Josephine

This perfume was originally given to me by my sister a few years ago, as she couldn't wear the perfume. It lost all of its charm on her skin. Fortunately for me, it sat beautifully on my skin. It immediately became my signature scent and I've been through many bottles since. People (men and women) stop me regularly to ask about my perfume. I'm often complimented for it and moreover, it is such a delightful smell that it makes me feel fantastic when I wear it. It is somehow feminine, pretty and enigmatic and joyful all at once. I'd go so far as to say that this scent is totally seductive in the most encompassing way. BEWARE of dodgy versions though. Once I received a bottle that smelt sour (similar to the negative reviews I've seen on it here actually) and faded on my skin with none of the uplifting aroma that it normally has. My fiancee thought i was wearing a whole new scent. It came new in the box from ebay and cost the same as the others so I don't know how it happened but it was a complete dud. I have no idea why. The next bottle I purchased was divine. My recommendation: you must try this on yourself to see if it works. If it suits you, welcome to Heaven :-) It is very difficult an expensive to obtain in Australia however. Any suggestions are welcome :-)

Josephine is such a polite and ladylike perfume, so sweet and charming, reminiscent of my little bottle of Arpege (parfum). It's warm and refreshingly crisp all at once. It opens with a gush of spicy florals and peach. The powdery heart is the part I adore and wish it lasted much longer; it's woody and musky with a touch of something sweet & fruity. The drydown is soft with hints of vanilla and sandalwood, yet the perfume retains a crisp green note throughout its development, possibly from the hyacinth. I wore this on a rainy day, and that's when I really fell in love with it. It created a beautiful cloud around me while I drove around in my muggy car. The musk seems to really come out in the rain and make this perfume very cozy and soft. I think this perfume deserves so much more appreciation than it gets. This is so classically elegant and very refined.

Very happy to discover this brand and scent. Warm, floral, feminine. Woody and mossy, too. Honeyed. Doesn't smell like any vintage I own but DOES definitely have that vintage vibe, something feminine and flowery but not too clean. Just how I like it. For me, this is a beautiful light floral that captures what many modern florals don't, which is a human warmth. I think of Chloe's modern formulation, it's pretty, but has no soul. Sneezy florals need balance, and in Josephine black currant gives some ammonia and sweetness, the galbanum lends an outdoors quality, the powdery amber provides animalic warmth. Update: the more I wear this, the more I love it. And the bottle! It's so pretty.

Timelessness in a bottle. To me, this opens and remains very much like Guerlain's L'Instant! It is uncanny, yet it does not hold the complexities of that fragrance. Much like Napoleon's wife, this fragrance is unquestionably regal, outspoken, classical and yet unassumingly feminine in its nuances. I love the fact that it does smell as though it might well have been touted by Napoleon's beloved Femme le Reine; though it is time evoking, not old fashioned. Beware, you need to be a brave and presumptious woman to wear this one out loud! Josephine is ever bit the bouteille d'histoire x

Dearest Josephine, After our first encounter, I've been unable to forget you. I kept coming back to get yet another taste of your mysterious aura. I was fascinated by you, I had to see you, touch you, inhale you, decipher your different moods. I had to know if we could be together, because I wanted you in my life and I needed to have you. Then I took you home, still not knowing what to expect. Sometimes I find you extravagant, unfriendly, and hard to bear. But you know how to be warm and lift my spirits on a cold, rainy day, and I love you for that. Yours truly, Rux

This is the best ever perfume I came across.I slowly felt in love with it, discovering different tones of it every time I smelt it, develops slowly on your skin very gentle, feminine and sophisticated. Not heavy, not too flowery but makes you aware you are wearing it. Exceptionally sensual in it's unique way creating warm full feeling. Not aggresive or common in any way. Fantastic formula you can not put an age to it, it will suit from young woman to late middle age without being too posh and heavy. That one might be a winner for me for a long, long time!

wow, nothing else like it; a green floral but with an odd quality like a flower you never smelled before, maybe hawthorne? bergamot, geranium and violet leaf in the top with hawthorn and rose, some galbanum in the middle to lend a little bitterness to keep this from sweet and cloying, vintage peach rises, some peony, a hint of lilac but more hyacinth, sandalwood and musk; very complex; as it dries down it becomes a very green rose geranium scent that is like petals drying in a box with a bitter quality

A second review. Reminds me a bit of Valentino Rock n' Rose, but more amber and sweetness in Josephine. Sillage is intimate but quite long-lasting. Pink pepper is in there somewhere, it was on the tester sticker that came on my bottle, and here it's done very subtly (normally a note I hate.) It's too bad that Rance has constructed a questionable brand lineage, because if their other perfumes are as nice smelling as this, they don't need to rely on fake history to sell their stuff.

