Reviews of Beyond Paradise (2003)
by Estée Lauder

I'm with ubuandibeme on this one...I think I understand why some call this a masterpiece (the straight-from-the-get-go warmth and complexity), but then there are times when I all I get from it is fabric softener. I'll stick with Beautiful as well...guess I'm just a sucker for a mossy base.

I'm convinced this is one of those fragrances that smells very different depending on the wearer. And it even smells different on this wearer depending on the day. I sense the honeysuckle and jasmine, yet this juice is neither sweet or "wangy" (my word for the unpleasant, funky thing that indoles do on me). I have a very hard time picking out any individual notes, but the overall impression is that of a dry, green floral. Sometimes this starts out on me with a sharpness akin to hairspray, particularly in cooler weather. Fortunately this doesn't present in hot, humid weather and BP also works well in dry heat. I find many of my favorite fragrances too heavy to wear in very hot 90º+ weather, but this one seems made for it and is very enjoyable on those days. I first tried this while in vacation in Florida, loved it, and wore little else for the rest of the trip. However, I absolutely cannot wear this when the temperature is less than 80º. It smells persistenly like hairspray and cat urine!

This is not a stable scent and changes a lot from skin to skin. I have bought it during first marketing rush in 2003. I thought it was magical as all flowers of the world should be in this potion. Hyacinth and honeysuckle are my two favorite flowers They are rarely distinguished in a floral because of their scents being faint in quality;they were even there. I wore it happily for a few months with dozens of compliments from even strangers. Two of my friends liked it so much that bought for themselves. I have gifted mine to a third friend which liked it very much but not bought in respect of me. So i have said goodbye to my love before it became official fragrance of our floor. But none of these three friends of mine enjoyed the scent on themselves as they do on me. Our other office friends who complimented it on me did not even take notice it on them. (God has justice?) Skin chemistry changes a lot. And this can be the only explanation about the negative reviews here. Beyond paradise is a really wonderful floral.

This surprised me because I hated it on the blotter enough not to even try it on my skin the first time some was shoved under my nose in a shop. I must also say that the ridiculous bottle put me off a little too.

Then, after having read the reviews here, I had to try again. I sprayed a generous amount on my skin. The opening felt so-so, but I smiled because it was much softer and a great deal more agreeable than the patchwork cacophony of chemicals I had previously experienced on the blotter. The scent remained almost unchanged for an hour, after which it evolved into "expensive fabric softener". Okay, I thought, this is pleasant, but nothing to write home about. Would appeal to lovers of clean smells.

Two hours in, the fragrance is still very much present, but it has transformed to one of the best florals I have ever experienced. It caresses the senses and comforts. It's gorgeous. I'm going to have to add this to my collection. I don't know whether to curse or thank Basenotes, but I would never have given Beyond Paradise another chance without this site.

A truly beautiful perfume, coming out really well on my skin. And yet I haven´t got a bottle... There is something missing, I can´t explane what... In lack of better words, I say it is missing personality.

It gets a thumbs up from me, because it is really beautiful. I hope I will understand it better one day, and than perhaps I will get a bottle.

Beyond Paradise is a moderately sweet, soft green-tinted floral scent that manages to be extremely amiable without ever descending into banality. According to Estée Lauder, what lies beyond paradise is a grassy alpine meadow brimming with wildflowers and warmed by a June morning’s sunshine.

Except for a brief, astringent galbanum and dry herb opening, Beyond Paradise’s green accord is one of newly mown grass and fresh hay. This greenery is seamlessly wed to a gentle white flower accord that’s so well-blended that this seasoned gardener is hard pressed to distinguish any individual floral notes. The indoles are under strict enough control that the only chink in Beyond Paradise’s clean innocence is a slightly animalic honey note that some passing bee brewed from all of the scent’s fresh nectar. Beyond Paradise is also largely free of conspicuous aldehydes. This lack may have a lot to do with the peculiar abstract clarity of the scent’s floral heart. More than the slightest hint of the trademark Lauder White Linen soap and powder would have made Beyond Paradise insufferably maudlin, so the restraint exercised in their application deserves special complements.

Beyond Paradise is not a thick, plush, heady floral scent in the vein of Fracas or Joy. Nor is it entirely aligned with the weightless, dew drenched spring florals of Diorissimo or En Passant. Instead, Beyond Paradise appears to occupy an elevated and appealing middle ground among today’s floral fragrances.

While Luca Turin may be right about the composition of this blend being "technically tricky", and ultimately a masterpiece in composition...my nose tells me I don't want to smell like Beyond Paradise. No matter the level of difficulty in it's creation, when I sniff this juice it is slightly sharp, soapy, and a bit heavy on the peachy/apricot note. (I can also smell Tommy Girl.) True enough, BP holds it's shape and strength throughout it's entire lifespan, but if a floral symphony is what I desire, I'm more likely to head for Lauder's Beautiful...which is velvety smooth and more pleasing to my nose.

