Eau de Californie

This is the one I was most excited to try and while I agree with Elirone below, it is nothing groundbreaking, it also did not disappoint me as I was hoping this would be the lovely combo of iris and palo santo that the notes had me imagining when it was first released. I am happy to report that it is even more beautiful than imagined with a perfect balance of powdery iris atmosphere to soften the burned wood of palo santo. The name is really fitting and anyone familiar with the smell of the desert, wood cooking in dry sun, will appreciate the connection. If you love palo santo but want a more refined take, a less smokey hippie vibe, something you can wear anytime anyplace, it’s worth a try. Samples are hard to come by still but I found two places online selling for $14 ml (yikes) and since we won’t be allowed to travel for awhile this was my only chance. I am sampling the whole line but this is full-bottle worthy to me. Marc Jacobs owns this one according to something he posted on Instagram FYI trivial bonus info. Oh and I guess I should add that the only drawback I can see is that I couldn’t smell this on myself after a couple of hours. My husband still could but I couldn’t. I was only wearing about .5 ml though so this could be one that requires a heavier spray. Update: Bought the bottle and I still love it, wear it everyday. I really load it on in the morning, skin, clothes, hair, and no matter how much I spray it always remains light and subtle, a gentle sillage. Quiet green citrus brightness fades into the perfect balance of iris and smokey palo santo. I love this so much that I can’t help but be devestated by its’ evaporation 2-3 hrs into the day. It has a gentle presence to begin with without any heavy base notes to anchor it longterm. So it’s performance is rather like a very successful, tenacious cologne rather than an EDP. I still adore it and will take this scent any way I can get it. Perhaps I can extend its’ performance with a little palo santo oil. 4 out of 5. Beware, this spoils a little faster than other perfumes in my collection. Try to use it up within a year.

Eau de Californie is a radiant woody cologne with a nice chypre drydown. It is very much in keeping with the Celine DNA, being a lightweight, utterly chic scent featuring Celine's signature sheer, delicate orris. It is similar in style to Bois Dormant, but this is my preference. The prominent use of Palo Santo here sets this apart - it is smooth and realistic, and smells freshly-hewn. EdC is smooth and woody from initial spray. Bergamot adds freshness up top, and the powdery orris slowly develops in the background, ethereal and refined. The chypre base is mossy and woody, with the smooth Palo Santo shining through. To me, it is evocative of vintage chypres but with a modern, pared-back update. It remains dry and woody until final fade, with some muted mossiness lingering. Sillage is intimate and longevity is moderate. It is a unisex, transeasonal daytime scent. A lightweight, high-quality cologne-chypre, EdC is an effortlessly elegant everyday scent. I just wish it had better performance, but Palo Santo and orris on a chypre base - beautiful. 4/5.

Eau De Californie is blazing sunlight on a dry Southern California landscape—a fragrance that feels like home to anyone who knows the quiet magic of Los Angeles hills in summer. It opens with a fleeting brightness of citrus, quickly giving way to smoky palo santo, creamy and warm, yet somehow transparent. Think cologne, but stripped down and reimagined, Hedi Slimane-style. The sillage is close, I recieve constant complements when wearing this one when someone comes in for a hug or gets a bit close in the office; subtle yet undeniably present. This isn’t a scent that shouts; it hums, drawing you in like the warmth of a fire you didn’t realize you needed. Wearing it is effortless—my everyday signature that feels personal yet endlessly chic. Smoky, intimate, and unmistakably cool, Eau De Californie is a scent for those who understand that less is always more.

This is my favorite from the original lineup. Beautiful woody palo santo and powdery orris. Very classy and likeable (i.e. inoffensive) as well as totally unisex. It smells really really good but I've been asking myself: is it worth the money? I've gone through over 10ml in samples which were kindly provided to me by my SA in the boutique at multiple occasions. While I love the scent, I just can't bring myself to buy a full bottle. My biggest issue is the performance. The longevity is nothing to rave about. It lasts a bit and projects decently for maybe 30 minutes, but the overall performance is simply not good enough to warrant the price of over 2€ per ml. If I pay that much I expect to be able to still smell it at least 3 hours after spraying.

