Reviews of Gris Clair (2006)
by Serge Lutens Les Salons du Palais Royal Shiseido

Definitely not the kind of lavender I expected to smell. Smoky, almost completely sun dried grey summer lavender, along with a really nice quality amber note create an interesting, yet linear blend. Unlike most SL creations, this one doesn’t evolve much on my skin, however the more you smell it the more familiar and comforting it becomes. A truly inspired formal winter scent, everyone should at least try.

Smokey Lavender indeed! Absolutely adore this one. This doesn't have the distinct sweetness that most Lutens harbor. Many lavender scents I've tried have failed to impress me the way Gris Clair does. Works perfect in my year round hot and humid weather.

Sorry, but... Seriously? I get grape soda and really not too much else. An hour or 2 into the drydown it smells better, but still. At these prices you want to be blown away right away without having to wait for a drydown. To me this is expensive grape soda for your skin. I'd have to be smacking bubble gum to wear this...

My favourite lavender scent.

Its crisp and sharp accords make this perfectly suitable for the warmer months (if worn during cooler weather, it’ll fail to fully bloom). Gris Clair is fresh, unapologetically dense and possesses plenty of charisma – at no point does it ever develop into generic blandness.

It’s a superb summer staple for anyone’s wardrobe.

[Original submission date: 10 April 2008]

Oh joy! A lavender scent that doesn't turn into stuffy-old-man soap! I love fresh lavender in the garden, but tend to steer away from lavender scents. Unless they have strong animalic components - like Jicky or Ungaro II - they become oppressively soapy on my skin. Not Gris Clair.

My experience is that almost every time Sheldrake and Lutens break out of their obsessive sweet oriental groove, they strike gold: Sa Majeste la Rose, Chene, Un Lys, Tubereuse Criminelle, and now Gris Clair. The element of success in this scent, I believe, is balance. The lavender is palpably real and three-dimensional, but not overwhelming. Instead, it's perfectly offset by smooth woods and soft spices, enlivened by a mild camphoraceous note, and rounded out by just the merest dab of sweetness in the base. It's not sensuous in the manner of most Serge Lutens scents, but rather quite reserved and formal.

Gris Clair is a scent that I would turn too when I'm dressing well in warm weather and want to project sophistication, poise, and confidence. Better than average lasting power and adequate, yet controlled sillage and projection add to its charms. Bravo!

I'm not a big fan of lavender scents, but I'll make an exception for Gris Clair, which I find vastly superior to the unpleasant Encens et Lavande. If EeL smells like cold, acrid ashes, GC radiates a dry heat like the scent of fire, if fire had a scent in itself, without any notes of burning wood or smoke. It feels smoky - it doesn't smell smoky. Perhaps steamy is a better word than smoky, steamy like a sauna. I guess this is the amber since I perceive many amber fragrances as hot and dry in a similar way (some are more syrupy).
The lavender is, to my nose, clearly detectable throughout, but it's a dry, warm, almost woody lavender with a citrusy freshness to it, not your green/herbal or sweet/floral variety. I think I only appreciate lavender like this, when its dry/woody aspects are emphasised in warm, musky fragrances like my beloved Jicky and now Gris Clair. I don't like it when it's paired with aggressively aromatic notes like mint or geranium in cool, green and supposedly "fresh" (more like stale and musty, to my nose) colognes, and I certainly don't like it when it's more feminine à la granny.
As much as I enjoy the hot atmosphere of Gris Clair I have one complaint: I find the basenotes unnecessarily sweet. I think the tonka is to blame.

A refined lavender with an elegant smoke, bringing to mind Sobranie Black Russian cigarettes.
It acts extremely well as a tonic against the arid heat and torpor of high noon in the height of Summer.
Surprisingly for an SL scent, it is not too syrupy.

Basic character profile: lavender tobacco

Potency: atomic bomb (compare to Knize Ten)

Uniqueness: not quite like anything else. Weird in a good way. As reviewed earlier, the lavender never takes on a soapy or geriatric aspect.

