Chene

Serious, SERIOUS business. How did it take me so long to write about Chene? A true masterpiece: tracked through a forest of expertise, riddled with the rot and stink of nature, and ending up as an amazingly complex enigma. The wild and the civilised, the rich and the austere, the indoor and outdoor woven together into some crazed kind of perfection. Chene is kind of "peak Lutens". It smells like nothing else on the market. It's radiant with completely solid, hardwood-to-the-core inner confidence, just doing its thing while you reel back in astonishment. It's dark and smoky and almost dirty. It's archaic and spicy and venerable. HISTORIC. It smells like old - like centuries-old - timber relics imbued with years of human effort, burnished to a mellow, dark-brown glow: barrels and airing chests and well-polished tables and the keys of some rattly old spinet. The scent of heirloom furniture and old, old money; grand families with deep roots and heavy dignity. It also brings the outside of an imaginary 18th-century-aristocrat's parkland right inside your memory palace with the unmistakeable reek of moss and mud and freshly stripped birch bark and dirty boots kicked through the forest floor in autumn. Its almost-sour, almost-acrid notes keep popping scent-memories of all facets of oak - slightly bruised acorns, moulding leaves, moss on damp bark, the tannic bite of fresh-splintered raw wood, the spicier undertow of that wood aged and tended and loved. It conjures not just a person or even a place - but a whole antique world, somehow. Scent of a roistering hereditary landowner with great taste and a love of the outdoors - though probably mostly for the chance to shoot things. Now that is not my world at all - and yet this was passionate love from the first moment. I drooled like a gundog or a truffle pig, not even from the first drop, but from the first waft of a tiny .25ml sample I'd tracked all over the internet for months. And it absolutely transported me. Chene is no easy ride, though: it's so determinedly ITSELF that it's not aiming to please, and definitely not even trying to put lesser beings at their ease. Some people tell me it positively revolts them: 'mouldy', 'stinky', 'sour', 'dirty' - well yes, kinda, of course, I feel like insisting... but still magically so? So much about it puzzles me: you can tell this is grown-ups' stuff because it's shot through with paradoxes. There's a very serious bang of poky-sharp alcoholic notes, which if you're caught on the wrong day, can go pretty strange, verging on acetone or pear drops or something more synthetic. And the immortelle is unmistakeably there: I LOATHE immortelle, yet here it is (as in another great love, Papillon Anubis), defiantly present but without ruining everything. It's not 'wearable' or 'adaptable' in any sense: it's the outermost, classiest, most stubbornly individual wood-centred scent I can imagine. The very first time I smelled this my nose went BOINGGG and it detonated a love and taste for niche, and a lust for Serge in particular, which would run for years. How do they DO that? A prince among scents and priced to match. Needs patience to let it unfold and despite its uncompromising presence it's not a huge, overbearing performer (for that would be vulgar, and this is far too weird and too classy to cheapen itself that way.) Very much on the masculine side of unisex but ladies like me, who love to hug trees or tree scents, will be able to deal. Take a walk on the properly wild - the countryside in autumn - side with it and you might well never want to leave. Chene. OMG. Oak Made Gorgeous. Please try to smell it once, even if you know you'll hate it. For truly this is what art perfumery can be at its finest.

