Description
De Profundis (De profundis clamavi – From the Depths I Cried) joined the exclusive line in 2011. Its composition is based on the chrysanthemum flower, with additional notes of violets, green and earthy notes. The fragrance is accompanied by the following words:
“When death steals into our midst, its breath flutters through the black crepe of mourning, nips at funeral wreaths and crucifixes, and ripples through the gladiola, chrysanthemums and dahlias.
If they end up in garlands in the Holy Land or the Galapagos Islands or on flower floats at the Annual Nice Carnival, so much the better!
What if the hearse were taking the deceased, surrounded by abundant flourish, to a final resting place in France, and leading altar boys, priest, undertaker, beadle and gravediggers to some sort of celebration where they could indulge gleefully in vice? Now that would be divine!
In French, the words beauty, war, religion, fear, life and death are all feminine, while challenge, combat, art, love, courage, suicide and vertigo remain within the realm of the masculine.
Clearly, Death is a Woman. Her absence imposes a strange state of widowhood.
Yet beauty cannot reach fulfilment without crime.
The chrysanthemum is the sole pretext for writing these lines.
Turning gravesites held in perpetuity over to Life – a familiar of these haunts – the chrysanthemum invites Death to leave the cemetery and offer us its flower.
De profundis clamavi.”
The nose behind this fragrance is Christopher Sheldrake.
sandaist – :
Non è un profumo che capisco molto.
Ha odori sia fruttati che dolci e intensi, un sottofondo chimico che sento in altri profumi moderni e un comportamento abbastanza calmo e tranquillo.
Non è sexy,non è seducente,non è da vita sociale ne da confusione, lo sento anche piccante tipo Black Opium.
Non saprei,non mi piace ma non lo odio, resta solo un profumo che si confonde tra la folla,tra mille altri odori tipo La religieuse.
S_N_O_R_K – :
In my solitude
You haunt me
With dreadful ease
Of days gone by
In my solitude
You taunt me
With memories
That never die
/Billie Holiday – Solitude/
Dark & velvety chrysanthemum with a cherry undertone. Warm, earthy & sentimental like autumn evening. There is something dignified & heroic in this fragrance. And something really lonesome, like dusk in an abandoned town.
scotttucker985 – :
I used to worship this perfume. It captured that verdant scent with slightly pungent edge from chrysanthemums. None the other perfumes have ever managed to achieve that effect.
However, I do wish they can take that powdery violet away, it dulls the green beginning, and coated it with rice powder.
What’s left, is abyss. It’s dark soil, but not those typical vetiver scent: it doesn’t give out even one hint of warmth. So It’s fair to say this perfume is cold, but just the opposite of those light/transparent citrusy/mint notes.
It’s wild chrysanthemum growing in a graveyard. (Though buried with suffocating make-up powder, ugh…)
Bogdana333 – :
De Profundis starts with a sharp chemical note upon spraying, so I guess it would be much better to dab it instead. All of a sudden, a green realistic flower emerges, but it feels as if it has spent eternity somewhere forgotten in a vase in a quiet empty house. At this stage, I can definitely say that this is not an uplifting scent, at all! After the initial greenness, a wave of slightly sour and sweet forest fruit immerses you in purple. The more the scent fades, the more lively and optimistic it becomes. This reminds me of those songs with fading out endings and an echoing disappearing chorus.. At the end of the De Profundis journey you are left with a very calm feeling, so that at some point you would like to try the experience again, but not immediately. I would rather use this fragrance when I’m home alone, and keep it personal, just as every moment of sadness and tranquility.
kayfec – :
i smell wet green notes and icy florals. crisp flowers and stems covered in rain. there is a hint of a soft, airy musk. these florals are not sweet or soft. they are very green and cold. the scent is fairly linear and does not change much from beginning to end. i think i’ll be wearing this on rainy spring days.
IGROK731 – :
Review 2
I was in Poland during All Saints Day this year (Nov 1), which is a pretty big holiday there- hundreds of people go to the cemetery to visit their loved ones, decorate graves and light candles. Chrysanthemums are WILDLY POPULAR during this occasion and I mean, I have never seen SO many mum’s as I did in the historic Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw. Wow, what a sight. But most importantly, the scent! It was de profundis in the air! The wetness of the moss covered graves, the scent of fresh mum’s and soil, I was inhaling serge lutens accompanied with the most incredible visual feast when the sun went down – candles for miles flickering off the old graves and the scent of mum’s rising into the air. What an experience. When I came back to North America, I dabbled on some de profundis and was instantly transported. LOVE!!!