I tried Josephine yesterday for the first time. I was and still am intrigued. I sprayed it in the back of my elbow and sniffed throughout the afternoon. A little bit sour, a little medicinal, I hoped it would become sweeter but in the end I think it's just not for me. It seems to smell better from a distance and has something very addictive about it. Now I miss it and I want more. Rancé, what is this sorcery we're dealing with? :)

I discovered it by accident, as I was buying Rancé tuberose soap. Such a stunning scent! It feels seductive, elegant inviting and playful to me. I love spraying it on a warm day as it just blooms and has a better sillage. I constantly get traces of lilac, vanilla, and musk, with a splash of iris. Had a few compliments already, so definitely a keeper! Cannot wait to try it in a Canadian winter :p

Elegant, timeless, inviting, and extremely feminine. Warm vanilla with soft powdery florals, with just the right amount of sweetness. Everything is perfectly balanced, it never becomes too powdery, floral or sweet. In the same vein as Kenzo Flower, but they are not the same. Definitely a unique scent. Performance is excellent on my skin.

I love this perfume. It is a unique and happy floral perfume. The two notes I smell most are rose and jasmine. It is a very good quality fragrance and it doesn't smell artificial or overly heavy as some floral fragrances do. A somewhat powdery scent during dry-down, which I love.

It's adorable.So longlasting,so pure and feminine, very classy...I only had a sample of this, i would like so badly to have the whole bottle...Josephine was one lucky girl :)

I find this perfume far to clean/cool and modern to be named after an historic figure. I get the freshness of hyacinth and violet leaf in the top notes (I love this part), followed by the floral and musk smoothness of the mid notes (nice), but then it disappears on me. It's a two-hour fragrance, tops. This is a very expensive perfume in my country so I'm lucky that I was able to purchase a tester at a reduced price. Nice, but not worth the big bucks for me. I should also add that the cord-covered metal section that sits around the actual sprayer is a pain because it blocks some of the spray and gets soaked with perfume. You can remove this piece without damaging the bottle.

so nice!!! Here is a complex elegant feminine fragrance which is both floral and warm, very little powdery. I think it is better to try it on skin before buying because it seems one of those scents that change according to chemistry. On me it smells fresh and peppery for the first 5 minutes. No peppery notes are listed. Maybe it is cloves effect. I smell no galbanum, at least not the strong galbanum note that it is so strong and herbal in some other fragrances. Then it turns to a warm luscious carnation floral with a very faint candied edge. It's not strong and radiant, it stays quite close to the skin and smell like a cosy elegant lady. It lasts quite a long time.

I'm not a floral girlie, but this perfume is really pretty. I would definetly buy a full bottle if the drydown wasn't so utterly boring. The first, let's say 15 minutes, I smell a beautiful creamy lotion-like floral scent. It feels very well blended. However, later I get this very boring woody-vanilla drydown, the floral element is completely gone on my skin after some time, which is very sad. Either way, it's a beautiful perfume, that made me want to explore florals more.

I get confused wearing this scent. It smells so good when I am not smelling it nose to wrist, but once I smell it nose to wrist it is just sooo sour! I hope to the dry down is more powdery.

want this for historical purposes✋🏻

You should take my experience with a grain of salt as I tested it in the store (not on my skin) and really liked it and then got my hands on someone's bottle that had like 1/4 left. So possibly whatever I got has gone a bit old, it seems similar to my Daliflor which is a 30 year old flanker. It is floral and soapy and for me the beginning is too much. In the beginning it has that rubbery sour undertone that some cheap or expired perfumes have, though it goes away and turns more pleasantly soapy. And I love granny perfumes, but this one really does smell kinda... of age. Possibly I sprayed on too much. I will try not spraying it near my nose because it really was making me nauseous. Later I added a layer of a sweet fruity perfume cause I thought I'm not gonna survive smelling it the whole day, and surprisingly it got better so you can layer it if you work smart. Maybe it just doesn't suit MY skin. Or maybe I'm just in a summery juvenile sugarcoat fragrance phase. The longevity on the skin was solid 6 hours for me and possibly forever on clothes. Will try it again later.

