Eau Duelle is one of my all-time favorite vanillas, and I love vanillas of all varieties. I like sticky, syrupy, intense, flirty. This I would call an earthy, clean vanilla. It has a beautiful list of notes accompanying the vanillas. There's a bourbon vanilla, and then a more sparkling, heady, bright vanilla note. But it also has olebonum, frankincense, and then cipril, and cardamom.
So it has this cool dryness to all of the surrounding notes, and then a rich smokiness with the bourbon vanilla. There's a black tea in the base, along with amber, and a white musk. So what it does for me is it feels at the same time both earthy and sparkling and effervescent. There is a dryness, but also a comforting quality to this.
I highly recommend it if you want a subtle vanilla or a summertime vanilla, because it's not too heavy, it's not too rich. It kind of reminds me of, in the spice section, buying the vanilla pods straight from the grocery stores and grating them for baking. It smells very real and natural. The other thing it reminds me of is the flecks of vanilla in the Breyers ice cream that I used to love as a kid. So I love wearing this.
Now this was released in 2010. They also launched an EDP form in 2013 with their eau de parfum. They tweaked it a little bit. It's slightly darker, richer, and more anamolic, almost, in the way that it wears. So I feel like this might even be a great option for a more masculine style.
They both are beautiful. I really can't pick between the two. In fact, I like to wear both on different days and even at the same time. So try both.
