I have something of a love-hate relationship with the Aqua Allegoria range from Guerlain. To recap for those who aren’t familiar with them, the Aqua Allegoria series was introduced in 1999 as a youth-oriented, reasonably-priced line aimed at bringing younger consumers into the Guerlain fold. In the early years, the fragrances were done in a naturalistic style, usually highlighting one or two notes, but more recent outings have strayed from those conventions. They’re generally launched as limited editions, then if they do well, they get added to the regular line. For some years, they’ve done two new Aqua Allegoria fragrances a year, but since 2010, they’ve only put one of the two into widespread distribution.¹

There’s no point in looking for the next Shalimar among the Aqua Allegorias, but some of them have been highly enjoyable fragrances, and a few of them of them are staples in my summer fragrance wardrobe.² The last few years, though — since Thierry Wasser took over as Guerlain’s house perfumer — they’ve been concentrating on a “young, fresh and dewy” style, not altogether unlike that of Guerlain Idylle. Sometimes that works, sometimes the output strikes me as forgettable and/or insipid.

This year’s widely distributed Aqua Allegoria is Lys Soleia…

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