Aire Loewe by Loewe

An ultra-feminine and timeless aroma, like an Inés Sastre strolling through Paris in a trench coat with soft gloss under the rain. It is green, woody, and floral without being overpowering, conveying naturalness, confidence, and sweetness. To insult it is a sin; I hold Chanel No. 5 in high regard, and this is simply wonderful and unique. I adore it!

Good heavens, the comments… Loewe’s Aire is not for everyone and depends on the wearer. To me, someone sensitive to strong scents, it always seemed dignified and respectful. My mother and several aunts have worn it for 30 years; it is soapy and clean, perhaps old-fashioned, but classic. I like people who go through life without fuss; that is true elegance.

I wore it for over 15 years and loved the whole line, but I stopped using it in 2020. When I bought it again three years later, it didn’t smell the same: it seemed more unisex and less citrusy. I don’t like it as much now and don’t have another perfume at the moment.

Yesterday I greeted a friend’s mother who was wearing this perfume; it wasn’t a happy moment, but her hug and that scent conveyed so much kindness that I wanted to rediscover it. Beautiful things should not go out of fashion. I saw on Fragrantica that the poor thing was very aggrieved by the reviews, so here is my opinion to convince the critics.

Sagitaria64’s review feels so coherent that, instead of criticising those who express themselves in an infantile and absurd way, believing the world revolves solely around their outdated tastes, I simply share my experience. I’m not looking for the extermination of something as innocent as a perfume, which brings joy to so many and is one of the few pleasures we can enjoy today without being censored, labelled, embarrassed or stigmatised by this ‘free and equal’ hive-mind that is modern society. Indeed, Air reminds me of a distinguished and free lady, who didn’t live on Calle Serrano nor was she a dowdy matron, but a woman with capital letters. It has an impulse of freedom, creativity, struggle, mysterious innocence, natural neatness and pure air, but with a lot, lots of character. I love this perfume, which speaks to her and to my childhood: when I was little, I loved Air because it was hers, even though I didn’t feel identified with it, and now I begin to understand it even when smelling it with my eyes closed, appreciating notes I once viewed with suspicion, very self-assured, very childlike. Now I adore thousands of scents, super different, some rare, others overused to infinity, but in the end, each personality is woven with so many threads, smells, memories, desires, efforts, songs, sounds, touches… that fortunately there is no rule. For me, perfume is to bring past, present and future in a personal, genuine, immediate and pleasurable way, it is to reunite with oneself in an unforgettable instant. So… don’t come to me with which perfume should be discontinued and which shouldn’t :_)

I laugh thinking that for years I was smelling like a mummy with bad breath from Serrano without knowing it. It is a fragrance I like because it ‘means something’ to me, memories of a stage in my life. I suggest trying it to appreciate it. As for the reviews, yes, a minimum of substance and respect is necessary. Blunt and histrionic opinions lose weight. Tomorrow I will put on the Aire to cause a bit of a stir in the supermarket, perhaps with a pearl necklace, although my memory says I don’t have one. It is irony.

My mother used to switch between Aire and Agua by Loewe, and although she stuck with the Agua, I recently bought a dupe of the Aire to remember it. It suits me perfectly; I’m not an old lady and I love it. I see it more as a winter scent because in summer it can be a bit heavy. Perhaps it has aged and fallen behind, but it’s rich and doesn’t smell musty like so many from that era.

