Body Made Luminous Scent by Alexis

Desirability: Full bottle and back up

Source: Fragrantica

Smoke and chocolate.

I waited a year for Body Made Luminous to be available again and I must say it is definitely worth the wait. I like this more and more with each wearing. There's plenty of chocolate in Body Made Luminous but I won't label it a gourmand, maybe an oriental gourmand with the oriental genes predominant.

The sweetest it ever gets is on the initial spray and even then it isn't very sweet at all, nothing candy coated here. At first it made me think of dark chocolate truffles covered with a generous dusting of rich unsweetened cocoa powder. Body Made Luminous has no vanilla in it, just straight up good quality chocolate that has no need of additives. There's something dry and woody as well, as if the truffles are some fancy artisan creation presented in hand crafted wooden boxes. Biting into one truffle and relishing the bittersweet warmth of the chocolate, you encounter the rich amber filling, balmy, resinous and smoky with a certain je ne sais quoi.

This may sound strange but well using eye make up as a metaphor, I think of Body Made Luminous like a "smokey eye". Dark, mysterious and sensual. In comparison Gourmand Coquin would be a "kitten flick", Café Cacao would be a "natural eye" and Chocomania/Choco Musk would be like a pop of something bright and happy on the eyelid. Other examples of "smokey eyes" would be Anima Dulcis or 1969. Anyway back to Body Made Luminous. It gets a very enthusiastic thumbs up from me for projection and longevity and is a great investment for olfactory pleasure.

Clara Bow. Source: pincurlmag.com/clara-bow

Miel de Bois Serge Lutens

 "Let me thank all those whose labor contributed to making this fragrance.... in other words, the bees and flowers. 

From candied honey I made an ether to obtain the rich scent of the golden nectar."  

-- Serge Lutens

My signature scent if I had to name one. I have to thank Providence for my bottle actually, can you imagine the shop was going to throw their full tester in the trash since Miel de Bois was pulled from the export line and made a Palais Royale exclusive. I was in the right place at the right time to save the tester. Who throws away perfume, let alone a deity like Miel de Bois!! 

If you are looking for a gourmand honeyed scent along the lines of Tokyo Milk's Honey & The Moon, this isn't quite it.

Don't get me wrong, there is honey in Miel de Bois, but it's way more mysterious. It's a musty, musky and woody honey that is polarising, either you fall in lust and love or you think it smells like cats' piss/toilet spray/urinal cakes etc. Yup I said musty, it smells like an ages old bottle that was forgotten in an attic, musty that brings to mind antiques and marvellous relics of a different lifetime, moth eaten heavy curtains... a little like what Miss Havisham's room must have been like. 

It has a similar vintage and animalistic quality that Jean Desprez's Bal de Versailles or Schiaparelli's Shocking has on me and belongs in the category of scents that I feel require a "Danger" label for it's drug-like effects on the senses, or nausea-inducing if you can't handle indoles or  dark musks. Not forgetting that this stuff is potent and more than one spray can knock out a whole room so caution should be applied. 

I think if one gets past the initial blast of dark, dry woods and heavy sweetness, Miel de Bois dries down to the most addictive mildly spiced, sweet-woody musk, that smells like nothing else and stays with you for hours and hours like a most beguiling ambience. It's the dry down that has this heartrending quality I have only experienced otherwise with Guerlain's L'Heure Bleue, Mitsouko or Francis Kurkdjian's Lumiere Noir Pour Femme, once again a Lutens has gotten the better of my emotions.

Miel de Bois is controversial, unique, passionate and wild (I'll slide in the skank award here too)...please don't ever be discontinued, the withdrawal will be unbearable.

P.S: I don't advise blind-buying Miel de Bois as it's picky with which skin chemistry it gets along with. P.P.S: I'm always happy to adopt more bottles. I leave you here with a song that is as emotive as this scent.