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ygkedjxrnz – :
Another beautiful scent from JoAnne, this one has a combination of notes that seems different from anything I’ve experienced before. The first few times I tried it I was left bewildered as I tried to explain what I was smelling.
The herbs smell fresh, bright and cool, the spices are rich, deep and warm. (Somehow the two seem to combine to create a note which could almost be related to anise). Then it’s cool again, and warm again and, while the herbs and spices are dancing around each other, the flowers are settled nicely, balancing it all. (Other users have noticed the jasmine as one of the last notes they smell, however on my skin, it is the most dominant of the flowers, supported by the rose.) As it dries down,the sandalwood becomes more dominant but the rose and spice is always there, to some degree, to balance it. At the end of its life (which took about seven hours), it was a sweet, faintly floral skin scent with only the vaguest whisper of cinnamon.
In the Sponsored Advent Calendar it was paired with the theme of a Masquerade and that is exactly what it feels like. It’s somehow exciting, shocking, comforting, known and unexpected, all at the same time. It’s a fragrance that has a surprise around every corner and they are all good ones.
s.edorov2011 – :
It is a bit eerie to be writing the very first Fragrantica review of a perfume, when the perfume both (1) has been around for several years, and (2) evokes a reaction that can be summed up in three words: “What a beauty!” How can I be the first? How can all this be true? Eerie.
I have been sampling sandalwoods, and noticed on the JB website that “Contessa” was said to contain “vintage Mysore Sandalwood” [sic]. So I got a sample, albeit everything about “Contessa’s” marketing seemed to dissuade a purchase by anyone other than a member of the tribe of Eve.
I was very pleasantly surprised to discover a distinctive floriental, composed of obviously high-quality ingredients, in which genuine Mysore sandalwood is used, in company with vanilla, skillfully to tie the other ingredients together. “Contessa” begins with a hesperidic opening—which in general have come to bore me—but here it is clear and wonderful, due I suspect to the sheer quality of the ingredients. It then segues into an herbal/spicy phase with interesting and unexpected floral high notes, in which it reminds me a lot of something from the Amouage line, lasting for several hours. In the drydown, floral notes once again re-emerge into prominence, surprisingly, above the sandalwood/vanilla base. “Contessa,” to be brief, is an unalloyed delight from beginning to end.
“Contessa” is one of those perfumes in which you first have to get past the marketing, and the perfume itself turns out to be wonderful. I had to overcome the statement that “Contessa” was “dedicated to a select few French women,” the image that “Contessa knows her place,” and the admonition that it is “for sensuous women.”
I would describe the perfume, on the other hand, as a distinctive unisex floriental that people who like the Amouage line, only done with a California vibe, should try. A guy either has to have a really secure sense of his sexuality, or a really strong sense of disdain for other people’s opinions of the gender-appropriateness of particular perfumes (with me, it’s the latter), in order to surmount the various marketing barriers that unnecessarily exist here. I would also rename it “Guermantes,” to allow for the new gender-inclusive marketing. The name “Contessa” evokes a certain overweight TV-cooking-show hostess.
Caveat: contrary to my usual protocol, I am going here on a single sample; however, in view of the lack of other reviews of a really nice perfume that deserves a much wider audience, I decided to speak out.
My score: 8/10