Reviews of Bigarade Concentrée
by Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle

I find the top notes quite enjoyable. They give off a strong newly-peeled orange smell, quite vivid and realistic. For better or worse, this smell gets dirtier as it progresses, as though you've bitten into a decomposing part of an orange, yet continue to eat. I used to not like it, but my tolerance for funky off-notes has gone way up since I started this hobby, so I usually have a small decant on hand for the summer months.

Unlike others here, I don't have longevity issues - it lasts a fair while for a citrus. I do, however, have sillage issues, so I tend to reserve it for steamy days, when the sillage really radiates off the skin.

Bigarade Concentrée is sweet but lacks the clarity, zest and freshness one would expect from this type of fragrance. Also, its longevity is abysmal.

There are much better niche alternatives available on the market.

[Original submission date: 14 October 2006]

Frederic Malle Bigarade Concentree

I grew up next to an orange grove in S. Florida. Much to the chagrin of the grove owner I would spend many an afternoon up in the branches of his trees eating the, literal, fruit of his labors. Sitting up in the high branches of an orange tree with the tropical sun beating down on me, sweaty from climbing and covered in orange pulp and juice. That carried a unique scent for me that I thought I would never experience again as my orange tree climbing days are behind me. Until I had the good fortune to spray Jean-Claude Ellena's 2002 creation for Frederic Malle, Bigarade Concentree. This was a follow-up to his 2001 scent Cologne Bigarade also for Frederic Malle. Bigarade Concentree uses the same four central notes of bitter orange, rose, hay and cedar as Cologne Bigarade but the balance and intensity in Bigarade Concentree makes it a much superior scent. The top starts with the bitter orange but that bitter accord also carries a green, tree sap kind of quality with it too and it smells like the rinds of oranges ripening in the sun. There is a cumin like sweaty accord present here that is not accounted for in the note list. This has a very similar feel to Hermes Eau D'Hermes and as Ellena is a big fan of that scent I have a feeling it was intentional on his part, his homage to that scent. As that begins to fade the very lightest of roses appear and then this is followed by the dried grass note of hay and the clean lines of cedar which in conjunction smell just like the sun-baked branches of an orange tree. Despite having Concentree in the name this is a very light composition and I can see it being very fleeting on some skin types. Thankfully on my skin it lasts and allows an old man to revisit his orange tree climbing days of his youth without fear of injury.

An application of BC makes me weak of knee and clear of mind. Bears some resemblance to Mandragore, which I also like. Takes a bit greater quantity of juice than some other scents to achieve the desired radiation effect. Bravo, J-C Ellena, for navigating past sweet, sour and tart, arriving at the simple essence of the citrus tree, peel, seed. Company description: Bitter orange, rose, hay, cedar.

Bigarade Concentree is a good fragrance. I like it and will always have in the collection. I love almost all works Jean-Claude Ellena. Good luck it I wish.

An animalic citrus! I get loads of gorgeous bitter orange and bergamot, and then Bigarade Concentree becomes very ripe and sexy in a 'sweaty man' sort of way. That must be the cumin. Very interesting. Unlike other reviewers, I find this quite masculine and cannot imagine wearing it myself, even though there are many masculine fragrances I DO love and wear. This must remain on my 'smells great on others' list, and I have purchased this for several male friends. MOST attractive on them!

My first impression after spraying is a vivid olfactory hallucination of fresh-peeled orange -- the oils in the air like a prism of citrus. It's amazingly uplifting: floral, fresh, green, bitter and sweet. This is a perfect winter scent, and in fact I don't enjoy it (being a northerner who associates oranges with ambient cold) in summer. The fleeting orange peel experience is followed by a beautiful drydown of woods, oriental spice and rose (I don't get the listed hay, but that's probably just my nose). It took me a few years of wearing it -- maybe until getting to the end of the bottle -- to pick up on the cumin but now I do really smell it and could perhaps do with a tiny bit less. Still, this is, to my nose, on the slightly femme side of unisex, though perfectly plausible for a man as well. It's transparent and delicately zingy until it suavely collapses into the pillowy drydown. My only complaint -- and it's major -- is poor lasting power. Very, very poor -- less than 2 hours on me. Still, not an absolute deal breaker, but only because I love orange scents madly and this one is unique.

I wanted to love this as I really dig the idea behind this line and am generally a big fan of Ellena's work but for me the bitter orange smell is just too strong, wiping out almost any other note.
I appreciate that it's a very well made perfume and the top note is certainly distinctive but on my skin, it's simply too linear. If I wanted to smell strongly of bitter orange all day, I'd never wear anything else...

Opens as ripe orange, at which point I feel attracted to it.

On my skin, however, bad things happen to this fragrance. I get a caramelised over-ripe orange served to me by someone with bad oral hygiene.

