Aqua Allegoria Anisia Bella Guerlain for women and men

There is a reason I am fond of Anisia Bella, a light, cold and flowery fragrance I usually don't find the most appealing.

Anisia Bella is fascinating. First it is all about cool anise and light flowers, but after a while, on skin, it develops a warm roasted note/accord to it. Then, it smells interesting. That is the note I keep tracing from my skin.

Anisia Bella turns out to be lightly (lightly!) gourmandish:
Lightly roasted anise sherbet.

I didn't like this at all when I bought it. I wanted a replacement for Herba Fresca, and this was the greenest one I could find. I am still not fond of the initial blast of aniseed, but once it settles, I find it a rich, enduring, subtle green fragrance that stays close to my body. My husband hates it, of course, but he loves very sweet fragrances that really don't float my boat anyway. Now that I have another bottle of Herba Fresca (Thank you Guerlain for re-releasing!) I wear that in Spring/Summer & break out the Anisia Bella once the weather turns chilly in the Autumn. Something that I once wore out of desperation has actually become part of me!

Lovely, crispy, it feels like a summer day in a reccently cutted grass field

The perfumer having been let out of the closet, so to speak, allows perfume hobbyists and enthusiasts to focus on particular perfumers. Cellier, Roudnitska, Robert, Chant. It allows us to recognize the history of the ephemeral and unspoken, give credit, and explore artists whose work has meaning for us. I think the precedent here is cinema, and its move from the focus on the studio and producer to the director. ‘Art film’ of the 1950s-1960s (Kurasowa, Truffault) could be likened to early niche perfumery (Laporte, Lutens.) 1970s-1980s and onward is where mainstream American film highlighted the star director (Scorsese, Spielberg.) I suppose the comparisons here would be Ellena and Kurkdjian. (Sorry, very broad strokes here. I’ve never studied film.) Whether the perfume/film analogy holds, and for better or worse, the perfumer as auteur is our current paradigm.

It’s fascinating to focus on the remaining work of the great, dead noses, but how about those still with us? I’m a great fan of Aurélien Guichard. He is prolific, his work has ongoing themes, his play with history and innovation is wonderfully smart, and his perfumes are beautiful. I find the connections between his contemporary work (Chinatown, Love in Paris) and his reconstructions/reorchestrations (Baghari, Azzaro Couture) utterly fascinating, and his mastery of genres admirable. (Chinatown is a fruity chypre, Future a green floral and Andy Warhol silver Factory a transparent woody insence.)

So, Anisia Bella (2004.) Creating an Aqua Allegoria must have been an interesting challenge to a perfumer whose future work would show a thorough grasp of classical perfumery in all its complexity. You know, the Aqua Allegorias---the Guerlain perfume training bra, the realm of the almost metaphysical ‘Is it a scent or a perfume?’ question. Guichard’s solution is witty and smells great.

The AA’s are light and easy if you like them, simplistic and possibly trite if you don’t. AB uses simplicity to its advantage. It is light but substantial, and complex enough to hold interest over time. Simple and facile, but not unsophisticated. Creating a two-tiered perfume is like the Goldylocks solution to the linear vs top/heart/base debate. AB keeps anise from start to finish, but starts with a cold, sugared citrus violet and transitions to a tea-like cedar. With herbs, perfumery tends to follow cuisine’s lead. Herbs are an enhancement, an embellishment. Fruit, flowers, woods are the lead. AB subverts the order and the flower serves the herb. Anise is the lead performer and ostensibly follows the ‘simple smell’ idea of the AAs. More often than not, though, he complexity of the floral and woody notes catches me when I’m not paying attention and gives me a wink.

See the Aqua Allegoria bottle, soulless through repitition, as the Trojan Horse to the beautiful set of ideas contained in Anisia Bella.

Anisia Bella is a lovely rendition of an herbal garden on sunny afternoon. It smells nice and natural. The anise note is lovely, pleasant and fresh combined with basil and bergamot. The scent stays linear but towards the dry down, the cedar note becomes more noticeable on my skin.

The scent is totally unisex but you have to be in love with anise to wear this. I feel that it is most suitable for summertime and it is great in hot weather and natural settings. My overall score is 7.5/10.

I expected this to be a light anise scent, and so it is. It starts out with a lot of airy-aquatic notes and a tame anise, so the fragrance delivers exactly what the name promises. The anise is subtly modified by green herbal notes, including basil, but mainly sticks to the anise lite theme. There’s just a hint of clean white musk in the base.

Longevity is not bad for a light EdT, about 3-4 hours with sillage, then a few more hours as a skin scent. I would characterize this as a delicate aquatic fragrance, lightly flavored with anise and green herbs, probably a good one for summer spritzing on hot days.

