Where I am living now we get these very intense thunderstorms throughout the summer. The sky is covered in angry dark clouds and the rain lashes down punctuated by bolts of lightning and the rumble of thunder. Then after about twenty minutes of this it passes through and quite often leaves behind the most brilliant blue sky and a vivid rainbow in its wake. I have always been enchanted with the sudden change from dark to light within minutes. The new Amouage Sunshine Woman has me thinking that this is very much a perfume like those moments after a thunderstorm has passed.
Christopher Chong (Photo: arabia.style.com)
My admiration for Amouage Creative Director Christopher Chong is well-known. He has always imparted a clear artistic vision to Amouage which has led to a consistency which is unmatched in perfumery over the last five years. I have also admired the slow evolution of Amouage from thunderous powerhouse perfumes prior to Mr. Chong’s creative stewardship to one of the most complex collections of fragrance on the market. It has been like watching that figurative thunderstorm move on and now with Sunshine Woman the sun shines on a crystal blue sky with an arc of prismatic color through the middle of it. The perfumer Mr. Chong chose to work with was Sidonie Lancesseur who is signing her first perfume for Amouage. These are two of my very favorite people in all of perfume and the perfume they collaborated on creating is simply amazing.
When I use words like sparkling, bright, sunshine, or brilliance; that usually means citrus, bergamot, maybe some of the higher register florals. What Mme Lancesseur has accomplished with this composition is to create something which lives up to all those adjectives I mentioned without using any of those notes I mentioned. Sunshine Woman is an expansively bright young thing in liquid form. It is also brilliant in the way that word means when used to describe creativity.
Mme Lancesseur opens Sunshine Woman with a trio of notes davana, almond, and blackcurrant liqueur. The woody nuttiness of the almond forms the core for the herbal fruity quality of the davana and the straight up syrupy fruity of the blackcurrant liqueur to converge upon. You read that and you think, how can that be light? It can be because the almond is the lead in the early moments and the davana and blackcurrant are used in such restrained quality that they add contrast and texture more than a distinct fruity presence. The almond segues into a floral heart of magnolia supported by jasmine and osmanthus. If the top notes were mainly almond with some support. The heart notes are a meeting of equals although the magnolia is a little more out front. Osmanthus and jasmine are becoming a favorite combination among florals as they complement each other almost perfectly. Here the magnolia adds a slightly woody aspect. Together this is crystal blue sky in vivid crisp tones. The figurative rainbow is supplied by an arc composed of papyrus, patchouli, tobacco, and cade wood. Mme Lancesseur uses these notes to etch a bold slash of olfactory color across the sky of Amouage Sunshine Woman. Her use of cade especially in this grouping is amazing. Cade usually adds smoke and deep black facets to a fragrance. Mme Lancesseur has used it in such a way to have it seem like it comes from a far distance as if you see the back edge of that line of thunderstorms as it moves away. The papyrus is an opaque green which is misted in smoke from the cade and given roots in the earth by patchouli. Finally a vanilla and tobacco accord add a bit of sweet narcotic air after the maelstrom has passed.
Amoauge Sunshine Woman has 10-12 hour longevity and above average sillage.
It is rare that I say this but my description of this perfume does not do it justice. As you can see by the list of notes up there this should not be a fragrance which gets compared to a sunbeam. Except it is and I have spent days trying to dig deeply inside of it to find a way to communicate this. I finally have to admit failure and tell you of any new perfume release in 2014 you simply have to try Amouage Sunshine Woman and then you will understand.
Disclosure: This review was based on a sample of Amouage Sunshine Woman provided by Amouage.
Editor’s note: Currently Amouage Sunshine Woman is only available at the 17 stand-alone Amouage boutiques around the world. As of February 2015 it will be available elsewhere.
–Mark Behnke
Mark – I think you captured the fragrance perfectly, but I understand the notion of trying to put into words what simply is impossible to do sometimes. This sounds perfect to take one away from the grey and cold skies of winter. Sunshine Woman reads so different from an Amouage scent…I'm sure however, it is unmistakenly Amouage?!