Chene is one of the few perfumes that leaves me speechless. I really have to force myself to articulate thoughts and feelings when I smell it. As many of you know that have been following my reviews, being speechless is an extreme rarity for me that I sure some of you would like to be a lot more frequent. I'm not sure I can do my usual thing of blending technical description with artistic and emotional descriptions, now that I've finally decided to try to put something to paper, so instead, let me tell you a story. Within walking distance of my home here in Northern California is a forest preserve park full of old oaks, birch trees, evergreens, and much more besides. A spring storm exploded through a couple of days prior to me taking a walk in this park, drenching us with rain and pummeling us with wind. Walking through a park after an early spring storm is one of life's little pleasures, where you'll get to witness the plant life seeming to have been shaken awake from their winter slumber and relieved of old growths to make room for new growths. I stopped at a little rest area deep in the park along a walking trail where the storm seemed to have really shaken things up. A large, old oak, some several decades old, was uprooted; birch and evergreen branches were everywhere; the ground was still wet, rainwater sitting in some spots while other spots with robust shrubbery seemed to have drank as much of the rainwater as they could. The smell was intoxicating. Pine and fir sap gave the thick air a sour and sweet resinous quality as the evergreens were bursting at their seams from pulling in as much water as they could muster to free their roots to air. The fallen birch branches and exposed trunk unions kept to themselves, but if I got close enough they smelled crisp and fresh yet mildly deep and robust with a distinct earthy leatheriness. Then there was the mighty fallen oak. It looked as though it was mostly dead by the time the storm hit, which it would be for a storm to have this much impact on it, but a significant part of it was hanging on for dear life until the storm hit, evidenced by several large roots bigger than elephant trunks still reaching into the earth from the tree's fallen base. But the storm made up the oak's mind for it, it was time. The oak was splintered and separating. The smell of it was captivating. The wet, rich soil that symbiotically lived around the root base of the oak was sweet, loamy, and fragrant. The oak tree smelled woody and stiff, slightly vanillic, and had a curious sweet-fruity-earthy facet very similar to beet root. Seeing this beautiful and stately giant laying prostrate on the ground in surrender didn't elicit any feelings of sadness or despondence; something about the clean, invigorated, and rich smells affected by the rain made me think the oak was happy to be there - if it had a mind and could express itself, it would say something like "I'm becoming more at one with the soil that supported me for decades. I'm still alive, just in a different form." I didn't share the happiness even though I stayed there for what felt like a long time, taking in the smells, colors, and the life forms, but what I did feel was a sense of equanimity and totality. Emotions, thoughts, and time were distractions from what is. Around me wasn't destruction or progress, it was what it should be. That moment for me is perfectly captured by Chene. There is something very evocative and tender-hearted about it, but it is also unflinchingly austere. It's a truly gorgeous perfume, and one of the best by Lutens and Sheldrake.

*Chene - Majestic Oak Forest* I recently had a trip to Paris to visit the headquarters of Serge Lutens at Palais Royal. I tested many of the exclusive bell jars, amongst them Chene and Santal de Mysore. I loved them both but for different reasons and after a day of testing, decided on Chene. Back at home, I was very intimidated to open the bottle. I was scared I did a hasty decision and that it would’t be the same as my first impression, even a completely different thing. (the normal perfume paranoia...) Indeed, there where many notes I missed that probably got burned away quickly in the Paris heat. The opening blast is a stressful explosion of sawdust, wood varnishes, acetone and boozy alcohols. Given a few minutes to settle you get Oakwood: fresh logs split in two, sap and slightly bitter bark, with soft immortelle and a whisper of thyme both just supporting and contributing to this smelling specifically like oak, not like cedar or sandalwood or any of the more conventional woody notes we see everywhere else. There is a strange fruitiness that brings some sweetness and notes of medium dark rum, or rum barrels which of course would be made of oakwood. The rum keeps the overall oakwood fresh and sappy as in newly chopped wood and moist sawdust, nothing stale or dusty. As nice as these aromas are, this is not what I love about this scent. The real beauty is revealed in the dry-down, when the sweetness of the rum subsides and the scene transitions from a peaceful sawmill against a green summer forest clearing, to an autumnal and dark fairytale forest. The Immortelle is still soft and restrained, now smelling of brown, fallen leaves. The fresh sawdust notes are gone and a soft, but dark Oakmoss rises to dominate for the hours to come. I’m very surprised not to see oakmoss listed here or mentioned that much, but of course an oak-centric perfume needs to have a proper dose of oakmoss to finish everything off! Chene actually manages to smell realisticly of pieces of dried oakmoss, rather than a concentrated oakmoss absolute - foresty, dry, tannic, fuzzy, gorgeous, peculiar- quite striking I must say. The experience of wearing Chene is like a dissection of the oak tree in reverse, or inside-out. It starts in the moist heartwood in the core of the tree, moves outwards through its growth rings, pierces the tannic bark and reaches its branches and stems covered in mosses and lichen, eventually depicting the whole majestic oak forest. I love how it ends so autumnal, I feel immersed in all kinds of murky and swampy colors, all goblin greens and browns, mist, mud and moss. Chene is unusual-woody, mischievous, ultimately dark and forest-like, a gloomy fantasy. It reminds me of why I in the end always prefer my unruly forest woods over sophisticated and polished sandalwoods.

