Un Bois Vanille

Thanks to Un Bois Vanille, the famous pod regains its splendor and its gourmand character becomes deep sensuality… Would you have believed that Lutens could offer a cloying and overdosed juice?

Un Bois Vanille: vanilla turned diabolical for an unforgettable cake!

The Lutens magic lies in breaking the codes and dictates of fashion, perfumery and image to turn them into artistic miracles. Moreover, at the mere mention of the waves of gourmand and regressive trends in perfumery, Lutens gives a definitive answer: I keep to myself. The waves only concern those who know how to swim. As for me, I sink straight down and take you to the bottom. Let that be clear!

So of course, when the artist Lutens offers his fragrance built on vanilla, Un Bois Vanille, one expects many things except an eternal saccharine teenage perfume or yet another scented confection spread across department store shelves. Moreover, like all Lutens perfumes, Un Bois Vanille is a unisex fragrance, which already rules out the cliché of an overdose of syrupy sugar.

And it is truly against the current of major marketing trends that Lutens plays to create Un Bois Vanille. He sets out to demonize the candy and bewitch the gourmand character to darken it… and ennoble it at the same time, of course! Un Bois Vanille is thus described in diabolical terms, all the better to create mystery: The devil, like vanilla, loves black. Forget any sappiness! In each of us, this velvet asserts and refines itself against a woody contrast. Serge Lutens for Un Bois Vanille.

A smoky gourmand character for a historic Un Bois Vanille

Un Bois Vanille thus has nothing in common with gourmand perfumes of its kind. No ostentatious communication campaign, no bottle with ultra-worked facets, no grandiloquent storytelling. Just a tribute from Lutens to a vanished civilization, the Aztecs, who cultivated vanilla to glorify and gild it despite the blazing sun.

Thus the top notes of Un Bois Vanille propel us straight toward the sun, sending honeyed and exotic scents of beeswax mixed with coconut. The absolute of black Mexican vanilla, sent “right to the head”, then melts into honeyed notes with a strong character, already far from everything one thought one knew about the scent of vanilla.

Then almond paste wraps this powerful vanilla in its gourmand character, the better to slide it toward the soft, dark and bewitching sensualities of benzoin and licorice. Finally the woody depths of guaiac wood, sandalwood and tonka bean envelop this sweet blend in a smoky, balsamic warmth.

Voluptuous and enveloping, Un Bois Vanille is a beautiful confection offered no longer to sugar-coated young girls but to real women, where the gourmand character becomes sensuality — the devil's sensuality? Nothing is less certain!