Traversée du Bosphore 2010

Traversée du Bosphore by L'Artisan Parfumeur
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7.3 / 10 271 Ratings
A perfume by L'Artisan Parfumeur for women and men, released in 2010. The scent is sweet-gourmand. It was last marketed by Puig.
Pronunciation
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Main accords

Sweet
Gourmand
Fruity
Leathery
Powdery

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes Top Notes
AppleApple PomegranatePomegranate SaffronSaffron GingerGinger
Heart Notes Heart Notes
LeatherLeather IrisIris LokumLokum TulipTulip
Base Notes Base Notes
BenzoinBenzoin MuskMusk CedarCedar

Perfumer

Ratings
Scent
7.3271 Ratings
Longevity
7.3186 Ratings
Sillage
6.3185 Ratings
Bottle
7.7178 Ratings
Value for money
7.718 Ratings
Submitted by Kankuro, last update on 11/20/2024.

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What the fragrance is similar to
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Reviews

14 in-depth fragrance descriptions
7.5
Bottle
5
Sillage
7.5
Longevity
10
Scent
Belgwen

94 Reviews
Belgwen
Belgwen
Helpful Review 12  
The Special Place in My Heart
My family owned and operated a restaurant named "Bosfor" that was located right on the Bosphorus for over 50 years. Standing upon round blocks buried deep into the sea, it was surrounded by water on three sides, had a splendid view of the canal, the dark blue waves that rose and splashed against its windows, and the glorious sunsets of the Marmara Sea that conjured images of pure magic when I was growing up. My mom says that countless folks including many international celebrities over the years have patronized our restaurant and enjoyed our delicious food. It was eventually demolished by the merciless local government due to refurbishment of the old western side of the city. To me however, the Bosphorus and that restaurant will always have an irreplaceable place in my heart. Besides the standard steak, chicken, and seafood dishes that come out of most professional kitchens, we also served traditional deserts that my parents said many people came from all over the world specifically to sample. One of them was our famous, fresh made lokum, which our pastry chef made with a secret ingredient he never shared with anyone, not even my parents! I remember it being so much different than any of the lokums that you could buy in the stores. Though it was thick and chewy to the point sticking to your teeth, it made up for that little inconvenience by hitting your tongue with the right amount of sweet & savory that was to die for.

Traversée du Bosphore captures that lokum of my childhood perfectly. The hint of a pink flower, the powder, and the gel-like consistency... The pure creative genius of Bertrand Duchaufour is evident when you look at the notes pyramid and notice that instead of the traditional rose + vanilla + heliotrope to form the powdery notes, he took an unconventional route by combining iris and pink fruity notes to capture the flavor of a powdery confection. The leather, I believe, was added here to reflect the rubbery quality of lokum rather than to make a statement of virile sensuality. It was a most fruitful choice, because of all the lokum fragrances I've ever tried, this composition is the only one that gave me that impression so accurately. Lasting power is around 8 hours on my skin. Although in no way could this be described as a skin scent, the sillage is fairly close throughout its lifespan. I can only picture Mr. Duchaufour taking a bite out of a piece of lokum when he was traveling through Istanbul and being moved enough to want to go straight back to his laboratory to recreate that delicious sensation. Well, they don’t call them “Turkish Delight” for nothing! :) I recommend this fragrance not only because it is an exemplary mature gourmand, but also for the travel-lovers out there who might just be vicariously transported to the same time and place of my childhood and that of the nose behind it.

Mr. Duchaufour: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for helping me relive my memories with this precious elixir.
6 Comments
5
Bottle
5
Sillage
7.5
Longevity
8
Scent
Pipette

63 Reviews
Pipette
Pipette
Very helpful Review 7  
Have perfume - will travel?
For the ones who have tasted Turkish Delight or have been in Istanbul with the local atmosphere smells, this perfume is probably just the answer. I will content myself of liking it to vanilla Christmas cookies, with a few extra colorful sugar sprinkles thrown on top. Yum! This perfume smells good enough to eat, and the girl who is wearing it is probably just as appetizing.

I love subtle scents and this one is light, fluffy, gentle, feather light and simply nice. Nice to spray on liberally because, I regret to say, the lasting power is not that tremendous. It settles quickly into a skin scent. That skin scent remains very close to the skin. Or is it just me?

I can then smell a subtle leather, a good leather.

The final dry down smells slightly musky.