Purchase-worthiness: if you are a collector, this is one of those 'buy, even if you don't wear' fragrances.

Personal info: I like it, I bought it...but I don't anticipate wearing it terribly often...probably because of the (nuclear) strength alone.

I was fortunate enough to be given a bottle of this for my birthday last year.

When I originally tested it, I found the cold & ashy note most appealing, but I find tha for some reason my nose picks this up far less these days. I mostly get lavender and amber, which I like, but I wish I got the ash- smoky note a bit more.

Like all Lutens, this does not lack longevity and I can easily get 14-plus hours of wear on my skin. I would recommend one applies with a light hand.

Great. Not most likely full bottle worthy to me after all, but it is still yet another fine blend from Sheldrake.

Top notes are very medicinal, bitter and slightly menthol-y. It smells like some obscure drug.
Like in some other lavender prominent fragrances too, this can come off quite plastic smelling during the duration. Personally, I love this smell.

Quite bizarre mixture of cool airy notes combined together with dark and a bit of a smoky undertones. It quite smooth but complex and it lasts a very long time. In colours this smells definitely very grey, probably more so than any other fragrance.

This fine crispy and melancholic creation is obviously one of the most masculine fragrance of all Lutens`s.
I recommend this to anyone, but mainly perhaps for those men who’s been fed up with fragrances like Le Male or Caron Pour un Homme. In Gris Clair you just might find the lavender scent of your life.

My favorite lavender scent. I prefer this over SL's own Encens et Lavande. This is very charismatic and unique.

Ashy and dry lavender. Lasts long and leaves a very pleasant trail. Perfect for the well-dressed sophisticated.

“Grey lavender, delicate smoky amber” (Lutens product information)
The range of opinions on this is most interesting. Those who like it, like it a lot. I’ll put my cards on the table: I love dry aromatic lavender and I don’t like amber. This scent has very little lavender and it has a particular style of amber. And yet, it is so well made that I cheerfully give it a neutral.
As I said, to my nose the lavender is MIA. Almost immediately I got a creamy, buttery amber note, with a bit of a salty tang. For a while this aspect dominates. It is somewhat unusual, and not unpleasant. It reminds me of a smoky cream cheese. The amber is translucent or “claire” and it is not cloying. In dry-down the amber becomes more conventional.
For comparison, I am also wearing L’Occitan. Now THERE is a dry, smoky lavender! The lavender is powerful, and there is no amber. Thus I love L’Occitan. To each his/her own.

I really wanted to like this frag because it's a Serge Lutens and because it's supposed to be a defining Lavender. However i really couldn't stand it. The astringent and vegetal nature of Lavender has been removed and replaced by something mutant and acrid which puts me in mind of something my granny uses to clean her sink. The dry down physically made me feel unwell deu to its weird chemical pungency which reminded me of cheap amber perfumes of the 1980's.

This horrid fragrance gave me a rash ( really it did, no exagerration ) and i couldn't wash it off no matter how hard i tried.

Big thumbs down.

The lavander in here is a real lavander and not the blast of many lavander scented products that give you a headache after 5 minutes, this is wild lavander the warm kind you smell when you put your nose into a lavander bush; it's dark, it's earthy, it's green and woody. It's an acquired taste though, it's a masculine scent..no doubt about it. But it's not a modern masculine scent that smells like every other lavander based male scent, there are similarities but there is too much going on in Gris Clair to say you can get the same stuff in any drugstore (not in iceland anyway). It's somewhat fresh (read: not aquatic and no Kouros either) but I'm also reminded of leather and ash in Gris Clair.

It's good, but not something that will have instant mass apeal, it's too deep and solid to be picked up I think, too strange and untamed. And not untamed as in a wild animal, but untamed as a purple field filled with heather.

Mostly sage and lavender on me. Very much a men's cologne, very clean and crisp. Great for a man with simplistic and classical tastes who doesn't want to wear the leather-heavy traditionals.

