Reviews of Bel Ami (1986)
by Hermès

Bel Ami is a big, spicy leather scent with a heaping dose of dark woods in its base. It’s neither so lithe nor so risqué as its lascivious oldest brother Eau d’Hermès, and it doesn’t share middle brother Equipage’s taste for tobacco. This leaves it the most staid – stolid, even – of the Hermès leather brethren. Bel Ami is a guy you can depend on, even he’s not the most charismatic one in the room. When I'm looking for a leather scent in this general style, I'm more apt to reach for the more challenging Knize Ten or Parfum d'Habit, but Bel Ami works just fine if you're after something more congenial.

An intense and pungent woody fragrance that made me jerk back my head in initial disgust. However, it does settle down to something warm and spicy. Although this would have been nice to wear in the ‘80s, I definitely can’t see myself wearing it now (and this is its main downfall).

I still love the re-vamped bottle, though.

[Original submission date: 29 December 2007]

Spicy florals and a deep sandalwood base. Sometimes it comes off as a citrus and leather but for me, it's all about the sandalwood. Opens up a tad off-putting with a bitter/sour lemon. I'd wear this for formal events.

What a wonderful name for the fragrance, "beautiful friend". I love it.

The scent itself isn`t bad either, although I don`t wear it myself anymore. To me Bel Ami has always been a borderline case. It smells good and fascinating, mysterious too, but at the times it can be quite offputting because of the weird combination of animalics, vanilla, flowers and smoky woods. Also, Bel Ami has a capability to remind me of Aramis, and that my friends is a huuuuge minus.

Bel Ami is very raunchy fragrance. It`s sweet and animalic. It`s very much "love me or hate me" type of fragrance, so I feel little bit strage giving this one a neutral rating.

An attempt to make Equipage more macho, or at least have stronger sillage and longevity by adding notes not listed on the pyramid that could be curry, onions, sulphur or mud. Nevertheless I can't bring myself to give Bel Ami a thumbs down--it's still too good for that-- and shall contain myself to pointing out that the earlier Equipage was better, though it demanded a bit more patience before socking you on the nose. Furtthermore, the early supposedly unisex original leather beast, Eau D' Hermes is still the best of the three. When it comes to leather, Mercury--or Hermes has been going retrograde.

Bel Ami opens with sour citrus, but not refreshingly sour, it's an oddly stale sourness, perhaps like old lemon juice or lemon water standing in a glass for days. Add to that dusty old herbs and spices rather than fresh ones and you get a pretty musty concoction. This smells nothing like the sweet and floral notes up there suggest (can they really be correct?) - I'd say it's a citrus, herbs, spice and leather fragrance. A pretty classic aromatic/leathery men's scent - yes, quite 80ies, but not quite as macho-extreme as some 80ies scents, this could be an older composition still I think. I have to say it walks a very fine line between the dated, herbal mustiness I detest and a pleasant spicy/leathery accord reminiscent of Yatagan. To its defense, it's actually getting slightly fresher as it develops on skin and that oddly stale citrus note disappears.
As so often with me, I get two completely different scents on my wrists and in the crook of my elbows. In the crook of my elbows, scents stick longer but they also turn sourer, sharper - those notes that tend to turn to soap or powder do so galore, herbal notes get extra musty... On my wrists, scents are fainter and more short-lived but prettier, truer to their original self, drier, fresher, spicier... Hence, with Bel Ami, I get mostly warm aromatic spices on my wrists and musty leathery herbs in the crook of my elbows!

I owned this for a long time, and frankly it was THE fragrance of my "wild and wooly" bachelor days in New York. (Not a drug taking, disco dancing, or "all night raves" wild and wooly, a different wild and wooly. Not debauched, think trying to be debonair. Lots, I mean LOTS, of girls liked the ballet, the musuems; the theater, and gin and tonics, at least back then they did. And they really liked boys who liked those things too. Boys who were not kids, boys who worked hard during the day and who wore Bel Ami.) Anyway, Bel Ami smells dated to me now and is associated with other times and other places, so even though my wife liked it and bought it for me last year(not knowing Bel Ami was my good friend when I dated other girls), I surreptitiously got rid of it. True it is has an exceedingly rich and spicy/woodsy smell; with a great incense and citrus on top; and, true it will make people see you as sophisticated and cultured and maybe the proud possessor of a well- endowed preppy's trust fund, as far as I am concerned enough is enough. It's a new millenium. Time to move on and build up the 401K. I am a dad now, and my fragrance thoughts and inspirations should be about other things. By the way, however, if you are into your "wild and wooly" early to mid 30s and living a really fun money spending lifesyle in a major metro area, and you DO like to go to the theater and the symphony and to foreign films as well as places like the Hamptons this could be your sexy but serious scent of choice. It will attract the right kind of ladies to your money.

I rather liked the spicy and smokey leather feel from this scent, but I got nothing but negative feedback regarind this one. The best of which were being told by kids that I smelled like "their Mom's pepper grinder" and a coworker asking me if I was standing near a campfire that morning. Too bad, because I used to like to wear this one.