Oscar

I have a 1977 bottle of Oscar I was lucky enough to find for a reasonable price. My review, therefore, is for the original Oscar, not its later iterations or its modern counterpart, Esprit d'Oscar. I dare say, many of the existing reviews here are for Esprit. The bottles look alike, the juice isn't. True Oscar is heavily spicy in the dry down. Nothing about the original Oscar is a matter of impression, she is what she is and she is a true Oriental princess, doused in warm enveloping spice. The opening is a little soapy, but that Vanderbilt like powderiness soon subsides into something richer and more engaging. There is white floral which sits like a lace veil over the scent pyramid at the very beginning. It does not weaken, but is juxtaposed against the sweetness and spice. A true metamorphosis. I would recommend searching for an original formulation. It is certainly worth putting some effort into identifying the earlier bottles. As is always the case for vintage fragrances and those fragrances which have sadly been reformulated over the years into the ghost of their original glory. All hail the OG!

Wearing this today, the main note I'm getting is a gorgeous jasmine. This perfume is gorgeously dynamic. Different wears will reveal different facets. Enjoy.

I have two vintage bottles of this, and they are both a little different. One is darker in color now and is more powdery and the other one is a bit more musky, but otherwise they're mostly the same. It's a very woody and spicy scent. It's a bit floral too. There's really a lot going on, but it's pretty nice.

It's a lot more unisex than you might think, especially heading into the base. Like Estee Lauder Knowing, there's a million notes; also like Knowing I think it's wearable chypre for me. What I got was a quick aldehydic hit of clove and coriander for spicy that set the tone against white florals, green notes, and background fruit. The heart does lean feminine with tuberose and other various florals, but there's an animalic musk that comes through that keeps everything balanced to my nose. The base shifts back to masculine lean in my opinion with grassy patchouli, ambery sandalwood, and soapy lavender. I don't see it listed, but some degree of honey or castoreum must exist because the animalics are what really appealed to me on the wear; the various greens and spices also help to keep the florals from running away.

Oscar de la Renta, the fashion designer, the Edt and the perfume. I have always followed ODLR's fashion as he brought some quasi-European frills and colours and Super Femininity to the American, NY and LA fashions. Karl Lagerfeld said with his vitriolic tongue, when Oscar took the reigns of Balmain Couture: 'we have here (Paris) already enough designers doing Frou Frou'. but he denounced Oscar not. they were even photographed in a Waltz, where Karl was a great dancer but Oscar was born in the Dominican Republic so his Latinism came of great use, in all named domains. his perfume was so Super Elegant. it kind of adhered to van Cleef&Arpels' First. it was a White Flowers, Rose and Orchid confection yet never out of line with the Rigid New York Chic. He belonged with his wife Annette de la Renta to the Jet Set. Oscar (1932-2014) was a designer to be reckoned with. Romanticism, Flair, Colour. His perfume excells in Flowers, Aromatic Herbs, Fruits, Resins, Woods and Spices. it is a Flower - (quasi-) Oriental - Amber perfume but with the quintessence in Lightness and Airiness. Chic and Present, yet in the mannered way. I had the perfume and it was divine. I loved his fashion. this perfume rightfully has become a Classic.

I just don't like it enough. I'll stick to my Aromatics Elixir. Really wanted to like it as I like the genre, but there is too much happening that pulls it into a minty, clove infused muscle pain cream. Too much white floral, too much spice cabinet, too much camphor. It's pretty nuclear and hard to scrub off, so if you like the scent, at least the performance is there.

This is such a beauty... a spicy herbal green soapy scent. The dry down is beautiful... not cloying just soft and remini"scent" of the opening. If you like chanel n.5 edp... you might like this. It's not the same at all... but could be cousins. I do smell the spices in here, but it's the coriander, rosemary and basil (aromatic)... so it's not a hot dense and punchy spice type, it's herbal, the clove gives it a unique twist on my skin at least. It's classy... I could imagine a elegant lady in a summer dress, a beautiful hat, shoes and purse that match... going to see a croquet match ^^. I'm really happy I have this.

This is my definition of soapy, in the best, cleanest sense of the word. No spice whatsoever. Powdery, creamy and vintage in a non-aldehyde way. Like Imperial Leather or Lux soap bar. Closer to NR Essence than Chanel N°5.

