Amelie Mae was originally part of Gorilla Perfumes. When that line was integrated into the Constantine family's body care store chain, Lush, Amelie Mae survived long enough to be sold as solid perfumes before being discontinued once and for all. That's how I got it. I blind-bought one of those solids during that availability window.
Amelie Mae had a few different descriptions depending on when and in which country you bought it, but the general idea is that it's a child's dream of summertime in a garden resplendent with flowers and berries. None of the flowers are wilted, the fruit doesn't need sugar added to taste good, the sun is not too hot, nobody is yelling at you, and you don't have to go "home". If you overdosed on heroin here, you could freeze your last memory as a colorized illustration from a fin-de-siècle book about flower fairies. Of course I wanted to see if the perfume would actually smell like that.
Lush packages its solids in little glass jars with black caps. This is basic packaging used widely for various cosmetics. Importantly for the brand, it's also recyclable. The substance of Amelie Mae is a bright, creamy medium pink that's so richly pigmented, it will leave color on light skin. It looks like play makeup. It also smells somewhat like real makeup, since its floral notes are the same ones used in lipsticks and face powders.
What sells Amelie Mae as childlike despite dipping into an adult's scent palette is its character, which is incredibly sweet, bright, and joyous. Its notes are rose, ylang-ylang, lavender, and above all, raspberry. The whole composition smells sunwarmed in a way Bath and Body Works never managed to pull off. I can't pick out the individual flowers competently, just aspects of them. There's suppleness from the ylang-ylang and a slight herbaceous bite from the lavender. It doesn't smell literally like a garden, but it does smell like a beautiful idea of enjoying tea pastries in a garden. The fruity sweetness might appeal to fans of its sibling scent, Rose Jam, though the rose note in Amelie Mae is turned way, way down relative to that.
Maybe the spray formula is less linear, the flowers more individualized. I don't know, I never smelled the spray. Linearity is par for the course for a solid, and I will not demand more from this one than I would any other. I think it's exactly where it needs to be, including in terms of its short longevity. It's designed to be reapplied. I also love that it's cute and small.
It's a shame that Amelie Mae got discontinued. It does everything right. It smells good in the way it was intended to and it fulfills the poetic ambitions of its ad copy. It's also really uplifting to wear. I enjoy my little jar of it very much.
8/15/22