Semence Douce

I imagine that if one encounters a fragrance with a dull imagination they may only take away an impression that their mind is capable of materializing. I have often thought about how many humans smell with few reference markers. If we aren't examining our environment, either the natural or the man-made, voraciously with our noses, then our palate may very well be limited. How do we otherwise fill in the gaps with a limited imagination? Take tulips, for example: visually striking, come in a rainbow of colors and even patterns, yet few seem to realize that there are actually a few tulip varieties that do have a discernible—and remarkable scent. Tulips in perfume are therefore mistakenly regarded as purely a fantasy accord. Semence Douce ("sweet seed," interpret that as you will as semence also means semen), may not smell like tulips to one who hasn't gone around smelling all sorts of tulips, but I've smelled a few fragrant ones. Tulip turkestanica smells spicy and saffron-like; the vibrant orange tulip 'Orca' has an incredible waxy, citrus and cyclamen-like scent; 'Shirley Double' are sweetly-green, sappy, with honey undertones; 'Apricot Beauty' has, you guessed it, a sweet, apricot like aroma. In Semence Douce, I am reminded of these, but I am also struck by this milky plant sappiness that encircles the tulips, like the latex of milkweeds and spurges. While there is listed an almond milk accord, it seems to only add to this sensation, and for those who aren't well-acquainted with the smell of plant exudates, I can see where there would be a flummoxed reaction and subsequent dismissal. What a pity! This is an example where something blurs the lines between what is perceived as organic and what is perceived as synthetic. When we smell latex or rubber, does the mind think of one or the other? If one were to be blindfolded and handed the phloem of certain plants, might they mistake it for something made in a lab? Are we reminded of condoms, of balloons, of gloves? I find this one so fascinating in that I not only enjoy wearing it (I truly do!), but it also challenges perceptions. It's a futuristic floral that elicits reactions and asks questions, while also insinuating certain life-giving emissions—not so blatant or unnerving as Secretions Magnifiques. This is tulips and plant sex as a metaphor as two lips and human sex, and perfumer Bernard Duchaufour doesn't even rely on an animalic accord to transmit its message. I think it's absolutely brilliant.

So, I bought the (really expensive) discovery set from l'entropiste a while ago, and I reallly loved Blanc Sada and Semence douce. The other day, I was listening to a podcast where Bertrand Duchaufour talked about his work and Semence douce... I'm gonna say first, that on skin, it's my favorite from the brand, is both green, dewy and a bit lactonic from the almond, it evokes tulips really well, and it's divine. I wore it to bed and it was fresh and really conforting while being complex. One of those perfume that smells like spring in the best way. I have to say that my main issue with this fragrance is that I won't buy a 300€ perfume with semence in the name. I gess I'm not rich enough for that kind of clowning. But I really liked it and I was considering turning a blind eye and buying it anyway So we are back to Bertrand Duchaufour talking about Semence douce, the guy says the worl "sperm" like 10 times in two minutes, explained why tulips look like p*nis and naked women (?), almond milk looks like sperm (no, it's just not true), rice is a seed so a semence (no one ever used that world in that context in french but okay). I felt like those people who just wanted to see a nice painting, go to a museum to end up with a guide that sees sex everywhere and a weird half-naked-lady doing an artistic performance in a corner of a room.

By far my favorite of the 6 new perfumes from Bertrand Duchaufour. This is milky, almondy, subtle, floral... fantasy tulip accord evokes a dewy hopeful thing with shades of carnal flower style tuberose under a watery Giacobetti type haze. I think this shares ground with other perfumes but is quite different when viewed as a whole. This is the outlier in the set and an immediate love. Nothing obviously synthetic but also doesn’t feel organic. If the master ever created something for Frederic Malle, this would be it. Classy.