This is possibly Jean-Claude Ellena at his best on men's cologne. A trail-blazer, iconic, different, unique among citrus scents -- this is bitter orange at its superb best. A dialectic of a fragrance, its hesperidic top notes express an icy freshness unlike any other, tempered by a touch of rose -- which dries down to a warm base of sumptious cedar and hay. A class act. C'est un parfum tres soigne!

Bigarade Concentree is one of my top-five favorite perfumes but then I must disclose that I am a huge citrus fan! (Other citrus loves are: AG Eau d'Hadrien, Fath Green Water, Mona di Orio Lux, Fresh's "Sugar" (not Lemon Sugar) and Chanel Eau de Cologne). And, I am a huge JCE admirer. I first smelled Bigarade Concentree at the Editions de Frederic Malle store in Paris on the Left Bank on a cold November day and had to have it.

Yes- Bigarade Concentree smells like a pungent tangerine at first but then if you leave it on and smell it a little more, the cumin and cedar notes start to peek out and it then calms down into a luxurious, warm citrussy smell. I would love to smell it on a man - I think it would have such class, such as how Guerlain's Vetiver always smells perfect on a man to me.

In short, Bigarade Concentree is a superb fragrance and it never fails to make me happy or get me jump-started! Full bottle worthy - always.

OK. I wouldn't buy it. Smells a little like black licorice to me.

Bigarade Concentree totally threw me for a loop, as they say. It was not at ALL what I was expecting, which was Terre d'Hermes' (which I love) more fascinating older brother. And the surprise here is, that after hearing and reading so many comparisons, I find that it's something completely different altogether. It is a heavy, dense, weighty, rich orange, deepened with that cedar element which may or may not be responsible for creating the cumin note which is present here without any doubt. The heaviness I experience in Bigarade Concentree expresses that deep oiliness that one senses upon inhaling a freshly ripped open orange PEEL, the sour, soft white strings and all. There is definitely something dirty here, a rounded, indolic aura with that cumin sensation grinning a dirty little smile in the background. And, call me crazy if you wish, but I also get, very clearly, the smell of the white rubber in tennis balls and/or the sour smell of new sneakers. I know this is going to confuse the situation if someone were to actually USE this review in his or her decision to try this fragrance, but it's there, I swear it!

So athletic equipment aside, Bigarade Concentree surprised me in two ways: with its weight and the relatively dark way the bitter orange is expressed here, think orange-brown. I suppose it's the high concentration of perfume oils but this does not sit on the skin lightly. It's a round, heavy orange scent that can't be described well with words: One just has to experience it first hand. If you are expecting something similar to Terre d'Hermes, you will not find it here (TdH a mere translucent veil compared to this). If you've smelled Eau d'Hermes, it's more in that direction, though I find EdH more effervescent than Bigarade Concentree. How can a citrus fragrance be so dense? Smell it and you'll see... A beautiful, artistic expression - an abstract vision of bigarade concept, but rather than taking that first sniff and saying, "OH GOD I NEED TO HAVE THIS", I simple sniffed, thought, "huh.. interesting" and kept trying to love it but after a month it's still all respect but no love.

I've described this as the scent of an (imagined) orange grove, heavy with ripe fruit; the damp breeze laden with sweet pollen, and the light scent of the living woods. This opens with a golden shimmer of citrus, becoming smooth, beautiful and full-bodied. It is sweet in the way a ripe but unpeeled orange smells sweet, not sugared or confection sweet. The spiciness is gentle, emerging late in the prolonged drydown. I find this lasts easily through the work day, 12 hours+, at least 3x longer than the Cologne - which I find this superior to in every way. I have disliked every JC Ellena fragrance until this one, which I find so enthralling that I wish I could afford the ancillary products. It is the apotheosis of citrus fragrances, and the artisanal redemption of 21st century fresh fragrance from aquatic barbarism. In real world terms it is something that can be worn everyday, in any climate, in nearly any social circumstance. Real world haute couture.

A dirtier, more orange-y cousin of Givenchy's Eau Torride. A handsome frag, and more easily unisex than Eau Torride. Not so much of a "celery" note, either -- that part made me a tad nuts with ET.

Longevity should be better for the price, though.

A very sexy monk eats a clementine in the forest.

Just peel and Orange. Same effect, though slightly more bitter.
- Rich

Cab driver eats an orange? I disagree, but that description is not far off. I'd say it is something more like a very classy person decides to play tennis everyday and then not bathe for a week, before dipping himself in a vat of Hermes eau d'orange verte concentree. When he emerges and the hermes dries off, I think he'd smell like this. The orange is very sharp, very bitter, and mixed in with something sweaty, dirty and sultry. The scent is very different, nevertheless I'd actually put it in the same family of personal, "bodily" scents like Rochas Femme or McQueen's kingdom, despite the fact that this one "smells" much better and is much more wearable by men or women.

Certainly worth a try, but as I said in my review of Vetiver Extraordinaire, this one as well probably won't be understood by friends and family who aren't big fragrance fans. They'll probably just ask you why you didn't bathe before "eating an orange." Like all the Malle I've tried, this one too is VERY personal.

