Ylang 49 Le Labo 2013 Eau de Parfum

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7.3 / 10 69 Ratings

Ylang 49 (Eau de Parfum) is a perfume by Le Labo for women and men and was released in 2013. The scent is floral-chypre. The longevity is above-average. It is being marketed by Estēe Lauder Companies.

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Fragrance Notes

Ylang-ylang

Gardenia

Patchouli

Oakmoss

Vetiver

Benzoin

Sandalwood

Perfumers

Frank Voelkl, Firmenich

Ratings

Scent

7.369 Ratings

Longevity

8.355 Ratings

Sillage

7.759 Ratings

Bottle

7.656 Ratings

Value for money

6.311 Ratings

Submitted by MiaTrost, last update on 22.09.2022.

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Reviews

3 in-depth fragrance descriptions

02/13/2015

LicoriceRain
57 Reviews

LicoriceRain

1

If Ylang 49 were a color, it would be fluorescent lavender!

The initial blast is very bright, and reminds me of Plum Japonais (Tom Ford) and Pomegranate Noir (Jo Malone). If Ylang 49 were a color, it would be fluorescent lavender! It opens very feminine, probably due to that gardenia, but eventually gets smokier, and might be able to pass as unisex. Overall, Ylang 49 is bright and distinctive. But after wearing it awhile, all I smell is the gardenia! And, sadly, this prominent gardenia note is the reason I can only “like” this and not love it.

09/17/2013

7.5
Bottle 10
Sillage 7.5
Longevity 9
Scent

Drseid
818 Reviews

Drseid

6

My New Favorite From Le Labo...

Ylang 49 opens immediately with the fragrance's primary accord consisting of a very strong, somewhat banana-like ylang-ylang yellow floral note balanced with gardenia white floral support. The early heart adds a soapy undertone to the balanced florals with the ylang-ylang growing in intensity as the fragrance progression remains quite linear. During the late dry-down the balanced florals remain though slightly diminished, as a touch of green oakmoss sharpened by woody vetiver from the base adds late support. Projection is excellent to outstanding and longevity is excellent at over 12 hours on skin.

Ylang 49 is billed by some as a floral chypre, and I guess one could stick with that classification if they so desire. That said, I think it a more floral driven soapy composition with some chypre aspects. Even though I may not feel it is a floral chypre in the strictest sense, there is no doubt in my mind that the composition is a major success and smells absolutely fabulous. The first thing I noticed is just how successfully balanced the yellow and white florals are. Normally white florals are difficult for me to wear, but the gardenia is kept well enough in check by the stronger ylang-ylang yellow florals to make the composition more unisex and easy to wear. Also worthy of mention is the soapy undertone is very high quality, deftly avoiding the "cheap shampoo" effect found in so many unsuccessful compositions of price points high and low while adding additional balance to the florals. Finally late in the dry-down the oakmoss and woody vetiver are revealed, gently grounding the composition while providing the mild chypre-like effect. The bottom line is the $240 per 100ml bottle Ylang 49 may develop in a rather minimalist linear way and is not a true floral chypre in my opinion, but it much more importantly succeeds big time in smelling exceptional with outstanding performance, earning a very strong 4 to 4.5 stars out of 5 rating. Ylang 49 is very highly recommended to all and is one of the best new releases I have sniffed this year.

08/07/2013

jtd
484 Reviews

jtd

Helpful Review 7

chypre?

Le Labo, in their ongoing conflation of ingredient lists and titles, have made a great contribution to the reinvention of the chypre. It's easy to misunderstand the chypre, focussing on the surface or its list of ingredients (bergamot, oakmoss, labdanum) rather than its complexity and balanced tension.

Trying to create a new chypre by replacing banned ingredients with less oppressive ones that smell the same is a strategy that aromachemical producers would love to employ. They would love to create the new captive molecule that re-creates all the beauty of oakmoss without any of its drawbacks. Le Labo take a more interesting approach. Ylang 49 doesn't attempt to fill in the missing pieces of the original formula. It tinkers with the dynamic qualities of a chypre and recreates the sensibility with different constituent parts. It has an aggressive opening on par with the haughty start of a stark chypre. It subverts the middle-notes a bit. A tropical twist, a sort of ylang/gardenia note, allows humid florals to coexist with a dry woodiness that eventually winds up a cigarette-voiced basenote on the patchouli/benzoin axis. Ylang 49 retains the scratchy, purring quality of a floral chypre and keeps all the peculiarities and unresolved tensions I associate with a floral chypre.

The floral chypre informed classical perfumery's working proposition that flowers are equally fetching and ferocious. Historically, beginning somewhere in the late 1980s, the credo of the fruity floral crushed floral complexity in a stampede. This credo holds that flowers should merely be simple, loud and match the sickly punch of fruity half of the fru-flo. Ylang 49, chypre or not, reminds us of the power of the flower.