Vanilia

L’Artisan Vanilia There are so many discussions about Wedding Day perfumes – about finding the perfect fragrance that honors that special day. Every bride is looking for something classic, refined, elegant, and beautiful. Sadly, I have yet to see any discussions about a honeymoon perfume. I think the perfect honeymoon perfume would honor the magic of the beginning of a love that lasts a lifetime with its own special fragrant blessing. It would invoke the memories of intimate days walking hand in hand on an exotic beach planning the rest of your lives together. It would have to be WARM to represent a warm happy life together. It would have to be SIMPLE and BEAUTIFUL to represent the gift of love that can weather all things. It would have to be SEXY to always keep the fires burning. It would have to be INTRIGUING to represent the changes to come. It would have to be LUSH to represent the hope of a prosperous life. It would have to be MYSTERIOUS for the courage to explore the dark times when they come. It would have to be FEMININE to showcase the gift of your body, mind, and heart to your beloved. This perfume is all this and more. The ylang-ylang, sandalwood, and smoky vanilla immediately transported me to an intimate, sexy, exotic beach wearing the pink shades of a new love. What a pity this is no longer being produced, but just like a precious love, I am going to savor this bottle until the last drop. Thank you, L’Artisan, for honoring the honeymoon phase with this masterpiece.

I'm loving this perfume ! I finally got it after a long time of searching. I previously had Havana Vanille from L'artisan and it was ok but little bit too rum and cigar filled for my liking. This scent starts out old school in the beginning - strong scent of ylang and amber. It reminds me of Vanisia by Creed. In 30 minutes the scent morphs into one of the most beautiful vanillas known to man. In the base there's a little bit of sandalwood and lots of pure vanilla bean. Amber is not so strong in the end. I sense some tonka bean sweetness in the drydown too but it might be just a secret ingredient. This scent is sweet but not in a sugary way. Really elegant and fabulous. I would wear this for any occasion. Maybe not the best scent for summer. But lovely any other time of the year! I don't see this as linear scent. Havana Vanille had way too much going on compared to Vanilia. This scent really has 3 stages like many older perfumes. Sillage is big in the beginning but in the drydown it's like a different perfume because the sillage is soft. 10/10

actually not quite a vanilla, I find! more a sweet neroli. this might sound a little crazy... I mixed macerat of gardenia des incas (tripodanthus acutifolius) and monoi (tiaré), plus quite a few drops of neroli oil, a drop of sandalwood, very few drops of vanilla absolute and coco extract....just accidentally in this combination.. And although the real juice in the bottle is for sure different, a complex mixture of malty-vanillic syntheticals and Neroli, this was so close to the perfume that it gave me that extreme flash of a scent that you recognize and didn't smell for a long time. I have still a full bottle of Vanilia and couldn't resist to open it to compare...haha not the worst accident:-)

Vanilia is in my opinion the best vanillic perfume that I've ever smelled. Timeless, simple, comforting, colorful and possessing not a single off-note. But that's not the point of this review... Today i visited the L'Artisan Parfumeur website to restock my collection. I have found Mure et Musc (probably reformulated for the 11th time) and Premier Figuier. Both brilliant but... there was no sign of either Vanilia, Dzing, Timbuktu or Dzongkha! I still have some juice left in my bottles (except for Vanilia...) so I'll archive them but it shouldn't be like that. Note to the once great brand of L'Artisan Parfumeur: soon there will be no reason to buy anything from your stores.

Lucky to find a bottle of this, and it is as Luca says, a fun scent, very well put together, an hour into the drydown a lift happens like champagne bubbles sparkling in the scent, which is a clever thing. You have to approach it as if the last 10 years of vanillas hadn't happened, as we've all had vanillas up the wazoo in every possible combination since Vanilia was sold. We've had Indecence, Grain de Soleil, Casmir, all the CSP scents, everything from Santa Maria Novella to DSH Marzipan and all the niches, AND YET Vanilia still stands up, the recipe is perfect and stable, the experience is light, happy and sweet. What a treat xx

I was curious about this fragrance--although it has been discontinued, I ordered a decant online. I find it very unusual and wearable. I'd classify it as a sparkling vanilla--it's almost like a beautiful tropical drink. It forgoes the typical vanilla cliches of smoky vanilla or heavy gourmand. I detect a hint of real citrus that smells almost like juice from a pineapple--it isn't sweet at all. Something about this fragrance is very uplifting. *I think a lot of the reviews on this page seem to be for Vanille Absolument, which smells like a damp cigar.

