Vanille Absolument / Havana Vanille by L'Artisan Parfumeur

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Vanille Absolument
Havana Vanille
L'Artisan Parfumeur 2009

7.4 / 10 243 Ratings

A perfume by L'Artisan Parfumeur for women and men, released in 2009. The scent is gourmand-spicy. The production was apparently discontinued.
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Main accords

Gourmand

Spicy

Sweet

Oriental

Powdery

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes

Rum

Clove

Mandarin orange Orange

Orange

Heart Notes

Dried fruits

Narcissus

Tobacco

Rose

Base Notes

Vanilla

Benzoin

Tolu balm

Tonka bean Vetiver

Vetiver

Musk

Perfumer

Bertrand Duchaufour

Ratings

Scent

7.4243 Ratings

Longevity

7.9179 Ratings

Sillage

6.5159 Ratings

Bottle

7.9158 Ratings

Value for money

7.217 Ratings

Submitted by Kankuro · last update on 06/14/2025.

Source-backed & verified

Smells similar

What the fragrance is similar to

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Amber Malaki

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Note Vanillée Eau de Parfum

Reviews

35 in-depth fragrance descriptions

07/31/2013

8Scent

Awesomeness
247 Reviews

Awesomeness

Top Review 6

Not an edible cookie

Many of the low sugar vanillas are simply too masculine for me to pull off. For instance, take any of the unisex Serge Lutens or Tom Fords that are vanilla-based -- Not only are they awful on me, but they are despised by those around me. However, I still love the dry & dark character of many of those fragrances.

Thank goodness for Vanille Absolument. For a gal who tends to favor feminine and sweet vanillas, Vanille Absolument is very wearable, even if it is not an edible cookie. I still get that dry & dark characteristic that I love, plus the tobacco is fairly prominent in the heart. In addition, there is a wee bit of spice, a tinge of floral and some rum on top - all of these accords make it an interesting and complex vanilla scent to wear.

In the heart, Vanille Absolument is a cigar - a vanilla-tinged one, but still a cigar, from the leaf wrapper to the moist tobacco to the smoke as it burns, this is cigar and a likable one at that. As a former cigarette smoker and an occasional cigar smoker, Vanille Absolument has me jonesing for more. However, it's not so overwhelming that I will jump off the wagon, so I think non-smokers and former smokers still might be OK with it.

When dry, Vanille Absolument is a vanilla skin scent on me. The balsam, tonka bean, and benzoin, coupled with the vanilla, make it noticable but soft. Overall, Vanille Absolument works with my girlie-girl chemistry, instead of against it like many of the Lutens and Fords.

Vanille Absolument is a dark, oriental vanilla. Unlike my experience with most vanillas marked unisex, this one truly is. I highly recommend it for sampling by cookie eaters, vanilla lovers ... and smokers.

02/09/2013

10Scent 10Longevity 7.5Sillage

TeaWithMilk
27 Reviews

TeaWithMilk

Very helpful Review 9

Green Vanilla

This is one of my very favorite vanillas. Lightly spiced, musty, and a little bit green, Vanille Absolument stands out as unique. It is not a smoky, incensy vanilla, nor is it too dark or intense. Its green naturalness gives it an inherent simplicity. Very wearable and versatile for so many different occasions, but I like to use it for casual days. If I put vanilla in my mouth that tasted like this, I would spit it out. It takes talent to create such an inedible vanilla. It's just like a vanilla cigar that has not been lit.

SUMMARY: "I asked her what's her name, she said Guantanamera." ~Wyclef Jean

02/26/2013

8Scent 7.5Longevity 7.5Sillage

Sherapop
1240 Reviews

Sherapop

8

Cuban Fantasy

Simple vanilla perfumes generally strike me as boring and banal, probably because they smell so much like the big bottle of Mexican vanilla bean extract in my kitchen. Yes, it smells good, but I cannot really muster up much enthusiasm for the idea of showering my body with it. L'Artisan Parfumeur VANILLE ABSOLUMENT, however, that's a very different story.

This is probably the most complex vanilla perfume I've ever encountered, so the first wonderful aspect is that it really seems like a perfume rather than just a mono-note vanilla fragrance. There are so many beautiful and engaging facets to this creation that it is hard to say which I find most appealing. The tolu balsam and benzoin add a creamy lusciousness. The tobacco leaf has a fresh greenness, but also the scent of processed tobacco before burning. The rum is evident in the opening, but it smells more like cognac to me, thankfully, since I dislike rum. There is an initial booziness, but it is brown (not dark rum!) without having any sort of molasses quality to it. At times the composition seems woody to me, perhaps it's the vetiver. The florals are blended in with everything else to embellish the creamy vanilla and tobacco facets. It may sound like a mess, but the blend works beautifully for me.