A chilly breeze rolls in, bringing with it a slightly n nasal bite—sharp, citrus-laced, bergamot slicing through the air like the first ray of sun over quiet hills. Crisp, fleeting, gone before you can retaliate. The friendly contrast of woods settle in fast, gentler yet equally attracting. Smooth sandalwood, dry but soft, curling into the smoky embrace of palo santo, sacred and weightless, like embers glowing in the dusk. Firm surfaces draped in cushy, cocooning moss, grounding but never heavy, earthy whispers of forest green beneath khaki warmth. Powdery, elegant, blurred at the edges, effortlessly unisex. Neither too bold nor too delicate. Just balance, just beauty, and just the quiet confidence of something thoughtfully, perfectly composed.

I'm in love with this fragrance. Easily the best example of a Palo Santo fragrance i've ever tried. It has that slight sweet woodiness, more like the unburnt sticks than the burnt smokiness. But as others have mentioned, its performance is shocking. I'm so disappointed as even with the high price tag it would have been an instant buy, but for a skin scent that you really have to bury your nose into within an hour or so of applying, it cannot be justified. SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME - i've been searching high and low for something that comes even close to this which is either more affordable OR just more powerful. Does anyone have any leads?

Very soft, woody, almost skin scent. Understated, confident, unoffensive, safe. The fragrance for a "no fragrance" office as it has less projection than most shampoos and body washes. Friends say it smells like money. No, not like quiet luxury old money, literally a stack of freshly minted dollar bills you get from a bank withdrawal. The scent every Chinese child knows by heart because it is the smell associated with red envelopes filled with crispy uncirculated bills.

Gorgeous palo santo and smooth orris. This is a balanced, dry, sweet woody scent that has all of the smoky, lactonic, and sweet aspects of real palo santo wood. That accord pairs really well with the Celine smooth orris, musk, woody DNA. The base notes which smell kind of like ambroxan and evernyl (synthetic oakmoss aromachem) linger for quite a while. This manages to also be wearable and pleasant, like pretty much everything from the line.

I'm obsessed with Eau de Californie. I'm not even a huge fan of this genre that straddles chypre and clean girl aesthetic, but omg this blew me away. I think it's my favorite from Celine. Definitely possesses a similar DNA to Prada Infusion d'Iris & YSL Trench, but Eau de Californie is 100x better IMO, it's just so balanced and dreamy. I can totally see this being a signature scent of mine. A must have for any Iris/Orris lover.

My mother works at CELINE and gifted me a bottle, at first i didnt really cherish it as i didnt even smell it lol but when i tried it i fell in love. Dont judge a book by it's cover ig, sadly this fragrance has terrible projection and longevity for being a eau de parfum. Even though Hedi intended it to be a skin scent i disagree with that concept and wished it had some projection to it

Channeling my inner celebrity with this fragrance! The minute I put it on I feel “cool” and “put together.” I know something you don’t know (for approximately 5 minutes). The Palo Santo and Bergamot power up to create almost this incense-y wooden box feel to the initial spray. The fluffy vanilla DNA floats up at the end. Yum!

The Celine fragrances all share a common orris base which gives them a beautiful diaphanous veil quality. They present as thin - in a moment when the US-based fragrance community is searching for beast-mode. This iteration with vetiver, moss and woods. Unfortunately, the bottles are 200ml for a reason.

Stunning. Definitely not beast mode, but I greatly disagree with anyone saying this is masculine by default. It's perfectly unisex, which are my favorite scents to wear. The price tag is horrendous, but I have nothing else quite like this. Very very pleased to have it in my collection.

My gosh, I wasn't expecting anything when I tried this but when I sprayed it on my hand to test and it spread in the air, the love was almost immediate. The beautiful woody, fresh, and powdery (orris!!) scent just took hold of my nose and didn't let go until I slept.

