Samsara Eau de Toilette

This is an old American literary reference, but has anyone else read Tennessee Williams? (I fell in love with his plays in high school.) Unfortunately I was not in the AP English class, but I read "A Streetcar Named Desire" anyway, and among many quotes are this one, by Stella, after she is asked by her sister Blanche, what is your husband like? "Oh, you can't describe someone you're in love with!" she says, and leaves it at that. Well I have been in love with Samsara for years, and while I've been steadily writing reviews for other perfumes, I don't think I've been able to review Samsara as of yet. It's because I love her. I mean, you can love a perfume, but I have serious love for this perfume. Among my 100+ bottles of perfumes I have 3 favorites (Aromatics Elixir, Prada Infusion d'Iris, and Samsara, if you want a reference) but Samsara is the one I'd take with me to a desert island, the moon, I would bring her along with me during the Zombie apocalypse, or rescue her among my cat, car keys, and pictures in the event of a house fire. If I had to have a signature perfume it would be Samsara. The review part, what does she smell like? She smells opulent and dense. She smells a bit sweet, bittersweet. She is woody and floral. Samsara is saturated jasmine flowers. She smells red and warm, like opaque wine. Samsara is liquid smooth, except for the iris, which always adds a powdery texture. On the edges she smells like peach liquor, or a tang of bright ylang ylang on the top. And then there is the sandalwood. The vintage sandalwood is swoon worthy, the modern is the best Indian Sandalwood Facsimile that I've ever smelled (but that's because I cut my teeth on the modern Samsara, not the vintage.) Samsara just smells like Samsara, and if there's a perfume that smells similar, it's because the perfumer is trying to imitate Jean Paul Guerlain's Samsara. The notes? Really I don't know. I just know that Samsara works for me. I've never gotten tired of her, she is my woody floral/sandalwood jasmine gold standard, and if she were not in existence, my experience with perfume may be a lot different. Just as aside, I love both the modern and vintage EDT, and one day if I can pick the notes apart, I will review them separately. If you're really going for sandalwood I recommend you get the vintage EDT over the EDP, as the EDT is all gorgeous sandalwood drydown. The EDP is even more loud and opulent than the EDT. PPS--My mother in law also loves Samsara. Once when I was visiting her, I brought along Samsara to wear. After I left, and she was cleaning the guest room, she said she could smell beautiful perfume on the sheets. I guess when I was spraying it on some landed on the linens. Anyway I sent her a decant, which she promptly drained, and last time I saw her I saw she had gotten a 100 ml bottle of Samsara that was already half gone. When I am in their house now I can smell Samsara and it makes me so happy, and calm (the scent once it dries down is calming to me for some reason.) Anyway my MIL is 62, and her favorite perfumes used to be Obsession and Opium, both of which were horribly reformulated, and she stopped wearing perfume. But she loves Samsara in EDP, and I am happy that I got her into wearing perfume again, and my desert island perfume, at that. If you've read this far, thank you. I will try to write a few more Samsara reviews in the future, as I have every possible vintage and concentration on my shelf anyway.