I had this a long time ago and was wondering what happened to it; I must have gifted this as I recall finding the name and bottle beautiful but the perfume itself disappointing. It is cool and mossy, focused on Ebony Wood & Hyacinth and overly muted and dusty on my skin, rarely projecting, with slightly medicinal, even ''hairspray'' notes on the opening. This never dried down to anything better and I never received any compliments wearing it either. It was forgettable and I could not smell any of the beautiful notes listed in the perfume, such as geranium or rose.

I find it hard to match the name of Josephine with something quite so subtle. In my head I had built up a picture of something rich and opulent I suppose in modern terms * more diva like*. This is pleasant and ladylike during the top and middle notes but during dry down it starts to get a little powdery which I love with the Lilac and Peony it has a very pretty ending and I can at the end just pick up a very light and subtle musk note that rounds it off nicely. I would always reach for this for any elegant occasion somehow it just fits.

I agree with adrienn99 ... Very mossy, powedery and dizzying hyacinth, at least in my opinion. I do not perceive it oriental at all, but chypre. And, i must say it again, for me is not subtle. The presentation is wonderful, super feminine. I'm looking forward to Avant Le Jour, Jasmin du Malabar, Pauline, Pres de Toi, Rose de Rose, Sur Mon Coeur and Tubereuse Amour ❤️ Edit: So far I LOVE Sur Mon Coeur!

to me this belongs more to the chypre genre than oriental floral. Heady, powdery, mossy and overall very unrelenting composition. Iris stands out to me as most dominant, so would only recommend to ladies who love iris and vintage feel. I don't get any warmth or cuddles from this one at all.

An antique vintage scent, feminine, womanly, sooo deep,,, soo sweet, really heavy! i don't mind smelling it on people around me but i can't bear it on me!

The top is a souring and bitter green note which gave me a nauseous feeling and the dry down is a very old powdery scent.

Francois Rance dedicated this perfume to the woman most loved by Napoleon - his wife Empress Josephine. "That recreation of the real fragrance Josephine, which has claimed more than two hundred years. Though, this recreation in fact captivates the smell of the modern lady who likes to use floral and sweet fragrances in their daily routine life. Some ingredients of the terrific Rancé Josephine are ylang ̧ jasmine floras. Others are hyacinth, musk and violet leaves." "Joséphine for women has been released in its original formula. The notes are May rose, hawthorn, jasmine, ylang ylang, hyacinth, iris, blackcurrant, white peach, cloves, galbanum, violet leaves, ebony, sandalwood, white musk, Bourbon vanilla and ambergris." "The house eventually devoted all its efforts to making perfume and soon became the court favorite of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who commissioned two special and exclusive fragrances for himself and Empress Joséphine to wear. The oils for these fragrances languished in the storehouse of the firm after the end of Napoleon’s reign, but a few years ago the current owner rediscovered them and the decision was made to release them, thus making available for the first time two perfumes worn only by the Emperor and his Empress; no one else was allowed to experience them back in the day. This was a wonderful gift to perfume lovers everywhere from a company that is still owned by the original family." From internet sources, Donna Hathaway "When they (Rance 1795) launched their most important creation in 200 years, they chose The Perfume House over every other location in the world to launch the fragrances named Le Vanquer Napoleon and Josephine. Before his coronation in 1804, Napoleon approached master perfumer Francois Rance and commissioned him to make two scents, one for himself and one for Josephine. The perfumes were designed so that if Napoleon and Josephine were in the same room, her scent would dominate, but if the two came together, the two perfumes would merge to create a whole new unique fragrance. Napoleon made a rule for the perfume to not be released for 200 years after the coronation. In 2004 the house of Rance launched these two perfumes." The Perfume House

Josephine opens overly dusty to me, the galbanum making it a serious vintage classic archetype, all cold and classy, Rapidly she changes into a very powdery floral, with prominent hyacinth, violet leaf, lots of iris (and I am an iris lover!) The coldness becomes warmer in a slightly Oriental manner-amber and a hint of sandalwood providing a base that makes this meld with the skin more than a classic garden/cut bouquet-type floral. The jasmine and ylang ylang are what gives a gentle roundness and sweetness. This isn't sweet, but it also isn't dry by any means. An untrained nose might just smell baby powder on the sweeter side, with an added dimension of floweriness. I never used to be into any part of the violet plant, hyacinth, or even the sweet richness of ylang ylang. Still not a fan of hyacinth, definitely not into galbanum, but working on it...This year I will turn 31, and I have been really into perfumes maybe 12 years now, so sometimes tastes change with maturity. Sometimes something as simple as being able to better identify notes and genres makes sampling more pleasurable. I wrote this off sampling years ago as not for me, but I might actually wear this out sometime now. Sometimes I just love the comforting scent of a great powdery perfume. If you want to talk powder, feel free to message me! Josephine is lovely, worth a try.