As an SL junkie I have several house perfumes--but my FIRST bell jar was not Chergui (though that was the one that led me to SL--& the one I thought I'd originally purchase as a Bell). After careful thought, THIS was the big one, and for me, just perfect; it's home" to me--the Sierras and the California valley; Lutens captures pines and cedars, imortelle and other "memory scents" beautifully, but this really is OAK--Oak and birch softened by a boozy sweetness, a bit of fall crushed fruit and the leaves, even the tannin smell of leaves fresh and fallen, oak and others, crushed. It evolves at various times from an astringent bracing wood (fresh cut), "bitter-tannin" into a warmth with the beeswax/imortelle and then even later into a more macerated fruit sweetness with less booze. The silage is moderate, but the longevity is quite good; I'm into my 10th hour now, and the scent is sweet but not gourmand at all--sharp tannins, balsamic resins and very honeyed fruit though not cloying. It is a multi-faceted perfume--I do not find it linear though it may be when compared to something like Borneo. Compared to his other woods and fruits, this one has the leather/tannin wood that braces but also soothes. It is somewhat less sultry,less "winey" and "port-like" than other SL woods, and I do wear it to work (and to play and in the evening!). I suppose because of the notes listed, someone might believe this is "better suited" for a man; however, I find that his more recent perfumes appeal to "my idea" of what I like a man to smell like, whereas his former woods, spices are quite unisex and more exotic, sexy, sophisticated and appealing on a woman (especially after a day walking through the college halls where I work where I'm suffocating from berry-fruit-bubble-liciousness drizzled on the young 20 somethings). There are other more dramatic SL creations, and some more "wearable," but this is just very enjoyable all around to me. Sometimes I just crave it--and right now, it's a warm complex pulsing wood emanating around me.

i love this perfume...love love LOVE this perfume. i got onto a 'rum kick' about a year ago, and ordered all manner of rum scent samples online. of the 30+ i got, only about 4 or 5 really hit me (this, opus v, etc), and this one is a pure PURE refined aristocratic scent. i can't describe it ANY other way. i can imagine the privileged few who have mansions and private libraries with butlers who dust the shelves SMELL like this; it's pure sophistication. it starts off with a dry, almost creamy woods smell. almost sandalwood creamy (without smelling like sandalwood, but displaying the creaminess of it) and some high, bitter white woods. almost bleached woods. this 'high' smell is joined shortly after the opening by boozy rum which melds seamlessly in to create an amazing accord. a few woods, rum and an irresistible creaminess that makes it amazing. i wanted to get a full bottle of this, and the options online were unbelievably steep. so i waited a few months until i was in paris and plotted a route to the paris palais royale branch to acquire my exclusive non-export. on the day i was supposed to get it, i had a MASSIVE fight with my wife which meant that i had to cancel my plans, and concentrate on making it up to her! the next day was our last day, and we had a big day ahead of us, so i had to get up early and go to the palais royale, which is an AMAZING peaceful and serene complex. i got there too early, and just took in the beautiful architecture and the perfectly-manicured hedges opposite the boutique. once the shop opened, i got in, smelt EVERY single exclusive (kinda liked the 'santal de mysore save for the cumin punch), bought my bell jar of 'chene', and hightailed it back home (we were staying in marais -- a 25 minute brisk walk), where i set about getting ready to go to champs elysees where i mended bridges with my wife, experienced the sephora flagship store (perfume mecca, in paris at least), and enjoyed my last day in paris, content in the fact that i had a FULL BOTTLE of chene in my clutches...