Quel Amour!
Goutal (2002)

Powdery rose and peach dry to a tart floral blend with tangerine or citrus elements. Pretty, but too powdery for me.

A potpourri of flowers greets me in the opening burst, with a fruity touch too here and now. A geranium is dominant, with a transient touch of a minty impression leading to the development of a rose note. Initially more rose blossoms, soon the rose leaves become more prominent. a pomegranate appears for a short while, whilst the floral side remains prominent and is enforced by a pleasant peony a bit later on.

Then a another note arises, a lilac that is a bit brighter than usual, and blends in well with the previous mix; it has a lightly ambery undertone accompanying it temporarily. Then the fruits take over: initially I smell restrained mixed berries, and then mainly white peaches, whiffs of pears, and some pallid cherries. Towards the end the florals return into the limelight, where they remain until the end.

I get moderate sillage, good projection, and five hours of longevity on my skin.

A very lovely floral spring scent with a few fruity facets, which is manufactured from high-quality ingredients. Nothing sensational, but crafted very well. The performance is limited though. 3.25/5

What an array of olfactory responses this scent evokes!

Turin smells lilac, but it is not listed. Others smell peony, but it is not listed. One smells mint, but it is not listed.

For a scent primarily described as a fruity floral, and for which there are five fruit notes listed, I get no fruit whatsoever, no sweetness, no candied effect.

My nose detects on my skin a pure rose, initially accompanied by a burst of sharp geranium, which settles down to a distant caraway seed note. From then on it's linear powdery old-fashioned rose!

It's quite lovely as a simple rose soliflore.

Certainly to be sampled before buying, because it seems it is one of the most individualized scents I've come across on Basenotes, being different things to different people.

I'm really glad I decided to buy a sample of this, instead of "blind buying" it. This perfume is really not my style at all! I think I might find it incredibly sexy (or maybe simply just nice) if someone else wore it, but I don't care for it on myself, and I don't think I would ever make it my signature scent!
I also want to say that I really don't agree (at all) with how Turin describes this one in his "A-Z Guide to Perfume." (Actually, I'm finding I disagree with a lot of what he says. I don't think we have the same taste in perfume.) He describes "Quel Amour!" as a "pink fruit cocktail" type of scent, and I have to say, to my nose, it really, really isn't at all. I thought it smelled really sweet and candy-like in the sample tube and on the dropper, but on my skin I really don't get any of the top notes at all! (Which for me is unusual.) I am purely just smelling peony and geranium! Period. I would say this is a floral-floral, NOT a sweet fruity-floral! It actually mostly reminds me of the individual flower-scented perfume oils that The Body Shop used to carry years ago. I used to have their rose perfume oil and it was quite similar to this. In the dry down, "Quel Amour!" also reminds me a lot of "Nirvana" by Elizabeth and James, the white version. Actually, if you want a peony-scented perfume I would probably recommend picking up "Nirvana" (white version) more because it doesn't cost $200!
The other thing I find weird about Turin's review of "Quel Amour!" is that, in other places in his book he kind of says he hates "realistic flower scents" and only really likes abstract floral perfumes. Honestly though, "Quel Amour!" smells exactly like peonies and geraniums that you find growing in a garden! There is nothing remotely "abstract", "modern" or "novel" or "complex" about this fragrance. It's just a very simple feminine flower scent. Really nice for some people, but that kind of thing just isn't me at all!

I can't think of anything positive to say about this perfume - from start to finish I just got sweet and sickly notes like a sugar-laden bag of fruit drops. I tried layering it with 'colder' scents but it just made them smell nasty too. I love other Goutal scents - Songes, Passion, Myrhhe Ardente, Encens Flamboyante, Eau D'Hadrien, but not this one.

A soft whisper of rose is listed on the packaging blurb but it's much more than that, this is a variation on Ce Soir Ou Jamais, a less jammy version. I own both.
Quel Amour opens with a fizzy sherbet lolly, which I hate. At this point I may as well be wearing any generic fruity floral.
Thank goodness that dissipates quite quickly and the lovely tendrils of scent linger on. There's enough tartness to keep it interesting, a touch of incense as the dry down commences and average projection. The dry down is actually lovely and is rather ageless. I can see it equally on a younger or more mature (ahem, that's me) woman. It lingers on scarves in something of a Hermes style; I think that means a lot, it's sylish, there you have it. Conversely, this fragrance would be lovely, emanating off your skin on a warm summers day; you're wearing jeans and a tee and picking fruit and everything is kissable and edible. Oh, to be in love.