I am going to take up the cudgels in favour of this perfume, given the terrible comments from some ‘perfume Taliban’ who think that if they don’t like it, it should disappear. I imagine that when they go to a restaurant and find a menu they don’t like, they will also think it should be removed from the list, I don’t know; I am surprised by such little tolerance when the world of perfume is infinite and tastes are as variable as people. A neighbour of mine uses a perfume that, I swear, smells to me like a mixture of vomit and sweat. When I talk to her for more than five minutes, I start to feel sick. Sometimes I haven’t been able to eat if I found her just before a meal and had to stop with her. It is impossible until that smell leaves my nose. However, she doesn’t just like it; she loves it. She literally bathes in that mess because it smells from afar and strongly. Let the creature enjoy it; in these turbulent times, something like a perfume, even if it is disgusting, that makes you feel well, is a gift. Mind you, those who complain about the smell of this perfume will probably use fragrances that others absolutely dislike. To each their own. Or smells, in this case. And perhaps we should not forget that at the time of making criticisms: our own tastes won’t appeal to others, no matter how much of a work of art it is for us. And let us not forget that on every skin, the same perfume smells different. Having said all that, I do like this perfume. It reminds me of my university years, the wonderful eighties. It has a green air and the aldehydes sit very well on my skin. Not all citrus notes suit me, but for me the combination of notes is perfect for hot weather. It has excellent longevity on my skin, to the point that a single spray lasts for hours. It is not a perfume to spray a whole bottle of at once, but one spray is enough. The trail is moderate; I don’t think it is excessive. Personally, I find it a wild scent, like the countryside. It is not at all sophisticated, nor do I see it as an elegant aroma, but wild, as I said before, rugged. Nothing to do with today’s taste, those perfumes that after smelling them for a while leave you stuffed, as if you had gorged yourself on sweets. From the eighties until today, I have bought it in a rather random way; I may have used it for a year in a whole decade, left it for five years, bought it again the next. It brings back good memories and generally seems a perfume different from today’s taste, but I don’t want it to disappear, just as I wouldn’t want Don Quixote to disappear from bookshops because that literature is not in fashion today.

I have a complicated relationship with Loewe Air: I like it, but only on mild days, neither too cold nor too hot, when my chemistry allows and I crave that classic lady scent. Greens and aldehydes aren’t usually my thing, but here they hook me, perhaps through nostalgia, though I don’t recall anyone wearing it in my childhood. I love that soapy opening note, which is hard to find. On the downside, it has a slightly harsh edge that bothers me with sudden temperature changes. I know some see it as a perfume from another era, arrogant and aloof, and that’s exactly the image it evokes for me. It’s not bad: there are days when it suits that image and I wear it. I have little left in the bottle and am in no rush to finish it; it’s for personal enjoyment and very occasional use. I wouldn’t recommend buying it blindly or gifting it, which is how it came into my hands.

I feel sorry for myself because Loewe’s Air was an unattainable dream when I was fifteen. I thought it was light and youthful until a friend showed us the Saphir dupes, which weren’t available in my city and came in a different format: a translucent crystal ball with a gold cap. I ordered the Air version, which is one of Saphir’s least successful imitations. I grew tired of it immediately, developed a strong dislike for it, and left the bottle half-finished. Now, I can’t stand the scent even when smelling the original (and ironically, the imitation smells stronger on the street than the genuine article). I thought my phobia was just mine because I’d worn the copy until I read your reviews here.

I see the same problem with it as with Chanel No. 5. It’s outdated. It’s a floral with too much aldehyde, with huge projection and longevity.

I feel sorry for it, but the scent of Loewe reminds me of air freshener, perhaps because they’ve been making it that way since then. I know because I worked in an office where it was purchased. I used it once, years ago, because it reminded me of my grandmother; she wore it, and it smelled wonderful, just like all her perfumes. She had incredible skin that made any fragrance shine.

Revolting, too heavy, ‘granny-like’. A very peculiar perfume: you either hate it or love it; there’s no room for neutral opinions. I hate it. It smells of incense, and on my skin, it smells worse, as if I’d emerged from a witch’s session with the ingredients falling on me. It’s a very heavy scent that you don’t know whether to wear in summer or winter, without smelling like the witch from fairy tales. It’s a piece in my collection that arrived as a gift from my boyfriend, who paired it with another I liked, Aire Sutileza, and since it was a gift, I can’t get rid of it, otherwise the poor thing would be laughing its head off.

I’ve tried this perfume many times and never liked it. At first, I didn’t understand why, because in the 80s I was practically a teenager, and a classmate, whose parents had plenty of money, wore this perfume and talked about it as if it were a great marvel. At that time, I could only afford colognes like Eau Jeune. But whenever I had the chance to smell Loewe’s Aire in perfumeries, I still couldn’t understand how they could spend money on that. And no matter how many years have passed, I still think the same.

Fresh, familiar, neutral, casual, unisex? For me, this fragrance differs enough from those adjectives. It’s an aldehydic/creamy and citrus/floral bomb with hints of plastic, corrupted latex and stagnant chloroform, aromatised with calendula, lots of moss and galbanum. Greasy, raw, with a taste of a chapel, a crime scene, and a mad scientist. Few perfumes cause me such stomach pain as Aire, which could more accurately be called ‘mummy breath’. To be serious, I don’t doubt it’s a masterpiece. But I can’t stand it; I feel sick just smelling it. It disturbs me.