This was my mother's signature fragrance, probably since the mid-80s. I know she said she wore it in high school. It fit her very well. She has always been very beautiful in every sense, & this perfume reminds me. The original Oscar perfume is gorgeous, & you may say I am biased. It is definitely powdery in the opening, but it lingers on the skin for a long time and changes into something different. It's a fragrance I will cherish for all my days.

My very first Oscar! Do NOT be put off by the SPICES listed. There is NO SPICE in this! This is VERY sweet , VERY pretty and VERY feminine. It's also VERY vintage smelling . VERY Yellow & White floral. This is youthful and fun. If Georgio and L' Heure Bleue AND Vanderbilt had a baby : THIS would be it. If you had to pick a vintage era for this to bring you back to: No questions : 1977 - 1980. I would imagine that this is what the daughters on the ABC-TV show "Eight is Enough" would smell like (if you are old enough to remember). This composition is slightly complex enough to hold your interest as a "daily dumb grab" (you will probably not be bored by this) . Longevity / projection is good - however my bottle seems to be a vintage Tester (I'm guessing 20 years old or more). Always go for a tester bottle on older perfumes -- chances are very good that you will score a decades old version. GRADE: B+. SBB (Safe Blind Buy - If you trust my reviews) & Un-29 (you will have no problem finding a full bottle of this for under $29.00 . Thank me later ?

Like a combination of l’heure bleue and jil sander sun. Yet its still its own thing. It has sun’s plasticy indolic undertones and l’heure bleue’s marshmallowiness, while toning down on the sweetness of sun and clove/carnation bomb aspect of l’heure bleue. It has a slight herbal facet , but it doesnt feel like a sharp and lush green. More like the smell of a bright and pale sage green. I will edit as i discover this perfume more as it already seems quite complex

I’m not sure how I feel about this. It was pretty powdery at first. I don’t do a powdery fragrance(personal preference) but it doesn’t stay there. Which is when I start to like it more. It’s super complex and interesting. Its not like anything I’ve smelled. But do I like it? Maybe. I have to get to know it more. I have the EDT and it is still a bit loud. I don’t mind a loud fragrance but I certainly do if it’s powdery. I don’t typically wear gourmands but I would prefer them to a powdery scent. We’ll see how it evolves, because I have a feeling I will really like the dry down. However, one light spray is all you need. The sillage is huge! It is a classic, and feels like it. Like you have an extremely recognizable fragrance on. It does have a vintage vibe for sure. I think this scent’s primary buyer is probably one who has been wearing it for decades, or reminds them of someone who had. As someone who is new to the fragrance, I am not sure I see the draw. It isn’t the worst, nor is it a scrubber, but it’s not a like either. I’ll probably end up selling this one. I have so many fragrances I enjoy that I just do see myself reaching for this. I also don’t know when I would wear this. I wear scents for the seasons and this one is a tough on the place in any particular one.

Vintage mini bottle of Oscar de la Renta EDT: a lovely amber floral w/good use of textural elements. Sophisticated spicy notes and lavender marry a fuzzy note of orange flower. The smooth heart: creamy tuberose, round carnation, powdery ylang all meld with a base that contains a healthy mix of real amber and the 80s/90s synthetic alternative. Rough around the edges with a seamless center. "Oscar" has real orchestral heft and feels properly grand. I was under the impression that this perfume functions as a cheap dupe for L'Heure Bleue. Oscar goes in more of a white floral direction, with a lot of emphasis on tuberose and orange flower, whereas L'Heure Bleure is substantially more iris dominant. I think the perfumes are distinct enough to justify owning both. Edit: I was so pleasantly surprised with this perfume I've bought a vintage bottle of it for $20. I'm going to try wearing it out.

Definitely for those women who like their perfume to be NOTICED! This is a tuberose bomb, a cloyingly glamorous humid jungle flower, spiced up with cloves so that overall you feel you've walked into a misty hothouse filled with spicy carnations, rotting wood and fleshy, oily, diesel-like tuberoses that reach out towards you with with their tendrils, clamouring for attention. Or so it seems to me! My friend was wearing this on our night out recently. It was quite a cool night and we were outside but I noticed it immediately and guessed the perfume. Actually I enjoyed it on her. I'd never wear it myself though, I don't wear tuberose really, it wears me. The exceptions would be Ubar by Amouage as it's so grounded, and Do Son, which is tuberose-lite. If you enjoy 80s jungle like florals but this is too heavy, try Songes by Goutal, or vintage Chloe

Tussy deodorant cream [complimentary]

Oh yeah Ive smelled this before. Floral soapy spice I associate with a generation or two ahead of me. Makes me think of my grandmother’s bridge club. Kind of nostalgic and glad to have but won't be wearing it out since it’s a bit old fashioned.

