Estée Lauder
Estée Lauder
4.2k votes
Best for
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
That lychee hits immediately—cool, translucent, genuinely fruity with a rose-like quality already embedded in it. The mandarin adds a fizzy brightness whilst mimosa dusts everything with its peculiar talc-and-honey softness, creating an opening that's both dewy and oddly powdered.
The white florals proper emerge after twenty minutes, with gardenia's creamy richness taking centre stage alongside a rose that's full-petalled and slightly soapy. Orange blossom weaves through with its characteristic waxiness, adding subtle indolic depth, whilst peony keeps everything airy enough to breathe—it's dense but not oppressive.
What remains is a soft, musky sweetness with vanilla's rounded warmth and just enough woody amber to prevent it becoming purely gourmand. The powder accord intensifies here, settling into that classic Lauder skin-scent territory—intimate, slightly retro, unmistakably feminine in a way that feels deliberate rather than accidental.
Beautiful Belle is Estée Lauder's unabashed love letter to the rose-lychee pairing that's defined modern feminine florals, though here it's executed with a particularly plush, almost old-fashioned opulence. Yann Vasnier opens with lychee that's genuinely juicy rather than that synthetic sweet-shop fakery you often encounter, its tropical wetness colliding with mandarin's bitter-bright oil and mimosa's curious powdery-honey quality. This creates an odd tension—something simultaneously fresh and retro—that carries through the entire composition. The heart is where Beautiful Belle reveals its true character: a gardenia-rose-orange blossom trio that should feel dated but instead feels deliberately nostalgic, like discovering your grandmother's pristine powder compact. The rose is full-bodied and slightly soapy in that distinctly Lauder way, whilst the orange blossom adds an indolic warmth that prevents things from becoming too prim. Peony contributes a watercolour-like transparency that keeps all this richness from suffocating you.
The base settles into a skin-like musk-vanilla embrace with just enough woody dryness to anchor what could otherwise float away entirely. It's powdery without being geriatric, sweet without being cloying. This is for the woman who isn't afraid of a proper perfume—someone who still thinks fragrance should announce itself rather than whisper. It's office-appropriate if your office still believes in elegance, date-night suitable if you're channelling Grace Kelly rather than a Hadid. Not groundbreaking, certainly, but executed with the kind of confident femininity that feels increasingly rare.
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4.1/5 (38.0k)