This is such an unexpected scent! I got it by buying the discovery set. I gotta say, L'Entropiste do not miss! This is one of the VERY few green fragrances I love. I struggle to even describe it, the sap is wet, the tulip is actually photorealistic, as tulips smell very differently depending on the variety, and this one smells like the kind my grandmother grew. Such a comforting scent for me.

lactonic, green, airy, honeyed. smells like spring and innocence. something about it makes me think of dandelion stem sap and also of a honeysuckle bush... perfect nervous system reset for me.

you can smell the incredibly realistic scent of linden blossoms, the sweetness, the stickiness, the honey. it's something i've never encountered before.

To me, most tulips read as boys, but this one is undeniably a girl. She’s dewy, sappy, sweet, and flirty in a read-between-the-lines way. She drops smart double entendres in passing, leaving you analyzing for the rest of the day. Her just-above-the-knee skirt’s hem lingers on your mind. Long after the initial spray, deep into the drydown, we learn that the mating has, indeed, taken place as the 'semence' concept lingers prettily. Considering how well the scent evokes subtle flirtation and how elegantly it culminates, I couldn’t call it weak in terms of performance. I think it’s meant to both be there and make you question whether what it leaves you feeling is real or just in your head. Semence Douce also has a sister — Zoologist’s Snowy Owl. One cracks the hard shell of soon-to-melt final patches of snow and reaches for the first snowdrops. The other sends a subtle mating message through the early mid-spring air to flowers, bugs, and humans alike. The semblance doesn’t make either redundant. Trying to be smart about my budget aside, I’d grab a bottle of this one as well and rock the two calone-forward scents, one right after the other, as seasons shift.

Crushed wet leaves, green almond milk, petrichor and saffron in all its metallic feel... a plasticky but otherworldly quality... a sterile environment and the smell of a band-aid, all at once. In the opening (the first few seconds) I thought I was smelling an Australian sandalwood leaning towards the green, rooty side, but it's not. For some reason when I think about this scent, a white otherworldly entity comes to mind. This entity's intentions are unclear, could be evil, could be good. Despite this purely radiant whiteness, it has pitch-black eyes with no whites (like those blue-eyed Fremen in Dune who've overdone the melange). With its austere stance, it secretly watches this world from the sidelines without getting too close. I understand why you compared this to Snowy Owl, there's wet snow and a slight dirtiness here too. Not sure if it's coming from the almond, it could be the ambrette too... I don't want to directly compare the scent, but Sirenide and Parisian Musc have this strange feel too. Plasticky, green, unsettling but beautiful. Tag(s): wet, cold, green, otherworldly, weirdo

Like a vegan gourmand. Starts off with a burning dry amarett, into a vivid red tulip with sticky plant sap and tepid almond milk. It dries down into an almost bready saffron soaked in almond milk. I'm very fascinated by the notes in this. They're natural but they're very odd. Overall together the scent to me reminds me of old wet hay on a cold morning. Or like clean wet coins. The almond milk is very soft wet and has that filling quality that lactonics give, but also smells nuttier and almost synthetic with a hint of amaretto in the back. And the green sap note is also so textural. When I smell it, it feels like the sensation of touching plant sap and feeling it dry and crystallize on your skin all itchy. It starts off sweet like agave syrup and then scratchy green almost like pine needles. Super unique.

Whatever was the idea behind Semence Douce, I smell chamomile tea with honey and lemon with all its soft spicy and animalic facets. To my nose it's similar to Amouage's Journey Woman but the leathery note is a bit creamier/ smoother here. It's a nice experience to smell these oriental scents but I couldn't wear it on an everyday basis.

Stayed home all day, so I decided to try five of the seven L'Entropistes from my set on skin for the fun of it (which I deeply regret because my throat got super irritated). While I'd argue Semence Douce smells almost objectively good, this smells exactly like an ambient fragrance used at my local Palacio de Hierro. I can't speak for any Palacios de Hierro other than the one in Guadalajara, but this smells exactly like one of the ambient fragrances used there. To my nose this is a mildly spicy, green, potentially floral almond scent. I'm not sure if it's just the almond note or a combination of it with a floral note but this has a very similar synthetic syrupiness like BeauFort's Sirenide, although unlike the BeauFort this isn't nauseating. In my opinion this is a unisex scent, maybe leaning feminine just by a touch, and oddly the only fragrance I've tried I think would only really make sense to wear during the spring, it's too thick to be worn during the summer, too green to be worn during the fall and too light to be worn during winter.