The perfect mix of vanilla and Ylang Ylang on a woody base. Moderately sweet, flowery and dry from the sandalwood. Smells vintage in a timeless way. My favorite is the opening, it feels like peeling a vanilla pod and smelling your fingers after scraping out the seeds. Bit green, bit woody. Even though it doesn't have tons of notes, it is a complex scent which gets sweeter and denser with time. I don't wear it often, it has this blueish , melancholic aura around it, but I do cherish my bottle and intend to keep it until it's gone.

A truly wonderful perfume; it's a pity they discontinued it. Overly-sweet to the point of hilarity. It was a revelation when it first came out, and despite a number of wannabe copycats, nobody has truly replicated it. Fun and unpretentious. I don't agree that it is a "wedding scent"; it's not particularly serious, sophisticated or romantic imo. Good beach scent. Clever and funny. A dumb blonde who is secretly quite clever. As Turin said, "Vulgar - in a good way". Love this scent. Quite heartbroken that it's been discontinued.

Such a perfect vanilla perfume. Probably the best I've tried. Just beautiful, without any of the negative aspects vanilla can often have like nauseating. It's comforting, almost like enjoying a vanilla ice cream. Very well created and high quality. Of course it's discontinued...

I ́m wearing VANILIA at the moment... at the beginning it is so ugly-strong...and ... smoky..!? But after 10 minutes it starts to be nice and warm. I like it very much! :-)

This is Takashi Murakami's paintings in fragrance form. Pure fun and hilarity, almost perverse in a joyful explosion of sweet that is not sweet! I love it

(Review of an early 1990s bottle) Vanilia is actually a very pretty vanilla-flecked ylang-ylang gourmand perfume. And there is really not much more that needs to be said about it. It certainly veers into gourmand territory with the vanilla and no less because of the very forward banana custard aroma of the ylang-ylang. As simplistic as it is, it is so well done. It makes my mouth water. If I close my eyes and smell, I would swear there is a parfait glass of banana custard with a graham cracker crust just waiting for me to dive in with a spoon. Yum. The prettiness is due to the way the ylang-ylang has been handled. Yes, there is the banana custard aroma I mentioned, but it’s also allowed to be its floral self as well. Its sweet, honeyed, tropical character has an infectious happiness and warmth to it. The overall effect of both is a perfume featuring a very exotic vanilla accord that smells neither exactly of vanilla, nor exactly of ylang-ylang, but of some extraterrestrial hybrid of both. The ease and seamlessness with which Laporte has been able to get them to overlap is very commendable and noteworthy. A bit of creamy and floral sandalwood develops towards the end but hardly enough to detract from the overall message and not sufficiently enough to truly feel like a dry down. Vanilia is a very one dimensional and linear perfume. Its sole aim is to present a yellow floral vanilla and only that, and the very obvious way in which the sandalwood at the base is steered towards its creamy and floral characteristics confirms that L’Artisan Parfumeur and Laporte truly wanted to keep this one simple. This is going to create some unfavorability amongst the perfumista community, but LAP have a creative tendency to make perfumes like this and have done for decades. So, if you don’t like one dimensional and linear perfumes, then you won’t like this and you won’t like a lot of LAP perfumes. If your mind and nose are of a sort where they can focus on one thing long enough and deeply enough to not need an evolution to keep them entertained, then Vanilia will suit you well. It is one of the more interesting presentations of vanilla I have ever smelled, even if it is ridiculously simple. But that’s its pawer. Sometimes the new, the weird and the odd, land on the nose better when it’s straightforward and simple.

This EdT is not my idea of vanilla, but maybe the name isn’t meant to imply that it’s just vanilla. Instead, what I smell up front is banana - strong banana, the kind that is in the banana pudding served in the US South. This traditional dish consists of vanilla pudding studded through and through with slices of blackish, overripe bananas, lying on a bed of soggy vanilla wafers. (Do they even make vanilla wafers any more?). I don’t like to see banana pudding, I don’t like to eat it, and I certainly don’t want to wear it. As the banana starts to die down it’s replaced by a butterscotch note, as if the perfumer decided to try a different pudding flavor. Then it changes gears again, taking off on a metallic, slightly floral tangent, but there’s still the banana undercurrent. Towards the end, it dries down into a standard vanilla base. It’s not particularly long lasting, about 2-3 hours, but that’s enough banana pudding for me.

