Chamade Eau de Toilette

Okay so i smelled this again when i was testing stuff with my mom to get an idea for what to get for mothers day. I ended up loving it much more than her, and i got a full bottle now... i got to experience a lot of aspects of this perfume. Initially found it too candied lemon esque.. now i dont get anything like that at all. This is a wonderful perfume with very interesting quirks and development. I dont frequently experience this in modern perfumery, its like progression and evolution isnt a real thing anymore. A lot of new stuff is focused on top notes while the base notes are always the same (ambroxan!) which truly diminishes the beauty of a fragrance. Chamade however does the opposite, the first smell is much different than the second and the third and the fourth. Initially, it is a green aldehyde bomb. Now, aldehydes are very ... reminiscent of soap. Yes, its been stated a thousand times before. But here it quickly settles down, and the aldehydes add a fattiness to a very realistic hyacinth. As stated in my previous review, this part smells like a more eastern market flower extract. Whereas western flower extract tend to smell suave and cleaned up, with more often than not a focus on 1 singular aspect of the flower, eastern ones smell more fizzy and alive and colorful and fatty and indolic. Its hard to explain. There is a kind of nag champa-ness about it all. Indolic in its truest form but never pissy or skanky or poopy. I find this much more enjoyable, its much more similar to the real flower regardless of which place used more delicate extraction methods. To get my point across, i advise you to smell a stick of unlit nag champa incense. Its that kind of indolic. No, not synthetic floral + poop note. It genuinely feels fully integrated into the flower itself, as it would be in real life. That aside, this perfume goes from aldehydic to realistic fatty waxy naturally sweet hyacinth to bitter green lush galbanum hyacinth, then the hyacinth disappears and makes way for a ylang ylang. This ylang is a bit tuberose esque, which means that it smells rubbery and waxy. Whereas tuberose can smell more industrial, the rubberiness in this ylang ylang is more textural. Its like the petals are rubbery, and not the smell. This is beautiful to me. It doesnt make the ylang too tropical or sunny or cheery, which wouldnt really go well with the other notes imo. This ylang eventually gets supported by a sandalwood, which comes and goes and comes and goes. It gets powdery for a bit, then it takes a turn and starts warming up. The aldehydic and green beginning of this perfume is very cold while the drydown isnt. The drydown is warm, cozy, still waxy yet not necessarily floral , ambery in the most vintage sense, and just comforting. So we went from crisp cold aldehydic indolic green floral to rubbery soft woody floral to warm ambery balsamic. I love it. It sadly doesnt last very long, but it surely performs. My classmate said it smells like hajj and my teacher said it smells vintage. Definitely onenof my all time favorites now and i hope to find more florals like this. Im so tired of unconvincing florals. I want more like this.. if anyone knows what im talking about with eastern vs western, please dm me recommendations. It doesnt have to be just hycanith, i love most flowers as long as theyre realistic

Edit: I wrote aboute the new Chamade EDT at the old version's site, and repost parts of it here, slightly edited. Chamade is one of my favourite Guerlain perfumes. I have two vintage versions, both a pure perfume miniature from 1996 and a full size EDT from 1992 (according the batch codes), and they manage to be both sharp green and flowery warm and spicy all at the same time. Aldehydic like Chanel no. 22, which is a perfume that smells very similar to Chamade on me. In the current EDT (my bottle is from 2022) I finally smell the juicy black current and roses in the opening, which is not there at all in the two vintage versions that I own. It is quite similar to the dry and spicy roses of Nahema for some minutes, before the opening is gone. In this new version, the aldehydes reminding of Chanel no. 22 are almost gone. The current version is weaker, as well as a little more cheerful, more for daytime everyday wear than for an evening out, but evaluated on its own I must say that it is brilliant! Fruity and light, but also green and warm. All contradictions, in a way, but in a perfect composition. The only drawback is the staying power, which is way to weak. This is the case also in the other Les Legendaires that I own (Nahema, Apres l'Ondee, Jicky): they are all beautiful and remastered versions of the originals, with a definite place of their own in the perfume world of today, but they only last a short time compared to the earlier compositions. Nahema has the best staying power of the new Guerlain's that I have tried, but I am eager to discover more of them since they are wonderful in their complexity and nuancing.

Reviewing the bee bottle version. So if Guerlain's Liu is a sunny, early in the morning spring garden, Chamade is a spring garden soaked in the afternoon sun. At least that's how they feel on my skin. Whereas Liu is a soapy aldehidic floral similar to No 5, to my nose Chamade is greener and centered on hyacinth, but in the dry down it's warmed up by the vanilla and sandalwood, just like a golden hour sun soak. Both are beautiful, fresh, uplifting, joyful. Nahema is a whole other thing... It's a sober, quite serious rich red rose, not the jammy kind, nor the pink kind. It's very, very elegant and I feel like it's more appropriate for evenings because of its velvety feel. It's also a little smoky, it sort of resembles the smell of dried roses a little bit. These are all beautiful gems I'm very happy to own. Next in line is Chant d'Aromes!

I find current Chamade to be a beautiful breath of fresh air. The galbanum along the hyacinth and black currant, are still unmistakably here. A resinous chypre, moss with a myrrh drydown! Certain similarity to Nahema in the opening. It might be similar to Parfum d’Hermes which I have in vintage, but its beauty (just like all Les Legendaires) makes it a must for me, even if it resembles many other perfumes. Just like with Liu, Nahema, Jicky, Insolence, with Vol de Nuit, L’Instant...each and every one of them is a delight. And even if it might seem redundant to have many perfumes that have smell a likes, they’re simply gorgeous and excellently maintained. Bravo once again Thierry!

Sprayed on Chamade this sunny mild day, 15 February. The promise of spring around the corner. Longevity and intensity isn't high with this new bottle's juice, but I don't mind. The dry down does linger for quite some hours. I wouldn't say there much of a sandalwood note left in this. Best to buy these new iterations of Guerlain's classics for 50-75 dollars. I've managed to do that, by watching online sales. When they aren't too expensive, I really appreciate the house keeping them alive, so we can enjoy them. Echoing AnnaCeciliaPetersson, just below me, these fragrances don't smell dated either, in these new versions. Very well done.