Some scents are just too big to fit in a bottle. This one is. It is like opening one of those children's books where an intire 3D scenery pops up. It pure lavender at first whif, not the extract but the real thing from the bush, crushed between fingers. And then something strange happens. I cannot single out any other note. It all comes together in a -linear indeed- but so compact smell that I at least cannot break down to its componants. Someone has already said something about being in a kitchen with a hot cup of tea in a winter morning. To me the esthetic and emotional impact of Gris Clair is the smell that comes from good quality cotton or linen that is being ironed, no fabric softener applied. I know the lavender is there. I know other notes are there, but there is just no way to analyze this fragrance. It's take it or live it. It takes you back to a place where you're sitting in a cold afternoon, the sun has just set but the lights are not yet on, there's the warm fuzzy feeling of your mom being around, but still you are so distant from all this. Comfort and melancholy at the same time. I couldn't imagine wearing it on a hot day. I couldn't imagine it being widely popular on a mass market base. But then maybe it's just me and a private emotional chord it had striken.

Lavender plants have been blooming in my garden and they have been trippling it's territory every year. Gris Clair smells like crushed dry lavender without the green edge. Cool, crisp, ashy and metallic, quite realistic comparing to the real lavender with a little toned down on the sharpness I would say. Doesn't seem to have developed much on the skin. Great longevity, moderate sillage.

As autumn begins its final transition into winter---leaves fall from trees, leaving silvery structures tracing smoky skies, before grayness is dusted over with magical powder---a reflective quiet falls over the land. Bugs have passed and birds prepare for cold, plants go into dormancy. Subtle rains cover the land before air becomes cold enough to mold raindrops into crystalline trinkets. During these days of stillness suspended, it becomes impossible to ignore the inner mind, while moving through the isolating--yet strangely comforting--calmness of November, in places that boast distinct seasonal phases."Gris Clair" captures such a time in all its transitional, ancient-seeming glory; it's like a wet, smoky air that's been purified by a cool breeze. It's haunting, beautiful but not disturbing; sometimes, it seems like a celebration of an alcohol note (like "L 'antimatiere") without the cutting harshness of that burst, but after an initial (and disconcertingly masculine, only to quickly dry down into something more universal) blast of dry lavender, it morphs into a clear, comforting sweetness that reminds one of walking through a historical "living" museum as outdoor bonfires are put out by a soft rain. It's an idealized scent of stories like "Braveheart" and "Robin Hood", where the quiet, magical dankness of Anglo-Saxon land, marries with spiritual sensuality and intellectual beauty in representing lost stories and eras. Mind you, the smokiness of "Gris Clair" is not a dirty, working residue---it's a clean, pulsing haziness, cozy like a wooly wrap but fresh enough to wear year-round. Lavender, to me, is the scent of wisdom and meditation; it can be sensual, but only under the most euphorically passionate, transcendental terms. "Gris Clair" is a surprisingly unexpected scent; it's dry, majestic, yet sweet and cozy. It has a rare character all its own and glorifies one of the most unpopular and misunderstood seasonal transitions of the year. I think this might be a quick buy for those who are sick of the boring status quo of department store releases. Come on, marketing groups and buying public; every fragrance doesn't have to smell like a Malibu beachhouse or international bouquet. There can be beauty and contentment in quiet solitude.

My favorite winter scent (though it works just as well in warmer weather).

This one is an enigma to me - cool and warm at the same time, crisp and mellow, refreshing and comforting. It reminds me of looking out of the window from the kitchen on a bright winter morning, with a cup of tea in my hands. The mineralic-woody-oriental base is just gold. Perfect sillage & longevity.

In my opinion a really good example of what not to do with lavender. It is not featured in a natural way nor integrated in a complex way. Instead the scent strikes me as over produced, sacharin sweetened, de-medicinalised. All the purple roundness is removed leaving a monochrome two dimensional flatland.

I get no pathos with this, it is too technical and has no flow. It would make a good flavouring for a travel sweet in a tin. It lacks in depth of conception and execution to me.