"Cab driver eats an orange."

That's both funny and accurate.

Bigarade Concentree is now one of my favorites. I have grown to like the initial and short lived abrasiveness. Soon it dries down into a quite pleasant subtle peppery citrus/floral.
The longevity is fair, you will have to renew it for the evening out. Of my small collection, this is the most distinctive, and I have grown to like it. Terre D' Hermes is better overall in my opinion and less expensive, but this is the more dangerous, slightly evil twin.

A rather trite and unnecessarily powdery exercise in citrus.

Bigarade Concentree is the more concentrated version of Cologne Bigarade. I guess that "concentree" refers to the increased bitterness of the orange note because interms of longevity, its about as fleeting as the cologne version.

Compared to my favorite all-citrus fragrance, Creeds Citrus Bigarrade, Concentree opens with a much more bitter orange note. I like Creeds opening better...it smells more natural and well rounded. Soon after this burst of orange, Concentree moves into a woody phase consisting of cedar and hay notes. I would have liked the orange notes to stay around longer - this is an ORANGE/CITRUS fragrance after all. Ellena seems to be in a habit of trying to make every fragrance smell earthy/mineral no matter what the type of fragrance (Terre D'Hermes, Angelique Sous, etc). By comparison, Creeds orange/citrus stay dominant for a longer period of time.

While Bigarade Concentree is a good fragrance, I prefer Creeds Citrus Bigarrade because of its longer lasting and smoother citrus notes. However both fragrances are expensive, with below average longevity - and I wont be investing in either of them anytime soon.

The bitter orange note is excellent. I think this is a much better—and certainly more subtle—presentation of the bitter orange concept that was done by Ellena in Cartier’s Déclaration. The synthetic aura of Déclaration’s bitter orange note IS GONE! It is now a thoroughly beautiful clear note. It is, indeed, an intriguing note, and it is phenomenally longer lasting than other citruses that I’ve encountered. This one is done right! The rose is used beautifully, too, and adds a necessary depth to the citrus accord. The dry down is a very pleasant and addictive ‘woody’ accord—not a heavy wood, it’s a light, rustic, natural hay / cedar combination that still retains echoes of the original bitter orange note. The woods in the dry down are the perfect foil for the orange note—the rustic ambiance is exceptionally appropriate as an ending to this fragrance. For the citrus lover, Bigarade Concentrée is an answer to a prayer—a genuine citrus—masculine, wonderfully alive, beautifully balanced, that lasts and lasts and LASTS.

a cab driver eats an orange

Picture a CSP scent with a soul. Fabulous scent. I can't say enough about this one. Fresh orange blossom and citrus that positively sings in hot and humid weather. While the lasting power is typical of a citrus scent, this one is beyond words and the best of its genre. Amazing scent.

Grant, I don't know if it's appropriate to copy and paste my review of Bigarade Concentree from the Cologne Bigarade page. The Concentree version did not have its own listing when I reviewed it. Here goes, just in case you think it's okay to do it this way. (Also, the reviews credited to "Sandy" and to sandyw7592 are from one person: me.)
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Nothing short of brilliant. This is a beautiful, refreshing, utterly compelling fragrance. Balanced somewhere between the classic and the eccentric, Cologne Bigarade is like nothing else you've ever worn - all the more surprising, as citrus is a standard element men's perfumery, and has been for a few centuries. (Citrus bigaradia is the botanical name for the bitter, or Seville orange.) The description on Frederic Malle's website does not claim that the bigaradenote, or essence of bitter orange, is new to perfumery, but that Jean-Claude Ellena wanted a true bitter citrus fragrance, and that this cologne uses a new formulation as the basis for it. It may be this new formulation which allows the citrus note in this scent to be so striking: it's clean, strong, bright without being sweet, and amazingly persistent. The citrus note seems a little more prominent in the Concentree version, (which I prefer slightly over Cologne Bigarade). The Cologne version gives more prominence to the rose note, I think. The combination of citrus, rose, cardamom and, of all things, hay is what gives this fragrance its complex, herbal, slightly strange character. Try it in hot, humid weather. In short I love this. I'd give it a whole fistful of thumbs up if I could!

A very zesty, edgy citrus. Does not strike me as femine at all. I get a subtle herbal note when it finally dries down.

Normally, I shy away from citrus scents, as I find them one-dimensional and fleeting. Not worth spending my hard-earned money on, IMO. Bigarage Concentree is the exception, and I've learned to expect nothing less from Frederic Malle. BC is sparkling and fresh, without being soapy or sweet, and actually has fantastic staying power for a citrus-based scent. It also doesn't hurt that Jean-Claude Ellena is one of my favorite perfumers, and I find it very hard to dislike any of his work. With summer fast approaching, I imagine this will be one of my staples.

A tad feminine, but perfect in the spring months. Perfect for when you're outside in nature, when I smell it I think of a walk in a French Garden.