Is this supposed to be a reconstructed formula from two centuries ago? Well, in some ways, Rancé 1795 JOSEPHINE seems very similar to Lalique FLORA BELLA, which was also coincidentally launched in 2005. I find the Rancé somewhat fruitier and tarter, although it is still not very sweet. There is definitely a similar texture to the eccentric floral bouquet here, and I imagine that this composition could be more appealing to those who find the Lalique too floral. I myself find JOSEPHINE a bit sour around the edges, so it may not be working well on my skin. The somewhat woody drydown of JOSEPHINE harks back again to Donna Karan GOLD (which I consider to be a close neighbor in some ways to FLORA BELLA), with an ever-so-slight feeling of pencil shavings lying underneath everything at the bottom. The overall composition is quite complex, and for that reason it is bound to play out very differently to different noses, given variable sensitivities to all of the various components present. There is an interesting array of flowers here, including hawthorne, and together they produce a sort of emergent floral note which doesn't really smell specifically like any of its constituent parts. Definitely worth a sniff, but also a try before you buy.

Convoluted floral opening. If shalimar is sitting in an old cafe with Lemon cake wafting all over then this dry down is like being in the storage closet thats recently been renovated in the back of this bakery, adorned with all the cardboard boxes filled with styrofoam, paper cups/napkins and cleaning products and you get hit with the cardboard scent, fresh paper and citrus but you eye the boxes of lemom scented spray cleaner and immediately recognize this is a different lemon hitting your nose but no you think as you take another whiff... that sweet cake is still filling the building but even if you close your eyes shutting out the visual stimulus of all the bottles of cleaning products that soapy scent is new and just won’t go away so wtf... is it the cake or the cleaning product ... you realize it’s both and are just happy to be able to take in the world this way. Not a diss at all- I do love the fresh smell of cardboard. This would be sexy on a guy.

It's sad Josephine doesn't match with my skin chemistry. It's the brand best seller, but after I spray on, my skin EATs up most of the aroma. The perfume is on the skin, I just can't smell it on my left inner elbow, I have Pauline on my right inner elbow. Pauline develops well with my skin, the sweet aroma of violet grow stronger, while Josephine turns sour, then turns into soapy, then vanilla, then peppermint, like the aroma of my German medical toothpaste. I have to let go Josephine and choose Pauline. Update: It's like a high quality girly perfume smells very similiar to Lancome Miracle. Way better perfume cause made from good quality natural ingresients and no artificial color.

Upon first spritz of Josephine I felt the cloves and ylang-ylang to be quite bold, and there's something a bit sour. I do have to say that the personality of Josephine really does change in the dry-down. I was pleased with the way this fragrance becomes so soft and feminine. I'm just not sure this fragrance is for me since I dislike the opening, and I'm too impatient for it to settle into that subtle powdery whisper.

Violet leaf! This is probably what makes this slightly boozy, fruity-floral bearable to me! The violet leaf gives it a nice green flavor, but definitely there's flowers, like jasmine and fruit like tart peaches. The notes above say "sandalwood" is in there, but I'm not really feeling the woody aspect of this one. Feminine, but is it really something Napoleon's lover would have worn?

It's very noble and femine perfume. No noisy, but subtle, however, about very expressive, aristocratic personalities. It enclosing me wonderful, very subtle poudre. This is womanly elixir. I love it and I respect; what, this is perfume of Napoleon's wife...

Agree on Lancôme Miracle vibe, top pyramid flowers are imitating Miracle’s litchi sweetness. I find some similarities with Trusardi My Name lilac + vanille combo too. Elegant, feminine, mature yet playful. Fresh and powdery floral.

I have a testing sample giving by a perfume salson gathering. When I tested on paper, it smells so fresh, but on my skin it so violet. Very wormen classy, sillage is Ok, on my skin its last like forever.

Have to admit this is one weir perfume. When spray and smell in the air or smell on the tester strip, it's wonderful like Lancome Miracle. But when smell on my skin, it's a little bit sour.

Guerlain Champs Elysees dupe. I'm surprised this doesn't have the almond note because this is a near dupe of Guerlain's 1996 masterpiece.

For me it is The best of this brand . Smells like floral body lotion .