Perhaps it was the power of suggestion but I got a pretty strong banana pudding vibe from this, coupled with sweet tarts. It softened up a bit over time and grew on me but it is not the vanilla I am looking for. I will say that about 4 hours after application I was in a closed room for a 1 1/2 hour teleconference, once that was over I left the room and had to go back in about 10 minutes later and it smelled wonderful in there, very vanilla, soft and fun smelling, so I think the silage on this may be better that the skin scent. And it does seem to last a bit better than some other L'artisan fragrances that I have tested. I don't love this enough to bother tracking down a bottle before they disappear, but I am glad I got to try it and I would encourage vanilla lovers looking for a warm weather fragrance to give it a test.

Unfortunately, I am underwhelmed by this scent. I suppose there is something to be said about a nice, gentle vanilla, but this is too subtle on my skin. It doesn't last very long either, which is very disappointing. This is a simple perfume and given that it is a vanilla scent, it is surprisingly lacking in sweetness. I don't get any of the ylang-ylang, only a very subtle vanilla that quickly dries down to a rather subdued sandalwood. For the price of this perfume, I could not suggest it as I have to believe there are many other fragrances out there with the same light, unassuming scent for much less money.

I remember Cher describing this scent and I had to have it! Not that I was a huge Cher fan but she made it sound so beautiful and sensual. I was quite young and lived in Florida at the time and liked a lighter, simpler, clean fragrance and this worked nicely. There was not on line ordering - i had to do some searching to find where to purchase it and do so over the phone. I did not repurchase after my bottle was gone. I kind of got bored with it....but here it is almost 30 years later and when I think of a perfect vanilla fragrance, this is always at the top of the list. I would love to experience it again.

L'Artisan Parfumeur VANILIA is not a sweet vanilla fragrance but a woody oriental tinged with vanilla. Notwithstanding the name, in this very warm woody oriental composition vanilla, sandalwood, and ylang seem equally important and mingle to produce a rather spicy melange. I actually thought that this must contain cinnamon, but apparently not. Although VANILIA is not groundbreaking, it would be a nice comforting scent for cold winter nights. The staying power of this medium sillage edt is fairly good, and the drydown has a somewhat ambery demeanor.

You know how a vanilla bean smells when you scoop the seeds out? This smells a bit like that. Vanilla, but clean, pure vanilla with minimal sweetness. Not at all cloying, just warm and inviting. The sandalwood and ylang-ylang are there as well, but they support and enhance the pure vanilla.

I don't like too much vanilla in a perfume, but L Artisan Vanilia is so nice and comfortable. Worth a try, especially if you're not a fan of vanilla- here is not outstanding, but it fits nicely into the whole composition. On my wishlist.

For me it smells like Tahitian vanilla pods: dry woody and at the same time fresh vanilla. I also have Havana Vanille, and HV has a strange salty fish note, but this one does not. Also HV is more tobacco rum.

For me this is a very beautiful vanilla. I usually dont like vanilla dominant scent, but this one is exception, i LIKE it :)

One for unusual surprises apparently. I read cinnamon (sherapop) and even banana (Doc Elly) in the reviews. I got mackerel. But when I read about the banana, I got banana. And when I read about cinnamon, I got cinnamon too. So much for suggestion.. The drydown gave me sandal and vanilla, rather sweet. Remote cousins: Myrrhe Ardente and Datura Noir

Not the best vanilla scent. Too watery. Even it seems a little bit plastic.

I was gifted a very sizeable decant of Vanilia in a swap, and so today I'm trying it. First spray is utterly overwhelming...the juice that comes out smells exactly like that cherry flavored cough syrup with codeine, the kind you only get when you're super sick, and just the thought of it makes you want to gag. Luckily this only lasts a few minutes, and if you can hang in there and not wash it off, it definitely gets better. From that hideous Purple Drank, it morphs into a mellow, slightly sweet jasmine. I know jasmine isn't listed as a note, but I detect the tiniest slip of it in there. From that it goes to a banana like fragrance, as other viewers have also noticed. It is a banana pudding scent, like a nursing home/prison inmate/cafeteria tray banana pudding. That's okay with me, because anything different and original gets bonus points with me, however I find it mindblowing that some perfumes get so much attention and praise because they are niche. This is Jessica Simpson's Fancy without the biting sweetness, but to be honest I prefer Fancy.