Barasboyt – :
The opening has a strong chrysanthemum note, which is an evocative reminder of cemeteries and death. But soon it fades and gives place to a beautiful lilac note paired with the depth of african violets. Don’t be scared, there’s beauty in the profoundness of life and death.
Kris23 – :
what a disappointment!!! do not deviate from the sweet and floral lutens. it is only very green as the cemetery flowers. but has a too sweet and too feminine base. violet is too strong and even the plum tree and soil tincture and incense are nonexistent. too feminine. for nothing sad. too feminine. great performance. 4/10
ottototkto – :
AMAZING moody green + floral opening that made me hopeful that this perfume would live up to its description.
However, after an hour, maybe even less, all of that disappears, leaving a vague but very familiar and masculine “aquatic” + musky scent. In this it reminds me a bit of CB I Hate Perfume’s “Black March.”
анушка – :
A lovely green and bitter floral, gimlet-eyed and unforgiving. The chrysanthemum accord is like no other scent in my wardrobe – hardly a flower at all – very cool and spicy. Chrysanthemums are very definitely funeral flowers in France, where I live – every 31 October, for Toussaints, people lay them on graves. This fragrance is very grey-day melancholy and I like to wear it when I feel solitary or when I want to intimidate, as I once handed it round to friends for a perfume evening and one woman said it smelled ‘like fear’. There is apparently a trace of cadaverine, the smell of dead bodies, in this fragrance, hence perhaps the strong reaction. The company gave me this along with Vitriol d’Oeillet and at first I preferred the latter, as it’s more accessible, but now I prefer this one by far.
igrok39 – :
A masterpiece by Serge Lutens… this scent whispers melancholy,sadness but also something very profound. I love this perfume though it can be dramatic, but it creates a great emotion in me. When the rain falls down, you’re alone with yourself…. this is a beautiful parfum! Thank you!!!
Sillage: 7./10
Longevity: 7.5/10
Scent: 10./10
Overall: 10./10
ssv1977 – :
Green, and bittersweet. Profundis is not a dark scent but a bright, melancholic green with a sweet touch of violet infused soil.
This initially smells of green weedy stems where the fragrant flower heads have been torn off. Then Profundis picks up a breeze that carries the torn petals on a cool wind, settling into a sweet, delicate violet petal scent.
What starts with the scent of death ends with the scent of hope.
riz261speagoessenda – :
I love the fantasy of this scent… oscar wilde, graveyards, romanticizing death, baudelaire…rimbaud…comte de lautreamont… to name a few I could see gravitating to this fume. It’s basically everything I ever wanted in a fragrance- to create this fantastical illusion and transport me back to a beautiful yet horrific time (let’s be real though, it wasn’t all absinthe, flowery poetry and dandyism… it was also death, rot, poverty…the whole sha-bang).
This fume is very melancholy but to my nose it is a peaceful, content kind of melancholy. As though you’d be sitting somewhere in a quiet place, drifting off into the distance and remembering a particularly happy memory from childhood or a lost love or whatever, smiling and being overcome by a sad kind of joy. Very serene and still, cold yet warm – so in a sense it does embody death and “misery” but not the kind that makes you weep uncontrollably. At least not for me.
It’s very fresh- you can smell the entire flower with the soil, as though it was plucked right after the rain during late summer/early fall. Has a hint of powder that softens it a bit. Doesn’t last very long and turns into a close skin scent after a few hours. A great experience. I don’t know where you’d wear this, on my skin it is very unique and not exactly something you’d wear to impress others. Perhaps for some introverted mediating or for the joy of it. A must try…
kirsan2009 – :
This is the only fragrance I ever tried that disturbed me so much that I actually had nightmares after trying it before going to bed. For this reason alone, I consider it a work of true genius, even though I knew I would never try it again. I can literally feel the disturbing scent now without having to try it on anyway. It has haunted my olfactive memory.
To me its the smell of death. No other other way to put it. If movie theaters wanted to add another dimension to a horror movie, they could scent the theater with this. The audience would never forget the experience.
