Rumba (1988)
by Balenciaga

Notes: mirabelle plum, peach, orange blossom, raspberry, magnolia, tuberose, orchid, gardenia, jasmine, carnation, heliotrope, honey, lily of the valley, amber, oakmoss, vanilla, sandalwood, cedarwood, tonka bean, musk, styrax.

Michael Edwards classifies Rumba as a crisp fruity dry woods (leather) fragrance, but I smell a creamy, lactonic, peachy floral chypre with stylistic affinities to Calyx, Yvresse, and the current incarnation of Baghari. Rumba opens on a high-impact candied bergamot top note, which in fact persists well into the development. Smooth peach lactone and bouquet of sweet white flowers, among which I detect ylang-ylang, jasmine, and a dab of tuberose, soon join the lingering citrus. A hint of coconut in the fruity floral accord lends the composition an understated tropical exoticism.

The plush drydown of sweet amber, vanilla, and musk is naggingly familiar, and it’s only after much head-scratching that it comes to me: in both style and olfactory texture, Rumba resembles Kenzo’s Ça Sent Beau, released in very same year. Coincidence? Zeitgeist? Either way, the two scents’ pyramids have plenty in common: bergamot, orange blossom, tuberose, plum, peach, oakmoss, amber, and musk. While the two converge most obviously in their juxtaposition of fruit and powdery clean musk, a conspicuous patchouli base note leaves Rumba feeling darker, heavier, and somehow more conventional than the relatively buoyant Kenzo.

When viewed in historical perspective, Rumba’s fruit, vanilla, and patchouli prefigure the gaudy berries and patchouli of Mugler’s Angel, which would arrive just a few years later. While by no means the olfactory hurricane that is Angel, Rumba is still strong stuff, with ample projection and several hours’ worth of lasting power. Do I love it? No. Is it worthwhile? Yes, in its somewhat brash manner. But Ça Sent Beau is more nuanced and more interesting, and Baghari has more depth to it, so I’d reach for either of those two before Rumba.

13rd December, 2011.

Wow this stuff is potent! It is now made under the name of Ted Lapidus Rumba. Identical fragrance! Grant tells me it's to do with Coty buying the Balenciagia licence. Interesting!

25th August, 2010.

Rumba is a fruity chypre perfume, very similar to a number of others of the same era; the mid 80s re-release of Worth's Dans La Nuit, Montana, Paco Rabanne's La Nuit, and Ungaro's Diva.

This type of fragrance just doesn't "do it" for me, though that's just me, and nothing against the fragrance itself.

26th March, 2010.

This is what i think Frank Fine from "the nanny" would wear.......



and her mom wearing Giorgio....



god...help...

21st November, 2009.

Good lord this is strong! Incredibly so. This scent was wildly popular in the Middle East in the late 80s and early 90s, and to smell it again reminds me of there. There's no question that this is an original scent. I'd call it an 'incense chypre'. Can't believe it's an Ellena!

22nd September, 2009.

I'm inclined to agree with the nay-sayers on this one. When I read the list of notes I thought for sure that this was something that I would love, however, it was not to be. Fortunately, I had purchased the 4-5 ml mini on ebay one night, so I wasn't out of lots of money. I really wanted to like it so I tried it on a few different occasions, but as someone mentioned earlier, all that keeps coming to mind is the loudness of a scent like Giorgio, even though it doesn't smell like it. Rumba has an over-the-top fruitiness that can become a bit cloying after a while. It would have been nice if that fruitiness had been tempered at some point by the oakmoss, sandalwood and cedarwood, but that never happens on me so the scent just sustains the same cloying fruitiness throughout to the point where I wanted to scrub it off. For sillage, think Giorgio, a little goes a long way.

20th April, 2009.