A spicy floral oriental, More Beauty than Beast opens with an orange-soaked amber accord as roundly sweet and waxy as Fendi’s discontinued Theorema. Seriously, it is so familiar a scent that I wore it a couple times in a row just to try and figure out what it reminded me of. And that’s what I arrived at: a softer, more natural, “glowing” version of Theorema. But the fragrance just uses this as a jumping off point, because within minutes I think what most defines the scent is the combination of a spicy, custardy ylang ylang and a very good (non-metallic) clove or cassia note.
Ylang is tricky to work with because it is super powerful and can overwhelm a scent with a benzyl acetate-driven gaseousness that makes everything feel like it’s been caught in a grape-flavored burp. But here the ylang note has been massaged a bit so that we only feel its banana crème brulee aspects. Soft, powdery, and somewhat innocent in feel, it reminds me in part of one of my favorite ylang fragrances, Tasneem by La Via del Profumo. Here the clove note adds a hot, cinnamon-spiced seasoning that keeps the ylang within the bounds of decency, like a sprinkling of black pepper on something fatty. Powerful, unruly notes, acting as checks and balances for each other – it’s practically the US government!

There is a cream-of-wheat milkiness in the base that speaks to the presence of a particularly fine, subtle grade of sandalwood. It is both softer and gentler than the usual sandalwood used in The Rising Phoenix perfumes, and dare I say, less distinctive for all of that. But still, a very pretty, natural sandalwood “milk” there to catch and then bed down all the spice and the florals in the heart.

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