Reviews of Chêne (2004)
by Serge Lutens Les Salons du Palais Royal Shiseido

chromatone wrote in an earlier review of Chêne: "sun-baked car seat cushion and dry-rotted dashboard vinyl, with a healthy side serving of faded "pine tree" car freshener, rust, and antifreeze. Essentially it shared many tonal qualities with the interior of an older, unclean automobile left in the sun."

Upon reading this, I let out an "ohhhhhhhh yeah!"

Despite me being a shameless Lutens fanatic, I could never get into Chêne. It reminded me of -something- but I couldn't pinpoint what it was until I read the above excerpt because that is absolutely and precisely what Chêne smells like: a disgusting car that has been parked in the sunlight all day with the windows up. It is a nauseating smell. Sunbaked car seat cushion, that's all Chêne manages to evoke for me.

An incredibly realistic oak scent, with a touch of sweetness and a bit smoke. The only thing I dislike is for a short period I get a somewhat earthy tone that detracts from the oak effect. Long lasting and rather intense. I struggle with Chene: I love smelling it, but is it how I want to smell? I don’t think I will buy a bottle currently, but I certainly like it enough to give it a thumbs up.

I wanted to like this, and I do.. but...

I just goes on oaky, smoky, and dry.. then that's it. However, by far, this is probably the most authentic conjuration of oak, but it just lacks the magic and charm I wanted it to have.

Altogether, will still buy if I see a reasonably priced bottle of it on the swap and sale boards.

a marvelous salty old dog of a wood scent from serge lutens. it is really a good one to wear with some of the other lutens creations to beef them up a bit, put hair on their chests Borneo Daim Blond and beaucoup des autres

One of the best non lutesque scent, a really pleasure to smell until you became intoxicated with oak. I like to sniff it on my forearm than to wear, it's somethig like a frenzy that you can't stop, Am I a Chene addict? The good thing is the exceptional longevity next to the skin, similar to knize ten, black aoud or ambre sultan on my skin. A really niche masterpiece.

Honeyed pencil shavings with few drops of sweet sap, this is a nice woody fragrance. However, from the first time I tested this, it felt just "nice", and it has been unable to rock my world ever since. I`ve sampled and woren this quite a few times, and the result has always been the same : "Nice".

It`s just not enough.

One of those fragrances which my brain tells me to be in love, but the heart knows better than that.

I have to say, I've never had to work so hard to understand a fragrance before. I've read reviews of Chene here and on various blogs and had a very specific expectation which had been building for nearly a year. Now that I've been able to experience it, it's taken me a week of concentrated effort to figure out how to conform my experience of Chene into what Sheldrake and Lutens were telling me I was supposed to be seeing. I'll begin by saying that now I see freshly sawed wood and sap when I smell this, without a pause, without skipping the slightest beat. But the first time I smelled Chene I was shocked to smell sour fruit candy notes billowing off my skin for at least the first half hour of wear. Truth be told, that is ALL I could smell the FIRST time I wore it. I wanted to smell wooded paths, pine needles under foot, or be transported to a wood shop or even an antiques store like my fellow basenoters but I couldn't get past this purple/maroon/red nondescript fruit candy smell. I lent my wrist to family members who would respond with "very woody!" and slump shouldered, I wondered why I wasn't getting it.

I honestly can't tell you what happened but one day, it just clicked: the candy turned into the smell of sap: the smell of walking into a room where wood is being cut by a circular saw, the hot blade radiating the scent of sawdust and resins and sap into the air. There is a great moment in Chene where the image of the freshly cut wooden plank and heated sap comes into complete focus and it is a really fantastic effect, though it takes me a while to get there each time I wear it. I guess I've just never experienced a woody fragrance quite like this before. They've all been less sweet, less "freshly cut" and less sappy, I suppose, thus the reason my nose and brain were groping for words to describe what they were experiencing -- the reason for why they were telling me fruity candy. The great thing about Chene is that it seems so fixed in its intent, but my interpretation of it shifts as I wear it... newly cut wood, old wooden furniture, a walk in a pine forest -- it's all conjured by this fascinating fragrance which I'd actually not want to wear, but am happy to have a little bit of to sniff from time to time.

While I generally love the SL exclusifs (export line not so much), this one reeks of Fahrenheit and is altogether very unpleasant. Thumbs way down.

