Il Était Un Bois is the forest walk of L’Artisan Parfumeur, signed by Caroline Dumur in 2024 and placed in La Collection. Three materials carry the story: vetiver, buckwheat and cedar. The house promises an unexpected harmony between the faces of wood, and buckwheat brings what it calls a gourmand touch.
Three materials kept by the house, eight in the list that retailers serve.
What the house declares
Vetiver, buckwheat, cedar. The house names two species in its glossary, Chrysopogon zizanioides for vetiver, Juniperus virginiana and Cedrus atlantica for cedar, and describes a woody freshness on one side, a distinguished wood on the other.
Buckwheat is left without a declared species. The house calls it gourmand and warm, without naming the form used.
What retailers serve
The wider list begins with pink pepper, clary sage in oil and turmeric leaf, and joins musks and ambroxan to cedar. Printemps and a French price comparison site give it in the same terms, one without tiers, the other with them.
Turmeric leaf is the other singularity of the juice: a green, bitter material, rare in perfumery, which holds the opening together with the sage.
What the label declares
Nine entries only: denatured alcohol, water, fragrance, an ultraviolet filter, and five regulated allergens — coumarin, hydroxycitronellal, linalool, limonene, benzyl benzoate.
That is a short list for a woody scent of such declared richness, and it is served identically in France and in the United States. No substance banned in the European Union appears on it.