The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Infiniment Coty Paris launched fourteen fragrances in 2024 to mark one hundred and twenty years of the house. Each scent was built around a specific feeling. For this one, the feeling was insistence: the desire to return to something, to try again. Fabrice Pellegrin was tasked with making vanilla the subject, not the support. Not a warm backdrop but the entire point. He did not reach for novelty. He reached for depth, building a composition where vanilla could be experienced fully, without dilution, anchored by complementary materials that allow it to command attention instead of recede into the background of a blend.
The decision to use bourbon vanilla, vanilla orchid, and Peru balsam together is a decision about balance. Vanilla on its own can become overwhelming or cloying. The orchid softens it without sweetening it further. The balsam grounds it, adding resinous warmth that enriches rather than competes. The result is a vanilla that does not recede, does not apologize, and does not require concealment. It is a statement about what vanilla can be when treated as the subject rather than a support.
The evolution
The journey has no false start. Encore Une Fois moves directly into its heart, placing bourbon vanilla at the center of attention from the opening moment. Vanilla orchid arrives with a soft floral quality that lifts the sweetness without diminishing it. Peru balsam anchors the composition with its warm, resinous character, creating a sense of fullness that holds steady through the hours. As time passes, the balsam and vanilla sustain each other, and the orchid remains present as a quiet reminder that warmth and elegance are not opposed. The effect is consistent, not dramatic. What changes is not the scent but your relationship to it, as it persists on skin for hours.
Cultural impact
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.