I was really excited to try Semence Douce and at one point, I was close ordering a full bottle. But I stopped myself just in time, because blind-buying is usually not the smartest move. I’m a big fan of La Tulipe by Byredo, which truly smells like tulips mixed with a fresh flower shop. Unfortunately, Semence Douce doesn’t smell like tulips to my nose or any part of the plant, really. It has a subtle greenness to it, paired with a creamy vibe that gives off a fancy body lotion kind of scent. For some reason, it actually annoys me a little when I catch whiffs of it. 😄 Like Blanc Sada, this one also feels very innocent and soft. If this perfume were a person, she’d be an introverted biology student in her early 20s. It's not like I'm only looking for a big loud perfumes but if this one has more interesting twist to it I will love it more for sure.

Philosophically speaking I absolutely adore what this fragrance stands for. Cycles of life and death represented through symbols of plants, flowers, almonds, and semen - it's genius. The fragrance itself lacks the depth of its conceptual vision however, as it doesn't even last long enough to take you through a singular journey of life and death, much less multiple cycles. The performance of this on my skin is simply poor, projects for about an hour, and even then it hardly projects, and then we get faints of it as a skin scent for 3. The smell is quite unique but also too faint to make any kind of mark. Smells like a clean and futuristic almond milk tea, which is interesting, but I expected so much more.

At first, I thought I liked Semence Douce. I tried hard to like it, I love all of the notes in here individually. In particular the green sap and tulip notes are truly beautiful for springtime and just the kind of thing I love. But the almond in here adds something that I find offputting. It clashes with the dewy florals, and sometimes entirely covers up the best part of the fragrance. This perfume is trying too hard to combine two very different ideas— like two perfumes that have been very unfortunately layered together. There’s artistry here but it’s not for me. It is a shame because I would love this without the almond.

Calone and stemone. To me it's nothing like Journey Woman. This smells cheap, and the aroma-chemicals immediately stand out recognisably. A very underwhelming experience.

Maybe it's just me but I don't get any green from this nor any tulips, I get strong almond oil/syrup and saffron. It's very sweet too, for me it's a pass.

This is my favorite of the three I sampled- Blanc Soda and Dawn Whispers being the other two. It's kind of fascinating and I can't say I've smelled a lot like it. I definitely pick up the almond nuttiness, and the fantasy tulip accord, and together they give this impression of a pretty, yet very oddball kind of leather. There's a mild kind of synthetic-rubber association I'm making from the plastic-like flower petal vibe Duchaufour created. It's not smoky or very "chemical" as in petrol-like or pungent, but it's what you may think latex smells like- creamy, a bit of a neutral sterility perhaps, but evidently coming from a living tree due to the earthy aromatic quality it has. I find it both natural and synthetic feeling, giving a sense of the uncanny, yet still feeling conventionally attractive, at least if you like an obviously sweet-floral aroma. Part of me feels like it's almost too quick to make it's point, presenting very linearly and leaving me wanting more to explore. That being said it really scratches some disparate corners of my brain that leave me both nostalgic, happy, and...confused haha. Thumbs up. I think more facets could reveal themselves with a full wear but I only have a dabber vial.

Quite a unique fragrance construction that smells removed from any reality of the fragrance world to be honest. The sort of sexual nature of the brief is common to see around the fragrance marketplace, but you see the same exectution nearly every time: musk, sandalwood, milk, cumin, and maybe touches of costus. While a nice idea, it has been so overdone. I was pleasantly surprised when I took this one for a spin. It is a harshly-made tulip, aldehydic and dry as a bone. It smells more like a muguet from a laundry/cleaning product at first glance. Then, an interesting contrast grows: the slight nutty rice note, along with the slew of elegant musks and sandalwood sort of create an unstable equilibrium. It goes both in the expected and in the completely unexpected directions. Dry, yet rich, innocent, yet devilish, living, yet dead. What a work! Definitely worth checking out...