Mossy sandlewood with citrus at the top. Doesn't smell like palo santo. It's almost like Eau de Citron Noir but done less horrifically and with javanol instead of ambrofixatives. It's not a bad perfume but it leaves me cold, and almost goes a bit pickley on me.

this perfume smells like a baddie 30 year old woman, it’s the year 2006 and she lives in a Tuscan style house and drinks red wine all day and carries around a coach bag. she’s a mess but we all love her. sometimes her Smokey eye liner turns out good.

My very best perfume, and I have zero issues with performance -- still very much there after 5h, and will stay with me for the rest of the day albeit a bit softer. I guess it comes down to skin chemistry.

Such a beautiful, woody fragrance. It leans towards more masculine imo. It’s definitely a skin scent, but I can still smell it by the end of the day. I can’t stop smelling my wrists when I wear this.

Very bright, pretty, and fresh. Outdoorsy but with an elegant orris base note which moderates and softens woodsy outdoorsy vibe. It sadly doesn’t last long on me. While it does, I get compliments.

Beautiful woody and creamy Palo Santo, like many of the comments have listed. It's perfectly unisex, sophisticated and clean. Just make an extrait and we'll be good 😭..

so gorgeous and it smells so luxurious but earthy and meditative.

Okay so this fragrance was the one from Celine which I'd heard people talk about in terms of how different an how much it smelled of Palo Santo, a much confused material and I'm sorry but I don't find this particularly indicative of the smell of palo santo. Thank god as well because that is such a bizarre thing, certainly my experience of it is. I recall someone, somewhere saying this Californian name thing is actually fitting because it smells like the Palo Santo grown in Southern California, and while I can't say I've smelled that, the Palo Santo I know is not dissimilar to Sandalwood but with mad, almost untamable facets, or 'side effects' I think they'd be called if Palo Santo was a drug. I don't doubt this formula contains some sandalwood aroma chemicals, but I wouldn't call it a sandalwood(palo santo) based thing but some folks do and that's worth noting. I like the opening, it's very classy, fresh bergamot and immediately woody in that linalool way and actually vaguely reminiscent of rosewood if anything, and a touch of the Serge/Sheldrake feminite du bois, spirit wise not suggesting this smell of that as such. What I do perceive is a sort of modern, French woody Iris accord, not shying away from it's Iso E Super base and elegant orris accord, the woody facets of approximated vetiver & cedar, but mild, fluffy and without the edge and scratch of those raw materials, probably because they're not present (at least not in any great quantity) I think it's a very nice perfume. That's about the most bland statement I could muster, and I'm afraid this is quite a bland perfume, complete with a bit of a lack of presence and persistence. I would place it in a category with Bois D'argent and L'eau d'Hiver and it's no less classy and understated, just not as good. It's actually far more like Prada Infusion series but even lacking some of the prettiness of those, and they were a revelation at the time, this feels greener, mossier and to me slightly more masculine leaning but no better off for those characteristics. I like the perfume, I know it doesn't sound like I do but I do, I'm just underwhelmed and I have to be honest it doesn't grab me the way I'd hoped, I thought this would be up there with Nightclubbing but there's far less to get excited about here.

Certain something in the DNA of almost all Celine fragrances pushes just the right buttons for me. Nearly all of them are heavenly to my nose. Californie is no exception. It contains my arch nemesis, my final boss of scent notes - The Oakmoss that usually defeats me every time, blocking every other note in a fragrance. But I love it here. Marvelous creamy wood plays so nice with this sharp, needly moss. And of course, The Iris, the king of flowers, my favorite note of all time makes the whole ansamble lightly fuzzy, pillowy, powdery. Dreamy, dreamy stuff Eau De Californie is. It does not exactly have a sillage, but it does fill the room with this barely-there, flickering, whimsical creamy-woody aroma, very light.

