Cèdre (2005)
by Serge Lutens Les Salons du Palais Royal Shiseido

I bought this blind! I just had to, I found a really good deal on a tester bottle and have been searching for something sweet with tuberose that was also something I could wear as a man. From the reviews and Luckyscent's scale that shows this as being on the masculine side, I decided to go for it!

Luckyscent lists the notes as cedarwood, tuberose, musk, amber and cinnamon.
Fragrancenet lists the notes as tuberose, amber cinnamon, musk and cloves.

The first blast from this fragrance is heavy and rich, maybe a bit medicinal. (I don't mind that at all!) And I for one do smell cedar from the very beginning, but I almost have to think about cedar to smell it because this one is blended so well that no single note powers to the front. It is as if the cedar woodiness is tempered by the tuberose which itself is not at all cloying. I have smelled Tubereuse Criminalle and found it to be over the top with tuberose and smelled like soap to me, and was very feminine. Not Cédre.

This is a tuberose scent but so well blended that it is not a pure tuberose by any stretch of the imagination. (I grow tuberose and know the smell well in flower form.) I find both a lot of white flowers and a musky background with a lot of amber and just enough cedar to make it interesting and make it more wearable. There is a spiciness that has to be the cinnamon and cloves but those notes are so well incorporated that it is hard to detect for me. I get a syrupy dark honey feel. Some people have said it smells of spiced apples or cider, I don't get that feeling.

Before I got this I was thinking I would find a tuberose scent that would be suitable for spring/summer, but this one is heavy and in my opinion is best in the fall and winter.

This one has an "old" vibe to it. Not in a bad way, but something that smells like a classic sweet scent, but unlike a lot of things that smell old, this one does not have even a hint of powder which is great because I hate powder. And it lasts! Almost a full day later and I can still smell it on my wrist. I should note that the dry down is delicious and warm.

Would I buy this again? Not sure...I will have to finish this bottle and decide. I know that I love this one and I have a feeling it will grow on me. But I have Ambre Sultan and these two both share the amber feeling but beyond that the two are very different. Very glad I have this one though. At last a tuberose scent I can actually wear.

13rd January, 2012.

Cedar is mostly the smell(with leather on a steady second place) that makes me turn down a fragrance. Most of the time I think it makes a fragrance cloying, boring and smell like an awful lot in a dozen. This one is not as bad as I expected it to be, but still unwearable for me. I simply don't like the smell of cedar.

10th October, 2011.

Recent discovery for me, i don't appreciate too much the syrupy Lutens,
I am conquered....I took three bottles… "Cèdre" is deep, secret, and the "wooded tuberose" is specially bright.

25th August, 2011.

Went to my local perfumer for Un Lys and walked out with this gem instead. REALLY works well with my chemistry apparently. I am a total newbie so I cannot go into great detail about any notes that I get but, suffice it to say it's AMAZING!

21st August, 2011.

Looking over the reviews of Cèdre I realize I’m one of only a handful who actually like this one. Yes, the name’s a bit odd, but only a bit. If you’re looking for the airy, crystalline cedar of the Lutens Bois perfumes you won’t find it here. What’s here is the oily, dusty cedar like straight-up cedar essential oil. The oily quality mixes with the syrup of the amber and the booze of the camphorous tuberose.

One of the interesting things about Cèdre is how it subverts the floriental category. Floriental usually implies the hybrid friendliness of amber fragrances and prettiness of florals. Cèdre is more melancholic than affable, alluring rather than pretty. Lutens is considered to have reinvented the oriental. Maybe this is his reinvented floriental.

16th December, 2010. (Last Edited: 8th February, 2011.)

Cedre isn't awful to my nose, but it really isn't anything noteworthy, either, especially given its price and numerous superior renditions of the tuberose flower ( some by the very same house! )

Poison infamously has a grape crush note, but Sheldrake has paired his jasmine and tuberose with something even sweeter - bubblegum! Yes, bright, simplistic versions of these two flowers feel sandwiched between a pack of Juicy Fruit and the more usual pink stuff. This isn't at all the limpid naturalism of fragrances like Carnal Flower or Lutens' own A La Nuit, but perhaps a close cousin of Michael Kors for women with the sweetness turned on high.

In the drydown, some of the token cedar does show up - a hint of Lutens' Bois accord, candied yet still smelling a little lost among the hot-pink neon sweetness.

When I picture the wearer of this fragrance, I picture a woman raised on this generation of fruity-florals, seeking something more upscale, yet gravitating to more or less the same thing she knows from thousands of better-priced fragrances.

She'd be better off saving her money and going with what she already knows.

1st February, 2010.