I can’t begin to decider the notes because the composition in itself has become an entity, making the notes irrelevant. All I can smell is deep sadness, decay, despair, etc. I also notice notes of human secretions like blood and other such fluids. Its faint, but there and I noticed from the SL fragrances I have tried tend to have bits of this element, and I wish it didn’t.
This is a fragrance that I think every perfume enthusiast should try at least once for the experience. I’m glad I tried it, but never again. I can do sad fragrances believe me. In fact, I’m drawn to them. However De Profundis brings me too far to the edge of these emotions that I fear I too will be crying out from the depths, maybe a bit too far than I’m willing to go.
NORKOT – :
“Clearly, Death is a Woman. Her absence imposes a strange state of widowhood. Yet beauty cannot reach fulfillment without crime.” Wow, what a stunner. It brings you beside a riverbed in the dead cold of night, where the raindrops on the grass blades glimmer in moonlight. It’s a place filled with abandoned funeral flower arrangements. Deep blue, violet, and purple flowers in full bloom. It’s mysterious, it’s hidden, complex, and marvelously timeless without the unnecessary powder and musk. I love it, really. The flowers are the highlight, but there is earth and moss and rain in here too. It’s marvelous and sinister without being classless. It’s melancholy in all the ways we all secretly desire to be melancholy in. I’m a fan. 9/10!
umoril – :
What a cleaned up and well dressed Severus Snape smells like. Buy it if you like nature and bitter green notes and darker mystery around you.
ccheappp – :
De Profundis
Eleanor Rigby Picks Up Her Rice
In The Church Where A Wedding Has Been
Lives In A Dream
Waits By The Window
Wearing A Face That She Keeps In A Jar By The Door
Eleanor Rigby Died In The Church
And Was Buried Along With Her Name
Father McKenzie Wiping The Dirt From His Hands
As He Walks From The Grave No One Was Saved
– Eleanor Rigby, Paul McCartney The Beatles
De Profundis is a simple scent but it’s as complex as every reviewer has made it out to be. This is a melancholy epic, a Victorian widow’s fragrance, a Gothic perfume of black, deep purple, of incense, churches, graveyards, cemeteries, and funeral burial services in a gloomy gray day or rainy day. I cannot find a more appropriate fragrance to wear to a funeral than this. As such, because it has that connotation and can be quite dismal, one wants to wear it as infrequently and as little times as possible. I must say that at my age I have worn it many a time to the funerals and memorial services of my older friends that have passed away. It is still such a beautiful and touching fragrance. Kudos to Serge Lutens for creating such a perfume.
The notes are more than the sum of their scents. Like so many other reviewers have written, this is a fragrance which can bring out so many emotions and so many images. It’s named after the existential book by author Oscar Wilde who loved the scent of green carnations, was seen in public wearing green carnation corsages and who was fond of English cemeteries. Right off the bat this fragrance will appeal to the Goth subculture out there whether you live in the UK US or Australia or Canada. This is a Goth fragrance which can be worn with all black attire: long black homespun dresses, black sleeves, black shoes, black eye make up. Black is the color of this fragrance for it’s profound and deep, deep as the earth one returns to after one is buried (and not cremated). This smells like wet, dark, mossy earth, deep soil, and not potted soil but the earth itself under our feet. One smells mushrooms, caves, dirt, earthy scents that can be smelled if you put your nose to burial mounds. This is as earthy and green as a fragrance can be. There is a slight moist aroma as well like it’s been raining and you smell the earth after a rain.
The floral notes are minimal but go along way. Chrysanthemum and violets are traditionally found in some British funeral parlors. I wish they had added a little more florals that would have reminded me of flowers at a funeral or funeral home. I am referring to such flowers as gladiola or white carnations. Although carnation is not listed here there is a carnation smell, and it is definitely a violet. But rather than coming off as powdery or too heady as a violet can be, it’s one of the saddest weepiest violets I have ever smelled. It’s a violet that can be seen in flowers that are offered to dead relatives and friends at their graves. I have done exactly that. I have presented gifts of flowers with violets and chrysanthemum to my friends who are now in an afterlife waiting for me to join them in a blissful continuation of existence away from this veil of tears called Earth. In and of itself the violet carnation and chrysanthemum scent is beautiful.