Bought the Celine Discovery Set. This is the second fragrance I tried out of the set, after Reptile. Saw some IG Reels and Youtube videos that said this one was good. First impression: its a nice fragrance thats opens powdery, then leans more peppery. I really enjoy peppery fragrances so I give it more points for that. Smells very similar to Byredo Bal d'Afrique. Like the first one I tried, I enjoy it but it doesn't project very far, becoming a skin scent after about an hour. That seems to be the common theme about these Celine fragrances: very delicate and airy with no real base notes = not much projection or longevity . Overall Grade: 7.5/10

Reviewing a sample from 2024. Eau de Californie was launched in 2019. This is an elegant dry woody chypre with the feel and performance of a cologne. Eau de Californie opens with bright clean bergamot and is quickly followed by a mossy but clean Palo Santo without any smoky notes.There is a powdery texture from the Orris adding elegance. No challenging notes. Simple but well blended. Quality- very good Unisex Performance- stays close, average to poor longevity for an eau de parfum This is an understated ,fresh and easy to wear fragrance especially in warm weather. Not unique or long- lasting. 7/10

This was my favourite in the range, followed by the lavender delight of Rimbaud. This is a Palo Santo and orris beauty. It reminded me of a cousin to Chanel’s ‘Antaeus’ and ‘Paris – Édimbourg’ as this is similarly soapy, spicy, powdery, woody and unisex. Even these Celine bottles reminded me of the Eaux Des Chanel line, unfortunately Celine’s efforts are toilette-like in their lightness and underperforming longevity. I got nose-blind to this and people had to lean-in closely to appreciate it. A very pretty skin-scent which may not be potent enough for some.

The similarity between this and Jo Malone Oud and Bergamot Rich Extrait is so close. I blind bought this based on Demi Rawling's youtube, and the moment I sniffed it, straight away Jo Malone Oud and Bergamot Rich Extrait came to mind. Side by side they are almost identical, Jo Malone's is a bit stronger and longer lasting. They are also the same ballpark as Dior's Purple Oud that I also own. Although, they are all nice and elegant fragrances, I learned my lesson not to blind buy again or at least do my research first.

It's unreal for 30 min then sadly fades. The scent is so dry, so elegant mossy and woody. The orris base appears and it fizzles out. Poof! Easily the worst performer of the three Celine scents in my collection and it's sadly my favorite one! I wish my review was more positive bc the smell is just stunning. This performs like an eau de cologne but priced like an extrait. Scent 9.5 Performance to price ratio 2

I received this as a gift from my uncle, and it’s my first ever designer fragrance. While I appreciate it, I have to admit that its performance isn’t the best. Compared to my Middle Eastern and inspired fragrances, this one doesn’t last as long or project as well. However, I do appreciate the presentation—it has a magnetic cap, which is a nice touch!

a very masculine, youthful chypre. Non-aggressive, gentlemanly and earthy denoting maturity and sincerity. This glances back to the 80s yuppie vibes. The oakmoss is dry and prominent with a clean, refreshing bergamot and the noble palo santo accord.

A fresh woody perfume. It can be a signature scent and very appropriate for office. Easy to wear, easy to love. More masculine to my opinion, I like on my husband. Versatile, like a white t-shirt (very good quality t-shirt).

A slightly dirtier and more masculine bal d'afrique. with better longevity. a great scent with some classic touches

Smoky woods and musk with a breezy, sun-warmed feel. Understated confidence.

Lightly citric woody scent, a bit sweet. A therapeutic sort of fragrance.

I call this "pencil shaving de citrus", not a fan. its just mostly raw wood on the dry down with a slight bitterfruit twitch than encre noire or the iso e super on molecule 01. Somewhat long lasting & okay-ish sillage. Its that one niche cologne you can't wear since it's unique and seasonless.

Sandalwood, vetiver, and patchouli. The vetiver isn’t too unpleasant thanks to the sandalwood, but the sandalwood itself doesn’t smell so good because it’s pulled down by the patchouli. There’s bergamot, but it leans medicinal. The scent feels calm, yet not comforting—somewhat contradictory

Fantastic opening, but unfortunately il falls flat and becomes a woody, mossy scent with vetiver. Shame, bc the opening is super nice. Leans masculine. A pass.

