She's the kind I like to flaunt and take to dinner.

Amouage Jubilation 25

In perfume, everyone is always either lamenting how nothing new is as good as the classics or hunting for the next big thing. I had heard a lot of buzz about Amouage Jubilation 25. Some of it was really good, and some was…not. Even those who loved it warned me: this isn’t for everyone.

So of course I couldn’t help but get some and try it for myself.

The official website has a giant video that takes forever to load and a very pretty story about “a fragrance for a man & woman from the house of Amouage.”

According to Amouage,

This fragrance will appeal to the elegant, enigmatic, and sophisticated woman who lives her life as an art form – evoking the time, place and cultures she inhabits with the mystical allure of amber, musk, vetiver, myrrh, frankincense, and patchouli.

Notes: Tarragon, lemon, ylang ylang, Rock rose, frankincense, davana, labdanum ciste, patchouli, amber, vetiver, musk, myrrh.

Here’s what I got: Immediately, liquorices, incense, wood. Two minutes in, powdery green sweetness. Five minutes in, amber and powder and musk. Maybe a little hint of leather. Ten minutes in I get some cinnamon and sugary business going on with the as a clove and cinnamon scent balance with the amber. Then it gets a little woody again. And on and on. This was out of a 1ml wand sample, too. God only knows what would happen if I sprayed it on.

Amouage Jubilation 25 smelled fancy to me, but it smelled fancy in the way that
Goldschläger is fancy – in a way that goes past necessary into total overkill. Who needs flecks of gold leaf in their Italian cinnamon schnapps? No one. Who needs a perfume with so many strong individual notes? Again I say, no one. It’s beautiful, but totally excessive, and in the end just ends up sort of a hot ambry, wood, powdery muddy mess on me. It’s big in the way that Tauer Perfume L'air du désert marocain is, but in my opinion it forgoes L'air du désert marocain’s distinctiveness in favor of being exclusively fancy, sophisticated, and high-end. And believe it or not, that makes me love it less.

It’s weird, I know. And maybe it’s me. I’ll never have $3000 designer shoes. I’ll never go to a celebrity fundraiser. And I’ll never own a bottle of Amouage Jubilation 25. It’s just too much for me. But I’m sort of okay with that. I’ll get myself a bottle of L'air du désert marocain when I want the world to notice me, and be big and fancy in my own way.

But it was definitely, definitely worth a try.

Amouage Jubilation 25 is a Beauty Encounter, Parfums Raffy, LuckyScent, Harrods, and other places. It’s got a hefty price tag, though, so I’d get your hands on a sample first.

"She can take what I dish out, and that's not easy,
but she knows me through and through,
and she knows just what to do and how to please me.
She's a lady... "
- “She’s a Lady,” Tom Jones

Want more? Try...
~ A review from Angela at Now Smell This!
~ A review from Perfume-Smellin’ Things.
~ A review from Eiderdown Press.
~ A review from Perfume Shrine.
~ A review from Absolute Fragrances.

Images: pretty black shoe designed by Roger Vivier $2,195; bottle image from Amouage.