The dry down reveals a touch of musk, moss, no woods but definitely incense. Not a big smoky incense but more of a Church incense Cathedral incense that has begun to subside. It’s a mysterious nocturnal incense that can be quite moving. It’s also just the tiniest bit powdery as some incense (and musk) can become powdery when it has started to disappear. It has green notes that I can’t identify. A bit herbal a bit mossy. Very earthy. This is hard to wear on your own casually. It can’t be taken out in public among your living friends. This is ok if you are Goth and want to wear this to sport a statement maker perfume with your Goth clique friends but it’s a perfume that demands respect. It’s more than just formal for formal black wear in funerals. It’s a fragrance that is dignified and solemn, somber, really. Lugubrious.
Serge Lutens has created a masterpiece and I’m very glad to read so many favorable reviews for this brilliantly created perfume. It is unisex so gentlemen, you can wear this without worrying that you are coming off as too feminine or lady like. It has a lot of earthiness and musk that it does smell quite masculine and unisex. Women will like it for the mystery and Gothic beauty and men for the earthiness. I visualize a Victorian widow, a Queen Victoria all in black, mourning the loss of her beloved Albert, whom she never could replace. This is a black taffeta gown that reaches to the floor. It drags from behind and she walks with slow steps in graceful mourning. She has a veil over her face that hangs from her black mourning hat. She will wear this for years because it is improper for her to get over her husband’s death. She has downcast eyes and teary eyes. This same woman will turn into a ghost when she’s gone and will continue to walk the halls and staircases of her estate.
This is also evocative of the later years of Abraham Lincoln’s widow, Mary Todd. This is Mary Todd Lincoln in the height of her depression. She was never able to get over the assassination of the President and she mourned him for the rest of her life. She became mad and surrounded herself in black. Black veils, black dresses, black collars, black bombazine, black taffeta, black velvet, black satin, black brooches, cameo pins, black curtains and séances. Why yes this is a séance fragrance to wear when you wish to communicate with your departed loved ones.
Beautiful.
lrg226speagoessenda – :
It’s like wearing Life & Death
Violet and Chrysantemum as life
Incense and soil as death….
I haven’t a problem with it,they are both close to me. On me it’s more fresh than I first would have expected…
It is not easy to wear and demand certain situations. I tend to grab for it when I need relaxation .
Tranquility kind of thing …I guess
wdi – :
I find it interesting that the chrysanthemum should inspire such a florid meditation on death when the flower has only very specific – not global – associations with death and dying. Around the world and at different times in history, chrysanthemums have been a symbol of longevity (China and Japan), friendship (Victorian England), and used as a corsage flower (modern USA). “If you would be happy for a lifetime, grow Chrysanthemums,” says a Chinese proverb. What we have here is a telling example of how death has been practiced differently throughout human history. On the scent, I agree with the interpretation of the scent’s lush vitality.
djdrap – :
Was Lutens an ironist, like Wilde, who, as Bois de Jasmin notes, wrote an essay of the same name? De Profundis is not full of sorrow and not for mourning. De Profundis is a scent that laughs. It opens with dancing blues and greens, low to the ground, which wind around each other in joyful embrace. The green grows bluer and blue to purple, which spin, thread-like, into living skeins with no beginning and no end. My wrists smell both radiant and dark, warm and cool, moving and still, but there is no point at which these contrasts are divisible, and sad? Never. But perhaps the scent speaks to decay after all, that form of death when difference merges into indistinguishable oneness…
Please, wear this at my funeral.
antonyszandor – :
Such a name!!! Such a perfume!!! A MASTERPIECE!!!
And the PERFECT colour too!!!! My God what an amazing, stupendous glorious thing is De Profundis, by the great maestro Serge Lutens!!!
It is light yet profound. Exquisite. It takes me deep inside myself, deep, deep, to the point almost of no return. But not quite. It also lifts my spirit, and gives it support in its hour of need, with such a beautiful, heart-rending fragrance, which is unique and very moving. Earthy, with sweet flowers and incense, and a touch of forest. It’s a deeply mournful, yet astoundingly positive perfume. It is as if the soul is crying, but also loving, and rejoicing!!!
It’s stunning.
lexa20465 – :
La bottiglie e’ stupenda e il colore e’geniale.
