Cèdre
Serge Lutens (2005)

On a bowl of ever so slightly musty wood chips lies a sweet, but never cloying marshmallow. The marshmallow has been sprinkled very lightly with talcum powder and christmas spice.

Woodsy fragrances that leans very gently into gourmand. Soft, comforting and inoffensive, it can probably be worn at any time, but maybe suits evening best.

Cedre is one of the overlooked Serge Lutens as its name surely eludes those who expect a straightforward cedar, but surely we would not expect anything straightforward from maestro Sheldrake? Perhaps one does not want the quandary of whether it is a cedar-scented tuberose or a tuberose-scented cedar, or that neither are truly front and center but rather just behind the perfumer's warm spices and syrup. It's that Sheldrake syrup that I love that is halfway between sweet and medicinal, and its interplay with somewhat Bazooka gum tuberose top notes, renders it delicious to a strange loop such as myself who enjoyed having liquid pink aspirin as a child.

The cedar is in a similar vein to the legendary Feminite du Bois, just out of reach but constantly echoing, as if you were the kid in the classroom fortunate enough to sit closest to the wall-mounted pencil sharpener, while stealthily chewing your bubblegum, of course. The mentholated tuberose accord in the heart brings tender flashbacks of my mother's Ludens cough drops mingled with her perfume, and a warm clove reminds me of that spice rack where I was obsessed as a kid studying all of them and was particularly transfixed by the McCormick whole cloves; scent and memory, people! That's the thrill of it...

How does this make me feel, you ask? Somehow rejuvenated, a bit less time-worn and cynical, and perhaps even a little hopeful.

Medicinal mint/cherry cough syrup with a pinch of hamster-cage cedar underneath. The tuberose is present but indirect - I wouldn't have recognized it without reading the notes. Instead, it acts as an amplification device, making everything loud and roundly floral. This stage smells surprisingly amateurish for a Lutens, in that, if you go to a decent street fair, there will be someone there selling homemade soaps scented with cobbled-together essential oils and they will have something that smells similar to this.

Things change with the arrival of the clove. It comes in waxy and mixes with the essential oil smell to come across as a cheap candle.

Finally, something merciful happens and this all self-corrects. The cherry cough syrup somehow turns into jasmine-inflected grape, while the essential oils smell fades into a comforting fuzzy haze, leaving a smell best described as posh, velvety grape kool-aid.

This is a bit problematic in itself, as this sort of jasmine grape kool-aid smell is the topnote of literally thousands of commonplace men's mall scents, so arriving at THIS is a bit of a letdown after the previous mess.

The grape kool-aid is the smell for most of the day, though a nice (but weak) base of honeyed cinnamon gingerbread eventually lingers on after the grape.

In all, this seems like an awful lot of work with no real payoff. Meh.

This is Serge Lutens does Le Labo, as in the name is not at all indicative of the perfume. What I smell in cedre is syrupy amber, tuberose, spices and generic wood notes, in that order. It begins with a nice promising blast of tuberose that is rich, slightly spicy (clove and cinnamon), but is soon drowned out by a syrupy amber. This amber accord dominates and prevails into the late dry down, where barely discernible sweet woody notes emerge. Sillage and duration are more than adequate.

I'm always ready to look past names (what's in a name?), but Cedre leaves me cold. There are tons of better tuberose fragrances (including one from Serge Lutens...), better amber fragrances (again, including one from Serge Lutens...) and the amber accord here is monotonous. Sure, Cedre smells nice, but is also one of the most boring scents I have encountered, especially beyond the first thirty minutes. All in all, severely underwhelming.

2.5/5

La donna e l'armatura by Felice Casorati 1921

Totally hypnotic and transportive. Very underrated.

A little too much of everything.

I just tried this for the first time, and I'm not as excited about it as I was when I read its description on the SL website. It was so promising, and while I do not hate it, I also do not love it either.

I'm not getting "hamster cage" as one member put it, but it's really powerful - and I'm not afraid of powerful, but I suppose it depends on the scent - and this is REALLY powerful, at least on me!

I smell rose, maybe some spices, but I'm so over-powered with the blow-back from the sweetish-fruity-smackdown and cedar, I can't think straight! I can taste it in the back of my throat. Still, not as over-whelming as Arabie!

I think on the right person, with the right body chemistry, this probably works quite well.

A rose-like, warm musks and amber, bergamot at first. Cloying sweet dried fruits..low sillage, good duration...more on the feminine side...ended in my GF wardrobe

I love Serge Lutens fragrances, but this smells like a hamster cage. The overpowering cedar and sweetness is unwearable to me.

Genre: Woody Oriental

Serge, Chris, enough with the desserts! Several Sheldrake-Lutens scents, including Rousse, Arabie, and Chergui, are smelling like slightly varied takes on baklava to me. Now I'll have to add Cèdre to the list as well. Yes, Chergui adds hay, Rousse adds cinnamon, and Cèdre adds tuberose(?!), but once they begin to dry down on me they grow too similar to warrant owning more than one.

Yes, there's tuberose in Cèdre, but it's crushed under the freight train full of syrupy amber and dried fruit. Yes, I can smell the resinous cedar in the mix, but it's very much a backseat passenger, too. All in all, a disappointment.

Another beautiful creation from master "Christopher Sheldrake" which perfectly blended for both genders.
The opening is a warm and sweet amber scent with touch of tuberose and some spices.
The amber note here smell very warm and sweet but in honey way! it's like the smell of a big beehive but I don't know how he did it but it's not cloying or too much sweet at all. it's warm, yummy and extremely sensual.
The tuberose give the scent a beautiful flowery scent but because of warm and strong honey like amber it can not overpower that much.
The spices are soft, but powerful enough to keep away the sweet floral scent from becoming completely feminine.
As time goes by and in the mid, the tuberose settles down and spices are stronger and much easier to detect and at the same time cedar kicks in.
The mid smell close to the opening but now it's less flowery, more spicy and there is a sharp woody note beside other notes to push the scent more toward the masculine side.
Projection is very good and longevity is around 8-10 hours.
Well done!

A rose-like, restrained, narcotic poudrée tuberose, cinnamon/eugenol notes, a load of warm musks and amber, a slight refreshing bergamot-like note at first. Syrupy, syrupy and syrupy. Sweet, cozy, soft aromatic woods base, with a subtle oak moss note you get more clearly after a while. Overall a dense, resinous, fruity and – yes – syrupy scent. Think of a fresher, simpler, laid-back version of Arabie. Once the syrup dries, you get a pleasant (barely pleasant) talcum-sweet drydown, fairly light but persistent. Nice, but a bit sticky. Not among my favourites.

P.S.: no cedar - at all.

6,5/10