Fame The Couture Edition Eau de Parfum 80ml

Rabanne Fame The Couture Edition Eau de Parfum 80ml is the most refined thing in the Fame family, and the giveaway is that it opens on incense rather than on fruit.

That reversal changes everything. Incense comes first, dry and cool and a little chalky, more like the air inside a stone building than like anything burning, and only then does the sweetness arrive. Coconut water is the clever choice there, thin and milky and faintly saline rather than rich, and it gives the top a soft, watery quality instead of a tropical one. Bergamot keeps the edges clean and bitter.

The heart is a proper couture floral. Iris is the backbone, cool and powdery and drawn from the root, with that curious mix of cold stone and talc about it, and sambac jasmine is set against it, the sweeter and more honeyed kind of jasmine, heady without being dirty. The pairing is expensive sounding and it is the reason this version costs what it does.

Australian sandalwood finishes it, drier and less creamy than the sandalwood used elsewhere in the range, with vanilla for a mild sweetness and musk to press the whole thing into the skin. Expect good length from the eau de parfum concentration and a close, powdery, faintly smoky trail rather than a loud one. It is a women's fragrance and suits evenings, offices and cooler weather equally well. Dora Baghriche and Marie Salamagne composed it, and it was released in 2024.

The label was founded on the couture of the designer Paco Rabanne, who showed his first collection in Paris in 1966, and its perfumes have been developed by the Spanish group Puig ever since the late sixties.