aicis333 – 2022-07-05:

5 out of 5

plummy tobacco on a bed of cedar/ish/indiscernible watery woodiness, becomes a skin scent after about 30mins or so. would be a disappointment in the serge lutens mainline, let alone the 700 or so pricing their d’or line commands.

Burtalkro – 2022-07-05:

5 out of 5

I was desesprately searching for a sample of Luten’s Fumerie Turque (same nose of this one) as it’s one of the best Tobacco based fragrance ever. Finally it’s available on …….. Serge Lutens official website for 170 euros/75 ml.
It was a very hard to find, and relatively expensive comparing with SL habitual frags.
What I don’t understand, Luten’s perfumes turns around 70-90 dollars, and now a similar fragrance from the same house goes a 500 dollars/50 ml….. Shoking.
This price beats Xerjoff, Clive Christian …..
Better stay in Guerlain and Tom Ford privates, they are still more “wearable”.

deathlaf – 2022-07-05:

3 out of 5

Why this colletcion is so expensive? Cost of formulation?
Even Joy has wouldn’t launch with this price tag altough it has one of the most expensive formulation. Must be joke!

VMAmudlyq – 2022-07-05:

5 out of 5

This is a gorgeous unisex fragrance that has a berry tobacco theme.
It is one of the best of the whole Section D’or line but the price tag at $900AU is just too much for most people, including me so I just load myself up with this when I’m in a Mecca store! Divine perfume!

tem200288 – 2022-07-05:

3 out of 5

Although the Section d’Or collection represents a departure from the roots of the brand, Serge Lutens did not turn his back on what inspired him from the beginning. It is apparent that Lutens has always been fascinated and influenced by Arab perfumery and his experiences with perfumes in Morocco. This time he does an indirect homage in the name to a holy man and patron of Morocco, Side Bel Abbas, who was honored in Algeria with a city that was a kind of French military base.
The theme of the perfume itself and its notes reach maximum cryptic levels, which surpass even the brand’s standards. There are no official notes and no great description. Siddi Bel-Abbès is attributed only to a forbidden love. And after trying this perfume, it seems to me that the forbidden love pictured here is the union of Western perfumery with Arab perfumery.
Lutens revisits here one of his earliest perfumes, Fumerie Turque, giving a new direction to the dense and smoked aroma of tabacco from the original composition. Siddi Bel-Abbès uses the same type of tobacco, but in a less saturated form, following a similar logic of style found in L’Incendiaire. The first moments are similar to Fumerie Turque, with an aroma that initially refers to smoky tobacco. A few minutes later a brighter aroma reveals itself, something that seems to be a citrus influence. From that moment the scent gains a more balanced aura, making room for smoky tobacco to blend into floral nuances of rose and a sweetly discreet vanilla and tonka touch. The aroma of tobacco is never gone, however the more time goes by the more discreet it becomes. Siddi Bel-Abbès may represent a forbidden love, but such love is not an explosion of emotions, but a kind of encounter and harmonization of distinct spiritual energies.
If Fumerie Turque and Siddi Bel-Abbès were representations of the same person, we could certainly say that Fumerie Turque represents the rebellion, energy and explosion of youth. Already Siddi Bel-Abbès represents the balance, maturity and refinement that many of us only get with life-long experiences. The only drawback is that this refinement comes at a price: one that is literal (that of a more exclusive luxury product) and also figurative (distancing from the brand’s older customer base).

Rocket – 2022-07-05:

4 out of 5

Sidi bel-Abbès, the city, housed the headquarters of the French Foreign Legion prior to Algerian independence in 1962. Sidi bel-Abbès, the perfume, is like a yellowed photograph or a postcard from that time addressed to an unknown woman by a man whose struggle for her love matched his fervor for his military cause – a local freedom fighter maybe or, perhaps, a foreign soldier.
Sidi bel-Abbès, essentially, is a romantic scent that has been stripped to a ghost of a memory about what once was or what could have been. A promise of young love, impossible or forbidden, symbolised by unsweetened and spiced red berries and dark patchouli, is almost suffocated by brutally charred woods and smoke, brown tobacco and birch tar leather.
In spite of the relentless intensity of the vertical layers here there is a palpable sense of austerity and loss, perhaps regret, and the overall feeling is that of muted vastness of a landscape viewed from a birds eye perspective through a sepia lense of vanilla and immortelle.
Sidi bel-Abbès feels best when it’s almost forgotten and allowed to release resinous-ambery wafts in its own time. In fact it would appear that the more attention is paid to the scent the less it works. This illustrates well an intriguing paradox about this mysterious creation; whatever once deserved a chance didn’t succeed; yet what we’re told isn’t worth pursuing wouldn’t let us go.

