Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia (2007)
by Estée Lauder

The top notes come racing out the door and have a very strong floral blast in the opening. I love neroli and the neroli and lilac [sorry I got just a teensy bit of rosewood] pack quite a punch!

Not a very 'green' scent, if that's what you were expecting (unlike the super green original Private Collection by Lauder). Just bright, airy and with the volume turned up high.

The middle notes are my favorite - my nose started to be able to tell the difference between the tuberose and the gardenia at this point. Maybe a little lemon (or some other citrus) shows up at this point and the gardenia becomes slightly 'creamy'.

Dry down was a little linear, but that slight vanillia-ish bourbon note was nice, if a little spice-less. Not a hint of powder anywhere.

Sillage is embarassingly strong. Longevity is above average and perhaps the parfum will ramp up the longevity even more.

I know someone out there is asking themselves - is PCTG a Unisex scent? I think it is. I approached PCTG warily. Carnal Flower by Frederic Malle and it's coconuty spicy tuberose was 'thick' on me. I felt like Carnal Flower was wearing me. So I asked a few people (non-fragrance people) if they thought the PCTG smelled too 'feminine' on me (including my husband) and everyone of them said no. A friend said it smelled really 'clean' to him, like I'd bathed in an expensive soap, which confused me. But I took that as a compliment. :)

I decided to stop trying to second guess everyones reaction to it and JUST WEAR IT again and again (office, first thing in the morning, to bed). In the heat - it surprised me. It didn't really blossom like I expected it to. Very surprising. Maybe Ms. Lauder (Erin, Estee's granddaughter who is marketing the PCTG herself) doesn't want a scent that is to be worn outdoors?

The scent smells like it has been very well thought out. It's serious. I think it smells like real absolutes of the flowers. Perhaps its not, but these floral notes seem crafted and complex. Classy too.

Which, happily, is what I expected.

What an unusual scent! The name had me expecting a conventional aldehydic/indolic white flower, but what comes out of the bottle is something else altogether, and I can see why opinions are so deeply divided.

There are indolic white flowers here, but they ride in on a bold and novel accord of pepper and overripe cheese that reads like an exaggerated take on the pungent (and, yes, cheesy,) undertone that distinguishes gardenia from other white flowers. You’re liable to find it either mesmerizing or whiplash-inducing, depending upon your temperament. The pungency is slow to fade, but as it does the tuberose becomes more conspicuous, to the point where it eventually dominates the composition. At the same time, Tuberose Gardenia grows more simple and transparent, and as it does it starts to reveal the spicy - woody base that has all along provided a firm backbone for the composition.

Three or four hours on and Tuberose Gardenia has evolved into a spicy/woody composition, generously topped with tuberose. The scent remains remarkably potent, even after the indole and aldehydes have retreated, and the generous sillage hangs around for hours. I don’t know that this will ever be a crowd-pleaser, but at its price it probably was not intended to. Distinctive and surprising, and I rather like it!

Nukapai, you and I must have the same chemistry, I got the 'chemical' note you mentioned though it didn't even take two minutes. Too bad, when you love tuberose and gardenia you are always looking for that perfect combination. So far for me, I've only found it in Goutal's Gardenia Passion.

I'd heard that Harrods stocks the Estee Lauder private collection Tuberose Gardenia, so I went over to sniff that. The sales assistant was entertaining: "I wear this all the time and I swear people lean towards me on the train to sniff me. It's such a lovely perfume; the arabs buy it by the bucketload!". I thought this was a Tuberose done very well - I tried some on my skin (which was a precious commodity reserved for fragrances I might like to buy), but within about 2 minutes, an odd chemical note emerged, which lurked underneath the strong tuberose and felt "wrong" to the point of making the perfume unpleasant to smell by the time it had settled. So, it doesn't suit me. Bummer.

Why does this cost $300? It's a beautiful scent but not worth that price tag I think. I once used a scent that I bought from Genovese drug store also called Gardenia about 15 years ago, which was my senior year in high school, and it smelled just like PCTG. That scent cost around $8. I wish I could remember the perfume brand. I have never seen it since.

Tuberose-Gardenia is one of those fragrances where I say, "This is beautiful. But it hates me." I got a decant of this, and the day it arrived my 17 year old goddaughter was visiting. I've turned her into a Perfumista, so she couldn't wait to try my newest prospect. We applied the Tuberose-Gardenia in the same places on our arms, at the same time. On her, the scent started out very green, became a full, rich gardenia, and disappeared within the hour. On me, the scent smelled like the freeway air in August. It lasted all of two hours on me; an unpleasant two hours, because it gave me a headache. I love tuberose, and gardenia, and I wear as many fragrances with these notes as my chemistry will tolerate (not all at once), but something about my skin brings out the piquant smell of asphalt from gardenia and tuberose essences. So this one's not for me. It's too bad, because this is reasonably priced and in a very pretty bottle.