SpellBound by Estée Lauder

I absolutely love it; it’s quite unusual. It opens with fruity notes before transporting me to a memory of honey; it’s sweet but not cloying. As it dries down, it gains immense complexity. It’s one of those perfumes that plays with you: it arrives, departs, and reappears as if by magic. It’s not a beast in terms of projection, yet its movement is constant and magical. Sweet and innocent at first, it evolves into something more complex with an animalic touch, a civet that modulates without being the star. There are so many notes it’s hard to distinguish the individual ones; initially, it smells synthetic but nothing unpleasant, before fading away. The notes dominate according to the phase: a fruity top, then floral, and an amber base with vanilla and that animalic nuance. Today, the vetiver, cedar, and sandalwood refuse to play second fiddle, and that is their greatest virtue: that constant movement, a ceaseless journey from the very first second. It has the aura of a great composition. The bottle is vintage, smooth clear glass, reminiscent of others from the house but with less rounded shapes. The gold spray nozzle and cap function perfectly. I wear it unisex.

This wonderful fragrance was worn by my mother years ago for dinners with my father, with friends, or for formal outings; it left a trail of prodigious mystery and sophistication. Some time ago I managed to get a miniature with a spray, and it was still wonderful, so enchanting and sophisticated… I really want to find a full bottle to add to my collection. A unique perfume and another masterpiece by Estee Lauder.

Spellbound has left me spellbound, just as its name says. Its opening, its longevity, and its dry-down are characteristics of a great creation. It is impossible not to smell it over and over again. If you don’t bring your hand close, it doesn’t matter, its effluvia come. It has left me transfixed. This perfume by Sophia Grosjman must have been a bomb in its time, because it is very, very unusual. It has a sweet, fruity synthetic characteristic that dominates the whole life of the fragrance, and this is a very long life. I was warned about the specialness of this perfume, but it has surpassed any warning. It is an absolute amalgam of fruits, flowers, some woods, in short, a lot of components that are very hard to break down individually, which make a powerful whole, with a lot of character, which could very well be an object of cult today. It is a sweetness that, without reaching narcotic levels as it could have been in the 80s, has a luminous beauty, which lends it some lightness by mixing a very dense formula. I take off my hat to this great perfumer again and again; she always always moves me. I think she could reach (for me) being the best perfumer of all time. She becomes so extremely good that even when she does something synthetic, she lends it an elegance that is impossible to ignore, because this elegance is her personal seal. The carnation in Spellbound is a fantasy carnation, mixed with beautiful fruits; it is to imagine having carnations in your hands while taking a bite out of a high-quality red liquorice. It treats the perfume with components that seem unreal and very luminous, which make it leave behind those synthetic scraps that one is surprised by at first, but as they evolve, they turn into sweet warmth thanks to the resins, the amber, the vanilla… Perfect to vary from everything you have in your wardrobe. If you want something with the sweet fastuousness of the eighties but with a luminous and modern character (today): Spellbound. It is a perfume that carries a lot of positivity in its formula because everything is an explosion of many components treated in different ways but that end up offering a result that, no matter how strange it is, works. I see it clearly in people who are extremely original, who go their own way, who have that characteristic that everything they do has an impact, people with a lot of vim, exciting people, people whose eyes sparkle when they explain something to you, people who dream while awake.

A sweet-citrus highlight of juicy fruits and fresh flowers with sandalwood, very typical of my beloved Sophia Grosjman. This wonderful floral scent has a touch of Paris, a hint of Volupté at times, and a juicy peach reminiscent of Trésor and Yvresse. The opening is fruity: blackcurrants, juicy fruits like peaches, ripe red plums, a hint of raspberry and apricot, interwoven with touches of orange blossom and vetiver. Towards the end, after five hours, soft traces of vanilla, amber and benzoin emerge, accented by cedar. I detected no civet or animal notes, as I’m reviewing the current market version. Simply beautiful, feminine, voluptuously floral and warmly floral, just like everything this artist creates. On my skin it lasts about six hours, being very potent during the first hour.

I bought it and I regret it… in the end it leaves a sugary alcohol scent, unbearable….

The Great Spell of Lauder, I love it and it was born as the synthetic and most sensual perfume, it is true, nowadays neither the perfume extract nor the eau de parfum is found, the eau de parfum was intense and wonderful, almost touching the limits, I will never understand how this perfume disappeared until the body line and its small sizes. It was like black magic of love, a bomb.