Sandalwoods

Diptyque«s Tam Dao is excellent (perhaps their best scent, after philosykos) and very pure I think. Haven«t tried the ones you mentioned unfortunately.

mmm

Art of Shaving Sandalwood is fantastic! It's made entirely of essential oils (seven, I believe). What I really love about this one is the combination of uplifting fir needle and sharp and tangy patchouli. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a very masculine and bracing fragrance made without any synthetics. Superb.

Molinard Bois Precieux is really nice, the only drawback is it's not long lasting. I layer it over the sandalwood shea butter from dragonflyblue.com and that helps. Also dragonflyblue's sandalwood oil is really nice and dirt cheap at that - it's not too woody or too sweet or too powdery, really well balanced. Bath and Body Works also has a great sandalwood rose blend in their aromatherapy line. 10 Corso Como is another sandalwood to try.

Can't speak to the two you've mentioned, Êbut Floris Santal is absolutely one to check out. ÊOrdered some Yesterday. ÊIncredible. ÊI agree with your list of likes with the exception of C-M's. ÊI love its warmth, very comfortable and long lasting. ÊVilloresi's is also a winner with rosewood, rose and guaiacwood. ÊBalsamic.

I agree with many mentioned above. I will add Madini's Santal Blanc. It is just an awesome, extremely dry, pure sandalwood. They draw the analogy to an old Chinese fan and I would agree. It lasts forever and the price is amazing for what you get.

Eric ;D

I have L'Artisan and Etro.....why don't you send me your address and I will decant some for you to try.

L'Artisan is very fresh with alot of lime and lavender...not complex. Nice.

Etro has more of a powdery aspect...the sandalwood is gorgeous and long lasting, but it's deeply base-heavy...you think it's gone and then you catch a wiff several hours later. There seems to be some....perhaps amber...creating that powdery aspect.

Both nice sandalwoods. Santal Noble did not suit me due to the coffee note...blech.

8) Pure Sandalwood does not suit me. Too rich. It can impart a lush smoothness to fragrances, however. I think it's the Sandalwood in Monsieur de Givenchy, that I dislike.

Second the Madini -- i agree with everything Eric said.

Jeff

I like Santal Noble, Molinard Bois P., Art of Shaving Sandalwood and Floris. My favorite, however, is a pure sandalwood oil I received from Sabatar. It is rough, earthy sandalwood like that in the MPG but without the softening notes of the latter.

I use the Sandalwood pre-shave oil, cream, and after shave balm. ÊThis is rich and complex sandalwood fragrance. ÊUp there with the best of them. ÊI wasn't impressed with SL Santal Blanc since both the Aedes SA and I could not smell any sandalwood on my skin, just honey. ÊI did get a brief and exhilarated blast of sandalwood after I left the store and into the the cold air, but the predominant honey notes minus sandalwood returned when I went indoors. ÊMy SL Santal de Mysore sample should arrive on Friday with 40 other samples of niche fragrances. ÊFloris Santal is also excellent. ÊThe Madini is wonderful, but I prefer more sweetness. ÊI will try layering the Madini with some other Madini samples I have ... maybe ambergris or patchouly.

SL's Santal Blanc smelled a lot like Corso Como 10 to me, though Corso Como 10 is a little headier. Though I prefer Floris Santal, Floris also has Sandalwood, which is a new creation just added to their classics range. I've only been able to locate it on their website for ordering, and picked up a bottle last year. Not quite as smooth/creamy as Tam Dao, but just as divine. Lorenzo Villoresi's Sandalo is much more arid, medicinal, but balanced with a hint of rose and worth checking out as well.

Santal de Mysore is one of the few Serge Lutens scents I don't like much. It's too pure a sandalwood for me. A bit flat.

Floris Santal and the much cheaper Larrikin for Men are worth checking out.
Renato

My favourite sandalwood fragrances:

1) Egoiste - Chanel
2) Samsara - Guerlain
3) Bois de Santal - Roger et Gallet

Other than these, I don't go anywhere near sandalwood except in the pure oil extract ....

I know there are many though who don't like the scent....

It's really a take it or leave it fragrance.
I'm Asian... it's in my blood.

I've ordered a big bottle of Fragonard's Santal and I can't wait for it to get here. I'm getting it blind. Review thoughts to come, I guess.

L'Artisan's Santal was what got me going in scent collecting.
--Chris

I have been testing Santal Noble vs Santal Imperial. I like them both and can not pick a favorite. I also like Tam Dao and I have pure Sandalwood essential oil. All are different and all are good. I do not know how to choose one over the other. :-/

Palais Royal SL Santal de Mysore, the most beautiful and purest sandalwood.
Santal de Mysore is deep, rich and resonant. It's kind of dense, dark and syrupy.
The mix of rich spices and wood is utterly fascinating .
Exotic scent which instantly transports you to the Shwedagon Pagoda in Burma (Myanmar).
Pure, rare, exotic.

I haven't sampled many sandalwood scents, but my favs - so far - are SL Santal Blanc and Keiko Mecheri's Bois de Santal. If only KM's BdS lasted better, it could even be my signature scent!

-T-

Crabtree and Evelyns Mysore Sandalwood is about as true a Sandalwood fragrance as you will ever come across. The Mysore is the more exspensive of the varieties of the essential oils used to achieve the sandalwood note in finer fragrances.

But I see that the Crabtree and Evelyn product appears to have changed. There is a new bottle and the label now says Sandalwood Eau de Toilette where it used to say Extract of Mysore Sandalwood. Also, the description now says "This fragrance is a touch of citrus on a classic heart of rich sandalwood, with hints of lavender and amber" but I never detected any citrus or lavender in the old formulation.

