I saw Donatella Versace on Italian television once when she was asked about her vision. With extravagant gestures, she cried, “Lusso, lusso, lusso!” (“luxury, luxury, luxury”), throwing her hands in the air as if seeding a catwalk with bits of cubic zirconia. Versace’s perfume licensee, EuroItalia, has faultlessly translated her taste into scent using some of the biggest creative names in the business: Bertrand Duchaufour, Francoise Caron, Francis Kurkdjian, among others; these are some of the best perfumers working and authors in other contexts of very serious olfactory work. Donatella is a master of synthetic luxe, and her perfumes (in particular Bright Crystal and Crystal Noir) are paradigms of the school. Versace Eau de Parfum, however, takes the aesthetic to a new level.

EuroItalia has outdone itself here. They clearly asked for “the Chanel No 5 of Versace” and Donatella, the creative director of the project, and the perfumer Loc Dong have given the company exactly what they wanted. Versace Eau de Parfum is Versace doing elegant feminine classic. This is mixing No 5’s powder, Joy’s rose, and Dioressence’s lily of the valley for the woman with the excellent plastic surgery and a principal residence in Beverly Hills.

The perfume opens beautifully and smells like an early Los Angeles rooftop breakfast at the Peninsula: the scent of jasmine in fresh Pacific air plus the perfume of the guava mango fruit plate the waiter brings, with a bit of the swimming pool water and a hint of the exhaust from the Ferraris being valet-parked in front. The drydown is ever so slightly harsh. This isn’t necessarily a negative. It’s an effect nature uses in freesia, for example, and while in a perfume it can come from not giving the perfumer enough money for the best raw materials, let’s assume that here, it’s intentional. The slight coarseness makes it pure Versace. The white flowers and fresh green fade into a murmur after about 20 minutes. And there you have it.

Like the brand, the perfume should be taken with a pinch of irony. (The press material lists “Jasmine/Angel wing” as an ingredient. Why the hell are they killing angels and distilling their wings to make perfume? Doesn’t the EPA regulate this? Isn’t there some kind of celestial wildlife law?) But for those who love Versace (and the house has made an indelible mark on fashion) this is an extraordinarily faithful distillation of its essence. Chloé and Yves Saint Laurent’s Elle are not greatly inferior as perfumes, but they are distinctly inferior as incarnations of the spirits of their houses. By that measure, Versace Eau de Parfum is a masterpiece.