Hyperbole by Courrèges

Editing my previous message. I wore it again today for the second time since my review and I absolutely love it. I no longer compare it to Gaultier 2… It is vanilla-based yes but today I also detected prominent notes of tobacco and white pepper. I imagine I was so eager to try it the first time (I bought it blind) and expected something closer to Gaultier 2 which disappointed me. But no… This is Hyperbole not Gaultier 2. I adore the blend of white pepper with the vanilla touch. It’s special suggestive and I’d say sexy. If I told you what it evokes… Moderate trail and performance though it sits beautifully on the skin. Hyperbole… My new acquisition. Who said second chances never pay off?

It’s worth appreciating how the Courrèges house treats its products. In fashion they respect their legacy: basic garments well-cut with the brand’s characteristic futuristic logo. Period. That same coherent philosophy translates to their perfumes. Few and good. Simple affordable prices (they don’t give them away for free) and not chasing trends. This Hyperbole is a lovely perfume; it serves as a sexy counterpoint to the dynamic fresh waters that characterize their fragrance line. It doesn’t reinvent anything that wasn’t invented in the mid-nineties but it’s refreshing that it doesn’t smell gourmand. The vanilla feels a bit plastic but it’s not a drama given we’re all used to the artificial radioactive vanillas of today. Hyperbole is a dirty perfume a clean kind of dirty. It’s not boozy or an exuberant oriental like Classique or Joop Femme; it’s a clean warm oriental with metallic edges. It’s sweet but absolutely not cloying. It’s oriental but filtered through the lens of a movie boudoir or an idealized sophisticated French sex club. It could be a more sophisticated and elegant version of Gaultier 2. It’s neither masculine nor feminine; rather it makes you think of rumpled satin sheets a bedroom after a night of passion between two previously perfumed people. A blend of their two fragrances plus the effluvia of hot skin could perfectly create the aroma of Hyperbole. Warm and cold sweet and sharp with a background of metallic tonka—a note I hate but which is well-executed here. A sharpened polished cold tonka that smells of satin and foreplay not burnt rust or the mop bucket of a sex club like in so many current fragrances. It seems like an updated flanker of Gaultier 2 more refined and stylized. I can’t distinguish the notes separately beyond an omnipresent tonka sometimes alcoholic sometimes vanilla with a taste of wet tobacco. It reminds me of freshly removed underwear from someone who’s turned you on slightly sweet slightly dirty. In the dry down it becomes somewhat banal. Highly recommended ultra-sexual and perfectly unisex.