Encore Une Fois

I picked this up on my Paris layover for work. Gorgeous top tier vanilla for me and undoubtedly a French fragrance. It is floral like the actual vanilla orchid flower, powdery and a tad spicy in the opening. The mid I get almost a soapy vanilla but it doesn't last long. In the dry down Its STUNNING! Ambery vanilla with slight booziness. Perhaps bourbon or rum, but the boozy note is not overpowering or heavy at all. It's an uplifting scent to me. Overall the fragrance is light and airy like BR540 but I don't go anosmic to it. As I move throughout the day I catch whiffs of it and it makes me happy. It is an addicting scent for sure. They have other gorgeous scents but this is the one that captivated me the most as I am a vanilla lover. As much as I love this, I don't think its blind buy safe. I recommend get a sample of this. I also think it's a little overpriced for how much you get. It's 75ml for 230 EUR. (Not sure how much they will charge for buying from US.) I did get my VAT back so it came out to around 200 EUR. I will layer this with Babycat, Ani, SDV, and Absolute Aphrodisiac to see how it layers with my other vanillas. I think it can be worn year round because of how weightless it is. Update 03/23/25 I decided to revisit this last week and have been wearing it non stop. It has aged beautifully after a year. It is more balmy, resinous and sweet. Even more vanilla orchid coming through now. I know the smell of the orchid+ vanilla pod well as I grew up around it. I no longer get the soapy vibe I got when I first purchased it. It's still not as good as SDV but it's up there in my vanillas.

This was not a love-at-first-sniff for me... In fact, when I first smelled it, I highly disliked it- immediately removing it from my fragrantica wishlist. I grew up on the sugary vanillas, so it was hard to shake that as my idea of what a vanilla should be. To be fair to Encore Une Fois, I came into smelling it thinking it would be another sweet vanilla, and when I smelled it for the first time I was let down because I set myself up to be let down. After thinking for months and months that I could not stand it, I kept my eyes on the reviews and kept noticing there was an amazing response from people on here and others I followed, so I decided to give it another chance. Since this is not super easily accessible where I live, I did what any logical person would do and ‘blind’ bought a fragrance that I was convinced I hated. I know... perfectly rational. But to my (and my wallets) great relief, when it arrived I was blown away that I thought I hadn’t liked it all that time. This vanilla brings such comfort, it’s like a cloud of soft elegance. It’s the quiet, soft-spoken girl who sits in the back of the library reading every classic novel she can get her hands on. The girl who is naturally warm and inviting, she doesn’t care to be considered “cool” by others, she’d much rather be considered warm, which in turn makes her the coolest in the room.

One of the best vanilla scents, a sophisticated one, just very beautiful. Such a shame, that it is so weak. One morning I spilled the whole sample on my neck and blouse (1,5ml-2ml) and could smell it maybe one or two hours barely. Very sad 🙄 I wanted to buy a bottle, but cant justify the price because it is so weak. I have heard that these french people make intentionally their fragrances weak.. i wonder why? 🤔 Edit. Couldn ́t get this scent out of my head, so I ordered it anyway.. Edit 10/18/24 (two months after receiving a FB). At first I was frustrated, of course the new bottle was weak, but today I can say that it has definately improved. Projection is there, other people can smell it, if they are about half meter close. Also longevity - I sprayed it on wool sweater last night at 11.pm., went to sleep and today morning at 9.pm, when I put on that same sweater, I could still smell it - what a surprise! 😇 I really hope that it gets even more stronger, because these days I hardly wear anything else anymore. Still soft and airy, a daytime fragrance, but a sophisticated non-gourmand vanilla. For me, it is nothing like Bouquet Ideale, but very close to SDV

I was not expecting to fall for this. I'm normally too accustomed to smelling vanillas from more commercialized fragrances like YSL Libre, but the vanilla here is so much smoother. I believe this is the first vanilla I've met with that I personally really enjoy... it actually caused me to purchase samples of Babycat and Bianco Latte so I can test out more loved vanillas. Encore Une Fois is a soft candied vanilla, yet still remaining light and airy. The name is perfect for this as well... I have a 10ml sample of this but I don't think I can bring myself to ever finish it so that I can keep going back to smelling it. I don't particularly favor gourmands (not that I'm saying that this is a gourmand), but this is purely addictive. Out of the others that I have tested, this is the one that sets apart from the rest of the other fragrances existing in my collection. Beautiful :) The vanilla orchids in this bloom on skin overtime and create a fairy-like ambience, almost like fairy dust. This was such a stand-out experience for me and I'm glad that whenever I catch a smell of it in the air, I am still taken back to when I first smelled it.

A gauzy and ethereal masterpiece vanilla! I never considered myself a vanilla lover, but this changed my mind. Encore Une Fois is light, airy and slightly sweet. And still, somehow, it’s also ambery and balsamic at the same time. It smells pure, but interesting; a sweet vanilla that is joyful but not juvenile. I enjoy quite a few of Fabrice Pellegrin’s fragrances. Many of them don’t have a complicated note breakdown, but they are perfectly balanced, elegant and sophisticated. It’s the same here: a chic French version of vanilla. Somehow this smells like eating cake in the gardens at Versailles. On me this lasts and projects. It doesn’t necessarily radiate off my skin, instead it floats around me in wisps and clouds. I can’t smell it on myself when I’m still, but once I move around I can smell it strongly. The slight floral nuances make it suitable in spring, as well as fall and winter. I can understand the comparison to SDV, but I don’t think they’re the same. I much prefer Encore Une Fois since it doesn’t have the sour incense like SDV.