EDIT LATE 2018 THIS REVIEW IS FOR WHAT ARE NOW THE OLD RUBY RED BOTTLES OF SAMSARA, NOT THE BEE BOTTLES, WHICH ARE INDEED REFORMULATED AND NOT MY BELOVED SAMSARA!! GET THE RED BOTTLES IF YOU CAN, OR BETTER YET THE CLEAR ONES IF YOU CAN FIND THEM. Samsara Eau de Toilette, the Newest Edition This gal has been around for almost 30 years now and it’s inevitable that she’s gone through some changes. There are some Samsara devotees that only want her in her vintage 90’s glory and eschew any newer stuff. I am not one of them, I wear both the new and the old versions. Yeah, the sandalwood ain’t what it used to be, but they’ve done a good job making up for it, and honestly, Guerlain does a really good job with the new materials that they have to use. But we’ll get into that. I really think that, for the most part, Guerlain has tried to maintain the integrity of most of their back catalogue of perfumes. I enjoy wearing a current bottle of Samsara as much as I do the older vintage stuff. It’s all there—the topnotes that are that strange combination of shimmering jasmine, ylang ylang, and thick vanilla-praline. As it dries down the florals really come out, the iris is very dominant, along with the white jasmine flowers, and a bit of violet. A difference that I detect is the addition of musk—older bottles are NEVER musky on my skin, but the newer bottles definitely have a note of skin musk. The drydown is lovely—sandalwood, lots of powdery iris, a hint of rose and jasmine, and still a bit of that vanilla praline note that defines Samsara as much as the sandalwood. Sure the drydown is not that magnificent milky, creamy, woody floral that Mysore sandalwood will give you. But it’s pretty damn good nonetheless. Thankfully the Sandalwood does NOT smell like a dryer sheet, artificial aromachemical ‘woods’ or iso-e-super. The Sandalwood has a soft fluidity to it, liquid-smoothness that just gracefully rolls off the skin. For me Samsara’s lasting power is excellent, I get a good day’s worth of wear out of her. And this, too—recently I’ve had compliments from mere 21 year olds on how good I smell when I wear this perfume. That’s how great Samsara is—kids who grew up on no perfume at all, or the sugary sweet/B&BW perfumes are telling me that I smell ‘really good’ when I wear this. Maybe like 5 or 10 years ago Guerlain was formulating the EDT with a really heavy peach note, the praline/vanilla/ylang ylang thing was replaced by a really thick, sticky peach liquor accord that hung around for hours. That’s the only formulation of Samsara I wasn’t fond of, since that heavy top note kind of dominated everything. (I don’t think the EDP ever had that note.) I think that’s why some are noting that Samsara smells of peach and licorice. Thankfully I don’t detect any of that in the newest bottles.

Ya'll Know I Adore Samsara, so here is a review for Vintage 90s Samsara, or, The Smoothest Skin Scent Sandalwood Perfume Ever Hey, skin scent can be a dirty (compound) word around here at Fragrantica. But 90s Samsara, yeah, in the boring yet eminently identifiable clear glass with red top bottles with tan liquid inside, that Samsara, she is the Queen of skin scents. When I wear 90s Samsara I believe in a signature perfume, because that's how she wears, she is Signature Material. She is like, "I turn your skin from that of a mere mortal into a God/dess, this is what you smell like, cream and wood and flowers and heat." I think that the 90s EDT is the most demure of all the vintages, and wears closest to the skin. The progression is pretty fast: A bit of musk, rose, jasmine, ylang ylang, and amber, that languidly moves into a base of PURE, UNADULTERATED, SANDALWOOD. That is the smooth, sexy, scent of the Gods here. The signature worthy, oh-I-just-smell-like-this-all-the-time base of sandalwood. That's how amazing it is. Not big, or loud, but just perfect. A perfect skin scent, that wears all day long. I really love Samsara EDP, just as much as the EDT, but unlike the EDP, Samsara in Eau de Toilette is just not as loud, obnoxious, opaque and opulent as her concentrated older sister. She is simpler and better for it. I'm not talking about a difference in sillage or longevity, just personality. This is subtle, confident, mysterious, sexy, my skin is just this awesome kind of perfume. That's why I think Samsara is signature worthy, she never gets boring, or worse, obtrusive, you can just live with her awesomeness all day long. My father is from India, and when I was young he brought me several sandalwood figurines, mostly of elephants, when he would go home and visit. I will never forget how smooth and substantial they felt, and how wonderful they smelled--getting to smell actual sandalwood I think is the reason that now, as a 40 year old woman, I love this perfume so much. This is the real deal, and either you've smelled it or you haven't. The scent of sandalwood is dynamic, multifaceted, and divine--no wonder it was used in religious ceremonies. In the meantime, I had an apartment fire so my precious sandalwood elephants are gone, and sandalwood is an endangered species (my father brought these presents to me in the 80s, prior to well deserved bans on sandalwood tree harvesting) so I will probably never again hold a piece of sandalwood in my hands, and rightly so, poaching the sandalwood trees in India now would be just as bad as shooting tiger for trophy. But I have several bottles of vintage Samsara EDT in my possession, and while the prices have gone up, they are still easily acquired. So that's my review of 90s Samsara.

