Un Bois Vanille: The dark side of vanilla The vanilla fragrance, or the dark scented object of the new millennium's lolitas, transforms under the hand of the master Lutens into a deep, woody, smoky and gourmand fragrance, Un Bois Vanille.
Since Féminité du Bois in 1992, Serge Lutens and Christopher Sheldrake have together crafted, one with dreams and the other with scented blotters, rare, original and powerful perfumes that have absolutely nothing in common with other bottles on the market today. It is precisely this way of swimming against the current of trends that gave birth, from this duo, to absolute fragrances, unique scents and thoroughly revolutionary accords. Do you still believe that Un Bois Vanille, released in 2003, could have anything in common with a gourmand perfume like so many others?
Un Bois Vanille, a gourmand and poetic perfume signed Serge Lutens and Christopher Sheldrake
The duo formed by Serge Lutens, the perfumer-poet, writer of scents, and the great perfumer Christopher Sheldrake is so distinctive that it is almost unique. The two men met in 1992 to compose Féminité du Bois together for Shiseido. This very first feminine woody perfume was so acclaimed by critics that it became the first perfume signed Serge Lutens and the first “child” of this duo of aesthetes, who would go on producing fragrances of timeless beauty and such a strong character that they became rare.
So naturally, when Serge Lutens and Christopher Sheldrake worked together on the beautiful vanilla with such a rich past, they could not produce a simple gourmand perfume of the kind current perfumery offers so abundantly. Nor could they reproduce, with Un Bois Vanille, the luxurious accords that made Jicky and its Guerlinade one of the flagship perfumes of the 19th century and of the house of Guerlain.
Un Bois Vanille would decidedly be none of that. Better still, it would present vanilla in its most nocturnal, deepest light, transforming this beautiful confection into a sensual and addictive velvet wood.
The opening of a perfume, as seen above, is mine. There is no other. Nothing can come from outside... in any case, not that way. Serge Lutens for Au Parfum.
A vanilla unlike any other in a chiaroscuro Un Bois Vanille by Lutens
Between the perfumer Christopher Sheldrake and the creative specialist Serge Lutens, there is a fine story of friendship, but above all a fine story of creations. The two men need no words to understand one another, and the immensely gifted perfumer who worked for Chanel quickly understood that Serge Lutens did not want vanilla to make it into a gourmand treat, but rather to compose an antithesis of its image. Vanilla becomes, for Un Bois Vanille, a dark and diabolical vanilla — diabolically surprising, in any case!
Thus Un Bois Vanille opens on notes of vanilla absolute, coconut milk and beeswax, carrying us into luminous, sun-kissed and exotic scents. Then at the heart, almond paste turns gourmand, while benzoin and licorice already reveal their darkest form, preparing us for the darkness of the depths, who knows? And indeed, guaiac wood and sandalwood form a powerful, deep and mysterious sillage, far removed from the coconut-scented beaches of the opening… Yet a few notes of tonka bean remind us that the sensuality of this Un Bois Vanille remains very much gourmand, make no mistake!