Beautiful (1985)
by Estée Lauder

Top notes: Mandarin, rose, tuberose, marigold, lily
Middle notes: Floral, ylang-ylang, jasmine, orange flower
Base notes: Vetiver, sandalwood

Estee Lauder's Beautiful is an iconic modern classic, in the same way as is Princess Diana's Wedding Dress. Enormous. Formal. Impressive. Luxe. Overdone. Not Sexy. Hard to Wear. Aloof. Regal. And did I mention 80's? This lady is loud and proud, with monster sillage a la Chanel Coco. It comes as no surprise that EL has marketed this for decades as a bridal fragrance.
Beautiful has about every heady floral note going, from lily to ylang ylang to marigold, and vetiver in the base, for added formality.This fragrance is a hybrid of a floral/green/chypre. While I think I would have hard time wearing it, I do like it. It feels like a spring wedding to me, but a wedding of a *certain* type.
If you plan on gathering 300 or more of your closest friends and relations in a formal sunny room, and are wearing a huge silk and tulle poof dress, and you need your fragrance to project "Beautiful" to the very last row, then this may very well be your wedding fragrance. A big scent for a big day.
:)

21st January, 2012.

One of the great fragrances for sophisticated ladies around the world, one of the favourite of my beloved aunt, my mum's sister, a great connoisseur of fragrances. Joyful but classy and respectful with a moderate synthetic trail. The unapologetic and slightly vintage-exotic trait of the light smell, that plays now to me as a reminiscence of the old era of great classics, is produced essentially by the combination of a bouquet mastered by  an heady rose and vintage muguet, with an old-school  structuring bergamot, a slightly stuffy mandarine-orange accord, the exotic touch of ylang-ylang and with the rooty elements (vetiver and may be a touch of patchouli) with their charge of autority and enigma. This extremely interweaved combination of elements is diluted on a chypre base made of powdery woods, amber and musk. The fruitiness of the scent  (nothing brewing or dense, just something consistent in the general powder) is created by the union of mandarine and ylang-ylang that on the side of orange flower and balsams impress  a more deep and mellow taste to an otherwise too lightweight floral aroma. The rose is emerging at the beginning before disappering in a mess of jumbled flowers. The smell is extremely sophisticated and is still a good seller from the famous creator Sophia Grojsman, the nose of the renowned Paris YSL. With reference to the  comparition (Off-Scenter talked about it) between the two Grojsman's famous rosey and finally powdery concoctions we must say that the two fragrances are different cause the initial combination of citrus, rose, geranium, violet and aldehydes in Paris makes the smell angular, cristalline, a bit laundry, fresh, anisy and  herbal with a restrained kind of mildness while Beautiful has since the beginning a softer fruity-floral approach that fades gradually in a cloud of powdery and vanillic musk. Beautiful is more joyful, sweet and clear, Paris is like a more algid, overcasted precious piece of crystal. Beautiful is a playful, soft, powdery floral-chypre that deserves attention and admiration for its romanticism(rose, muguet), versatility(orange flower), joy and sophisticated femininity(jasmine-tuberose).

1st December, 2011. (Last Edited: 13rd December, 2011.)

I have a friend who wears this and its aroma is heavenly. I smell the most elegant and refined pastry shop imaginable. I have a yen for dessert when I get a whiff of this. Deliciously feminine!

30th July, 2011.

A soapy floral featuring rose, orange, and powder. This smells too clean for me. It has that "just stepped out of the shower" aroma of soaped skin. I don't find it offensive, but it is no rightt for me. I associate this aroma with some lipsticks, which I think smell nice as I put them on, but I wouldn't want to smell like that all day.

2nd June, 2011.

Beautiful is one of Sophia Grojsman’s first and most successful outings on a powder, fruit, and rose-lined path she would follow for years with scents like Trésor, Kashâya, Yvresse, and 100% Love. It is a more staid and conventional composition than most of its successors, but all the more wearable and timeless for it.

Grojsman did the enormous (and enormously successful,) rose chypre Paris for Yves Saint Laurent not long before Beautiful, and a comparison between these twins is instructive. Both are very potent and both rely on woods and mossy base notes to balance intensely sweet fruit, powdery ambers, and heady rose accords. While not necessarily any quieter than Paris, Beautiful exhibits much softer contours, leaving it at once less flamboyant and more comfortable. It is the sweeter, brighter, and more congenial sister to the more glamorous, but aloof Paris. Beautiful is also predecessor to Lauder’s own later rose chypre Knowing, whose relative darkness and comparatively convoluted structure more closely approximate Paris in mood, if not in content.

Beautiful opens on a smiling accord of mandarin and bergamot that immediately establish a sweet, fruity context for the rose that follows. The rose rolls in on a wave of the powdery vanillic amber that would soon become a Grojsman trademark. The scent’s fruity quality meanwhile persists in the form of lactones and jammy ylang-ylang even as the citrus notes retreat. The amber and rose carry through into the drydown, supported by relatively restrained moss and woods. The result is perhaps more plain than either Paris or Knowing, but I feel it has aged better than either. Beautiful may be “old-fashioned,” but it never feels like wearing costume.

2nd May, 2011. (Last Edited: 3rd May, 2011.)

This is possibly one of Estee Lauder's best fragrances. I can see why this is such a popular choice for a bride on her wedding day and unlike most Estee Lauder fragrances, the synthetic notes in this are not as strong.

Mature? Yes, it most definitely requires maturity, sophistication and class to pull this one off. Old lady scent? Certainly not. Although this may smell like your typical 80's floral, there is something about it that never fails in gaining attention and compliments, especially from men.

This is a soft and romantic fragrance with fantastic lasting strength. One spray goes a very long way in regards to wearing this.

26th April, 2011.