My sample-vial dealer sent me a dabber of this along with my last order, and I love it so much that now I want an entire bottle. The sandalwood/vanilla/citrus/floral balance seems absolutely perfect to me, vaguely floriental but mostly about that rich amber-vanilla drydown. I'm putting this on my wishlist for sure. I don't have the vintage so I can't compare this formulation to that one, but this version of Samsara is lovely enough to my nose that I will probably buy a full bottle someday, or at least get a larger decant. So far I have yet to smell a Guerlain fragrance that I didn't at least like, and most of them I love at first sniff. Update: I bought a full bottle. I know Tania Sanchez says it's loud, but if this is loud, go ahead and scream sweet nothings into my ear, darling Samsara. As a Yoko fan, I will understand this as your love language. Eventually I would love to expand my collection of Guerlain fragrances (I would love to have a bottle of Shalimar again, for instance, or Après l'Ondée, or Mitsouko), but I think Samsara is the right oriental for me at this stage of what I am no longer ironically referring to as my Scent Journey. Update: I just realized that I have the EDT, not the EDP. I'm going to move this review over to the EDT section if I can figure out how to do this. I'm not mad about it; I think the sample might have been the EDT also. At any rate, you won't hear me complaining that it's not screaming loud enough to suit me. I love this woody, citrussy, sandalwood-soapy floozy! Update: Dear lord, I could bathe in this stuff. There is a balsamic herbal note that reminds me of a shampoo I loved as a child, the original Herbal Essences, and also a clean cola-like fragrance that makes me think of Youth Dew, without smelling at all like Youth Dew. It's very lemony, too, but not the syrupy lemon-poundcake lemon of Lira or the like. This is more like lemon zest than lemon extract, sparkling and tart. Over the woody base it is just addictive to me, and not entirely unlike the smell of lemon-oil furniture polish rubbed into a fine old hardwood tabletop. (That probably sounds like an insult, but I swooned over that smell as a child and enjoy it to this day.) Update: Wearing again, six days later, and I love it more all the time. The drydown is insane. I can't believe I almost never smelled this perfume. Eternally grateful to Sarah C for her prescient sample. I'm going to wear the hell out of this EDT.

My grandmother - my Aita - was a woman of few possessions, but among her precious possessions was a stick of sandalwood, worn smooth after years of rubbing on a stone plate with water to turn into sandalwood paste. “This cools you down”, she’d say and dab some on our temples. I remember the sensation but more than that, I remember the smell. Maybe that’s one reason why I always like the smell of sandalwood incense. Or even the Mysore sandal soap that my best friend used to use; I remember their entire bathroom would be fragranced by that one bar of soap. My hunt for a good sandalwood perfume began way back in 2012, after I got married and shifted to Vietnam and started truly exploring my love for perfumes now that I had access. And I’d heard of Samsara all those years ago as the epitome, the ultimate sandalwood. But then life happened, and somehow the quest never turned earnest. Until last year, when this passion of mine started bordering on obsession and I started really looking at the gaps in my library and wondering what would fill them. And it came back to this - a true sandalwood scent. I didn’t have any. Which is why, when I walked into a discount perfume store by pure chance today - one that I’d always walked past and dismissed - and saw the last bottle of Samsara on the shelf, I couldn’t believe my luck. Could it truly be? That after all those years, she was right there - almost waiting for me. I came out of the store because I had other stuff to pick up but I realised I was in a daze all throughout, my mind preoccupied with the thought of that bottle. I even texted a friend because I know how much she loves her Samsara, but eventually I couldn’t wait. Twenty minutes later I walked out of the store with my brand new Samsara. And yes, a million times yes, I love this. Timeless. Classy. Beautiful. Samsara is an experience to be had. I smell the ylang-ylang and jasmine quite prominently, and as it is drying down, the wafts around me are soft and woody, like the inside of a sandalwood box. I am smiling ear to ear. My quest has ended. Also, I wore this layered with Chanel N°5 and when I say I had an emotional experience... I had to put down the book I was reading because I wanted to bask in the scent.