Holy Oak

Thanks for adding this one fragrantica 🙏 Wonderful fragrance from lvnea, this smells like the description says, photorealistic damp wood cabin in the forest. It’s dirty but beautiful. As it dries down it begins to remind me a bit of creeds royal oud which was a pleasant surprise. It’s like if Royal oud rolled around in the mud, which may not sound appealing but it really is a gorgeous scent that works. For me at least. The fact that lvnea uses natural ingredients that aren’t harmful to you is a huge bonus. Foret dormante and ghost pine are my other two favourites from the house, highly recommend checking out their store in Montreal if you have a chance.

Now that's a proper cedar scent! Rainy forest, 100% photorealistic (I generally love botanical perfumes for their realism). Dries down to cold frankincense and a faint wet rose. Gorgeous... I am so happy I finally got to try LVNEA, I wanted to for so, so long <3 The longevity is that of a standard botanical perfume, up to 6 hours on my skin. I am obsessed, cannot stop sniffing my wrist!

A walk in a Scandinavian pine forest where someone has been camping, their bonfire is still smoking even though it was put out an hour ago. You feel comforted in the shelter of tall dark trees, the moss underfoot is soft and welcoming. I feel I can only wear this with darker clothing

Ran out of the sample fairly quickly because a) i loved spraying lots and lots of it when wearing it and b) i liked it on my partner sprayed it on him a lot. To me this is the smell of the Twin Peaks intro and walking past a sawmill near a river surrounded by forest.

Photorealistic burning lug fire in a cabin. Smell of the fire smoke

When I wore Holy Oak on its own for the first couple of wears it did not work on my skin. The cedar came off very astringent and just didn’t smell very pleasant on me. However, I decided to layer it with Stora Skuggan’s “Pine” and it totally balanced out the acidity of Holy Oak and blended quite beautifully together. I also want to note that the team at Lvnea is wonderful and was willing to resolve my initial issue with Holy Oak, but I was more than happy to report back that I found a solution to make their fragrance shine on my skin. This is a great one to layer with anything that has a main accord of Pine or Fir.

Opens cold and wet: damp forest floor with a sour, pungent tickle in the nose. Matures into something sauna-like: dry woods and warmth, hot cedar and gentle steam. Like coming in from the cold rain into a log cabin and lighting a fire.

So lovely, an earthy, hands-in-the-damp-and-dewy-undergrowth dirty. Surprisingly sweet as the oakwood lends a subtly warming whiskey-like creamy/spiced flavor balanced by the faint ghost of a dusty rose.

A bitter galbanum overruns the cedar leaf in the opening. It's a bitter, savory, pickle opening. This is not an attractive scent. It softens a bit, but it's still pickle wood. I'm surprised it's not a cheap sandalwood, but sandalwood isn't listed in the notes here. A trace of frankincense. No rose. Then, moss and pickle wood. The final drydown is frankincense resin with a touch of dill. A repulsive version of a forest! Weak performance too.

This has a strange sour undertone I don’t care for. It might be the way the rose is blended in with the woods but it doesn’t work imo