Purtroppo non lo trovo profondo come mi aspettavo dal nome
ma chiuso.
non sottoterra,piuttosto nel portabagagli di un carro funebre.
All’apertura ho la sensazione aspra come una lattina di redbull appena aperta.molto forte.con una caramella alla violetta che tira i primi e ultimi sospiri prima di morire travolta da un muro di crisantemi.
Mi piace il crisantemo.lo trovo femminile e fresco ma qui e’decisamente troppo.non riesco a sentire altro,nemmeno un po di fumo che avrei gradito.
Avrebbe dato un tocco consono da cerimonia e aperto qualche spiraglio per respirare….in un certo senso.
La durata e’grande,il sillage anche.
Mi piace solo il finale,quando non pizzica piu al mio naso.
Apprezzo il coraggio e gli ingredienti ma non le proporzioni.
Lo avrei gradito fosse stato piu dark e meno verde.
Il sample per me e’ piu che sufficiente.
Passo.
taiga76 – :
Ophelia John Everett Millais 1852
харек48 – :
To Jean B – It seams to me that Serge Lutens have biblical references on some of his perfumes.
He also often plays with words and I love the poetical names of his perfumes.
Please se my own thoughts about Jeaux de Peau Édition Gravée Couronne d’épines regarding this subject.
kiralightman – :
A sweet almost white floral with a tiny hint of fruit in the opening but with a depth and richness that comes from the soil and greens. It has spice and dries down powdery and unlike any other floral I own. Lovely.
ALLEXXE – :
I recently had the good fortune to visit the Serge Lutens store in Paris. Saved up a considerable sum for this, got quite a few things and before leaving I saw the bottle with the violet loveliness and sniffed the sample. Then applied it to my skin. Unlike with most of the stuff I purchased, I was not familiar with scent. Which in a sense made the experience more raw. I don’t even like florals. My favorite scents up till this point were Chergui and L’Orpheline. De Profundis first charmed my eyes and then I just fell for the earthy lovely scent. It reminded me of fall. No wonder, my favorite flower happens to be chrysanthemum and I grew up taking chrysanthemums to cemeteries on All Saints every year. This was like earth and green and flowers but also just ever so feminine and melancholy and lovely. It’s an inward turning scent. Someone mentioned how this reminded them on BPAL scents. I don’t know. I have quite a few of those and they end up all smelling the same after a while. This is different. There is a dichotomy between the color of the perfume which speaks of spring and lively things, and the scent which speaks of opulent, lovely decay. Without reading about the scent to me it truly resonated with my early experiences in life that were somewhat like the description. I just wish it lasted longer. It does not. I get about 2-3 hours of sniffing pleasure and it lingers no longer and leaves with a feeling of lovely sadness of things past and hope for a the eternal return.
voldemar – :
For those that think that the inspiration behind De Profundis stems from Oscar Wilde or the biblical Psalm 130 – what do you think of the possibility it was, perhaps, also Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal? For your reading pleasure:
Out of the Depths (De Profundis)
Sole Being I love, Your mercy I implore
Out of the bitter pit of my heart’s night,
With leaden skyscapes on a dismal shore,
Peopled only by blasphemy and fright;
For six months frigid suns float overhead,
For six months more darkness and solitude.
No polar wastes are bleaker and more dead,
With never beast nor stream nor plant nor wood.
No horror in this world but is outdone
By the cold razor of this glacial sun
And this chaotic night’s immensities.
I envy the most humble beast that ease
Which brings dull slumber to his brutish soul
So slowly does my skein of time unroll.
— Jacques LeClercq, Flowers of Evil (Mt Vernon, NY: Peter Pauper Press, 1958)
enemy95 – :
I want to write a bunch of hyperbole here because it is just that good. Instead I will sum it up with a single word: masterpiece
Noxcho95 – :
I don’t normally get flowery in my reviews (seriously – biochemist in a former life here, I’m awful at simile, metaphor, and analyzing poetry), but De Profundis is almost, well, poetic in its expression and lifespan.
I put it on this morning and then again in the early afternoon and was stuck by how lovely the opening notes were: A blast of chrysanthemum, green notes, and soil, plus something almost spicy about the mix. I know chrysanthemums have some spice to them (verified by sniffing a mother’s day bouquet with some mums in them), but on me, I detect…carnation?
