Attrape Coeur / Guet-Apens (1999)
by Guerlain

Unfortunately, this old classic smelled merely old fashioned on me. A powdery, old-style floral with nothing to catch my attention. It's okay, but it's not worth seeking out for me.

This "trap for the heart" is a sweet, sticky kiss from the lips of a candy-eating child. It is warmer and sweeter than many Guerlain fragrances, blanket-like and eveloping, almost confectionary. It reminds me of Aimez Moi, only the licorice has been replaced with a pronounced vanilla and a smooth peach. At the base is a perfecty balanced civit note that gives it an animalic edge. I don't think it resembles Mitsouko much; that woody, classic beauty is reserved, austere, and aloof, while this one is sweet and cozy. It does share the glorious powdery peach of Nahema, the best feature of that fragrance. But Attrape-Coer never focuses on the rose. Rather, it offers a great deal of greenness that is apparent in the violet and iris notes. Guerlain does such amazing things with peach. Although it does not replace Mitsouko or Nahema, it is well worth one's time to experience its warmth and complexity.

They don't make stuff like this anymore. Creamy Mitsouko? More like sexy Mitsouko! Seems like a classic pre gas-chromatography had some contemporary warm goo droped into it. Definately worth cracking open that collector bottle!

Amazing! I have half-jokingly wondered why nobody makes a perfume that smells like horses, and this is it. Guet-Apens smells just like a horse! It's the sweet-and-sour quality of it. I get it from Bandit too, but not as extremely, in Bandit it's more of a hay loft plus an animalic warmth. In Guet-Apens it's pure, unadultered horse, with a hefty dose of half-chewed hay and a hint of dung heap.
Sure, if I put my mind to it I can pick out notes: citrus for the sourness, vanilla for the sweetness, some sort of spicy floral for the hay note... But to no avail: it all adds upp to horse! I'm very nostalgic about the scent of horses so I find it quite irresistible in a very quirky way.

My bottle of Guet Apens, still in the cellophane, arrived today. I ordered it several weeks ago from Italy, and I had become resigned to its never turning up, so I was incredibly excited when it arrived...so excited, in fact, that I couldn't bring myself to open it. I carried it around in my handbag all day, getting the great big blue box out every now and then to *look* at. Got back home an hour or so ago, and opened it! I shall sit here and wait for it to *do* things, and describe it every time it does something interesting over the next half hour.

First impressions: good lord, it's phenomenally good. It's a lot like the very best parts of both Apres l'Ondee and Mitsouko kind of remixed with a healthy dollop of creamy vanilla from Shalimar, made all the better in Guet Apens. Amazing creamy iris and a sweetly (important, this sweetness, because it goes all the way through the perfume) green violet over a big red basket of roses and peaches - the big, perfect white-fleshed kind of peach. I don't usually do peach, but this is glorious. It's much more recognisable as peach than the similar note in Mitsouko is - whether this is an accident of blending or a different chemical, I don't know. After a while it works its way into the background and lets the rose and sandalwood sing.

The sandalwood is in the bottom and a wonderfully vanillic cream. The sandalwood is, for me, the heaviest note in the drydown. There's an amber note in there too, but it feels almost like it's a trick of the peach and labdanum; it's like the two notes blended into a beautiful whole. The peach has turned ambery rather than juicy (about 20 minutes in at this point). It's so delicious I may accidentally eat my wrist if I stop paying attention. The iris, very upright and a little powdery, is still singing over the top like a very clearly sung musical note. It's very hard to say yet, but my experience of the EDPs of Mitsouko and Shalimar, which share some bottom notes with this, makes me think this will stick around, close to the skin, for a good long time.

I am completely in love. I think I'm going to get through this bottle *very* fast.

I remember reading someone's comment that Attrape-Coeur is a creamy Mitsouko, and that description spurred me to sample A-C because I find Mitsouko a bit overpowering.
Top: Rose, jasmine, tuberose
Heart: Peach
Base: Amber, musk
I can appreciate this as a true Guerlain and a true work of art. However, like many beautiful works of art, it just doesn't speak to me on the "gotta own it" level. In the drydown I pick up on a kitchen-variety vanilla, very sweet and delectable.