Oscar by Oscar de la Renta is another well-known floriental from the 80s (officially released in 1977), ...and this one does play at a higher pitch (dare I say shrill?) than most, (no) thanks to its spice component consisting almost entirely (only?) of cloves. Overdosed clove oil makes this an extra hot mix for the floriental genre, worth sampling for the experience, though ultimately less pleasant to wear than most. No, I'm serious. This vintage formula of Oscar is literally stinging my skin; surviving evidence of why allowable eugenol (clove oil) levels in perfumery really did need to be reduced. See also Giorgio Red. Now I really should try to find a modern bottle of this stuff, just so I can compare and decide if safe and sane really does equate to no fun, as I'm sure the old guard will claim. Continuing on, now working solely from a blotter, I will describe the floral component as leading strongly with tuberose and ylang-ylang, two powerhouse white florals able to stand up and fight back against an acidic barrage of cloves (cloven hooves?) Obviously, Oscar's old-school formula is full of additional (subtle) grace notes helping to build up an olfactory phalanx, ...but most of them aren't likely to be liminally perceived. However, the take-home message is simple: fiery cloves & rich white florals, both dialed up into the red.

WTF is this? What is this tuberose/gas/death bomb that I just stuck on my skin?!?! I have a vintage bottle that I sprayed on myself earlier to reverently love this little beauty. But momma needed another hit. Instead of letting her play out, it seemed like a good idea to give my newer bottle a little spray. It was a chemical explosion. I couldn't pick up a single note outside of gas, tar, synthetic, tuberose. My arch nemesis tuberose. You may look at my profile and question how I could say this as tuberose is in many fragrances that I love. And that is true. However, the wrong tuberose smells exactly like a corpse flower on my skin. It is the sickly smell of decomposing flesh playing out for everyone to smell what my endgame will be. You're welcome. And I paid for someone to make me smell that way. I don't know if this is the batch number as it was under the label punched in the glass but HP-12 is evil. I had no idea that this is what the reformulation smelled like. It now makes sense that this has fallen to places like drugstores where synthetics reign queen. If anyone wants to make a trade for this bottle then please hit me up.

Happy elegance in a bottle... Oscar is one of the fragrances that has truly impressed me lately. I didn’t expect to love it this much. A magnificent perfume from 1977 — classic at its core yet carrying a discreet kind of grandeur. It has a vintage aura that somehow feels modern, as contradictory as that may seem. I hardly know where to begin, because this fragrance is so rich. The notes are numerous and beautifully blended, making it almost impossible to separate them. What I can say is that the cloves are not disturbing in the least. They stay in the background, adding a slightly spicy, almost playful touch to the white florals. Basil contributes a gentle herbal note and a light spicy nuance that perfectly balances the peach, gardenia, and orange blossom. If Gloria by Vanderbilt truly resembles this perfume, then I absolutely need to buy it. I’m extremely happy with this fragrance, and delighted to have the large 200 ml bottle. It’s a scent I will keep in my collection forever. It has the potential to be a real signature scent, even though I’m not someone who easily adopts one. But this one — yes, I can see myself wearing it every day. Edit : When it comes to comparing Oscar with Esprit d’Oscar, I truly don’t see any similarity. Perhaps there is an extremely subtle shared base note, a whisper of the same DNA, but in essence, they are entirely distinct fragrances.

Wow. This is phenomenal. I mainly get tuberose in this (shocker!) but it's so beautifully grounded by a soft warm spiciness. Initially this reminded me of Estee Lauder White Linen but over time it more so reminds me of Vanderbilt and Giorgio Beverly Hills whilst still strongly standing on it's own. Divine. This feels like a hot summer night in a bottle.

