Lancome La Vie Est Belle

Armand Petitjean, a former Coty man, started Lancome in 1935 and introduced it with five fragrances on the same day. Seventy-seven years later it produced the release that reset the entire women's mainstream. La Vie Est Belle, from 2012, was a team composition: Lancome names Anne Flipo and Dominique Ropion on its own page, and Olivier Polge is widely credited as the third hand. That is an extraordinary line-up for a commercial launch. Polge became Chanel's in-house perfumer in 2015; Ropion is the author of Frederic Malle's Portrait of a Lady and Carnal Flower; Flipo has composed for Dior and L'Artisan Parfumeur.

What the three of them made was the fragrance that turned patchouli and praline into the default shape of women's perfumery for the next decade. Lancome's published pyramid runs pear and blackcurrant at the top, iris pallida concrete with orange blossom and jasmine sambac at the heart, and patchouli, tonka bean, vanilla and praline in the base. The house also publishes its sourcing, naming iris pallida butter from France and patchouli from Bali.

On skin the fruit is brief and mostly there to open a door. The centre is iris, and it is real iris, powdery and cool and slightly earthy, which is what stops the base from collapsing into candyfloss. Underneath, praline and patchouli lock together into the accord that launched a thousand imitations: sweet, dark, faintly rooty, more caramel than sugar. It is not a subtle fragrance and it was never meant to be.

The bottle, which Lancome calls a crystal smile, and Julia Roberts fronting the campaign for over a decade did the rest.

Wear it cool and wear it after dark; in Highveld summer heat the praline can turn heavy within an hour. Autumn and winter are its season, and it is better at dinner than at a desk.

Performance is very strong: nine to twelve hours, with the base clinging to scarves for days. One or two sprays. Lancome has built an enormous family around it, including iris absolu and intense versions that redistribute the same materials, and the original eau de parfum remains in continuous production without any significant reformulation history.