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Portia

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Heya APJ Crew,

Lots of people have been bitching about the brand new bottle and I understand that nobody likes change. I also understand that if you have a set of Serge Lutens bottles that this is not going to fit. What did you do when you changed to CDs? Yes. This is the excuse you needed to get a new set. I do like that price per ml has gone down. I think that is really classy of Shishedo, when every body else is aspirational pricing their arses out of my ballpark. Serge Lutens is still making a fabulous, affordable product. Now I can uberspritz my La Fille De Berlin with no thought to running out.

When the new bottle was first available in Paris I got my bottle but things have been so hectic around here I didn’t get time to write you my thoughts.

La Fille de Berlin by Serge Lutens 2013

La Fille de Berlin by Christopher Sheldrake

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Rose, geranium
Heart: Palmarosa
Base: Oakmoss, honey, patchouli

Cherry roses and pepper on opening with a softly metallic twang. Interesting how quickly it dries out. On Tina’s skin it stayed a crisp snap of cutting of a rose stem, violet and geranium – much cooler, where my skin the honey has taken over almost immediately and you can definitely smell the dryness of palmarosa. Smells expensive. So many Serge Lutens are freaky – this misses out on the freaky and is a very expensive rose + glam. Unusually for Serge, the honey is clean and not so animalic. We’re not smelling any of the bees or the wax on either of our skins.

La Fille de Berlin makes me smile. The rose is deep and burnished and a little bit boozy.

So fragrant yet La Fille de Berlin isn’t in your face, it manages to be quite a heavy perfume but restrained. It hits my dressed up evening button but I’ve also been enjoying wearing it in the warm spring daytime air around here.

Further reading: Olfactoria’s Travels and EauMG
Mecca has some $171/50ml and $294/100ml
Surrender To Chance has samples from $6/ml

What do you think of the new 100ml bottles?
Portia xx

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Portia

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Heya Fumies,

So recently there have been wild rumours going around about the Serge Lutens brand. Bottle changes, discontinuations, export going to bell and vice versa. It has freaked me out so I finally bit the bullet and bought a few I’ve been humming and having over. Grabbed some of them on the discount sites and others I paid retail. Got a couple of the DCd vaporisator bottles and a brand new 100ml of La Fille de Berlin. Expensive couple of months but I am glad.

Clair de Musc by Serge Lutens 2003

Clair de Musc by Christopher Sheldrake

Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Iris, musk, neroli, bergamot

My noses telling me fruity musks but it doesn’t smell like citrus. Actually it has a kind of metallic smell like icy gutters. Sheer and weightless yet surprisingly full of scent. An interesting oxymoron.

In Clair de Musc the iris is earthy and only slightly cardboard, a very cool, aloof, spacious iris that whispers elegant restraint.

I have some problems smelling some musks but these are fragrant to me. Both clean and animal come through, there’s a very soft funkiness but the focus is laundry clean.

WikiMedia

My mind keeps wandering to who this scent could be created for. It seems to sit at a weird crossroads between animal and mechanical. As if a robot or computer are trying to generate human smells to cloak their inhumanity. It seems they can only work within the confines of their AI scented vocabulary though. Though Clair de Musc gets furry, it’s not a puppy or even a piglet but the scratchy glass fibres of roof insulation or the petrochemical created fake fur in flour colours. Everything seems just a bit off true. It makes the journey really interesting.

So I’m thinking it would be an excellent scent for work, to project the scent of absolute industrial strength dedication and a computers focus. Brilliant job interview scent, especially for someone in IT, engineering or construction.

Will I wear mine? I’m not sure that it will reached for often but the times that I want to smell just like this it will definitely get a triple spritz.

PDI

Further reading: I Scent You A Day and Non-Blonde
FragranceNet has around $100/50ml before Coupon
Surrender To Chance has samples from $6/ml

Also, having read a few reviews of Clair de Musc it seems everyone gets entirely different experiences from it. So even if my review has you gasping to grab a bottle do test first.

Have a lovely day.
Do you like musks?
Portia xx

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Portia

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Hello APJ,

Sorry but I forgot to post yesterday. With all that’s going on around here somehow it completely slipped  my notice that we had nothing going up.