After awhile, there’s a plummy, powdery feeling to it, but the spicy chrysanthemum remains. I don’t get incense from this, but it’s lovely nevertheless and it’s now my mission to get my hands on a bottle so this can become part of my fall/winter rotation.
As an aside, I’m wearing this in Arizona on a sunny, mild late spring day – it’s a weird scent and out of place for this type of weather. This would have be excellent for the rain we had back in January and February, when it was brittle and cold.
lakeev_a – :
@Shiva-woman…..Great review!! This frag isn’t all that in my opinion and not really for men either. Nice concept but seriously there is dye in this frag. Huge turn off for me.
Прораб – :
After several wearings and readings of the notes and this perfume, and because I’m a SL junkie, I finally took the plunge and purchased. The delay was in part because I did not get the “mood” that so many people discuss; this perfume seems to elicit “dark” and “mysterious” adjectives or even “melancholy.” So discontinue reading soon, “Gentle Reader”(!) because my take on this is blasphemous. There are no Oscar Wilde allusions going through my mind while wearing this. IMHO it is super green, crunchy spring green, raw, fresh, just-cut chrysanthemum green, allied strangely with a powdery note. It reminds me of lilies but without the sweetness. I smell the earthiness of the scent as well, but this perfume is even the color of green–perhaps a malachite (not purple), and is light, airy, springy, not quite refreshing, but brisk morning. It’s been raining here in California with just an occasional pinch of sun, and my sweet peas are taking off in my garden. This scent compels me to get outside, plant my carrots and lettuces before we “fry and die” here. It seems like a fitting “gardening kind” of scent–earth and “growies” (my husband’s catch-all term for both weeds, edibles, and flowers). We’ve had brisk mornings, and a little breeze–that’s the mood this perfume puts me in. I love incense scents, but alas, this perfume does not have that finish or trail on me. At the very, very bottom, the end note and with a deep sniff, I find a bit of the SL wood note–faint. To someone trying this perfume, first get a generous sample (because silage and longevity for me were not great). Then, put aside all preconceptions and just smell! That’s what I did before and after my usual intense reading frenzy on Fragrantica. You may find that this perfume is “ethereal” (that was about as close as I could get to melancholy on this one). I’m off to dig in the dirt…
LeTSdance2006 – :
“The final mystery is one’s self. When one has weighed the sun in balance, measured the steps of the moon and mapped out the Seven Heavens star by star, there still remains one’s self. Who can calculate the orbit of one’s own soul?”
– De Profundis by Oscar Wilde.
This fragrance contains the spirit of Oscar Wilde who wrote De Profundis while he was in prison for the “crime” of being gay. I live in his townhouse in New York which he bought during his years in Manhattan. Last Halloween my friends and I contacted his spirit in a séance. He came to us in the form of the scent of roses and earth soil. This fragrance was given to me as a gift by my friend in London Lucia who is also a fan of Oscar. This is a very melancholy scent of a cemetery, of graves in the moonlight, of Oscar’s soul as it flies through the night air over London. He will never be forgotten and he is beloved as a great writer of the English canon. This scent is like a more tragic L’Heure Bleue by Guerlain. There is no top middle and base structure and the notes flip back and forth through your nose. I smell earthy soil, I smell incense, smoky incense, I smell fleeting floral scents of violet and chrysanthemum. It’s a funereal scent, a Goth fragrance. If you like unusual earthy incense scents this is for you. It’s a fragrance that sends shivers down my spine because it feels like Oscar is right next to me. Except he liked roses and this has violets. I think this is an amazing indie niche frag but it’s quite strong and mysterious so it’s one of those frags to wear only now and then. Definitely a Halloween frag (think Voleur de Rose). This is a winter and autumn fragrance. To my nose the green notes, the earth notes and the incense are the strongest. It smells like smoke and the grave, evokes a mist rising out of the dark of night in. Aromatic, strong, masculine, mysterious and lugubrious, like a ghost crying and sobbing in the night. I love it. I will wear this again next October 16 for Oscar’s birthday when I will try to contact him once more. We love you Oscar.
oplan – :
I have received a sample as part of a sample box and this is stunning. Deep earthy dark and….violetty? I want this (but it isn’t for sale here). Gorgeous…don’t know what else to say.
marsianinof – :
A dear friend from paris had the kindness to send me a bottle of this magnificent creation!!!!!
