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.