Anyway, today we are talking about a scent that I didn’t really take much notice of when I smelled it. Perhaps it was nasal fatigue from smelling it in a bunch of others or maybe my taste has changed. A couple of years ago Jin and I went to the Palais Royale Serge Lutens store and had a fabulous morning going through the whole of the Lutens line. While we were there Elvire also showed us a historical lineage of Feminite du Bois since the original bottles and suddenly I understood.

Feminite du Bois by Serge Lutens 2009

Feminite du Bois by Christopher Sheldrake

Fragrantica

Parfumo gives these featured accords:
Beeswax, Clove, Honey, Cardamom, Musk, Orange blossom, Peach, Plum, Rose, Vanilla, Violet, Ylang-ylang, Cedar, Cinnamon

OK, so anyone who loved the original Shiseido version of this baby is never going to be satisfied with the newer version. That’s OK, plenty of other perfume out there for you to sniff and enjoy. Mourn it’s passing, you’ll have to move on.

Here is my bottle, bought recently from a friend on the FB pages. As you can see it’s the original Palais Royale export bottle stamp. So not the 100% modern version but ahead of the Shiseido curved mauve bottle that looks disturbingly like a human organ.

What I smell mainly is ginger. A spiced ginger smoothed over by beeswax and honey to create a plush and velvety opening. The stewed fruit comes in later, swirled in like mixing it through a cake batter. None of these opening heavy hitters really leave but as the fragrance dries down I am left with a sweet vanilla woodsiness and the cool crispness of green leaves. Fully fragrant longevity is not excellent, Feminite du Bois seems to soften off alarmingly after less than an hour and the dry down hums along very close to my skin for a couple of hours till I lose it completely.

PDI

Further reading: Bois de Jasmin and Now Smell This
FragranceNet has around $100/50ml before Coupon
Surrender To Chance has samples from $6/ml

Hope your life is doing all right,
What has surprised you after years of neglect?
Portia xx

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Post by Portia

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Hiya Fumies,

For some reason I have always overlooked todays fragrance. Not sure why. Nothing about it has ever jumped out at me but I’d also never read the notes list. Having fallen truly, madly and deeply in love with Apollo Hyacinth by Eric Buterbaugh Florals it suddenly seemed necessary to try another hyacinth fragrance and Serge Lutens often creates the benchmark, so it was to his that I gravitated.

Bas de Soie by Serge Lutens 2010

Bas de Soie by Christopher Sheldrake

Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Iris, galbanum, hyacinth, spices, musk

One year when we were kids my Mum splurged on a packet of Hyacinth bulbs. We were great gardeners, Mum & I, and spent whole weekends together creating and recreating the garden. Sydney is a funny climate and most bulbs get one year of fabulous and then rot in the ground. Anyway, this year the Hyacinths came up and were a beautiful blue, Mum was thrilled. Bas de Soie reminds me of the feeling that Mum & I had really achieved something to have these beautiful flowers to show for our efforts.

Bas de Soie reminds me of that spring. It’s alive, fresh, hopefull springlike green opening is so like the sap of freshly cut hyacinths. It has that glorious galbanum which smells both incredibly cool and aloof while also giving me a smooth, resinous, shiny and reflective smell. I am explaining it very badly but hopefully you understand.

Pixabay

Iris is green and only lightly powdery. Actually it’s like the cool spring morning air blowing through the lovely green and grey leaves of the iris, that makes the flowers shiver of their impossibly long stems. Then the startling cascade of colour, a positive riot of purples, yellows, oranges and pinks.

About 30 minutes in and then Bas de Soie changes. It warms through slightly, while still being green and light as air, maybe the spices and musk but it feels woody and earthy.

Now you will be fragrant, people will smell you, but there is little chance of your fragrance ever skunking anyone if you’re wearing Bas de Soie. It’s a very pretty floral. Maybe if CHANEL No 19 is a bit too severe then the friendliness of Bas de Soie could quite well be a better fit for you.

Further reading: Olfactoria’s Travels and Megan In St. Maxime
LuckyScent has $135/50ml
Surrender To Chance has samples starting at $4/0.5ml

Do you have a hyacinth fragrance you love? Maybe something that smells so fresh and new?
Portia xx