A version that has two little 30ml bottles and a vaporisateur!!! Classy black bottle!!!! I had the chance to smell and instantly fall in love with this unique fume two years ago when I received the well known black envelope full of solid samples from the company of serge lutens!!! I waited and waited imagining how it would smell!!! And now it’s hear!!!! I LOVE IT!!!! I could cry!!!!!!!! The scent is amazing the best thing I own, it’s so precious and fragile like a fresh bouquet of wild flowers collected under the moonlight!!! I get the smell of night the smell of kindness nothing sad!!!! It is an absolute floral but the secret blend of some unknown to me base notes and the quality of ingredients makes it so unique unlike everything i know!!!!! Trust me iff you’re lucky enough to find one you will be amazed of its greatness!!!!!! It’s my first lutens and from now on I only hope to find a way to get some more!!!!!
Thanks
G.
ELIELLLIOT – :
I have to admit I was skeptical of this from the start (due to the ad copy and rapturous reviews tilting at the same effect) and initially underwhelmed by the dense floral/”clean” opening, which struck me as too much fabric softener and recalled various linen-themed Yankee Candle cloyers. The quality of ingredients was immediately evident, but deployed too thickly for my tastes. I got a noseful of pale, sterile chrysanthemum and would not have made any morbid associations if I’d sniffed it blind.
Well, it’s still not my cup of tea but after several testings I can now detect the soft incense and wood in its drydown. These compliment the flowers very nicely, and I wish they surfaced sooner. It also seems to get slightly more powdery with time, although I smell little “green” and no soil.
Lyrically, it reminds me less of mortality and more of stillness and stasis, a place secluded, a wait overlong, stale air. Not a cemetery, but purgatory. Blank. An endless grey, peaceful but undesirable. Serious for sure.
With that demeanor and poor sillage, I’m unsure how or why I’d wear this. If to “a board meeting” as vonnnie suggests below, I fear the corporation’s long-postponed bankruptcy is finally being voted up. Maybe there’s a reporter or two present, but the creditors have known for months and suspected for years. Nobody’s proud, and the complimentary refreshments are discarded, entirely untouched, at adjournment.
Finally (and running with the accounting theme), even if that’s the desired effect I can’t help but feel there are more economical means to accomplish it outside Lutens.
I really wanted to like this more.
JewellHerl25 – :
this works surprisingly well layered with La Haie Fleurie!
starscream1988 – :
This is a serious scent and decidedly, a Perfume. Earthy, green, chrysanthemum, incense, some violet (I smell more faint lilac or muguet). Stately. Deep. Serious. Penetrating. The top note is amazing. Not for the young. The opera, a state dinner, a solemn Eucharist, a board meeting. A quiet, second wedding. A funeral. A scent for cool or cold weather, rain, a foggy day. It is the smell of profound humility, rich and sacred.
Borzen – :
It is with some sadness that I must amend my review to include the following: DO NOT WEAR THIS IN THE SUMMER.
The soft, vegetal notes in this calm, serene, mystical beauty turn acrid when mixed with sweat, producing an incredibly strong scent reminiscent of body odor. Wear with abandon in cool weather, but if you’re going to be sweating, best leave this one at home. Still at the top of my want list… just not for when I’m running halfway across campus. Oops…
flexton – :
I Don’t usually give florid discriptions of frags but this one almost demands just that. I picture inxs singing They could never tear us apart while I am running my hand along a wet cold wrought iron fence of an old New Orleans cemetery. When I wear this it belongs to me no one else. Comforting even in its austerity.
tvinis23 – :
Sublime. Really, that’s all I can say about this one. I had been looking for a contemplative incense, cool, calm, a bit forlorn, but safe, serene, and sacred. This is it. Beautifully done, with just enough earthy realism to keep it from flying away. The soil smells fresh, moist, and dark, with chrysanthemum and violet growing nearby. Green notes aren’t too prominent, and incense takes center stage. It is a soft, ethereal blend, not acrid, dark, or churchy. I’ve got several Lutens fragrances on my must have list for eventual purchase in the bell jar, and this one is at the very top. Just lovely…
Khodor – :
I believe this fragrance is abou