Artistique Ambre Ardent
Avon (2020)

I get fruity floral overtones with woody amber beneath. Not screamy, but powdery and kind of loud. It is a warm amber but the whole is a very perfume-y composition. After about an hour, it’s more like a piece of sun-warmed quality wood furniture, maybe made of sandalwood. It's much better here, but it's still more perfume than I love in an amber. That being said, it's pretty good for Avon and the bottle is a wonderful, heavily built stylish thing that screams quality, despite the pedestrian but wearable juice inside.

Avon has always kept an eye on trends, and the Artistique Parfumiers series seems to be their way of playing in the Malle-style niche sandbox, complete with perfumer names on the bottles. Flores-Roux is one of my favorite working perfumers, so I was curious as to what he might cook up for Avon.

Here, he creates a fruity, creamy amber built around a Datura accord with what strikes me as a kind of seductive, slightly salivic "warm skin" feeling lurking in the base. The fruity tones are syrupy and synthetic feeling, but I dig the creamy undertone that emerges as the fruitiness dissipates. The mid and base remind me slightly of elements in Anima Dulcis and Nanban (also by Flores-Roux), likely because they all rely on similar amber accords.

Conceptually, it ain't bad, but it feels hamstrung by budget. It's a fairly weak performer, too.