According to the Estée Lauder website, “When on a holiday trip in the south of France, Evelyn Lauder was intrigued with a floral scent that wafted through the garden below her balcony. She searched for the source and found that it was the pittosporum flower, which she immediately knew could be the floral center of a wonderful fragrance.” That fragrance was Estée Lauder Knowing.
Perfume enthusiasts recognize Knowing as one of the few department store fragrances that earned five stars in Perfumes: The Guide. And it’s not the perfume’s pittosporum (one family of pittosporum is romantically named “cheesewood,” by the way) that draws admiration, it’s Knowing’s elegant and complex treatment of rose and moss.
Knowing was developed in 1988 by Elie Roger, also the nose behind Clinique Wrappings. Knowing’s notes include rose, tuberose, mimosa, plum, pittosporum, jasmine, patchouli, orange flower, oakmoss, vetiver, sandalwood and amber. The website classifies it as a “floral woody,” but the general consensus among reviewers is that Knowing is a rose chypre.
Knowing kicks off with a cloud of soapy-fruity aldehydes before settling into a rose boosted by the soprano hum of jasmine but given weight by plum, tuberose and a hint of coriander. Knowing’s oakmoss reminds me of the earthy, wet-stone moss in Estée Lauder Azurée or Molyneux Quartz rather than the fusty-woolly moss of some chypres. Orange blossom keeps the fragrance clean, but it’s too easy to call Knowing “a nice clean mossy rose,” because a whole symphony of notes comes together to create something a lot more complex — and exuberant.
And that’s Knowing’s genius. The fragrance strikes a canny balance between restraint and bawdiness with minerally oakmoss as its spine. On the surface, Knowing is Grace Kelly prim with rose, aldehydes, powder and orange blossom. Dig a little deeper, and you get the perfume’s flesh of fruit and honey with a definite animalic growl. (Come to think of it, wasn’t Grace Kelly known as fast?) This is a fragrance I’d love to smell in Extrait.
Although Knowing may have been focus-grouped within an inch of its life — I have no idea — it doesn’t smell like it. It assumes its wearer is sophisticated enough to appreciate it. I’d say Knowing is a well mannered take on vintage Schiaparelli Shocking, or it’s Agent Provocateur with topnotch tailoring and no itchy corset. I’ve read reviews warning to apply Knowing in dabs, but I’ve been wearing two and three spritzes from a sample vial in ninety degree weather, and I don’t feel overwhelmed. It lasts all afternoon on my skin.
Knowing didn’t make the cut to join the House of Estée line (as one sales associate I talked to called the newly packaged classic fragrances). I talked to Estée Lauder sales associates in two department stores about Knowing, and both were stymied as to what the bottle even looked like. In one store, the tester was missing, to the surprise of all three people who looked for it. It might have been missing for months. In the other store, the sales associate cheerfully let me make a sample from her tester. “Take as much as you want. It’s not like we sell a lot,” she said.
I’ve long admired Estée Lauder for hanging on to its great old fragrances and selling them at a good price, and I hope they keep Knowing in their line up. Modern Muse Chics are a dime a dozen, but Knowings are hard to come by. Knowing isn’t trendy or easy or shocking or innovative, but neither is the classic black pump. Or, in this case, rose satin d’Orsay heels.
Estée Lauder Knowing Eau de Parfum is $58 for 30 ml and $82 for 75 ml. It's available in department stores that carry Estée Lauder cosmetics (although it may not be on display, and you might have to ask for it).
A friend of mine had this in either high school or college in the perfume and cream. Loved the wavy black top. Seems like she was pretty mature for her age! I remember liking it and could never put a finger on the thing I liked – it was a fizzy fermented kind of quality. Maybe the moss? Need to sniff again now I have a slightly more sophisticated nose
I love smelling things after I haven’t smelled them in a while. It’s so encouraging to me to be able to “read” a fragrance just a tiny bit better over time!
Consider me the choir:
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
(Love this one!)
I kick myself for taking so long to fully appreciate it!
Can’t believe that I’ve never tried this one. Now I have to rush immediately to the nearest EL counter for a test-drive.
Incidentally, the little flowers of Pittosporum tobira, a handsome tall shrub which is widely used for landscaping here in the SF bay area, smell just like citrus blossom. I love to take a sniff any time I pass by one.
I know I’d sniffed Knowing at some point, but I didn’t spend any time on it until I did this review. And I like the ELs! I don’t know why it took me so long.
I don’t think I’ve ever even smelled this, but your great review (and an intriguing list of notes) has made me want to! Thanks for reviewing.
At least it’s fairly easy to sample if you’re near a department store. That is, as long as a tester is about.
I used to wear my mom’s Knowing when I was in high school. I really should get a bottle for nostalgia purposes – plus I suspect at 40 I can wear it better than I did as a teenager!