Green, spicy, creamy and at the same time a bit powdery. It's not a heavy fragrance. I had it on a paper and sniffed it once a while (it lasted two days on that paper!) but something in my mind didn't seem to be able to imagine a female wearing this. Eventually, I got it. It would be very nice on a male! I told it to a friend of mine and let her sniff it, and she agreed completely. She even said she would think it would be very sexy on a man! So guyss... Give it a try for us :D

Wore this perfume twice...nothing special! I may pull it back out of my perfume collection and try to give it 1 more try before giving it to someone who will appreciate this weird spring grass smelling Guerlain travesty.

I did not like Anisia Bella when I bought it several months ago without having smelled it. However, the bottle is so pretty I couldn't just toss it. I recently tried it again, and I like it much better. It's a nice change from my floral fragrances. The anise is most dominant on my skin, but the drydown is very clean, refreshing, herbal, subtle.

My bottle of Guerlain Aqua Allegoria ANISIA BELLA was MIA for some time and just resurfaced while I was searching for something else. O Happy Day!

This unique fragrance opens with a marked anise/licorice note but shortly thereafter transforms into an herbaceous melange with a dominant bitter green character not unlike Bond no 9 CENTRAL PARK, which was also produced in 2004. There must have been something in the air...

I like this composition a lot, but I also like CENTRAL PARK. Both are slightly masculine, or at least not sweet and flowery. I find this herbaceous green quality quite refreshing, especially in the heat.

Because ANISIA BELLA has a strong anise opening, this one is best for licorice/fennel/anise fans, I think. The staying power is good, as is usually the case with the AA edts.

My impression of this is clean, lemony and soapy. At keast that's what it smelled like on me. Pretty mild and pleasanet, but not my thing.

When i first saw the AD for the Aqua allegoria perfumes, i thougt wow! these perfumes must smell delicious, as i am a big fan of perfumes with a natural fruit/flower theme.

I really wanted to get at least one of them. I got myself a well priced bottle of anisia bella, I hadnt smelled it before but i was sure it was gonna be great, unfortunately i was really disapointed, it smells too strong with a sharp anise wiff, kind of reminds me of dryed out old anise seed, at the back of my mothers spice cupboard. It does have great staying power though! Im still looking forward to trying the rest of the AA perfumes, hopefully il find something amazing.

Light black licorice. You can spray on a lot and not overwhelm. Lovely, really.

to me, this smells like black licorice on a bed of white and purple flowers. i would not have guessed that it fell into the green category. i also would not have thought it to be unisex though i think the right man can pull of lots of smells that are aimed at women. anyway, a very playful perfume. i've heard that black licorice attracts men. hm. :)

Very interesting scent, not for everyone, not for every day but very unique, anise scent.

Well, several hours after my first impressions of the fragrance, I can tell you about the drydown - it's very soapy & I smell like I have scrubbed myself clean in an expensive organic shower gel. Not at all unpleasant and certainly more relaxing than the first notes were!

Altogether, the experience of this fragrance is like a brisk, healthy walk in the mountains whilst eating licorice, then being rained on whilst having a picnic in a field of lush grass, then returning home and showering after your day out.

This arrived this morning, and so of course I had to try it immediately. It was a bit of an unsniffed chance - got it for a bargain price online & decided to give it a go. I am aware I have, in the past, played it quite safe with my choices and currently am in the mood to diversify my fragrance wardrobe.

The first blast was pure licorice, quite aggressive & very masculine to my nose. That top note lasts for about 5 minutes on my skin, then waves of wet grass & fresh mountain air take centre stage. We are now at the stage of this mellowing into notes of black tea with faint warmer wafts of fresh apricot & herbs. There's a background of white lilies in this, somewhere. The notes keep changing, so it's difficult to keep track of them.

Anisia Bella is very interesting to try, certainly something new for me, but I would say this is akin to visiting a health spa & having a number of salt rubs & aromatherapy treatments. You might come away feeling healthy and smelling of herbs, but it's not exactly what one would immediately reach for as a perfume to smell of each day.

I shall give this to my fiancé to try - I have a feeling this would work far better on him!

Goes on like grapefruit and anise. Starts to show touch of floral in dry down then a sudden blast of herby mint comes, lovely and unexpected. It’s probably the Basil. End is summery, fresh anise and herby notes.
Very nice.

I also don`t like the licorice top note. It is like a teaspoon of cough medicine!But when it wears down, it`s very relaxing, a bit sweet and grassy.Too casual for the evening though.The lasting power is pretty good on me, but I am lucky with Guerlains.
I guess not lucky with this one - after a while I couldn`t stand that licorice note anymore, it was too overwhelming, and traded it for another bottle.

Don't like the top notes. they are too overpowering but fade away quickly. Maybe it's just my skin chemistry but it smelled very bad on me. Doesn't last long, it is too subtle.