Sophisticated in sharp detail, but a pretty simple “tulip scent” from a distance. Everything I’ve been socialized to expect of a tulip’s scent and everything I’ve ever observed of a tulip’s scent after 30 years as a florist, is pretty much here in proper order. It’s only vaguely sweet, vaguely floral, and tinged with the slightest hints of the humid offnotes of decaying biological material, conveyed with a spicy texture. There is a prominent green, succulent freshness rounded out with lactones of almond milk. I wish that my nose could find the link between the sexual title, images and this rather sexless pleasant scent. This is more a perfume for Lisa Simpson than for Betty Boop (or any animated strumpet...I couldn’t think of any). 3 out of 5.

Gorgeous! Sprightly green & floral notes with Ganymede's space-suede underneath. Ganymede's deliberately synthetic effect gets unpleasant on me, but Semence Douce has enough of a natural-sap-n-petal feel that the suede underneath connects with skin, and I'm impressed by how well that balance is held. I do agree with @PeachyQ that the floral+suede disjunction is somewhat noticeable, and at times I wish the dewy florals were a little more dominant, but this is still a great perfume. Not animalic (semen-smelling) at all that I can tell; slightly shampoo-ey, rather, which is kind of what you want from a tulip perfume. Also very strong - one spray from the tester was more than plenty for me.

Opens with a lovely pop of greenish almond, if almond extract was a plant sap. Moves quickly into a lactonic almond milk delight, and then goes very sappy green. Not pine sap or resinous but a dewy green broken stem plant sap. Gorgeous! There is a floral aspect but it’s hard to nail down for me- I have grown a lot of tulips but I’m almost embarrassed to say that I don’t know if I have ever smelled one and perhaps this is what I’m smelling. Rooted nicely with a subtle leathery feel, probably the saffron. The entire experience feels very botanical and fresh and non-synthetic which I love. Green plant milk. Just beautiful !

A suit-and-tie scent! Pure office elegance! As the tulip bends and reveals its evocative movements, its delicate, captivating fragrance subtly intertwines with the threads of life. It features the aroma of milk—gently flavored and sweetened with honey—poured over freshly cut green stems and lush tulips. It evokes the sensation of savoring milk with honey in a flourishing garden during the early morning hours, while dewdrops still rest upon the leaves. This perfume is instantly addictive. I admire the realism of the plant-stem accord. 9/10

Tulips to me have a special pleasant plastic smell, not like real flowers, and Semence Douce manages to convey this extraordinary quality. I don't get the typical green grass accord but a kind of green freshness merged with the plastic tulip smell and sweet almond. I don't know how Mr Duchaufour did it and I guess there are much more interesting ingredients than the above mentioned, but it's genial! The perfume has a distant hint of the metalic smell of Ganymede but SD is more pleasant.

I absolutely love this on skin. It's one of those perfumes that unfolds in the best way as you wear it. I get the sappy green stalks and I get the milky almond note. Texturally, it feels tulip-like, and the saffron is noticeable but deft. Of all the seven, and it's a strong seven (or maybe five) this one is probably my favourite.

Imagine a green gourmand without any pastry stuff, an almond biscuit with saffron, placed in a garden. The stems of the tulips are just crushed and the slight bitterness reminds me of tonka bean. All this is nice, appealing, familiar yet rare to see in a perfume form. It's Zen the French way.

The most characteristic perfume of L'entropiste range. It does not smell of tulips, almonds, saffron. It does not smell green. It does not smell of semen. It's a very strange chemical perfume without a hope. It is anti-perfumery.

Dry almond scent is rough at the beginning, then it goes behind and green fresh almond comes! It is very young feeling scent