I think its complexity would complement the complexity and wisdom of age!
I had a small likely gift with purchase sized 15 ml bottle from a mother of a boyfriend while I was in college. Ahem. 1990? I remember just being kind of totally mesmerized by the sophistication and rawness of it. Up til then, I was a devotee of Tea Rose, Coco edt, and Jardins de Bagatelle. I was ready for a step up. I wore it often during the early 90s. I want to love it still, and totally respect it, even though when I smell it now I it only reminds me of a very terrible breakup/divorce & MIL memories gone bad that resulted from that time. I love the bottle design, the ad, everything. Paulina Porizkova forever, right? Could anyone (a woman!) wear a tux to sell fragrance in our current naked faux-sexy perfume ads? I was 20 when I discovered this – for heaven’s sake! – now this would be a “mature woman” frag! A classic rose-chypre is an awesome thing and EL should be commended for keeping it on. If Knowing was released now by Serge Lutens, it would be a unisex smash.
It’s so amazing how a fragrance can bring back a whole era in someone’s life. Music can be like that, too. SL Rose de Nuit is a chypre, if I remember right. I’d love to sample them side by side.
It still is my signature! I have sooooo many bottles, also niche. But nothing beats Knowing, even now it’s reformulated. And I bought 10 bodycremes , the only ten available ( not the beautiful jar anymore) but still the most delicous creme I ever smelled. Afraid of discontinuation, I keep searching for something similar in Niche!
Afraid-affraid ofcourse
I love a good body creme! I hope they keep Knowing in production for you–and all of us.
need some…love the old Shocking, had (and have) the old Quartz…
It’s worth a try, at the very least. The pinch of honey, coriander, and civet is what reminded me of the old Shocking.
My “career-lady” chemist aunt (the youngest of my dad’s three sisters, and the one who married rather late in life – she just became a grandmother this week) used to wear this, and always smelled stunning. She just retired last year, from department head at a major chemical company. Her best career advice was always, “No matter what you specialize in, learn to write a coherent report as well.”
Knowing is really wonderful – I agree, it’s mostly a rose chypre with clean florality hiding some naughty knickers. But like most of the classic Lauders, it goes weird on my skin and makes me queasy two hours in. I’m just glad they still make it; more people should wear it.
What a great association to have with a fragrance!
Is that a young Liz Hurley on the left?
Read your review and was actually near a mall, so I headed to the Estee Lauder counter and after some searching was able to try it. My first thoughts: Wow, Beautiful, the moss! I would love to find a bottle of this on the cheap.
The SA’s face though when she sprayed it, it was classic! Her face said to me in so many words “What in the world does a guy like you want to smell like this?” IMO I think a man could pull this off, far better than Spellbound for sure.
I’m so glad you tried it! I think rose smells great on men, personally. Was the tester out and easy to find?
No she had to look for it, but she gave me a spray and put it back like it was liquid gold! No sample to take home unfortunately (:( )but I will just spray it on myself next time I pass the EL counter now that I know where they hide it!
Good plan!
Totally Liz Hurley.
And I’m a man, and I bought Knowing in EDP the second I smelled it. Then I got a bottle of the extrait. This was long before I knew what a chypre was, but it’s absolutely one of the best chypres I’ve ever smelled. (The stuff that’s in the stores now isn’t the same: it’s much heavier on the patchouli, as is everything that’s called a chypre nowadays.)
Ohhh! I will have to look on ebay for a vintage bottle.
I’ll cross my fingers for you!
I bet the extrait is heaven–this is just the sort of fragrance the lushness of extrait is made for, I think.
I think it would be great on a guy.
It smells beyond gorgeous on my boyfriend – like it was made for him and made to make him be gorgeous! I love Knowing too, but even more so on him.
So nice!
My godmother, who just recently passed last month, wore this fragrance. I would get her a bottle every Christmas. Right now it is hard for me to wear it because it brings back so many memories.
I’m so sorry! Hopefully, at some point, the memories will be more joyful than painful, and you’ll be able to enjoy it again.
I think Knowing is a formidable fragrance, and once in a while I wear it from a precious decant, mostly to bed. I appreciate EL very much, for a European (at least, this one) there is a certain attraction to American houses. My late mother used to have one of these solid perfumes (I think it must have been Cinnabar) in a walnut or a frog, my father brought it from the US (which, again, to us, at least then, was something very special!!). I think Blue Grass was mentioned on the blog here, and although Elizabeth Arden, this is also such an essential American perfume to me.
I would love to get to the Delrae, and other American niche houses, but they are too difficult to obtain here.
Thank you for this lovely review Angela!
I’m glad you enjoyed the review, and it’s interesting that an American perfume can be tantalizing to a European for its “American-ness.”
DelRae and some of the niche houses can be difficult to get here, too! I’m way behind on smelling so many of them.
