L'Etre Aime Homme (2008)
by Divine

Spices/herbs and foody and felt like I spilt my mother's chicken soup on myself. Other than the top notes, nothing else is interesting about this. Typical woody amber found in most designer scents. Don't like it.

The two previous men’s scents from Divine, L’Homme Sage and L’Homme de Coeur, both elicited love at first sniff from me, but it’s taken me much longer to come to grips with L’Etre Aime Homme. I wrote a review of L’Etre Aime Homme last year, when it was first released, but since it had not yet been listed in the Basenotes Directory I set the review aside…and apparently misplaced it.

Wearing L’Etre Aime Homme again sparks no memory of that previous review, which suggests just how much less potent and immediate an impact it had on me than its two brothers. L’Etre Aime Homme strikes me as the most subdued and enigmatic of the trio, and that’s quite a feat, since it’s composed around immortelle, which is notorious as one of the most intractable and overbearing notes in perfumery. It seems to me that immortelle is difficult to dose. Use it in any quantity, and it tends to dominate a composition at the expense of all other ingredients. (Annick Goutal’s love-it-or-leave-it immortelle foghorn Sables is a case in point.) Without carefully chosen and proportioned savory accents immortelle can also become syrupy sweet and awkwardly “foody.” So much so at times as to suggest artificial “maple” food flavoring. Divine’s perfumer Yann Vasnier controls immortelle’s bullying tendencies by using it in moderation, and avoids the maple syrup trap by setting it in a decidedly inedible woody context.

Only the most fleeting of bergamot and aromatic top notes usher in L’Etre Ame Homme’s sweet woody heart, which sustains an unvaried pulse for several hours. The dark woods and immortelle are accompanied by sweet culinary spices and the barest hint of dry patchouli, which together lend the scent a deep, cozy warmth. Warmth enough that I’d find L’Etre Aime Homme oppressive in the summer heat, even though it’s not an overly potent scent. L’Etre Aime Homme is odd in offering sillage disproportionate to its modest potency, so while it never comes across as loud, it does linger in the air, such that you’ll catch hints of it if you retrace your steps within a room.

After all this, L’Etre Aime Homme’s drydown is a disappointment, consisting as it does mostly of a “sandalwood” that smells to me much more like a skimpy, hollow, dusty cedar of no particular character. This limp exit sends me right back to wondering exactly what to make of L’Etre Aime Homme. On the plus side, it is remarkably deft in its use of immortelle, and gracefully sidesteps both the hackneyed gourmand effects and the crude bombast into which that ingredient can so easily drift. The deficits are a certain perplexing want of character and that dull, flimsy drydown. The balance leaves me still ambivalent. L’Etre Aime Homme is a pleasant scent and for the most part an accomplished composition, but after the delightful L’Homme Sage and L’Homme de Coeur I wanted more.

Divine L'Etre Aime Homme

L'Etre Aime Homme translates to The Beloved Man and Yann Vasnier wanted to create a pair of scents centered around Immortelle and hopefully create a beloved scent. L'Etre Aime Homme is the latest in a number of recent scents I've tried to go for a close wearing spicy feel. This comes off as the antithesis of the old Orientals of the 90's which clobbered you over the head with projection and power. L'Etre Aime Homme is subtle and for all intents and purposes only meant to be beloved by the wearer. The top starts with bergamot and lavender, a traditional, almost generic beginning. Thankfully it takes a turn for the better pretty quickly as ginger and basil appear to add some spring to the step of this. It is here that the inspiration note of Immortelle begins to come in but it is a very light application of its signature maple syrup accord and it is almost immediately joined by cardamom which is an almost perfect transition from the zing of ginger to the soft spiciness of cardamom. The base starts to make its appearance as vetiver holds the edge that the spices have provided before. Vanilla and sandalwood come along to round this scent out and tie it off in a familiar combination. This is a beautifully done scent but if you want something that has projection beyond your personal space this is not that scent. That scent is Annick Goutal Sables especially if you like immortelle. This is instead the scent that only you can smell and allows you to have that knowing smile only a tuned-in colognoisseur should have.