Samsara (1989)
by Guerlain

I walked into a dusty old perfume store a few months back and spotted a vintage bottle of Samsara. My first thought: "well HELLO there!" This is now in the top 3 fragrances that I own, and I am never disappointed!To be quite frank, I only appreciate the standard Guerlains more as time goes by; the more I learn about the art of perfumery, the more beautiful they become. Here's looking at you Shalimar!

13rd December, 2011.

I love orientals and Samsara is no exception. It is fast becoming my favorite for Winter and Fall. I have the 1989 formulation which I am just now getting around to wearing so I get the real sandalwood and vanilla. I think bebang romanticizes this scent perfectly. I also share Lady Dragon Fly's comments about its connection to Shalimar. I adore vintage Shalimar.

I have no idea what the reformulation smells like. jtd may very well be correct about the new formulation. I will have to go to my local department store and give the new one a try.

For the moment, Samsara is my go to fragrance.

27th November, 2011.

I have been looking for years for my signature fragrance. It was a long, arduous search - but now, at the age of 39...I know this is THE ONE. I have purchased this scent several times in the past but I also kept searching for greener pastures, fearing there might something else out there even better that I will be missing out on if I don't keep looking. Well...it wasn't. I would then be drawn back, again and again, to the beauty, mystery and immense sensuality of Samsara. This is to me the perfume of the extremely sensual yet very lady-like, classy woman. Few women can actually pack both of these two qualities - it is usually either one or the other.
Samsara declares unabashedly that you can be both at the same time. I am not sure why some people complain about its "synthetic" feel, I don't get that at all - clearly not any more than with all other perfumes that are not soliflores. The scent is divine, the impression you leave behind is unforgettable. To me, this IS Guerlain at its best.

18th November, 2011.

yuck. that pretty much sums it up. it smells like old lady talcum mixed with alcohol and it gives me the worst migraines. for the price i'd expect better. honestly, i wouldn't be caught dead wearing this. ever.

30th October, 2011.

Perfumery lore has it that Samsara contained 30% sandalwood oil when launched. It’s also part of perfumery’s body of common knowledge that Samsara’s sandalwood is long gone. Apparently early iterations of Samsara used this botanical sandalwood as well as botanical jasmine and had a wonderful vanilla note. There was certainly more to the composition than that, but these 3 elements defined Samsara’s shape.

Sandalwood has effectively been removed from the perfumer’s palette, and in Samsara’s case, it’s been replaced by polysantol (more from perfumery lore), a powerful synthetic. Perhaps a lush, botanically derived jasmine might have been overmatched by the polysantol, but it appears that a jasmine-analogue of equal volume and shrillness to the synthetic sandalwood is employed as well. I imagine the vanilla in the early Samsara versions would have complemented the creamy tartness of true sandalwood. In the current Samsara the shriek of the polysantol combined with the vanilla gives us a new, sick-making gourmand note: butterscotch vomit.

Samsara is for me what Secretions Magnifiques is to its detractors.

When powerful aromachemicals are used in largely synthetic perfumes, imbalanced accords and compositions carry greater risks. For better or for worse, when aromachemicals are particularly strong, their effects are a leveraged increase in punch, sillage, durability. If the accords made with theses strong chemicals are imbalanced (read: unappealing) the negatives will be leveraged as well. Whereas a haphazard mix of botanicals will likely read as muddy, Samsara’s polysantol-based composition is both horrifying in its gear-grinding volume and nauseating. Samsara creates a perfume sub-genre: the rancid gourmand.

26th October, 2011.

This is a good smoky-vanilla perfume. It smells a lot like it was meant to be a remake of Shalimar (it must be the EDP I'm wearing because it definitely seems smoky and vanillic and reminds me of Shalimar..it's not really woody at all.) I definitely prefer this one to another Shalimar remake I tried, Dior Addict. Samsara seems less overwhelmingly strong to me, and easier to wear any time. (This must just be my body chemistry again, since some other people are saying this is far too overwhelmingly strong for them.)
I'm not sure if I prefer Samsara or Shalimar yet. I'll need to give both of them at least one other wear to make a decision for sure. I definitely like both of them though.

3rd October, 2011.