Encore Une Fois.

The name says it twice: Encore Une Fois. Again. Once more. There's an insistence in it, a refusal to let go of an idea the first time around. Infiniment Coty Paris built this collection around that feeling, fourteen fragrances, each one an amplified emotion. Vanilla became the subject. Not a supporting player, not a drydown afterthought. The whole point. Perfumer Fabrice Pellegrin worked with two vanilla extracts to give the idea depth: Bourbon, with its warm, almost smoky character; and Planifolia, the Madagascar variety known for its floral cream. Peru Balsam came in as the amplifier, amber warmth to make sure nothing got lost. The 2024 launch marked Coty's 120th year, and this fragrance marked the anniversary's most addictive idea: that the best vanilla doesn't whisper. It stays.

Vanilla is everywhere. That's the challenge and the opportunity. Encore Une Fois meets it by being ruthlessly specific about which vanilla it's being. Bourbon carries warmth, a slight darkness, the memory of the pod's resinous interior. Planifolia brings cream, a coolness that reads almost floral. Together they cover more ground than a single extract could. The Peru Balsam doesn't add complexity in the traditional sense, it adds stickiness. It makes the vanilla adhere to skin and fabric alike, extending the drydown past where solo vanilla usually gives up. At 20% fragrance oil concentration, the formula is built to outlast the evening. This is what happens when you take vanilla seriously enough to use twice.

The opening hits with density. Vanilla absolute in its most concentrated form, the smell of the pod cracked open, resin on the fingers. No green, no top notes to soften it. Just sweet, sticky, immediate warmth. Within minutes, the balsamic quality arrives. Peru Balsam does what it does: turns vanilla's natural sweetness into something more resinous, more amber, more like the memory of vanilla than the note itself. By the heart phase, hours in, both vanillas have merged into a single impression, warmth without edges. Planifolia's floral cream and Bourbon's darker warmth have settled into something unified, held together by the balsam's adhesive quality. The drydown continues this trajectory: powdery, warm, clinging to skin and fabric. The aldehydic edge that some users identify in the opening has softened into the background. What remains is vanilla extract on warm skin, present and quiet, long after the initial application.

Part of a broader revival in serious vanilla composition, not the foody, confectionery vanillas of the 2010s, but resins, ambers, and powders that treat vanilla as a complex natural material. The dual-extract approach and balsam amplification position Encore Une Fois alongside Guerlain's Spiritueuse Double Vanille and Aedes de Venustas' Cierge de Lune as a study in what vanilla can be when pushed past comfort. At 20% concentration, the formula itself is the statement: more oil, more staying power, more commitment to the idea.