Reviews of Bois Farine (2003)
by L'Artisan Parfumeur

Cloying sweetness, uncooked honey noodle wetness. Unwearable. Made me and my boyfriend think of raw honey, straight from a beehive for some reason. He was repulsed by it, and it is pretty strong especially the first few minutes. Lucky for us it started to rain so he could wash it off his wrist.

OMG, this smells of dentist's rooms! Must be the powderiness of the talc on their gloves and the minty-powderiness of mouthwash, or something, but I HATE this so much! Awful.

Bois Farine is one potent and distinctive fragrance. The opening peanut butter accord doesn’t sit well with me, and bears a spooky resemblance to the scented foliage of the harlequin glorybower tree (Clerodendrum trichotomum), though it’s not listed as a note. I can’t detect the fennel, but the iris root emerges forcefully after a few minutes on the skin. The peanut butter effect persists on me right through the drydown. I waited but never got the yeasty, fresh dough accord that has generated so much enthusiasm for this scent.

My own thought is that the nut accord (hazelnut) in Mechant Loup is better handled than the peanut in Bois Farine. My cultural biases could be showing here, however: I think of hazelnuts as part of a rich Viennese dessert, and peanuts as, well, a Snickers bar. Bois Farine leaves me with nightmares of being pursued by mobs of hungry schoolchildren. Oh well, I suppose it can’t work for everyone...

It is what it says: Flour and woods (mixed with peanut butter). It gets thumbs down from me because it is the only fragrance (at least up to this day) I am allergic to. I couldn't stop coughing as soon as I spritzed a few times on my chest.

I bought it blind because of its consistently wonderful reviews from reviewers I trust—this turned out to be an unfortunate investment. Bois Farine is a total disappointment—raw dough! Raw peanut butter cookie dough for about an hour then nothing. Six times I tested it and six times I got an hour of raw peanut butter cookie dough—then zip, zilch, nada.
The seventh time I sprayed the back of my hand with five sprays (I’m normally a one spray person). My hand looked wet and Bois Farine dripped from between my fingers, but with that I smelled something like what others seem to be experiencing: a warm doughy smell (yawn), then powder, and then a kind of wet cedar / sandalwood (yaawwwnnnnnnn). Ah ha! So that’s it! I have to swim in it for this fragrance to partially work. I’ve worn it, heavily applied, about a half dozen times now, and I have found that it’s a nice fragrance but absolutely nothing special—call me crazy, but I just can’t get excited about raw peanut butter cookie dough.
I don’t know if the problem is a weak fragrance, or my inability to smell the scent, or my skin’s inability to retain the scent, or all of the above. In any case, this is not a scent for me.