underrated excellence. 5/5.

Azurée strikes me as a distinctly European fragrance, despite its New World provenance. Lauder’s oeuvre is filled with cheerful and openly friendly (“American”) scents like White Linen and Beyond Paradise; Azurée doesn’t aim to please so easily. It’s one of those rare perfumes that feels like it has its own personality and temperament, indifferent to the whims of its wearer. It’s bold and unique in a sea of sameness; there’s certainly nothing else like it on the mainstream fragrance counter, unless you include the current Cabochard - all bones, no flesh - or Lauder’s own Aramis. A similarly mouth-puckering leather chypre, Aramis admittedly feels stark in comparison to the more lush Azurée, but the family resemblance is undeniable. With its robust character, earthy depth, and aversion to pleasing the crowd, Azurée feels like fragrance as body armor. I wear it when I want to feel confident and devil-may-care, or when I just need inspiration to pull myself together and get things done. (I don’t know if Katherine Hepburn ever wore Azurée, but it strikes me as something right up her alley.) It’s a “backup bottle” scent, to me - both affordable and the kind of proper retro perfume that feels like the result of a glitch in the matrix. How can this kind of thing exist in 2022? If you love a dry chypre that smells like a chypre should, Azurée is a must. [Edit: Despite its potency - or perhaps because of it - this is one of those chypres that arguably suits warm weather better than cold. The heat dissolves some of oakmoss’s inherent mustiness, leaving behind a sharp, sun-baked bitterness that cuts right though a doggy summer day. The citruses and florals have more bounce, and the rich leathery drydown feels even sultrier, while remaining crisp and breathable. Don’t write this one off before you experiment with it in different climates.]

A sweet little chypre. I'm still not sure what sunlight is supposed to smell like, exactly, but this does smell like the great outdoors. I get a lot of moss and vetiver, with a little brightness from the opening citrus and basil. The rose and jasmine seem to come out more during the drydown, but they never dominate over the sweet grassy and mossy accords. Overall, Azurée is in the same general family as EL's Private Collection, vintage Miss Dior, Miss Balmain, Clinique's Aromatics Elixir, and Avon's Unforgettable. Azurée smells to me like sweet hay, clover, moss, grass, and some unobtrusive but recognizable rose and jasmine. I find this crisp and pretty, in a slightly wild way. It doesn't smell remotely azure to me (except maybe in a vaguely Mallarmé way); to me it smells more like shades of green and gold, with some chestnut and bark-brown here and there. This is the perfume you should wear if have elected to roll around in a fallow field or a hayloft with a sexy day laborer. But it also works just fine if you're just sitting in your office, in November, on a cold but sunny day, and you're thinking wistfully about the Côte d'Azur. Update: Even though the leather isn't listed as a note anymore, I can still smell it, as a soft suede accord blending with the mosses. This might be a reformulation and perhaps a bit of a compromise of Ms. Lauder's austere original, but make no mistake: this is still very recognizably Azurée. I'm sure the oakmoss notes are synthetic, but they smell every bit as convincing to me as their now-illegal compounds in my vintage chypres (EL PC, Avon's Unforgettable).

I blind bought this latest version of Azuree last year, and it is probably the bitterest green in my collection. I didn't appreciate it until today as I am hunkered down in cool air conditioning, hiding from our almost unliveable heat and humidity in the 2020 Australian summer. With the shutters closed to keep out the heat and sun, I feel as though I am living like a mole, deep underground, surrounded by Moses and lichens, earth and damp - It has wormwood as a note after all! Azuree fits my mood to be sequestered in a comfortable place inside, but still in touch with nature. This version of Azuree has absolutely nothing to do with the description of the original by Mrs Lauder as quoted in the Fragrantica notes above (and indeed is still being used on the EL official site to describe this 2019 Azuree - they really need to have a word with their marketing department). Maybe in the late 60's Azuree smelled of the Mediterranean, and was a sunny fragrance. Take a look for yourself at the notes here in the 2019 version. Oak moss (or whatever is used these days to recreate it) is big, dark and dank here, the florals fairly subsumed by the herbals and woods, and aldehydes are completely gone. This is unquestionably a bitter herbal green and leans more towards the Aromatic Woody family I think. So, in short, don't blind buy this if you believe the official description of this Azuree, and want a sunny fragrance, but if you love bitter woody green fragrances, or something of the Aromatics Elixir ilk, do give the latest Azuree a sniff. it is brilliant, heady stuff.