Samsara by Guerlain, 1989

Perfumery lore has it that Samsara contained 30% sandalwood oil when launched. Its also part of perfumerys body of common knowledge that Samsaras sandalwood is long gone. Apparently early iterations of Samsara used this botanical sandalwood as well as botanical jasmine and had a wonderful vanilla note. There was certainly more to the composition than that, but these 3 elements defined Samsaras shape. Sandalwood has effectively been removed from the perfumers palette, and in Samsaras case, its been replaced by polysantol (more from perfumery lore), a powerful synthetic. Perhaps a lush, botanically derived jasmine might have been overmatched by the polysantol, but it appears that a jasmine-analogue of equal volume and shrillness to the synthetic sandalwood is employed as well. I imagine the vanilla in the early Samsara versions would have complemented the creamy tartness of true sandalwood. In the current Samsara the shriek of the polysantol combined with the vanilla gives us a new, sick-making gourmand note: butterscotch vomit. Samsara is for me what Secretions Magnifiques is to its detractors. When powerful aromachemicals are used in largely synthetic perfumes, imbalanced accords and compositions carry greater risks. For better or for worse, when aromachemicals are particularly strong, their effects are a leveraged increase in punch, sillage, durability. If the accords made with theses strong chemicals are imbalanced (read: unappealing) the negatives will be leveraged as well. Whereas a haphazard mix of botanicals will likely read as muddy, Samsaras polysantol-based composition is both horrifying in its gear-grinding volume and nauseating. Samsara creates a perfume sub-genre: the rancid gourmand.