My husband does woodworking as a hobby, and this Chene is true to the fragrance of oak! Smells like oak boards being cut, sanded, etc. Original, authentic and attention getting. Nicely done!

Sharp and green and smoky. An unforgettable fragrance for a man or a woman. Mysterious, in that your neighbor will definitely not own a similar scent, and people will want to figure out what you're wearing.

I couldn't decide between Fumerie Turque and Chene for a few months, because they're both nice. Fumerie Turque is a safer choice for women, but Chene is a bit more interesting.

Of all the Serge Lutens I've tried, this one is the one that seems to fall firmly in the "masculine" for me. I say this because it's a wee bit too green and woodsy and never strays to far from those notes, making it as linear as most of the other men's department store scents that I don't care for. As I wore it, it did remind me of walking through a forest in the fall, smelling pine in the air and the fallen leaves and earth of the forest floor. Now, I'm not one of those girly girls, I'll wear a scent meant for a man in a minute, if I like it, but there are some things even I can't pull off. I imagine this would smell really great on some rugged outdoorsy man.

I'll leave the eloquent descriptions of this fragrance to the other reviewers, many of whom have already done a great job describing this little gem.

All you really need to know is that this smells exactly like the inside of an oak dresser drawer. Not everyone's idea of perfume, but it's captured beautifully and I do love it!

It makes me smell like a drunkard, who slept rough in the woods all night and forgot to put out the campfire...

I see why there are so many favorable reviews for Chene. It truly is a wood-lover’s dream come true. The birch and cedar are dry and aromatic, very accurate and completely satisfying. This is an exceptionally well-designed scent. The rich elements (tonka, rum, beeswax) support and enhance the wood, rather than compete with it. I’m usually wary of vanilla, but those notes from the tonka bean are just right here. The dry-down develops lovely herbaceous notes and is very complex and subtle, with a distinctive beauty. The thyme is very mellow, not at all like salad dressing. (I’m thinking of the thyme in Baïme, which in my opinion detracts from the other elements.) This has great staying power. If you like wood, seek this one out... you won’t be disappointed. The wood, earth and herbs evoke a mood of contemplative contentment.

Chêne is quite a beautiful and unique scent: Oak and smoke are primary and then there are all those almost subconscious bits and pieces of the olfactory experience floating in the ether of the smoky wood: sap, wild herbs, beeswax, cedar leaves, undergrowth. The result is near surreal. The solid woody base and all of the disparate miscellaneous elements create a natural-within-meditative-experience; especially for the person who loves woods and brilliant creativity. Chêne is resinous and rich, smoky and sweet. It is easy to wear, and linear through most of its life. It has stellar lasting ability, and is as lush a wood accord as can be wished. For the wood lover, this is one dream of an experience.

The initial scent of Chêne is that of a fairly standard "wood" with a few sweet extras lingering in the back. However, the drydown quickly exposes a copious dose of sun-baked car seat cushion and dry-rotted dashboard vinyl, with a healthy side serving of faded "pine tree" car freshener, rust, and antifreeze. Essentially it shared many tonal qualities with the interior of an older, unclean automobile left in the sun. To be sure it was not a bad reaction on my own skin, I applied the fragrance onto a friend of mine who came to the same conclusions, who added that Chêne has a bit of asphalt and car wash notes. After cleansing with warm soap and water, the scent still imposed on my skin for another 12 hours before finally leaving me in peace. I am a big fan of the Lutens line, but this one makes me wonder if it is just a joke in a bottle.

Oak, oak, oak, and more oak. Perfect, crystal, clear and consistent. I know there is more than just oak, but that is all I care about in this scent and all I want to smell in it. It is perfect.

I like this! It's dry, woody, mossy, and just a bit astringent: a real walk in the forest. No extra syrup either, just the natural sweetness of cured oak logs, plus lots of herbs and lots of booze. The oak note in Chene is beyond real, its hallucinogenic.

This off-dry, woody scent is a nice departure for Sheldrake and Lutens. The honeyed amber "house note" that can make some Serge Lutens scents hard to wear is barely in evidence here, so that Chene smells unlike most other entries in this line. Long-lasting, with moderate sillage and a beautiful mossy/woody/tonka bean drydown. It smells "serious," but it makes me happy.