While I'm not a fan of other Lauder fragrances, this one was perfect for the April day it arrived in the mail. To me, it smells like all the soft flowers--apple blossoms, grape hyacinths, tulips--in bloom right now, with water-splashed violets and a whiff of fresh raspberries. I think it would lovely for spring and summer, lovely on a young girl. As fresh as a cotton dress.

I love the smell of honeysuckle. When I was a girl, (when the crust was cooling on earth) hot summer nights were filled with the lovely scent of honeysuckle and roses.It seemed that everyone in my tiny home town had honeysuckle and roses in their yards and both grew wild in fields and woods near my hometown. So I love this scent.One whiff from the bottle and I am 12 and the world is a much more simple and innocent place. The honeysuckle scent is brilliant and true. I can also smell leaves and freshly cut vines. On me the jasmine drydown is soft and a little sweet, but still I love it too. Wonderful fragrance for me. But I can well understand why some people loathe this fragrance. It smells good on me and my mother, but on my sister it reeks of rotting watermelon rind and makes her skin itch where the perfume had been sprayed.

This is my first review here on Basenotes. I just got home from Bloomingdale's, with a nice big bottle of this perfume... and given that it's from Estee Lauder, willingly bought it with no 'free gifts' either (shocking).

This is the most magnificent fragrance I have ever smelled in my life. Until now, my favorite perfumes have consisted of Mitsouki, Caleche, Joy, Shalimar, Chanel #5, mostly older classics, or 'traditional' perfumes. While I own dozens more perfumes (I have contributed quite a few photos to Basenotes perfumes, taken of my personal collection), these have been my favorites to date. Newer scents always seemed to lack something.

The reason I even ventured to try this is because I read Luca Turin's Blogspot, where he had this to say about Beyond Paradise (June 05, 2005), "The fact is that perfumes, like species, usually evolve in incremental steps. When closely related, they can even interbreed to produce rare and splendid hybrids. Estée Lauder's latest, Beyond Paradise, is one such marvel. If it had a coat of arms, it would be a four-generation mosaic of fleur-de-lys. This is the matchmaker's dream come true, a perfect heir to several princely houses of fragrance...
Beyond Paradise begins with the most breathtaking floral chord ever, a hundred close-miked voices singing
in unison. That alone would suffice, but what happens next is even more
remarkable. A great artist at the peak of her powers, Becker has taken the bone
structure from Cristalle, the tempting flesh from Diorella, the flattering hue of J'Adore and the radiance of Tommy Girl, and fused them all into a seraphic being we foolishly thought would never come: the Perfect Floral."

I HAD to smell this work of art...the perfect floral? And having smelled it, I had to own it, at any price (and the price is very reasonable, even at Bloomingdale's).

For the record, I think most Estee Lauder perfumes are terrible, I couldn't even review them, I would have nothing good to say.

When I read these reviews, I was stunned. I have no idea what 'fragrance stores' pass off for Beyond Paradise, but please head for a department store and smell it again.

Luca Turin is right, it is, in fact, "The Perfect Floral", and absolutely breathtaking in balance and nuance. While not everyone might be able to wear it, lucky are those who can. Helen Starkweather

when i sampled this on myself when it first came out, i loved it. i asked to smell it at a fragrance outlet, and the clerk sprayed it on paper and it was the most rancid thing i've ever smelled. i'm new to the world of perfumes, but i figured the paper turned the scent awry? i really think you have to have a certain body chemistry to pull this one off without it being overly sweet.

Top note: Eden mist, jaboticaba berry, orange blossom, blue hyacinth;Middle note :Crepe jasmine, laelia orchid, pink honeysuckle, Japanese mahonia Base note :Natal plum blossom, golden melaleuca, zebrano wood, ambrette seed according to OsMoz.

After staying away from Lauder for YEARS because on me anything from her was too loud and demanding I tried this because it was showing up so often on BN.

And I'm glad I did. First spritz smelled oddly of machine oil (ambrette seed? The most expensive ingredient in the world?) Anway, that quickly dissipated and the honeysuckle took over, quickly followed by the jasmine. After a couple of hours it settled into a warm, unobtrusive (!!) and complicated floral. Guess it's all in the body chemistry.

Never realized it's considered a cheap drugstore scent - guess I'll have to gain weight, acquire some pink and white glitters and head for a disco.

You know, the first time I ever tried this on my skin, it turned into a fruit bowl gone bad, I could only get fake bananas, fake melon, fake you name it. It was sweet but not too cloying, not too densely sweet. It lasted more than I ever wanted it to last, and that was a long time. The sillage was nice, strange but true, and it didn’t give me any headaches or any bad physical reactions, but in the end it was too much for me, it even felt a bit cheap. That was the summer. Later on, and on a cooler climate, I tried it some other times. I still didn’t like it that much but the initial fakeness of it all was subdued and the top notes became better and less sweet, the fake fruits came and went fast and there remained some plastic (I like plastic) notes that had some soapy undertones that were very comfortable (even if I’m not much of a soapy notes fan). It lasted a long time too. In the end, I started to like the fragrance for what it is: something not entirely bad. I’d much rather spray on the male version of this, wich I love. I got a full bottle of this, it’s pretty and makes a good home spray.