Kicking myself found the tall black cap bottle of Oscar at Value Village. Sprayed it while there thought WO so put it down. Walking home I came to like it. Now I know why it has been so loved. There's those perfumes you just wanna experience from time to time knowing you have it in your collection. :(

It’s 5:45pm on a warm-ish late summer afternoon, you’re eating Battenberg cake outside from a paper plate, the cake tumbles off your plate and lands in the dry dirt at your feet, you bend down to scoop up the cake and while doing so smell the herby lemon aromatics of the bordered plants. Now your cake is covered in dirt 🐝 so you reach for your warm saspirella 🥤

The starched white, bittersweet Oscar displays its obvious lineage to L'Heure Bleue and Bellodgia, released at a time when it seemed like a rewind at a time of ever-advancing trends in perfumery. Next to Sieuzac's other, collaborative contribution at the time, Opium, Oscar feels more high-society to the former's discotheque decadence. It has a gauzy elegance and a softer, peppery spice, a muted clove and cinnamon caressing a peach cobbler surface, only ever so slightly disrupted by an indolic jasmine. There is a pale pink carnation and aromatic lavender (a welcome diversion) in the foreground, while an impressionistic gardenia feels like it is detected from a bit of a distance rather than nose-in-petals. Its sillage is a proper, somewhat melancholy, misty bouquet, while moving in closer to the skin there is more of a boudoir passion simmering. Wearing this on a hot, humid day seems to bring out the best in it, becoming a three-dimensional bloom with a discernible myrrh surfacing. I challenge a gent to get into this one—I feel rather sexy wearing it, I must say...

This is the review for the supposed to be vintage EDT (tall bottle with Oscar de la Renta writting on it). This one opens with the bombastic smell of its time, perfumy, stuffy, sharp, loud and dated white floral with vanillic ambery undertone. The invasion of heavy dose of gardenia & ylang, not the realistic smelling variants but the ultra perfumy ones. Smells very close to Kenzo by Kenzo, Narcisse by Chloé, Diamonds and Emeralds by Elizabeth Taylor, and many many floriental created around that time. This smelling profile was extremely popular in the 80s-90s, many brands tried creating this smelling profile for their fragrances, 1 out of 5 women who wore fragrance would smell like this (in my city at least). As the sharp floral smell subsides, powdery iris, clove and resins show up making the fragrance more appealing and not as dated to my nose. The very slight resemblance to the drydown of L'Heure Bleue starts to appear but very very slightly. Lavender adds a tiny interesting herbal & pickled smell (in a good way) to the whole concoction. At this stage, the fragrance is very enjoyable, no longer smell dated & quite unisex. Sillage is massive for the 1st hour then the scent mellows down quite a lot, longevity is average.

One of the most wearable old-school oriental fragrances left: Warm, aromatic cloves, a sweet creamy purple/white floral combo, ylang-ylang with all it's many facets and a sort of powdery, incense base. The herbal notes never come off green, but add a pleasant, balmy, medicinal touch. Think of it as a white "floriental". It's seamless wearability, I attribute to the absence of those sometimes problematic, dirty, amber notes found in Obsession, Youth Dew etc... It's also missing that wet, rotten, church-pew wood note that many of those fragrances have. I also insist on having a Myrrh fragrance in my arsenal at all times. While this is certainly no Opium, I've found that it does scratch that itch when need be. Oscar prices have recently skyrocketed online. It used to be quite affordable.

Is this the same as the oscar signature with the black cap with small stripes? Cant find that one here on fragrantica. It was one of my mums signature scents when i was a teenager❤️

Pure class, grace and elegance. Only sorry I didn't pick this up sooner. 😘

My mom's signature scent. A bridal boquet, musky, creamy and beautiful. Reminds me of warm hugs and my childhood. My mum is the classiest lady I have ever met. She is so put together I'm convinced even Bree van de Camp would look like a rug compared to her. She is fiery, sparkly, creative like an artist and we have the longest most amazing conversations. I will keep this like a treasure forever and ever.

I just received my vintage Oscar! I wore this in high school. The minute I sprayed it I went back in time. It’s delicious. IMO buy the vintage

The initial spray is fresh and relatively modern considering this is an absolute classic. It’s the use of the hazy, dry herbs in ‘Oscar’ which elevate this oriental floral to be light, airy and dazzling as an aromatic vintage rather than being stuffy. It’s so herbaceous but with a sweet vintage musky amber which warms this. I’m trying not to confuse the creator of ‘Oscar’ Jean-Louis Sieuzac with Jean-Louis Scherrer as ‘Oscar’ and ‘Scherrer I and II’ share a similar floriental vintage style. Interestingly, Oscar’s sweet-musky-animalic drydown is almost identical to the dry-down of Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion. Longevity is still very good, even after modern reformulation. A vintage gem that’s still a steal.