Everything about this perfume is subtle, slight, light. A pleasure to wear and I doubt that I would get tired of it ...
0 Comments
jtd

484 Reviews
jtd
jtd
Helpful Review 5  
Nose candy
In the wrong hands this perfume might just have been an exercise. How do you take a food known as much for its texture and viscosity and make its scent appear out of thin air? Without the unctuous confection itself. And without the characteristic sticky sweetness. Turkish delight has a particular scent that doesn't have the wafting quality of many other food scents. The scent is like a reflection of the density of the food itself. Think of a piece loukhoum as a planet. The aroma, like a planet's is denser closer to the surface and grows thinner with altitude. It's a scent that implies gravity and therefore solidity and weight.

Bosphore has the potency of the confection yet the transparency that Duchaufour manages to bring to even the densest subjects. And he does it with a clever bait and switch. He makes an olfactory portrait of a confection that is in fact flavored with classically aromatic ingredients such as rose water, orange blossom, citrus and mastic. Loukhoum is interesting to a Western palate for the fact that it takes elements that we tend to think of as scents, not flavors, and makes food with them. Duchaufour steals them back and makes a perfume tribute to the aromatic confection.

After an effusive papery iris start, Bosphore settles into its whispery play on loukhoum in a linear but rich fashion. It lasts from morning to night remaining noticeable but never loud. Even the vaguely leathery tobacco note is lasting yet airy. More than most perfumes, a little bit of heat and sweat jumpstart Bosphore and you find yourself going for the ride again.
0 Comments
ColinM

516 Reviews
ColinM
ColinM
6  
Traversée du Meh
Traversée du Bosphore opens with a pleasant, evocative and invigorating Middle-Eastern blend comprising warm notes of powder, amber, vanilla, spices (tonka above all to me), a sweet and earthy tobacco note providing a darker, yet always mellow “support” to the powdery-amber-spicy accord. It may sound simple, but actually it’s a rather pleasant and perhaps quite complex harmony of colours and shades, with a thin but totally solid texture, basically a sort of warm Oriental talc-amber-spicy scent with an ephemeral boozy heart. Now... the issue here, as with many scents by L’Artisan, is that of all this suddenly turns into a fairly light (and somehow generic) skin-scent, as much pleasant as “faded”. It’s like a time machine that in 30 minutes transports you directly 4 hours later, on the very drydown. Great until it lasts, then barely nice overall, but... meh, bit of a tune on the “volume/persistence” knob would be appreciated in my opinion.

6,5/10
0 Comments
7
Scent
Sherapop

1239 Reviews
Sherapop
Sherapop
Helpful Review 6  
An Eccentric Assortment of Disparate Notes with an Intriguing Result
I tested L'Artisan Parfumeur TRAVERSEE DU BOSPHORE when it was first launched and didn't really understand it. Having recently received a fresh sample, I've decided to give this fragrance another whirl. Yes, it was created by Bertrand Duchaufour. Luck of the draw, I guess.

It's somewhat difficult to believe that anyone would consider rolling so many diverse notes into one perfume, but Bert did just that: tulip, iris, leather, loukhoum, ginger, saffron, apple... what's going on here?

Apparently this fragrance was inspired by Duchafour's trip to Istanbul. This is a jumble of distinctive scents all rolled together to produce a strange open-market kind of effect, so maybe that is what he had in mind. There seems to be a waft of sweet gummy resin (gurjum?) which I first met in one of the Montale perfumes (VELVET FLOWERS), but I detect it (or something similar) only lightly here.

Initially I seem to smell camphor, or something along those lines, and after a few minutes amidst the floral-fruity mélange, the leather comes to dominate. But it is a soft, gentle leather, nothing like the black oily leather of some of the fragrances of Etat Libre d'Orange, and nothing like this house's DZING! (which I dislke).

This leather-fruity-floral-nutty perfume sounds like it should be a (hot?) mess, but somehow it is not. I like it a lot, and it is definitely unique in my experience of perfumes. Fortunately TRAVERSEE DU BOSPHORE was launched at eau de parfum not eau de toilette concentration, so the longevity and sillage are somewhat better than what I have come (grudgingly) to expect chez L'Artisan Parfumeur.
0 Comments
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Statements

2 short views on the fragrance
EpimetheusEpimetheus 8 months ago
5
Sillage
6
Longevity
7
Scent
tangy snack in the anatolian crisp and spices, with leather and iris accord to create more powdery sophistication
0 Comments
JoaoMartinsJoaoMartins 6 years ago
8
Bottle
3
Sillage
4
Longevity
8
Scent
A really nice sweet powdery leather. Smooth and cozy. I think the Iris is a little bit too dominant. Sadly the performance is mediocre on me
0 Comments

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