I keep spraying this on myself whenever I go into my favourite department store. I go to cheap perfume outlets and enquire about the price of this perfume. Hence, I have never bought it. I think my hesitation comes from the overly powerful jasmin scent in the perfume. Of course, the perfume is way too expensive for my budget. It's not so much that I cannot afford it, but rather that I prefer spending my money on the things that I really like 100%. Beyond Paradise just hasn't seemed to 'get' me at the right time/price. I think my wallet's happy about that though!

I don't want people to think I only write positive reviews. The truth is, I don't write reviews for perfumes that I don't like. I have no time for that.
Lest you think I save my rejection for the rare, terrible perfume, consider this--my review of a wildly popular perfume sold in every department store in America. Somebody must like this, but it's not me.
Beyond Paradise was bright jasmine and honeysuckle and a multitude of piercingly sweet florals. Not good.

Back in 1995, I thought Pleasures was the limit. But this one beats everythig! Horrible. Vulgar. Perfectly suitable for a fat suburb gal all dolled up in pink and white glitters ready for a local disco party.

This was my second perfume bottle (except for drugstore scents), from before I became a complete scent junkie hunting scents on the internet. Back then, I wanted to wear perfumes but had a difficulty finding anything I liked in the local department stores.
This one ended up on my wishlist because it smelled like a true jasmine single note to me. I had no idea of the concept or the exotic ingredients in it. Today, when my taste has evolved away from florals and feminine scents in general, I get other notes than jasmine out of it. In the beginning I find it a bit too green, sharp, cool and perfumey. Then it dries down to pretty much a single note jasmine, but I don't find it as true and lush as I used to and I never wear it anymore.

the smell is nice, but not as complex or catching as i would have liked. it just smells like i rubbed cinnamon on me, and while cinnamon is nice, i wish there were more to it. gorgeous bottle, though.

Well, I happen to really like honeysuckle and jasmine, so this fragrance really works for me. It develops beautifully on me, and the honeysuckle note that I like so much lasts pretty much throughout.

I used to wear a lot of Estee Lauder, particularly White Linen (but also Estee and Beautiful), but I got out of the habit and when I went back, I found them to be a bit too heavy and not really to my taste any more for whatever reason. This fragrance, however, has brought me back into Estee's loving arms again. I do like this one (and I admit that I even quite like the bottle which is, yes, corny and a bit silly, but why do perfume bottles have to be serious, anyway?)

Let me start by saying, I love most Estee Lauder products. I really wanted to like Beyond Paradise. I have tried it a couple times, but I just cannot make myself like it.My husband told me he thought it smelled like a hotel swimming pool. It has such a strong honeysuckle note & another note (I just can't place it) that just sticks in my nostrils for hours. YUCK!

Make sure you sample a day before buying it. I really think this will turn off most loyal Estee Lauder clientle. Especially if you are a fan of Estee's original more European spicy & sophisicated scents.

Jabuticaba fruit? Natal plum blossom? Mahonia japonica? Golden melaleauca bark? No, I don't know what these are either, but in spite of this fragrance's almost too-clinical-to-be-tropical inclinations and origins, I like it. Unlike so many bursting-with-life, dripping-with-dew scents that really just smell like, well, floral perfumes, I think Beyond Paradise actually succeeds in going above and - yes, beyond - the usual parameters of simulated nature. For an Estee Lauder fragrance, it has a multi-dimensional character that no fragrance from that particular company had ever before achieved. Much less cloying, much more living. Comapre this to THE Lauder floral of the previous decade, Pleasures. Beyond Paradise is a vast improvement; I don't exactly hate Pleasures, but it's rather dull at the end of the day. I did detest the TV commercials for Beyond Paradise, the ones with Carolyn Murphy - in fact, they made me NOT want to buy Beyond Paradise, as something about Murphy's legs and dress really bothered me -but I ended up caving. This is a favorite scent to wear when I go to visit Florida during the winter; it seems, somehow, made exactly for that type of occasion.

Admittedly, the bottle is ridiculous. Ditto for the ad campaign. And it is extremely floral, intense and some might say cloying. I happen to like it, but I can see why others wouldn't. Don't think of Renuzit while you're smelling it.

A sweet candy jasmine, this fragrance cannot help its own soapiness. Overly astringent as the effervescent Alka-Seltzer/soap smell becomes tinged with a minty aftershave aura. Dries down to a pleasant innocuous floral. Bottle looks like sand bottle art, very 1980's rainbow suspenders homage.

Yet another horrid fragrance from Estee Lauder. irretating old and too floral. The bottle is eyecatching. Dont let it be just keep walking past & try something else.