Reviews of Attrape Coeur / Guet-Apens (1999)
by Guerlain

Attrape-Coeur is a warm, spicy, woody oriental scent that flirts with gingerbread and Christmas pudding, but doesn’t actually stray into gourmand territory. It avoids the dessert buffet by balancing its cinnamon and cloves with an animalic indole in its floral accord and a pleasantly medicinal accent in its woods. A heavy violet note accompanies the spices, the sweet, jammy rose, and the orange blossom at Attrape-Coeur’s center, while a sweet, powdery, vanillic amber and an ample dose of patchouli ground the composition. No lightweight, Attrape-Coeur radiates prodigiously and leaves a generous cloud of dark, sweet sillage. It’s also tenacious, with those powdery amber and patchouli basenotes stretching the drydown out for hours.

I’ve wavered over rating Attrape-Coeur. It smells pleasant enough at first acquaintance, and it feels to be made of high quality ingredients, but to my nose it’s also overly dense and ponderous, an after and hour or so its unrelieved weight becomes mightily oppressive. However, if you love Serge Lutens’s Arabie, Bond No. 9’s West Side, Chanel’s Coromandel and Bois des Îles, but find them all a little bit too slender, Attrape-Coeur may be just what you’re after!

Guerlain Attrape Coeur

Notes: rose, violet, iris, vanilla, woods, amber (from perfumeshrine.com)

Attrape Coeur starts as a dark and rich, slightly dirty floral with clove, liquored rose, powdery iris, vanilla and sweet amber as the main notes. Development is extremely slow and graceful on skin, and the indoles are the first things to soften as AC moves to a lush, creamy, boozy, spicy rose bouquet in the heart notes. In the late middle stage, there is some artificial bitterness that seems inappropriate to the composition--I have noticed this mostly in mainstream floral-orientals (Rochas Tocade is an example). In AC, it does not detract very much from my enjoyment, though I think this would have been an almost perfect fragrance if not for the bitter note. The drydown is absolutely gorgeous, and is a vaguely spicy, floral, vanilla feminine "guerlinade" of typically high calibre.

I agree with comments I have seen that compare AC with Chanel 31 Rue Cambon. However, AC is much dirtier, less iris-pronounced, and the sour fruit note present in 31RC is better tempered in AC. I find both fragrances beautiful, but Attrape Coeur behaves much better on my skin. AC falls squarely onto the line between floral and oriental, a genre that I love for its complexity. In that sense, AC does not disappoint, and yet, despite having a seemingly unfathomable depth bordering on melancholy, Attrape Coeur is as quiet, lighthearted and unassuming as the Mona Lisa's smile in DaVinci's famous painting.

I was disappointed by this one. Was hoping for something smooth, sexy, warm and sophisticated, especially after some of the reviews; but on me this smells like sickly plasticky rasberry, and i do get a bit of that horse manure barnyard thing too.
Sorry, but i think this is horrible.

Yum. To my nose, entirely gourmand, without any heavy, overly literal "food" notes. Warm, spicy, boozy amber comes out right away, and though I wouldn't normally think of amber as edible, this makes me think of rich pastry soaked in honey, with violets providing sugar and iris as cream. Wonderful silage and good lasting power, drying down to soft sandalwood and classic Guerlain vanilla. There is a lot of powder here, which can make me feel self-conscious about smelling "perfumey" -- I apply lightly if I'm going to be with company. If it's just me, I splash it over myself and curl up under a blanket to enjoy the glow.

Have Chanel & Guerlain been fooling around behind our backs?! Guet-Apens begins just like 31 Rue Cambon, a modern lactonic oakmoss free chypre, mouth watering and richly blended. The opening is incredibly Chanel like. As it wears on the skin, its' lineage with Mitsouko becomes evident, and begins to reveal a Guerlain personality. Rose, Iris & Jasmine are among the flowers in this delicate arrangement. Guet-Apens sweetens as the hours pass, and after awhile the vanillic amber base proclaims to the wearer without question ~ "I am a Guerlain!" The composition is flawless. I have a difficult time imagining anyone not appreciating the beauty of this gorgeous perfume. Stunning!

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.

Gosh! This fragrance is so so so good!! I tried it with a small vial and applied it deliberately to both of my forearms before going to bed. The result was amazing. The interplay of powdery iris, creamy vanilla, and sweet core of rose accompanied by a cello note of woody base was heavenly. It is deep, soft, and creamy, as sweet as a thin layer of sugar veil had been laid on my skin but never developed into something cloying or overpowering. I was instantly hooked and it kept on drawing me deeper and deeper. This is really a fragrance of quality as I was often repelled by iris note because it often presents too powdery to get on with. But in Attrape-Coeur, along with the tenacious sandalwood and smooth vanilla, the powdery iris stays just impeccably beautiful to add the tranquil and tender touch as plumy as a very refined velour to the composition. I feel fantastic as I am wearing it. It is one of a few of recent Guerlain that I feel it really shows the prodigy of the brand. And I am so glad that Guerlain is gonna make it permanent in its perfume line as I need not to worry about I will find it nowhere in the future.

Smells almost exactly like Mitsouko to me. Fortunately, I love Mitsouko -- which is much more easily found and cheaper.

Guet-Apens (in French "a trap") is one of my most favorite fragrances. In 1999 it was sold as very expensive one-shot, an EDP in a dark blue bottle called Lanterne (this bottle was used for other Guerlain fragrances, e.g. in the thirties last century, also for Vol de Nuit). It is amber-fruity-musky type, with an unusual flowery head (rose, jasmin and tuberose), an unusual fruity (!) heart (peach; this fruity surprise at the heart is "a trap" for the nose), and amber + musk at the base.
Mysterious, intriguing, dangerous - when I put it on, I feel warm and secure, like dressed in a costly fur, and everybody (or rather every man) seems to look at me. I have kept my bottle hidden as a treasure and used it very rarely, afraid it would be impossible to buy it again.