Ungaro (original)
Ungaro (1977)

Even though it's an orange flower bouquet this reminds me of those garish roses from the 80's, all thorns and luminous reds.
On the other hand, it's got the fruity woods of Antaeus in the basement.
Pretty good whichever way you look at it.

This review is for the original EdP in the blue bottle with green cap. (Ungaro came out in 1977 and my bottle says Ungaro 1990.) My experience is 100% at odds with everyone else, which makes me wonder if they are actually reviewing the reformulated versions.

First of all, I get no fruit, brightness, brevity. Quite the opposite.

On me, this is a giant 80s symphonic floral musky Oriental with huge woody notes that quickly overtake and blend with the floral top. It then softens, grows spicy and animalic musky, but purrs and clings sexily to skin into the next day.

(I've had several of the blue & green bottles over the years and they are all the same on me. The minis I've tried seem lighter, perhaps lacking the heavy musks, but follow the same general notes and development).

Ungaro is a grand curvy sexy imperious diva with giant cleavage dripping with jewels swanning about the palace of Versailles with the boudoir on her mind. It is extremely well-blended so it's hard for me to pick out individual notes, except to say that it's musky and animalic and heavy and probably contains sandalwood. There is an oily, almost viscous quality to it that makes me wonder if it contains ambergris or animal musks (or very good aromachemicals that mimic these. Were nitromusks outlawed by 1990?) There is also spice. I don't like overly sweet perfumes so this straddles the perfect line for me between sweet, woods, floral, spice and musk. It is a huge perfume. It is a commitment. Its sexy dirty over-the-top vibe demands that attention be paid. Sometimes I feel it stops just short of being cloying, but then I'm whisked away by its woods and resins and all is well again. At times it reminds me of the 80s love child of Musc Ravageur & vintage Boucheron parfum. It is firmly in the tradition of big brocaded classic French perfumery which has gone hopelessly out of style, due to both changing dates and restrictions on raw materials. Louis XIV would have loved it. It reminds me quite a bit of Eris Perfumes' (Barbara Herman's niche line) Night Flower, which also has a retro feel and which I also enjoy. I don't reach for Ungaro often, but sometimes when I crave opulent musky sexiness, nothing else will do.

I am sampling this from a 1 ml miniature, which leads me to believe it is the older version, but I could be wrong. What I can say with certainty is that Ungaro is the 80's version of modern day Juicy Couture scents. Fruity, stylish, a little ditzy, but somehow competently composed. If you can imagine vintage Halston (Women's) with a bit more plum you will have the right idea. It's bright but thick and mire-like, like a fragrance made from compote, and the notes are blurry and indistinct, but create a feeling like sunflower crossed with strawberry. I now recognize in this build a great number of fragrances that tried to use this template but fell flat because the modern standard ingredients were not up to snuff. While this stands as a classic and influential fruity floral it isn't really worth the asking price these days if you can still find vintage Nicole Miller or Halston Couture.

Always being in love of powerful fragrances, I imagined this Ungaro to be the classical strong perfume fashionable in the 80s and 90s. But to my surprise the power of the first sniff disappear after few minutes. Not to say it's not nice, the first notes are flowery and fruity. Fruit notes were very different in the 80s, not as sugary, candy and childish as they are today. Fruit was sweet and ripe, deep and sunny as it should be to our tongue. It's a pity this classic notes are not lasting.

This starts off smelling like fruit-flavoured gum. Not terrible, but not what I would have expected. The fruitiness develops through fruit punch and children's birthday party notes (I really don't know how else to describe it), with a faint suggestion of fruity cocktails (the sort with a maraschino cherry), or the more exhuberant iterations of sangria. It becomes less sweet over time, but I cannot shake the image of a large fruit salad with tinned pineapple, maraschino cherries, mandarin orange segments, kiwi slices, starfruit, the whole spashed with not-100%-natural fruit juice.This isn't terrible fragrance, or even a bad one, and I can actually imagine some sort of odd (for me) occasion on which I might be in the mood for wearing it (it would probably be preceded by a bit too much sun during the day, and a bit too much wine during dinner). This seems to be a very uncomplicated fragrance, and would not be inappropriate for a young teenager (although it is not a light fragrance, and should be accompanied by a careful explanation of the difference between pleasant sillage, and rendering people on the other side of piazza insensible).I must just be in a good mood, but for some reason, i don't find it in me to trash this stuff. If you like serious/interesting, AVOID; I would describe this as a cheerful, silly, yet friendly fragrance. I'm a bit puzzled by the fragrance's 'discontinued' status, since it's available in Italy (it may be old stock; today's date, for future refernce, is 22 March 2010).

My Grandmother gave me a miniature of this perfume and I loved it.