Sunde123 – 2022-07-05:

4 out of 5

Does anyone want to share the cost of a bottle with me? I live in Australia.

gje699bedyWelty – 2022-07-05:

4 out of 5

No doubt that this is one stunning tobacco fragrance that I’m loving so much, I’m considering paying the $800A plus for it
My favourite from the gold line!
Just gorgeous, I’m in love!
Would class it as male focused but still very unisex! (I’m female)

MARTY510 – 2022-07-05:

4 out of 5

$600?!?!?!?!?!???
And it’s worth it, unfortunately.
By Christopher Sheldrake. 2015.
What a dense, rich, earthy, tobacco fragrance with dried fruit and resinous notes; smokey, maybe a little too smokey at first, but then mellowing out into a boozy, old leather. So perfect for Fall and Winter.
Would this be the most I’ve ever spent on fragrance? Oh yeah. Am I saving up for it? Big time.

ethegrenHonmeve – 2022-07-05:

3 out of 5

My Night at Maud’s by Éric Rohmer 1969

amid_ru – 2022-07-05:

3 out of 5

The opening moments of Sidi Bel-Abbès on my skin are quite confusing: the very first whiffs are of a mild chocolate aroma, but it’s swiftly replaced by crystalline red berries and fresh plums, mingled with cold, even mineral frankincense, only to be purged out by a razor-sharp smoky woody aromachemical.
Fortunately, this sharp woody smoke fades away after no more than 30 minutes. Sidi Bel-Abbès settles into a fluid resinous dry down, at first closer to labdanum, with its slightly chocolate-y, darker, slightly leathery aroma, but later shifts into something more akin to benzoin and Peru/Tolu balsam, with a more pronounced vanilla and more golden in tone. The whole is then coated with shimmers of fizzy rosy incense, like a soft glow of dawn, over a tranquil lake of resins.
The sillage of Sidi Bel-Abbès is extremely close to skin, and the longevity is around 6 hours.
I enjoyed the peaceful, mild, balmy dry down of Sidi Bel-Abbès, but overall it feels overly abstract and lacks the depth/complexity/magic of typical Lutens offerings. The forceful smoky wood at the beginning also feels quite synthetic according to my taste. Even if it was released in export range, I wouldn’t say that it’s among the most interesting ones. Therefore, I would not particularly recommend it at its current price range.

pavlentyi – 2022-07-05:

5 out of 5

This is in a similar vein as perfumes from brands like Clive Christian, Montale, and Roja Dove: over-stuffed and ostentatious in a manner that borders on trashy, only here the volume has been dipped down a few notches. In no specific order, this flip flops between (what smells to me like) notes of wine, suede, chocolate, iris, incense, jasmine, and some citrus for punchy aeration. It shifts around a lot, and that’s really what tanks it: it’s too hard to tell what you’re smelling at any given moment. If I were to describe it, I’d say that it smells like a vodka cocktail served on a leather tray. There’s something environmental about it, but it’s such a mush — a grey-smelling semi-industrial scent cloud, that, for whatever reason, makes me think of a fog machine. Out of focus and moody, but not entirely unappealing, if the price weren’t such a joke, this is the one that I’d consider following up with again. I’ll wait until it hits the Fragrancenet clearance bin for $50 or so.

FAMIN – 2022-07-05:

4 out of 5

In general all the perfumes of the “Gold” collection are very direct in their reading of the notes, there is not much evolution. The quality is high enough without doubt, do we smell the difference with all the other Lutens? not really. They would have made great additions to the normal collection and we can not help thinking that this price is a profitability operation of little elegance.
Sidi Bel-Abbès is a cold incense whith tobacco, notes of wax, polish. There is something of very manly, old school cologne – old barbershop – but in a super high density, almost mineral.
Very nice.

PLYTO – 2022-07-05:

5 out of 5

Hhh….sidi belabes!!!!…ville à l’ouest de Mon pays natal….l’Algérie !!!..ça fait plaisir la!!!!