Beyond Paradise For Men by Estée Lauder

It doesn’t smell like hyacinth as Fragrantica claimed. It’s tropical grape, plum wood, and aquatic notes. The opening smells like a purple push-pop from the 90s: bitter, cold, very fruity and green, but not sweet. It reminds me of the classic Polo Blue’s wet sponge but without copying it. Then it evolves into a sensual 90s amber, sandy and skin-like, without vanilla, warmer. The concept doesn’t quite click for me and the performance is mediocre, but I love the bottle.

It feels bland, weak in personality, and mostly floral. I haven’t sensed any citrus. Despite the many components, it smells flat and unchanging over time. My partner says it smells like cucumber. It’s not strictly masculine; it could easily be unisex.

Beyond Paradise could be hiding in any garden with white flowers and lemon trees, especially when the sun feels tedious. The bottle and the scent emulate a perfect sunset. It smells of shyly sweet white flowers, perhaps jasmine, with other lovely field florals, all covered in orange blossoms and citrus that give it a spark, especially at the start. It’s a full-bodied unisex.

Buy blind; if I’d known it beforehand, I wouldn’t have brought it, but well, I’m starting to use it. The opening is quite calonitic with the bitterness of grapefruit. Shortly after, I notice the greenness of the hyacinth and a dry, indolic jasmine (the whole ensemble feels forced and unnatural). I don’t know how the plum wood smells, but when it seems like it’s about to fade, the amber emerges, giving it life. It’s not the typical niche amber; it’s a balsamic accompaniment to the flowers that makes the ensemble usable and passable. It lasts 6 or 7 hours without issues.

Beyond Paradise carries the weight of Luca Turin’s opinion, who said it’s the only work capable of bottling a beautiful sunset. For me, it’s nothing extraordinary, just an evolution of approaches like CK ONE or Paco Rabanne. It has a relaxed, kind, eternally youthful edge, almost teenage, and quite unisex. It opens with a sweet, heavy floral accord, with reminiscences of white sand beaches, virgin vegetation, and turquoise waters. It shows green and bitter traces with a hefty floral load that appears quickly after leaving the citrus opening and lasts for hours. It’s not a fragrance of masculine or alpha-male character; it’s the personification of an easy-going life, Caribbean vacations, or refined coastlines. Turin’s comments have attracted many of us, but in the end, it seems like a simple work, almost as subjective as his sayings. To finish, it has no resemblance to Hilfiger Athletics, at most in that teenage approach.