Bois d'Ascèse Naomi Goodsir 2012

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7.8 / 10 341 Ratings

A popular perfume by Naomi Goodsir for women and men, released in 2012. The scent is smoky-woody. The longevity is above-average. It is still in production.

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Main accords

Smoky

Woody

Spicy

Resinous

Earthy

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes

Tobacco

Whisky

Heart Notes

Labdanum

Amber

Cinnamon

Base Notes

Smoked prickly cedar

Somalian frankincense Oakmoss

Oakmoss

Perfumer

Julien Rasquinet

Ratings

Scent

7.8341 Ratings

Longevity

8.4267 Ratings

Sillage

7.8268 Ratings

Bottle

7.3239 Ratings

Value for money

7.089 Ratings

Submitted by Kankuro, last update on 02/01/2025.

Smells similar

What the fragrance is similar to

Bois Sikar

Fume

Black Comme des Garçons

Révolution

Tonnerre

Chaman's Party

Reviews

14 in-depth fragrance descriptions

05/20/2013

jtd
484 Reviews

jtd

Helpful Review 6

why frankincense? what is niche?

Frankincense, it’s the new black.

Bois d’Ascese is a good, solid fragrance. It’s handsome. It smells like frankincense. I’ve smelled frankincense many times and love it. Most people do.

There’s the hazard.

Bois d’Ascese falls prey to the Amber Trap. Take a ‘ready-made’ botanical such as frankincense or labdanum (or rose, or vetiver...). Then build a fragrance around the central component by applying olfactory make-up. Enhance it. Detail it. Build a Greek chorus around it for christ’s sake. Just make sure it’s dead center and don’t stray off course. This style of sola-nota perfumery is conservative by definition. It’s what has lead every niche house to have an unmistakeable Amber which very often is nearly indistinguishable from any other house’s Amber

I can’t argue with the fragrance. It’s lovely and would be wonderful to smell on someone in passing. But to say that the perfumer has made frankincense beautiful is like saying that the make-up artist made Cary Grant handsome. I know that it puts perfumer Julien Rasquinet and designer Naomi Goodsir in the spotlight, but releasing a frankincense perfume in the niche perfumery market is not far conceptually from making a fresh aquatic for the mainstream men’s perfume market. I’ve never smelled, Cuir Velours, Goodsir’s other perfume, but the name alone leads me to a cynical frame of mind. I imagine the third fragrance will be an eponymous Oud, and following soon thereafter will be an Amber, a Musk and a nouveau Vanilla.

‘Niche’ can mean so many things. It can refer to an alternate strategy to the mainstreams, it can describe a sensibility, it can mean something particular that has spun off from the norm into its own little eddy. Naomi Goodsir convinces me that niche in perfumery means the same thing that ‘young’ and ‘modern’ mean in fashion--code for the most recent iteration of an easily identified item.

from scent hurdle.com

12/13/2012

5
Bottle 7.5
Sillage 10
Longevity 8
Scent

Drseid
821 Reviews

Drseid

4

Looking For The Smell of a Campfire In A Bottle? Now You Have Found It...

Bois d'Ascese opens with a quick shot of straight-up whiskey before quickly transitioning to the key heart note of smoked cadewood incense (cadewood smells quite similar to cedar to my nose, at least). The scent is quite minimalist in its implementation, but the smoked cadewood is just about as close as you can get to standing right next to an active wood burning fireplace or campfire all ablaze. This is bone-dry and very, very smoky. While the official note list says one should expect cinnamon in the heart I confess I smell none. What *is* present to a minor degree is an underlying completely dry ashy tobacco note that supports the smoked cade through the dry-down with only a very subtle relatively dry amber adding just a hint of softness to the receding smoke at the very end of the scent's life-cycle. Projection is very good and longevity is exceptional.

Bois d'Ascese is a fine opening salvo from the house of Naomi Goodsir. It does not contain many notes and does not develop much staying linearly smoky throughout, but unlike so many smoky scents on the market that get the scent of real smoke wrong, this one is absolutely a reference scent when it comes to presenting what an actual wood burning fire smells like. I confess that smelling like a campfire is not really something one strives for on a daily basis (or at least not this reviewer), but given the right special occasion to shine Bois d'Ascese gets the job done with aplomb and is the first one I would reach for every time. I will not join the many folks that feel this is "fragrance of the year 2012," and the price point is more than a bit steep, but definitely consider me as highly impressed and eager to sample more from the house as new fragrances are released. Bois d'Ascese earns an excellent 4 out of 5 stars.

