Un Bois Vanille (2003)
by Serge Lutens Les Salons du Palais Royal Shiseido

Love this. It is a warm gourmand scent that envelops you and hugs you tight. It makes me happy to smell this. Not too sweet with the perfect mix of vanilla and smoke. With some coconut thrown in for good measure. In a word it is delicious.

6th December, 2010.

Okay, I just bought a 5ml decant of Daim Blond after being impressed with a card sample (not bloody cheap at $16 - four times the cost of Heritage!). I love this stuff. I like feminine-leaning scents. So I figure I'll probably like other Serge Lutens stuff, right?

So, I'm at House of Fraser in Cheltenham, a rare one (perhaps) with an SL stand. Although, weirdly, they only seem to display the really feminine scents. I recognise Bois Vanille, squirt some on a paper tongue, and sniff.

I'm immediately confused. What IS this stuff? Some kind of sick JOKE? It doesn't smell of vanilla to me. All I smell is sickly, oversweet toffee. And cheap toffee, at that. You know the kind you get at souvenir shops on holiday? All the same, wherever you go, individually wrapped and in a bag printed with "Greetings from Portsmouth". Horrible, cheap, tacky (I'm sniffing it now..) - urggh. I can smell something slightly finer and subtle in there, but I can't tell what it is. It's like sniffing one of those woody acorn car fresheners that girls like, sticking it right up to your nose and sucking in deep.

And unisex? No disrespect, but if one of my friends wore this, I'd take him aside and treat him gently, as if, say, he were wearing Speedos at the seaside. No, my friend. No.

Seriously though, I'm really surprised at the positive reviews (though I probably have a lot to learn). This is not Champion the Wonder Horse. It's a one-trick pony.

27th October, 2010.

Smells like sugar cookies smeared with vanilla frosting at Christmastime. Very edible. Definitely unisex.

30th August, 2010.

My initial feeling upon sampling this in a store while looking for a go-to vanilla scent was "this could be in the running". On my skin it dried down to more of a cotton candy although I do get waifs of the vanilla from time to time. I also get some smokiness and every now and then a rubbery smell, which isn't as bad as it sounds.

A little suprised it is marketed as a woman's frag when I could definitely see it being unisex. That being said, I think ultimately I will go with one that falls more on the masculine-to-unisex side (if one exists) especially at the Serge Luten prices.

22nd June, 2010.

To be fair, I'm wearing a dupe of UBV. I've never even smelled the real thing. So, that's my disclaimer. But I've bought dupes from several sites online and they are all DIVINE in this scent! I had to laugh when people talked about drooling on their arms because I'm the same way! This is a sweet vanilla, not cloying, doesn't smell like vanilla play doh, not heavy or smoky. But I don't smell any of the notes that are supposedly in it! Licorice? Nah! I don't remember all the supposed notes because they aren't apparent to me. I just know it's a sweet vanilla mixed with something else that's also sweet but not TOO sweet. It's a pretty scent, definitely NOT unisex (remember, mine's a dupe!) and I get tons of compliments on it.

15th June, 2010.

I like the spareness of this take on vanilla. In comparison many other vanilla scents are overwhelmingly cloying, syrupy, or gooey smelling (all of which I do actually appreciate, sometimes). The slight woodiness in this is nice, too. Pleasant for what it is. I would like to smell it on a man.

6th March, 2010.