Blonde
Versace (1995)

I love this quote by Nathalie Feisthauer about Blonde:

“I was in Miami to visit Donatella. Madonna was there and she was the one behind the choice of tuberose as the main note. She was always with Donatella and smelling and giving her advice. Madonna was a true tuberose fan. There was no price limit for Blonde. We used real tuberose… The world production was needed for the launch. Nice memories of the 1990s.”

I own Blonde in the extrait. It is phenomenal. At first I thought it was *just* a tuberose and civet bomb, and it certainly is. But here is a perfume wherein the top notes last for an hour, the heart notes for 8, and the base for 24.

This fragrance has a revolving door of accords, each one turned up to 11! Buttery. Camphorous. Clean white floral. Indole. Musk. Civet stank. Seductive benzoin-amber.

Living in Southern California, I am familiar with the heady, enchanting smell of pittosporum (mock orange) in bloom. Blonde is the first time I've experienced this note in perfume, and it is spot on.

A treasure.

At the risk of repeating what just about every other reviewer has said, this really is a dupe of Fracas. And although it's pretty bombastic in its own right, the tuberose here is actually less natural, less full, less buttery, less in-your-face narcotic than that of Fracas. If Madonna's Truth or Dare was Fracas Lite, this is Fracas Medium. There's a little more citrus & orange blossom here, & it's drier, with a faint touch of woods, but the wafts of scent coming off my arm remind me of nothing else but Fracas. And as I already own & love that one, this one is redundant for me. It does bring a smile to my face though, & I'm glad I got to try it. Although there's little development, the projection & longevity are excellent; it's still going ten hours in.

Blonde is an unfortunately discontinued ethereal white floral hyper feminine fragrance with a dominant green tuberose-neroli-gardenia accord, a sensual musky animalic core and a joyful and hyper elegant glamour aura of lingering sophistication. As well as many do around I'm also wondering why this little gem has been discontinued. The comparison with Fracas is in here vociferously quoted and indeed the similarities are plain but I find Blonde less dense-indolic-spicy, less vegetal, more musky, freshly soapy, radiant, modern and volatile. A touch of violet, narcissus and probably ylang-ylang enrich the floral changeful voluptuousness of this complex floral chypre. The aroma is marvellously wearable, deeply sensual (amber, musk, civet) but in to a softer tamed chic way. The dry down is creamy woody, intensely floral and spicy. Powerful sillage and immense temperament. Amazing bottle with the notorious Versace's Medusa.

I've railed against the soliflor before (see Fracas) but I must stand up for Blonde. I blind-bought the extrait and was surprised to find the closest thing to tuberose flower I've ever smelled out of a bottle. It perfectly captures a Philip Glass-like cycle of flower, bitterness, sweetness, rottenness. The extrait holds close to the skin after the first ten minutes, when it performs for the wearer and intimates only.

Blonde Extrait de Parfum.
A big old Roxy Music of a perfume.
This comes in a super-tarty coffret gold and red containing a cute glass bottle,reverse intaglio-ed with the Versace signature Medusa.

The rather delicious fragrance opens with a heady bouquet of flowery delights including narcissus,gardenia,ylang-ylang and much much more.These develop to a slightly musky sharp sophistication which is a little like Van Cleef and Arpels' First's drydown, but much sharper and brassier without the tweed and chrysanthemum which is now so outmoded.
I also detect a slight fruitiness which is common to Versace perfumes and aftershaves, but not the unpleasant Juicy Fruit odours of some modern contenders. This is more subtle and tropical, like a side dish of candied tutti-frutti on a sultry night.

Somehow the whole thing reminds me of going to a plush n'gold cinema on a hot summer's evening with the sun just going down. Or maybe that is just the box.

The extrait de parfum is sophisticated and has an undertow of spellbinding sharp eroticism, albeit pleasantly old-fashioned; as though Veronica Lake rather than Donatella Versace were the inspiration.

I have compared the perfume to Versace's The Dreamer and both have an odd completely indefinable end result after a couple of hours, unlike almost anything else I have ever sampled. Some call it chemical, and indeed both have a synthetic tinge- but this is part of the unusual nature of scents which are highly idiosyncratic and with a panoply of ingredient constituents . Also common to perfumes which contain narcissus, which even in real life always smell like pleasant burnt plastic, (to me,at least, anyway).

This is a fleeting transient effect which makes me sniff and sniff again, as it waxes and wanes like a violet.Unlike most of my preferences, there is no vanilla in this, but a smoky sharpness over flowers pervades after two hours on the skin. It is strong, but not in a horrible tacky blowsy way like the horrid new formulation of Opium. It has a bright quality, slightly dated, but this is good for us ladies who are past 20( or 30 for that matter).

I really do wish this were not discontinued, as it is extremely yummy and intriguing, a little bit showy but in a good way, silk stockings as opposed to fishnets.

stale sour overpoweringly obvious ... not sexy at alll!!! im rather surprised there r people out there who love this,cus i think its probably the worst scent ever!!