Smells like the dry down of Bleu De Chanel. A less citrusy BDC.

calming, realistic palo santo wood with a bit of powder, citrus and maybe leather? smells good but Eau de Californie has possibly the weakest projection of the celine line, and that’s saying something! I’m an undersprayer by nature yet with this stuff I do 8x and it still doesn’t feel like enough! if this were stronger it’d be decent for a man. but at this price it’s crazy for it to immediately be a skin scent

Unpopular opinion but the entire new Celine fragrance collection is so uninspiring... Every single scent is just another overly-done accord or DNA with some androgynous tweaks and deceiving top notes. Not sure if they were trying to create this whole elegant translucent airy aesthetic here but it was clearly a bad execution, everything is so watered down and weak. But I guess it works for the Celine’s clientele. Not bad, but definitely not worth a bottle. P/S: another unpopular opinion, I can’t get over the fact that these Celine bottles look like Chanel Les Exclusifs but maybe on a budget. That makes me question the originality of this line even further - very uninspiring

This is a nice perfume. The most prominent note for me is leather which sticks around until the dry down. I also agree with a slight BO note but it's only there if you sniff your skin where you sprayed :-D The fragrance is pleasant, inoffensive - won't disturb others nor will it distract you from what you're doing. For me personally - it's missing a character, a story. It doesn't tell any story at all. It doesn't transport me to any place or any time... Palo Santo? No, can't find it here. I know the smell of real palo santo very well (spoiler alert - it stinks :-D ) and I can only smell a shadow of it if I work really hard on imagining it here. I'm also surprised to read complaints about longevity. There has to be iso e super here so that thing will grab onto your skin and clothes for ever! :-) But yes I agree it is a very faint scent, almost a ghost of a fragrance (although I prefer to call it transparent or airy). But if you have a trained nose you will feel it all day (you may go nose blind for a while but then it will come back). If you keep sniffing the place of application and then try to find it in the air - you won't. The dry down is even less remarkable though. But honestly this isn't Celine's fault. I see this more and more often - dry down/base is "meh" in most perfumes nowadays. I guess that's the price we pay for getting the real ingredients banned while some houses (like Celine) still resist using those aggressive aroma chemicals which assault our noses every day on a subway, in a supermarket, in a cinema... Overall - a safe pick for anyone (well, anyone with cash). Literally, any gender, any profession, any age - I think it's because it doesn't tell any story, you will just smell nice. I don't know this for a fact but maybe that's exactly what people who dress in Celine clothes want - they don't want to tell a story or show a personality, they just want to kinda blend in knowing that their outfit costs more than a yearly rent for most people?

This has got to be the oddest smelling fragrance I've ever smelled. It was so faint with one spray that I had to do a second spritz on my wrist. The scent then comes forth and hits my nose--it's that envelope adhesive scent. You know how you have to lick that back flap for it to be sticky? That's how it smells. After a few hours, it fades into a sharper version of that envelope adhesive scent. Truly bizarre. Is it the orris? Anyway, I was testing Cologne Francais and Parade at the same time and Cologne Francais has the same envelope adhesive DNA, but way more faint/watered down. Maybe it's because I only did one spritz for that one. Very hard pass on this one. Honestly, this smell was so distinct and odd and I wasn't focusing much on the other two scents. It definitely got my attention but not in a good way. I'm trying to smell beautiful here--not like an envelope. 4/10 because it is an interesting scent and wasn't outright stank or offensive

Now that I have been wearing Eau de Californie a couple of times I can say that I get not much moss unfortunately. I do get a lot of genuine Palo Santo which is nice. It smells exactly like an organic Palo Santo roomspray that I have. The roomspray is 10 euro for 200ml while a bottle of Celine is about thirty times more expensive. Another difference is that the roomspray lasts and the Palo Santo in Eau de Californie doesn’t. Minutes after spraying it on my skin it turns into a light generic woody designer scent of which there are hundreds made before. Eau de Californie is very nice as natural Palo Santo is very nice and that is what this is. But only in the first minutes. I don’t get much more then a light, airy and a bit sweet Palo Santo before it turns into a simple woody fragrance. Very light and I think I find it too light/soft but nice. That’s it, soft and woody, barely a composition.