08/10/2020

7
Bottle 9
Sillage 8
Longevity 7
Scent

Laurana77
13 Reviews

Laurana77

Helpful Review 2

Campfire Smoke Meets Cedar & Leather

This was another of the luckyscent samples a loved one let me try, and it's one I chose to keep. On application, I got smoke, reminiscent of times around a campfire and the scent is like that of a log of pine or cedar wood that's been burnt into nearly black charcoal. It's a bit too smoky for me and I didn't apply much so a little goes a long way. This fragrance also brought me back in time to when I used to attend a women's circle for rituals around a fire out in the woods at night where we'd each apply pieces of birchwood, pieces of pine or cedar and also burnt incense. This fragrance definitely evokes a sense of that sacred space, of incense and smoke and meditation.

After the first hour, the scent became more leathery and brought back vivid memories of riding the motorcycle of a good friend where we'd both be wearing leather jackets. There's a spicy-amber mix that comes into play about a hour in and rounds off the fragrance. It's a scent to wear on a day like this one which is cool, damp and rainy, and overcast and where you're going to stay indoors curled up by the fireplace with a good book. I can't imagine wearing this when out with others, nor is it suited to the office due to its intense heady smokiness. It's definitely suited to wearing with a quality leather jacket as the loved one who'd given me this in the luckyscent sample commented when I was wearing it the other day.

This is definitely a fragrance for lovers of smokiness and cedar, and it brings to mind sitting around the campfire with friends, pieces of cedar wood being added to keep you warm, and watching the sparks flying up against the darkening evening sky. It's a very evocative fragrance and if you have any memories of campfires when younger or of wearing leather whilst riding a motorcycle, this will vividly bring those memories back to you.

The sillage is moderate with it becoming a skin scent more rapidly than I'd anticipated. The projection is quite good, though, and it's easy to underestimate this because once applied your nose quickly adapts to the fragrance so it's best to apply a little at a time. Whilst as a woman I find this quite nice, I prefer to layer it with my Clarin's Eau Dynamisante EDT just to take the edge off the smokiness and to give it a lighter note. That way, too, I'm able to wear it out and people have enjoyed the mix whilst this fragrance on its own often come across as a bit too strongly smoky. However, I'm sure some people prefer not to 'dilute' it in any way and just wear it by itself.

08/21/2022

Nushka
24 Reviews

Nushka

3

Sunlit wood in summertime

This fragrance is (just like Nuit de Bakélite) a world within itself, it reminds us that beyond smelling "nice" or "interesting", perfumes can tell a story.

Lots of mention of fire and smoke in other reviews, but it's not what I get.
I guess it's a cultural thing, but Bois d'ascèse for me is a sunlit pine forest in the middle of a hot continental summer. It brings me memories of summers with my Babushka, it warms my heart and makes me smile and sigh peacefully.
I've worked with wood some years ago - sawing it, piecing planks together, leaving it to dry in the sun; and this fragrance is the closest scent to natural freshly cut and dried wood planks I've ever encountered.
If this is a church, then it is a church in the sense that all Nature is sacred and all living things are connected to one another...
I love wearing it sparingly, on quiet summer evenings in the countryside, just for myself.

08/21/2022

8
Pricing 8
Bottle 7
Sillage 9
Longevity 9.5
Scent

VTrancoso
31 Reviews

VTrancoso

3

Bushfires in the countryside

After Nuit de Bakélite (masterpiece) this was the second good surprise I experienced from the Naomi Goodsir range. Essentially a woody incense that is generally associated with smoke from campfires. However there is much more. There is the aroma of a huge forest of ancient and imposing trees that surrounds us. The wood that burns doesn't have (IMHO) the characteristic of Birch Tar (birch tar) so well built in award winning Hyde (Hiram Green). Rather, I feel a fragrant wood that burns and reminds me of the bushfires in the countryside where we feel a breeze of aromatic plants. A slightly sweet smoke and a different incense. No monastic sensations. It is not “churchy” nor does it belong in a Buddhist temple. I didn't feel austerity or a feeling of asceticism (as the name suggests). Perhaps because it is tempered by a soft, blond tobacco that gives the arm the amber – giving it more richness, softness and a feeling of comfort.
I confess that I didn't smell whiskey or cinnamon, but the woody aroma with a leather and oak moss vibe is beautiful, very elegant, markedly masculine and “transparent”. It is not dense or opaque. A very pleasant scent despite being a bit linear. It lasts about 10 hours on the skin, has moderate projection and the sillage is smooth.
There is a sense of an environment that we have felt before. Maybe that's why it reminds me of the type of fragrances from the 1960s.

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