Reviews of Cèdre by Serge Lutens

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

I blind bought Cedre last week since I already own a few Serge Leuten fragrances. I knew I would not be let down and I was right. Cedre is my first fragrance with tuberose and I must say that I love it! It is exquisite, warm and subtle. The cinnamon and cloves are just right. I can smell it all around me and that makes me and my nose very happy.

Despite its odd name - something of an in joke, I imagine - for there is no discernible scent of cedar present, this is a lovely and balanced scent.

It is a very restrained tuberose mixed with the slightly sweet but refined scent of Vietnamese cinnamon (the finest on earth). It is for me unisex, both in its enticing aroma and in its being so subtle.

Tuberose is usually center stage and loudly announced in scents that revolve around it. It is a real pleasure to find it here used so sparingly and to such good effect.

Supporting these two notes of tuberose and cinnamon are musk, amber, clove and I imagine cedar, but again so well balanced that none of them announce themselves to disrupt the two note harmony,

A real Lutens winner in my book.

sample firstI blind bought Cedre. At first sniff, the tuberose made me regret my purchase. I'm not the great fan of tuberose. Plus I didn't get any of the cedar and it smelled dated to me. But I refused to give up. I kept wearing it... trying it again and again in different weather. In the winter, I get a lot more cedar. But what I love most about this and why I've rated it so high, is the dry down. After a 5-6 hours, I get the ceder, amber, and spice. It's a lot more "me" then and I can finally appreciate my purchase.

Cedar PlusCedar is present from start to end, and I get it especially at the beginning. Later some tuberose and a nice amber note with cinnamon is added. Nice, but nothing extraordinary. Decent silage and five hours of longevity.

I first got a whiff of Cedre on a trip to London. I'd sprayed about 6 fragrances all the way up both arms and this one stood out as exceptional. Most people that do not like it think it has been given the wrong name, if you are expecting cedar / woody smell, look elsewhere.

On my skin this is a very sweet sherbet / apple fragrance that settles into a sweet amber musk. A pleasure to wear form the opening to the dry down. Lasts at least 12 hours on me.

This fragrance is poorly named. If it's some kind of homage to the terrific wood that is cedar, they should be clearer so as not to build up expectations.

The opening is pure tuberose, then the cinnamon and and cloves kick in to provide a thick, almost syrupy progression. Once the amber basenotes have settled, you finally get some woody notes, but it certainly isn't some strong cedar.

Make no mistake. This is an attempt at a unisex tuberose, having the spicy notes there in an attempt to make it a little more masculine. There is no cedar in there, at least not to my nose. Perhaps Christopher Sheldrake was trying to mix non-cedar notes to create an illusion of cedar, but if so, he's missed the mark.

Don't expect any cedar out of this one, and you'll find quite a nice unisex tuberose. I won't wear it, but for a spicy white-floral scent, you could do worse. I just wish it had cedar in it.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Looking over the reviews of Cèdre I realize I'm one of only a handful who actually like it. 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.

Floriental usually implies the hybrid friendliness of amber fragrances and prettiness of florals. Cèdre subverts the genre, being more melancholic than affable, alluring rather than pretty. Lutens is considered to have reinvented the oriental. Maybe this is his reinvented floriental.

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.