So then ... Clinique (essentially Lauder) rips off Lancôme nowhere near as stylishly (just compare the bottle of L'Autre Ôud to this one), and serves up yet one more rendition of an Arabic Rose a la Wood Mystique, Perfume Calligraphy, Velvet Rose & Oud (yes, Lauder owns Jo Malone) and Sahara Noir (yes, they own Tom Ford too!!). Each are subtly tweaked to make them appear new and different ... but at the heart, I'd hazard a guess that these fragrances are all out of the same catalogue.
The rub here is that I cannot call any of these fragrances bad ... they aren't ... just unnecessary! What drives me, a total Rose addict insane, is that if one is to call a fragrance 'Beyond Rose', then imagine the possibilities that could actually exist! If I, certifiably Rose mad as I am, can find never-ending Rose heaven in something as inexpensive and simple as Perfumer's Workshop Tea Rose ... then BEYOND Rose should literally have had my nostrils a-twitter ... which it didn't,
Granted, this is a nice fragrance that I have smelled in many incarnations ... amber-ish, sweet but not overly so and definitely Rosy, straddling the gender line with a woody and slightly metallic dry down that is so reminiscent of a multitude of oils and middle eastern fragrances that can be had for pennies in comparison to this $100-plus rendition of something the Lauder company has produced before ... seemingly ad nauseum. A little web sleuthing reveals that Harrods sells this fragrance for £110 per 100ml. Come and buy it here in South Africa, where it sells for R 1135 ... or roughly £65 per 100ml ... BONUS!!! I think the powers that be realised that no-one would spend nearly double on this here ... it probably won't be around for long in my neck of the woods either ... not in the current economic climate. A few hundred Rand more gets me a niche bottle of something down here ... I'm certainly not gonna waste it on a Lauder regurgitation!
Now, as I have said, this is not a bad fragrance by any means. In fact I have rather enjoyed wearing the generous test I gave myself this afternoon. Five or six sprays to each forearm have held up generously in the Summer heat, radiating about a foot and drying down fairly well ... if a little metallic. The promotional blurb maintains that Beyond Rose is "an elegant rose with spicy undertones and a tantalizing trail of amber. Aramia's past, present and future meet in a sophisticated fragrance that is both modern and complex. Engineered to blossom over time and linger in your memory" ... mmm-yes ... OK ... who the hell is Aramia?
I really wish some perfumer out there would take up the challenge and truly create a fragrance that is BEYOND ROSE. While this Clinique offering is nice, it certainly is not memorable, sophisticated or complex ... at least not to my nose. The Lauder company continues to disappoint.
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