I always eschewed vanilla perfumes before, but this complex and gorgeous creation has proven at last that a great vanilla perfume is possible. Thank you Bertrand Duchaufour!

12/10/2012

jtd
484 Reviews

jtd

7

reinvent the wheel

12/2012
Bertrand Duchafour is the poster child for the perfumer-as-auteur movement. Contrary to the old school of perfumery, he speaks publicly about his work, is identified by perfume producers as the composer of the work and has identifiable styles. He is commonly discussed as an artist and creator, still a fairly new phenomenon. When his work is discussed, you often see words such as translucent, sheer, radiant, weightless. I only know a small fraction of his work, but I'm interested in the meaning of this weightless quality.

Duchaufour takes elements that we recognize (incense, orange blossom, vanilla, and rose for example) then separates the 'flavor' of the scent from other material qualities that our noses identify as weight, viscosity, density. Removing what reads to the nose as mass or palpability from identifiable aromas gives fascinating results. The perfumes aren't less complex or thinner than traditional perfumes. They are not simply diminished. They become twisted in a manner that implicitly makes us question the works until we've come to some understanding of them. Timbuktu feels not so much like an incense fragrance, but an answer the question, is light a wave or a particle? Timbuktu's radiance says wave. Vanille Absolument doesn't change vanilla itself, it alters the context and gives us a vanilla pod in zero-G. Can the flavor of Turkish Delight be separated from its material manifestation and placed as a permanent watermark on a perfume? (Yes, Traversée du Bosphore)

Duchaufour's work, more than any in the past 20 years of perfumery, takes us back to one of the original questions posed by modern perfumery, starting with the coumadin in Fougere Royale: how do you define synthetic and natural? In the late 19th century the answers might have seemed clearer, though no less interesting. Duchaufour's take is not to argue for a distinction, but to focus on our beliefs, based on the interpretation of our senses, of what feels natural or synthetic. He gives us the tools to recalibrate our instinct, to retrain our 'gut' and smell the world differently if we choose to. In doing so, we, the subject, are changed. We are not 'natural' in that our instinct, our inborn ability to sense a more fundamental reality than our 5 senses reveal, is shown to be mutable and therefore subjective. Instinct is revealed as a hunch that we tend to believe is absolute. Duchaufour liberates instinct from the fairy-tale realm of natural and un-natural and shows us how to make better use of our intuition and insights. And we get to smell nice along the way. Take that, Secretions Magnifiques.

Easy shot at Etat Libre, another house that does a great job of challenging our views, but intentional. Punk, as a genre or sensibility, tends to come from the ring-and-run school of art. Duchaufour’s example shows a few more interesting things about perfumery and art. His making of spectacular perfumes is artistry per se, but to make us question the supposition of our beliefs about fragrance and ourselves while at the same time giving us gorgeous perfumes to wear? Bravo! And by welcoming the wearer to question societal beliefs, Duchaufour makes perfume wearers comrades in arts, an important piece in the definition of perfume artistry.

(I’m not very well informed on the Uzbek perfume issue, so I won’t comment. The question of the ethics of the ‘independent contractor’ or ‘hired gun’ in perfumery does raise interesting questions, though.)

12/06/2013

6Scent

Kxnaiades
50 Reviews

Kxnaiades

Helpful Review 4

a cigar in one hand, whiskey in another

Review for Havana Vanille (which to me is a different composition from Vanille Absolument which I found had a far more screechy opening). This is definitely not a gourmand vanilla ( at least to my nose it isn't). It's a herbal/tobacco dry vanilla that's just slightly sweet. I love it personally but I can see that this is a love it/hate it perfume as it's a little strange/challenging on the nose? I agree with the comparison to ELDO compositions. The herbal/tobacco/rum combination...it's very intriguing to say the least. Those who hate licorice will want to stay far away from this as the note is quite intense in the opening. The drydown is my favourite part where it is less intent on challenging your nose and becomes a softer, comforting and warm, ever just slightly sweet woody vanilla. It lasted about six hours on me and by then it was truly a skin scent. I find this more interesting a composition than Tom Ford's Tobacco Vanille although that is also a fond favourite for this catergory of scent.

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