Saying that I love Eau de Californie would be an understatement. It opens up with a dirty citrus and then settles into a mossy, slightly smoky palo santo that feels deliciously creamy and airy yet never sweet. It's my idea of effortlessly cool. A little raunchy. Messy-sexy, like stealing a few sprays from the bottle you found in the bathroom of the guy you spent the night with, maybe one of his shirts too, and slipping out bright and early while he's still peacefully asleep. Safe to say it's my #1 favorite from Celine, together with Nightclubbing. Unfortunately, it really doesn't last long - maybe 2-3 hours, before becoming a very intimate skinscent. If they ever came out with a more concentrated version, it would make me extremely happy.

Nice scent profile, but very moderate performer. Too moderate. Funny, but when I first sprayed it on test blotter it smelled like Bal d'Afrique by Byredo or Dior Balade Sauvage. But when I finally sprayed it on skin, it was TOTALLY different. The Palo Santo really came through. And I could easily detect the facets that are drawing the comparisons to Paris - Édimbourg by Chanel, and they really add to the beauty of EdC's scent profile. But Eau de Californie is predominantly, woody, and warm, in the most understated way. The Palo Santo and Orris together are almost sandalwood-like. Profile wise, I'd put this on my shelf with the likes of YSL Tuxedo. An understated, elegant, mostly formal occassion wear.

This fragrance is heaven. Oh my god. However. This is 90% Prada Infusion d’Iris. Ssssssstraight up. The remaining 10% is, of course, palo santo. And it’s JUST what IdI misses to be somehow even better than the absolutely perfect fragrance it already is. Can I recreate this very well marketed fragrance by combining a (relatively) affordable Prada fragrance with a cheap palo santo roll on? Longevity is not nearly as bad as most of the reviews make it sound like. Did you guys spray it on your mustache? The good stuff is gone after 6-8 hours, but I can still smell some of the bergamot and oak moss after almost 12 hours.

Most people who worship notes will miss out on the fact there is a leather note, not listed by the brand, in Eau de Californie. "THE HOUSE IN BEVERLY HILLS WHERE I LIVED FOR TEN YEARS IN THE SCENTS AND AROMAS OF PALO SANTO. THE SAN CLEMENTE AND SAN ONOFRE SURF BEACHES WHERE I SPENT MY SUMMERS, THE SMELL OF CONNOLLY LEATHER IN MY ROLLS ROYCE CORNICHE HEADING OUT ON THE PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY." This is Hedi's tribute to California, and it is built similar to an Eau de Cologne, without the traditional ingredients used in Eau de Colognes.

Transportive to the woods and wilds. I don't find it particularly 'Californian' but it's a great Palo Santo fragrance and a pleasure to wear. It's a smoky, powdery, tree-lush landscape. It's for me one of a few fragrances that feels like a 'forest bath' — It synchronizes with nature. Eau de Californie isn't a revelation, but it is a fantastic scent for being outside of the city. Or, when one can't escape— bringing some of the outside, in.

This smells so much like a masculine designer cologne I have tried, I just can't put my finger on it. This definitely isn't worth the money. There is a body odor or mothballs note somewhere in here that ruins it for me. But at the same time, if it didn't have that note it would be even more boring. If this is supposed to evoke California, i presume they are trying to evoke Skid Row. The name confuses me, and the scent is very boring.

Very beautiful fragrance, but as the whole line, it’s nothing groundbreaking. Smells like burned wood but not in a bad way, and softened a lot, it’s not agressive by any mean, other notes apart oakmoss are discreet until the drydown, especially the patchouli. Fragrance doesn’t last that long, 5h on my skin before becoming a skin scent, and projects within an arm lenght, sillage however is gorgeous.