Reviews of Kenzo Amour (2006)
by Kenzo

KenzoAmour is a delicate, sweet, gentle fragrance. It is tender, and serene, and feels like that incomparable first love. It smells like cool white tea with floating plumeria blossoms and vanilla pods, set upon a bamboo table, with powdery incense burning, as the sun sets. It's sensual, calm, and evokes a sanctuary, with the timeless emotion of a lover's embrace.

I'm not all that familiar with Kenzo fragrances. Kenzo Amour is a powdery sweet vanilla. At first, it comes off as an ultra feminine take on Bulgari Black. The vanilla powder has a certain "smokiness". I quite like it! It's not like anything else in my collection. Also resembling Montale's Sweet Oriental Dream - this Kenzo is extremely wearable and much preferred to the Montale. The balance is incredible, I don't get overwhelmed with any of the notes. If I could choose one word to describe this scent it would be 'harmony'.

Kenzo Amour is a pleasant, if slightly boring, vanilla/almond/powder/floral scent with an overlay of white musk. I think it would appeal most to a girl aged 12-15 who just wants to blend in with the crowd and smell "sweet and clean". I much prefer Kenzo’s “L’Eau” and “Parfum d’Ete” to this.

This is so beautiful. It really is "Amour" to me. It is such a calming and comfortable scent. It is warm and sensual and not overdone. It is fabulous. I don't think I have met a Kenzo that I didn't like. So far I own Flower, Flower Oriental, and now Amour, and I will eventual buy Jungle Elephant (that is heady and wonderful!)

I have come to appreciate gourmands, and this is one of my favs. It is not sophisticated, it is not perfumy. Instead, it is soft, delicate and delicious vanillaic, like angel food cake or something. I bought it for my wife and she enjoys it as much as I do. If you love (not just like) vanilla, you should try this. Works best on a summer day or an errand Saturday in the spring. Well done.

Does Asia smell like a pudding? I don't think so. Shallow.

I find Kenzo Amour a little bit too one-dimentioned. It is really pleasant, an obvious quality-fragance, but not exiting at all. It is a perfect every-day-fragance, when you don´t want to offend others. I adore the fuchsia-coloured bottle, though!

After Ayala's wonderful review, there is little to add other than it is ok with me. This is a fragrance that I would wear if it were given to me, but I would not go out and buy it. I love Kenzo Oriental and Amour has a quality or expensive smell to it, but it's just not so special I could fall in love with it and I do have so many loves. So I would say yes and no.

I had a sample of this recently and found it to be good. A comfort scent. Was on my purchase list, but I just don't think it has enough "wow" to justify the price. Would purchase if cheaper. The bottle? It's unique, I don't know if it's fitting for the fragrance though.

I got a sample of this and I was pleasantly surprised by the smell, Flower is one of those smells I really hate. I don't know what it is that makes me hate it, but I had the same with Eden from Cacharel. There's something in those perfumes that really makes me feel sick and want to run as far away from it as I can. Hypnôse gives me a little bit of that feeling. And believe me, I can stand lots of smells... .
I like Kenzoamour maybe because it's so serene. When you're with lots of people together and with little children, sometimes you just don't want to be noticed by your perfume. This gives me a calm, cousy feeling, ideal for a cold winter's day or evening.

I never liked Flower by Kenzo, I find it offensive even and it makes me sneezy. I'm a person who just doesn't do flowery scents that well. But cover me in a scent that has less flowers in it and more gourmande notes and fruit and I bring out the notes perfectly, espcially vanilla.
I like Kenzo Amour a lot, it's subtle, warm, sensual and sweet.

If it reminds other people of Dior Poison then Poison is a woman who jumps on her man and tell him what she demands. Amour is more subtle and will linger close to him without being demanding. Very seducing scent.

Judging by the passionate colours of the fluidly designed phallic bottles, I was really expecting something powerfully seductive. Instead, what I got from Kenzo Amour was a cuddly synthesis of gourmand suggestions, what is now known as “comfort scent” – the equivalent of a chocolate, ice cream or a bag of chips on a lonely Friday night, watching cartoons on the couch and wearing pyjamas with matching cartoon character prints.

Kenzo Amour starts with a confusing floral bouquet – marketed as frangipani and cherry blossom. I smell a hint of rose and powder that is a déjà vu of Flower – one of Kenzo’s greatest hits. There is an underlining of powder and musk. The heart notes dive into a concoction of cherries and steamed rice, in a dessert connotation such as rice dumpling sprinkled with crushed raw peanuts; And a rather gentle suggestion of cherries – somewhat like a subdued version of Lutens’ Rahat Loukum. What saves me from drowning in sweetness is a slightly tart note, which I cannot quite place my nose on.

The base is powdery musk and vanilla, as in Flower, or the signature drydown of the Ormonde Jayne line (The tartness of Amour reminds me of the pink pepper and dates notes in Ta’if, and the steam rice recalls the basmati rice in Champaca).

As for the packaging: this is quite a lcever marketing stunt: three bottles of the same fragrance, in three different colours and slightly different shapes. These look great next to each other on the ad. But in reality, they look like an interesting take on clean Scandinavian and Japanese design gone cheap and sold at IKEA, after being molded into cheap plastic or ceramics, or worst yet – leather couches. I almost bought into it, and first bought the large freesia coloured bottle, only to discover that in this size it looks more like a vase than a perfume flacon – and the colour is all wrong, it’s orange and plasticky looking (anyways, when displayed on its own…). I suggest starting small, with the fuschia bottle, which is truly adorable (as long as you manage to get over the feeling that you are about to take a bite from a chicken’s drumstick when opening it).

Flower and Flower Oriental are staples in my colllection, so I was very excited to try Amour. It is a very pleasant, but exceptionally quiet, scent. For people who project perfume well, and do not like strong fragrances, this might be the one. The rice note is lovely and comforting, and the entire impression is peaceful and serene. It's just too quiet for me.

KenzoAmour is described as a musky floral.

I was expecting Amour to be much more floral; yet it's rather woody, but not like the spicy woody notes of FlowerbyKenzo Oriental. Amour opens on a cherry note (rather than cherry blossom) and the soft rubber-like aroma of white tea. I don't detect much of the fraginpani, no white flower animal "indole" here. The floral element that really gives Amour it's central character is the heliotrope. Those almond-like floral notes combined with thanaka wood (like a soft spicy cedar) and vanilla base really are reminiscent of Dior's Hypnotic Poison, yet Amour is much less extravagant (and less gourmand). Amour finally ends on Kenzo's signature musky powdery trail.

The packaging is really eye catching.

Final verdict: FlowerbyKenzo (minus the violet) meets Hypnotic Poison's almond. Good but a little disappointed.