Some scents are paintings and can be best described by terms such as Impressionist, Fauvist, Baroque and the like. Chene is a photograph, and while one can sometimes identify a painter by his brushstrokes, the photographer has stayed very much out of the picture here. An oak forest, the colours nearly bleached by sunlight. The word perfume comes with so many associations that just don’t apply to this olfactory document. Although it seems that most of its fans here are men, I can not meaningfully say that Chene is either masculine or feminine. It really doesn’t make that sort of concession to humanity. It is, simply and perfectly, what it is. I find this to be a very grounding and comfortable scent to wear. Woodsy, natural and SL’s signature cedar note is well reined in here. It is warm and very nicely dry. I don’t think it would need to be restricted to any particular season.

Chene starts off very woodsy and green that reminds me of the wonderful opening of Diptyque's L'Eua Trois. But it evolves quickly to a sweet warm undercurrent supporting the thyme sap that warms the room like a hunting lodge fire crackling with hard woods. As the fragrance progresses the piny scent goes away and a sweet waxy very light wood fragrance dominates. A very soothing and comforting scent of freshly cut oak logs - refreshing. This very light oak stays for the duration softening as it wears down and getting slightly sweeter. Very pure and clean.

Chene is excellent by itself, and layers well (sillage and longevity being similar) with CdG Avignon.

One of my two Holy Grail Scents (along with de Nicolaï's New York), Chêne smells unambiguously of oak, at least to my nose - as it should since its name is the French word for oak. But there is so much more in there than simple oak. Imagine a mixture of fresh oak sawdust and the fine, powdery organic matter on the bottom of the litter layer of some primeval forest and you're getting the idea.

I have not come close to wearing this as much as I want because it is obscenely expensive in the U.S. Curses on the head of Mr. Lutens for limiting Chêne to the non-export line.

I ordered this blind and I'm so glad I did!!! This is my favorite SL scent that I've sniffed so far. I get rich honey sitting on top of gorgeous woods. It's like sweet antique furniture. This is everything that Miel de Bois should have been IMO.

Now this is weird, in a lovely way. It smells like no other high-end perfume to me, it smells more like foresty, dark perfume oils from companies like BPAL. Only better, of course. I would say pine or fir if I hadn't read the notes, but birch makes sense as well. Definitely bittersweet tree resins and sweet tree sap. It's stunning. It's what I've been looking for - a true, natural forest scent. Just like standing in a forest, inhaling the fumes. A hot, sunny summer forest I think, but perhaps after the rain, with humidity rising from the ground. So vivid. I get a touch of smoke too, of burning wood, a campfire. It also has a fresh, sour note that is almost too citrusy sour in the opening but adds a wonderful vegetal freshness in the drydown.

Chene has a light sweetness about it. To me it smells very much like the sap that falls from oak trees here in the eastern part of the US. Sweet, woodsy, slick, and somehow clean or "pure." Totally unisex in my opinion. Feels light, like it's close to the skin, and yet you catch whiffs of it in the air when you move. Am I the only one who doesn't get rum? Guess so...maybe my nostalgia gets in the way here. Lasts very well for the light impression it gives. Another great Lutens' scent that, for me, invokes childhood imagery and wonder.

A forest primeval, ancient untouched first-growth. Chene is not so much a fragrance as a place, to wear and close ones eyes and be transported to the woodland and the wild. This is the place that once was before a church was built and it became CDGs Zagorsk which is no less lovely but is more controlled, forgiving, and perhaps understandable. Chene is not for rational thought but for pure escape.

I just can't get past the mental picture of thick, rich, honeyed rum, funneled by some prankster into the classroom pencil trimmer. I mean, who's gonna clean up that mess??
I can't give it a thumbs down, though. The sweet richness brings Fumerie Turque to mind, and I suspect part of my Meh factor is just that its not going to be Fumerie Turque! Chene is guite a bit more masculine IMO.

The other SL that had me hooked (with Borneo). Hot woods and spices dry down to oak, honey and rum, with Luten's (Or Sheldrake's) uncanny scent of tanned flesh. Love it!

Wonderful and seems to be one of the lesser known scents. Smokey oak, rich rum and honey notes, and white woods create a surprising composition that it totally intoxicating. The first time I can call an SL scent "smokin'"! Reminds me ever-so-slightly of Balenciaga Cristobal, though not nearly as sweet.

Smells like powdered sweet tarts to me. Certainly not bad, but very different. It's a well crafted fragrance but I don't think it is for me.

Newly released as I type. I get heavy oak-bark, tonka bean and rum. Advertised as unisex but it skews more into the masculine direction. Very Pleasant