Here is the new product, Sandalwood EDT:
http://store.crabtree-evelyn.com/san217000.html

Here is the old Extract of Mysore Sandalwood:
http://www.basenotes.net/ID26121431.html
http://www.ciao.co.uk/Crabtree_Evely...dalwood__66689
The Basenotes profile of the old Extract should probably be changed to show the availability as discontinued.

Which is that, the old Extract of Mysore Sandalwood or the new Sandalwood EDT?

Oh Mylene that sounds wonderful! I was born in Yangon (Rangoon) and grew up visiting this Pagoda and the smell of sandalwood is still something that instantly calms me, transports me and reinvigorates me. If the Santal de Mysore is as you say, I need to smell it!! And the Art of Shaving Sandalwood is something I have been itching to get my hands on. My current favourite is Tam Dao, but perhaps I will have to add these two into the collection as well. To me, sandalwood is the king of scent notes!

Sante.

Well, what are you waiting for?

Maybe so, I have about 1 oz left of an old bottle and I just sprayed some on a tissue - I guess that I can smell some lavender. I will have to get a bottle or decant of the new stuff for comparison.

Moving on to Chanel Egoiste, is it still in production? I was just at a Nordstrom to buy another bottle of JHL so I asked to sample Egoiste but all the SA could find was Platinum Egoiste. Of course, this was the same SA who had never heard of JHL even though it had been on a display shelf just a couple of weeks ago.

As far as I know Original Egoiste is still in production. It's funny - at the nearest mall to me there are three fragrance shops (2 Perfumanias and an indie) and they all have lots of the stuff. But I guess it's nearly impossible to find elsewhere? Go figure...

My favorites are Floris Santal Extreme and Keiko Mecheri Santal.

KM Santal lasts all day on me, as do any of her other frags I've sampled.

Oh, I so envy you :-X I haven't sampled other KM scents, but Bois de Santal I really LOVE, eventhough it seems to dissappear in less than four hours from my skin :-/ I guess it must be the skin chemistry thing then... or perhaps the liquid from the sample I've got isn't as potent as from a retail bottle?

T

So I have finally managed to get a decant of Lutens Santal de Mysore and thought I would post my reaction.

What did I expect from this scent? Well I guess given the name I expected a pure scent of sandalwood, but its much more complex than that. My response to the post above by Mylene tells you that what she said intrigued me and in a way, she was right. The hot spiciness of the opening notes immediately took me back to the kitchens of my mother and aunts. Hot spices (cumin, chili, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove) frying in a pan - deep, slightly sweet and slightly sour - thrown in to make a spice paste or to flavour frying onions! It doesn't smell like that of course, but these are the resonances the opening of this scent evokes. It is by no means a calming, spiritual or even masculine sandalwood if that is what you are after - as I said, it is hot and deeply spicy - a much wilder cousin to the opening notes of something like Kingdom and eons removed from the nirvana like calmness of a Tam Dao.

It takes some time for the sandalwood to start emerging, though I think it has always been hovering in the background. I think that is the sweetness I keep detecting, and I believe it will be a sweet sandalwood. I suspect it will keep evolving and the sandalwood will take some time to come - it has been an hour or so since application and while the heat of spice has burnt off, they are still there - like a slow motion version of the effect of spices hitting hot oil which then settles into a slow burn.

Whew, it is a scent to make you gasp (but I wonder if it will be a scent to wear?) and I suspect similar in its effect and development to Muscs KK which others have talked about on another thread (the strong opening animalistic notes settling to a ravishing musk).

Sante.

AZ i got mine on ebay from a lovely ebay seller...

http://stores.ebay.com/Terries-Tempt...Q3amesstQQtZkm


Sante.

I have a bottle of Floris Santal, I haven't tried it enough to give it a real review but it strikes me as sweet, spicy but not really being much like a real sandalwood.

Adeel, I see that you now have Etro Sandalo? What can you say about this?

A sandalwood to run away shrieking from is Santa Maria Novella. Extremely harsh, super dry.

And while on the subject, my favorite soap of all time was Floris Sandalwood. It was a tragedy when this was discontinued.

I use the Crabtree & Evelyn Sandalwood shaving soap. Probably doesn´t get any better than this! Best sandalwood I´ve ever come across so far and I´ll stick with it since I´m still shaken up by the initial fecal smell in Santal Noble... Nothing of this in the C & E though!!!!!
/Tobbe

Hi,

A very good one

Santal Fragonard

quiet classc but really round well balanced lasttttttttttt for ever

laurent

I could not agree more with "JW"... Excellent fragrance and for my semi dry skin a very long lasting scent, Outstanding!

"While sandalwood is a very common ingredient in MANY men's fragrances, I'm always a fan of those that center on that particular ingredient as their primary note and this one is, for certain, a superior blend. It not only has the superior lasting qualities that all LV products possess, but also a fantastic development through each and every phase and practically every note in the make-up. This is a MUST for fans of sandalwood."
by j_dubyah

On the other side the shelve, MPG Sandal Nobal is unique and dynamic and the dry down is stunning. Upon refreshing it - it reminds of
a great soupe or stew that the next day you add water simmer and is as good if not better that the evening before.
Its mark for me, again Outstanding.

Let me also make note here that these words are in my Opinion - ONLY and to taken with a grain of salt.

Anyone hungry? Well I am. (Could you pass the salt again please, thank you)

C

If you are looking for a discreetly fragranced Sandalwood, try the one created by Taylor's of Old Bond Street.

I'm partial to Santos by Cartier. Clean sandlewood notes balanced nicely by crisp spices. Distinctive and elegant.