Oh, thank you for reviewing this. I wore this in my first years in college. I thought it was terribly sophisticated. Back then, I chose fragrance with an aim to who I wanted to be rather than how I felt. Aspirational scenting at its best.
I remember Knowing being far more mossy then than now, and bet this was one of the notes that was hit in reformulation. I checked it in about 2010, and did not quite love it anymore. You make me want to try again, for old times sake.
I bet with more of a mossy hit it was even better. I’ll definitely keep my eyes out for older bottles at thrift stores, etc.
EBAY, baby…. just sayin’.
I took a gander for the extrait, and it’s outrageously priced!
The trick is getting the parfum minis with the pale green tops. I am sure they sell them at the miniature perfume shoppe, but I get mine on eBay. I prefer it to the edp (black cap).
Thanks for the tip!
I need to revisit Knowing. I had a sample once, but it just went all laundry detergent when I tried to wear it. I’d like to try it again to see if it’s any different the second time around.
Sometimes things can smell so different the second time around…
This perfume made me start using perfume. I was working in a large mansion as a conservator and the house keeper, a very strict and dull looking woman always left a wonderful silage in the staircases, in the elevator, in the saloons….I associated the smell with a large bouquet of different flowers among them roses. I just loved the smell and I thought that this perfume gave this dull looking woman a new dimension. I sought for the perfume in all the perfumeshops i ever visited and finally I found it – it was Knowing. A year later a friend told me that he had seen the bottle in the woman’s bathroom. My search was finally over. I forgot to mention that I never dared to ask her what perfume she was wearing (she was the kind you don’t ask I think). Thanks to her my interest in perfumes has given me so many happy moments when discovering new perfumes. Halleluja!
I love that story! In my mind’s eye, the housekeeper looks like Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca. Thank you for sharing it.
Hi Angela,
I’m a longtime lover of rose/Chypres. EL’s Knowing was one that got heavy rotation back in the day. I loved it’s lush, green rosiness and silage that seemed to last for hours. I’d even smell it in my hair the next day! I think the rose was more pronounced in the FL heat and humidity.
Knowing is right up there with other great rose/chypres of the 90’s e.g., Magie Noire and Paloma.
All three smell great on a man, b.t.w., I’ve tested it out on the hubby!
I’m surprised–and happy–to see how much love Knowing is getting! You point out Knowing’s sisters for sure in Paloma and Magie Noire. I’d add Arte di Gucci, too.
And Paco Rabanne’s La Nuit was another one. I’ve worn a lot of Paloma and Magie Noire in my time, and these days Knowing is getting a fair bit of use, but for me La Nuit is so dark and animalic that it is almost unwearable. I keep a mini for reference though. It’s great stuff.
I have a mini, too, and for all the same reasons!
It’s fabulous to see Knowing reviewed here. It is mighty chypre, almost too much I sometimes think, too much inclined to out-chypre itself. It’s as if someone knew that the genre was growling its last growl before allergen restrictions and the wheel of fashion swung in another direction.
I came to it late – only in the last year or so – and decided that the stuff is so potent that I could make do with a decant. There is a respectable amount of air in that decant vial now. Next time I see a small bottle at a good price, I’ll snap it up, even if just to do honour to EL for keeping it in the lineup. I’m glad it has kept its own bottle.
A testimonial! I’ll be looking for a bottle, too. I can imagine using more than I’d think.
Again, A Sublime Review, Mon Angel!
I remember when Knowing first launched, Oh those many moons ago… it was i think around the same time as Eternity and it had an equally esoteric and romantic advert… (Damn if Youtube has ANY of those old Strange Eternity commercials… they were a TRIP!) but i was always intrigued by this scent… it isn’t the Zenith of the Estee Lauder Perfume art… but it is Nonetheless Exquisite…
you can find it on the Estee Lauder Website very easily, so if you’re looking for a bottle… that’s the easiest answer!
P.S. Angel, Angela… you should do a review of Estee… That’s my Absolute FAVORITE Fragrance to smell on my mom… makes me think back to my childhood and makes me nostalgic in a way that very little else in this world does… I’d like to hear your thoughts on that fragrance!
I’m glad you enjoyed the review, and I’m surprised we haven’t covered Estée yet! I’d love to review it.
I’d love to see a review of Estee as well. Another love of mine.
That’s two votes, then. I’ll definitely add it to the line-up. Maybe even next week, if Robin doesn’t object.
I just smelled this on paper at the EL at Macys this afternoon. While I like it, I don’t think I need a FB; I see a mini of this in my future. Kudos to the SA who recognized the perfume, knew exactly where the stock is kept AND actually had the tester out. For what it’s worth, she was on the mature side…a younger one probably would have looked at me like I had two heads.
I’m glad you had the chance to smell it, and I’m extra glad that the S.A. was on the ball!