Elie Saab
Elie Saab
79 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Mandarin oil practically snaps against your skin with bright, almost tart clarity, immediately backed by the green-white pepperiness of orange blossom. The fig arrives almost simultaneously, adding a dusty, slightly herbaceous sweetness that prevents the citrus from feeling one-dimensional. Within minutes, you're standing in an orchard that's been lightly misted—fresh, slightly resinous, disarmingly clean.
The citrus gradually fades into soft focus as frangipani and jasmine fully bloom. Frangipani dominates here with its creamy, almost buttery floral character, whilst jasmine adds a greener, more powdery edge that keeps the composition from turning dessert-like. The aquatic accord becomes more noticeable now, lending an almost skin-like translucency that makes the florals feel less heavy than they might otherwise be.
The amber emerges with quiet intensity, offering a subtle warmth and faint vanillic sweetness, whilst cedarwood provides a dry, slightly resinous base note. The florals persist but in significantly muted form, reduced to something closer to skin scent. What remains is essentially honeyed wood touched with the merest suggestion of frangipani's creamy undertones—intimate, barely-there, and already fading.
Elie Saab's Resort Collection feels less like a fragrance and more like capturing the precise moment when citrus groves meet humid tropical gardens. Francis Kurkdjian constructs something deceptively simple: he's taken the brightness of mandarin and the honeyed greenness of orange blossom, then allowed frangipani to bloom beneath them with an almost indecent sensuality. The fig adds a fig-leaf earthiness that prevents this from becoming purely floral pastiche—it grounds the composition, lending a vaguely edible quality that makes you want to lean closer to verify whether you're actually smelling skin or fruit.
What's immediately striking is how the fruity and floral accords (sitting at 100% and 88% respectively) don't clash. Instead, the mandarin's natural sweetness becomes a bridge between the citrus opening and the creamy, almost coconut-tinged frangipani that dominates the heart. There's an aquatic quality threading through everything—that 52% accord manifests as a cool, almost ozonic dampness, as though the flowers have just been rinsed with mineral water. The amber and cedarwood base peek through rather than anchor; they're whispers of warmth rather than declarations.
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Elizabeth Taylor
3.7/5 (110)