Extremely different from most Lutens scents, Gris Clair is somewhat brutal, quite one- dimensional and very masculine. It definitely breaks the mold regarding what we´ve come to expect from this house. Neither ambigous or an oriental-candied fruit-honeyed-sweetness-meltdown, Gris Clair is a modern, sharp and quite dark take on lavender.

The lavender has a clear metallic edge to it that is very special - reminds me a bit of the small spice sachets that grandma had lying around drawers with linen.

But it´s also easy to argue that Gris Clair in fact is a stronge move toward the mainstream. It´s miles less original than most Lutens fragrances, and elements of it are extremely reminiscent of widely available stuff like Lanvin L´Homme or Rocabar from Hermès. Perhaps this is the route many niche houses will be taking? At least Fredric Malle´s Outrageous and many of the latest L'Artisans seem to indicate such a development.

To conclude, Gris Clair is a cool (literallly)and macho spiced juice with some serious bite. Mellow and subtle it is not, but an accesible lavender that'll work great in a professional business enviroment assuming it is applied with moderation. A nice fragrance on it´s own but only okay granted it´s maker and niche status.

Sharp, crisp and melancholy use of lavender here. I see blustery moors and snow-covered hills when I wear Gris Clair - it's not a warm and fuzzy frag, no. It's pure wintertime crispness, with no prettified edges.

Gris Clair is an interesting take on lavender—it’s heavy, a bit dark, unique, but cool at the same time. I’m not usually a fan of strong lavender fragrances, but I have actually given serious consideration to this one. I like that it’s not sweet; I love that it’s quite aromatic; I love its darkness. I question that it doesn’t seem to go anywhere—it just sits there being interestingly linear. The drydown is definitely a Lutens creation; it is rich, unique, Oriental, and it has almost impossible longevity. In spite of the excellent drydown, and even though I would rank it as my favorite lavender fragrance, I am still considering if I like Gris Clair enough to buy a bottle. It is an intriguing, beautiful fragrance that deserves a thumbs up. This could be a great fragrance for a lavender fan who might appreciate a completely different take on this interesting note. I’m working on it—I may buy it yet.

Must've been no mean feat to make a lavender scent so stuffy. Pass.

This is the perfect scent for a cool, misty day hiking in the Alps. More melancholy and austere than L'Heure Bleue, sharper and fresher than many lavender-based scents, this is a poem, this is Goethe in a bottle.

hm, nice but.. the drydown is very similar to Gucci Pour Homme, at least the basenotes seem to me almost identical. So if you really like this fragrance I suggest try GPM as well, you may get almost the same for less than 1/3 the price of this.

Strange, I think of Gris Clair as the heavier of the two Lutens' lavender scents. It has a very thick, creamy, sweet base that smooths out the intensity of the sharp lavender that opens the show. Sweet, but probably not too sweet for the summer. It has a cheerier feel than Encens et Lavande. Not sure if or when I would wear this scent. I like it, it's just not one I would imagine reaching for often. Of course it's a Lutens, so it has strong sillage and very good longevity. It's good, maybe not my thing though.

I decided to buy this fragrance today but only after I've sampled it a week ago. This scent made such an impression that I had to have it. I've always loved Lavander but this is the one that I actually would spend money on. The Annick Goutal Lavande comes second.

I can not say this any better than MikeD. This is like genuine dried lavender crushed in a mortar and pestle. It is very similar to Encens et Lavande but somehow feels "cooler". It has a lighter feel than the Encens et Lavande that I find more wearable for myself. I will have to be in the right mood for it however.

A very fresh, very well-done lavender. Be aware though that in hot weather, the lavender can really take over. Best worn in cooler weather, where the smooth dry-down can really come out and play.

This is a fascinating fragrance, in that it has a truly genuine lavender feel about it, which is not found in most "lavender" scents. It reminds me of lavender in the summer, crushed between the fingers and allowed to dry on them. There is a hint of coolness here as well, which adds to the comfortable wearability quotient. A nice, soft dry-down completes this summery scent. Unisex and recommended!