Angéliques Sous La Pluie

If this perfume was a flower it would be the Queen of the night lily. Blooms only once at night. Blink and it’s gone. This was the first FM ever smelt when they first came out. The smell stayed with me. I never forgot it. It was so transportive. Like others have mentioned about it feeling like being in the rain in the forest etc. that’s the exact feeling I get it. There is something somber, reflective and introspective about this. Calming and grounding as someone else has said below. Hyper photorealistic. Back then to spend that amount on a fleeting scent wasn’t practical. I was a teenager looking to impress the girls. This just wasn’t it. I wanted Tom Fords and the latest club banger. But I never forgot this sent. Then I smelt Hermes Voyage in a store. Instant purchase. It was this scent profile but beefier and cheaper. With better performance. But the truth was it was never the same. It was as close as you could get. But it didn’t have the opening or quality in ingredients. It lacked the spices and the cedar, the airiness and musks. But it made more sense at the time. I don’t know why this scent is so fleeting. Cedar coriander and pink pepper have the ability to stay around. And let’s be honest, if this fragrance wasn’t selling it would have been on the chopping block years ago, FM aka Estée Lauder don’t mess around when it comes to the bottom line. I don’t know who this scent is for. I don’t know where it would be appropriate to be worn. By the time you get there it would have disappeared. For me it’s at home just out of the shower. Or when I’m in that kind of quiet contemplative mood. Maybe this scent has survived so long to show off the artistry of the brand. Maybe there some millionaire bathing in the stuff to warrant FM to keep producing it. Whatever the reason, I’m grateful to now have a bottle to experience that fleeting moment. That opening that feels like rain on flowers, drops dripping off their petals. The spicy woody mid before it disappears off into the night. Thank you Jean Claude Ellena.

This heavenly juice is a very underrated piece in the FM line. One of the most unique and interesting smells out there that is exquisitely pleasant and natural and real. It's never boring or linear. Yet so simple and so inoffensive! I have come to like it more than any other fragrance I own because it isn't trying to be anything. It doesn't have a pretense but it stands out and makes a statement. You can't categorize it; you can't call it sexy or masculine or feminine or woody even. It's not woody because the cedar is rounded out too well, in such a way that it doesn't evoke woods at all. It's slightly medicinal because of that roundedness but yet really natural and wet, like if you were standing and smelling a bottle of some tincture in some green, wet jungle...but the scent isn't stationary-- it flutters around you. It has almost a minty quality that would completely destroy any association with musk. People don't smell this on you and think it's a perfume. It smells like dewy rain and stalks of Angelica, and it is nothing like any standard perfume iteration out there. It refuses to be identified. I'm flabbergasted that a fragrance could be so bewildering! It's art! The reason I love it so much is whenever I smell it, my brain, at a loss for words at such poetry, immediately connects the scent to where I wore it most in the past-- Miami in the summer. It rained a lot then and the flowers were blooming and it was just a quiet majesty to the surroundings. The scent made the memories from when I wore it comforting and magical. Angelique Sous La Pluie is WHIMSICAL. It makes me imagine fairies, like what Tinker Bell would smell like. That sounds like such an odd association but it's a very unusual perfume!

how can i put this into words? imagine a green circle with a layer of dust over it. that is the best way i can describe the opening. it's green but not an alive green, it's not necessarily herbal or freshly cut plants, it's a dead green stem that's still green but neither sharp nor alive. which is actually quite pleasant. it is quickly accompanied by what i can only think of as a "ricy" note, it's powdery, a tad bit starchy, dusty. there is metallic touches imo from the juniper, but it doesn't necessarily smell like iron or blood, it's not even screechy, it smells like what i expect liquid aluminum solution to smell like. then comes the drydown where my skin brings out a natural sweetness from this, i can't necessarily say that it's musky, it's more so like a coconut water type of sweetness, which is why i'd categorize it along with guerlain coconut fizz. the only thing is that it lasts about 2 hrs on my skin, which is what it's supposed to do and be.

There is a life situations when your perfume must not be loud or offensive, but you want to enjoy in your fragrance that moment just for yourself, than is the right time for Angeliques, but most interesting, for about 2-3h after applying you have possibily to apply a completely new perfume because the scent of Angeliques would completely disappear. I dont know why many folks thing that is hard to create a LOUD and longlasting fragrances, that makes apsolutely no sense to me. A good quallity product doesn't mean the good longevity and big sillage. Is considered as a forerunner of French Lover, there is a long story behind, personaly i prefer Angeliques over the FL. I respect this creation so much, it is so Ellena! Minimalistic and realistic smells of the angelique tree under the rain. So calm and gentle. It can be a great cologne to starting a day with but i prefere to wearing it before i fall in sleep. 10/10

It starts like a pale-green, cold, rainy day. Angelica shows its full spectrum; lightly rooty and herbal, aromatic, and vividly green. The opening is genuinely captivating: wet, cold, and green. Then the steering wheel is suddenly taken over by juniper and cedar. The scent shifts from that muted, icy green into something more woody; crisp, piney, and still distinctly cold. Up to this point, it’s excellent. And then my brain makes a connection I can’t unmake: on me, this feels like a colder, greener, better-executed version of Juniper Sling; but still very close to it. I accept that. Similar enough that as long as I have Juniper Sling, buying this would feel pointless. Once my Juniper Sling is gone, this will become an FBW. Tag(s): pale-green, cold rainy opening, angelica, rooty-herbal, aromatic, wet, juniper, cedar, crisp woods, piney, forest-air vibe