(Raises hand) I also read Luca Turin's book and embarked on a quest to try Vanilia. Found carded sample on the bay, and enthusiastically waited for it to arrive. My story could as well finish now, as I am still not sure how this smells after having used the whole 2 mls on myself at one go. It is so light to the point of being undetectable, but to be fair I have the same problem with all L'artisan fragrances, they just are very diluted it feels. I I guess Vanilia is a light, pleasant vanilla with gentle floral nuances, but do not take my word on it. Of course having a whole bottle would have helped me memorise it, but with its current rare status its price -if found- would be restricting me from spraying liberally in a body spray way. On the positive side, this perfume came out in the 70s, so L'artisan must have been way ahead of their times, creating a vanilla based fragrance in a sea of civet and oakmoss

Like a sweet cloying cherry syrup, it s ridiculous this got a five star.Too sweet, slightly synthetic, the ylang note too thick, too stuffy. The whole composition is quite depressing, there no interesting notes, no special oomph to distinguish itself other than its price tag. I am curious why some mention it lacking in sweetness, as i repeat, this is like the last drop of cherry syrup that refuses to leave the damn spoon, clinging on to it, crusting on into a concentrate of sugary stickiness. To me it smells ordinary vanilla fragrance whose aim is to fare no better than the next vanilla gourmand on the market.Overrated in my opinion.

Another in my long line of vanilla samples to test. I really like this one - it's lovely, soft, well-rounded, nicely balanced, and sadly, discontinued! What a disappointment. While this is called Vanilia, I think Ylang should be part of the name because I think the two elements have almost equal weight here. I guess some find that Vanilia has some similarity to Maitre et Gantier Fleurs des Comores but I didn't see much similarity there. Anyway, none of this matters as it's not made anymore. I would love for Fragrantica to list when scents have been discontinued along with the other descriptive info.

Testing Vanilia and it's a must-have for me! Very very distinct vanilla right from the opening, but a very spicy kind of vanilla. No listed as such, but it becomes more and more spicy on me over time. Surprising lack of sweetness, which I really enjoy. I have a bad cold atm, and I can smell it loud and clear! Fantastic. Sadly, it's not available here. I have to hope and wait, maybe it comes up on a swap list someday. edit: It's pretty much versatile on me - but it is so lovely that for once I don't even mind.

Vanilia makes me think of the way back early golden days of niche perfumery. I bought Vanilia and thought it was too sweet. Ended up selling my bottle. Now that I’ve been over saturated with sweet sweet sweet since the early 2000’s I probably wouldn’t think this was too sweet anymore. Kinda miss it. Also really miss the good ole days when many of the best fragrances were still around, not discontinued and reformulated. Le Sigh.

Vanilia is one of the best L'Artisan scents IMO, with the only minus that it doesn't last. I won't re-purchase because of lack of intensity. It smells smoky and sooo good vanilla, sweet and green, not foody at all. I smell a little hint of banana too. What impress me most is the similarity with the smell of my skin. It mixes well, but it doesn't have that ooomph that kick me.

I confess i haven't tried this yet, as so many new scents have way too much vanilla for me. But the fragrance components listed on the L'Artisan Parfumeur website intrigue me: ylang-ylang, nutmeg, clove, vanilla, sandalwood I'm posting this because the nutmeg and clove are not listed here. Judging by current reviews, they are not too apparent in the scent.

Was not sure I liked this to start with as my nose was picking up quite a citrusy smell when first on my skin, but after about 10 minutes it settled to a beautiful almost tangy vanilla smell. Not warm and sweet on me at all. Just love it and I do get the warmer sandalwood smell as well.

This brilliant shiny vanillia. Like a birtday cake under a big ylang ylang tree, woody but not serious, candies and creme de caramel basking in the sun, and lots of powder pouring down from the sky.Fun and outdoorsy gourmet, not perfect but interesting

Beautiful, spicy, earthy, smokey vanilla. No sugar, no sweetness. Very special, sophisticated and different. It feels very modern, but it was created in1978. I would take the risk of saying that it is a classic now...

This scent was just "okay" for me. Nothing to write home about (especially for the price). You might have better luck with the Comptoir Sud Pacifique or Lavanila lines if you really like vanilla scents...

I love the vanilla-ylang-ylang-combo, it's sweet and fresh and original, with depth but not heavy. AND I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S BEEN DISCONTINUED!! The new havana vanilia is so dull. This makes me sad.

Vanilla and ylang-ylang composition. I could swear, I also smell neroli and little citrus here. Anyway, this is little sweet, soft & delicate vanilla with some floral, Mediterranean-tropical flair.

Sweetly vanilla with floral notes that don't blend well on my skin. In the end, the sandalwood attacks me and turns it into a scrubber. Too bad: Might work great on others.

This one is discontined. Havana Vanille replaced this one. I prefer the new Havana Vanille than this. More hot fragrance. But I dont think those 2 will make history. 6,5/10

Favorite perfume of all time. Unpretentious vanilla/ylang composition. I agree with the reviewer who stated there is a faint bit of plastic in it as well.

As others have said, lacks sweetness. The smokiness, to me, was a little too much like stale cigarettes.

Why did they discontinue this? 😭