Vétiver oriental Serge Lutens 2004

Vetiver is one of my favourite notes. It is part of the base of more perfumes than one can detect. It gives a warm, woody facet to them. But it can also shine as the star in many performances. It can play the fresh, young, casual, lemony vetiver in Mugler Cologne or Paul Smith Story. It can also be the sophisticated, reserved vetiver of Guerlain or Vetiver Extraordinaire. It can bring on the darkness of Route du Vetiver and it can also play the Devil himself as in Lorenzo Villoresi’s rendition.

All this versatility seems to have an invisible barrier: the oriental family. It seems quite difficult to build an oriental perfume based on the earthy, smoky, woody vetiver. So when Serge Lutens decides to come up with Oriental Vetiver, this sounds a little pretentious and very interesting!

And in fact it is! Being a hardcore vetiver fan I had a really hard time finding the vetiver in this one. Once I did though, I realized that this wasn’t because it was discretely blended but because it was in such unlikely company that the surrounding notes distracted me. Unlike any other vetiver fragrance it opens with a sweet, velvety accord. I can smell the iris and the tonka, the expensive tonka, the one with the slight bitter almond note. It is sticky sweet with a powdery hue. There is a point in the development where vetiver breaks through the vale of thick and sweet notes to reveal its rubbery, rooty character. Think for a moment Vetiver Extraordinaire blended at equal volumes with La Guerlinade.

I cannot help thinking of Habit Rouge whenever I smell VO. It is not clear to me exactly why. It is not the similarity in notes per se but I believe it must be the intricate use of many different ingredients from across the spectrum of notes. Everything but the kitchen sink struggles inside the bottle for dominance and when they hit the skin hell breaks loose. A sweet hell. In fact Vetiver Oriental smells like the potion the Evil Queen soaked the Apple in for Snow White to eat. The intense edible sweetness seems to be there just to conceal the deleterious bitterness of vetiver and labdanum. It feels like danger in a bottle. But its elegance is undeniable. Every contradiction is under control in this composition. It wears like a green velvet frock coat: it is definitely something out of grandpa’s closet but worn in today’s context is totally eccentric.

This is one of those modern vetivers that doesn’t say ‘Vetiver’ and adds a few curliqueues as an afterthought, it’s a sublimated vetiver, one that does not speak it’s name.

Creamy and white, it’s an icing-sugar Oriental, cool and lightly minted; with amber, heavy-hipped sandal and musk.

There are a few other bits and bobs as well, including labdanum, moss, and green sappy twigs; something fruity and metallic, and ‘chocolate’ ... white?

And so - depending on which side you focus on - Vétiver can be seen as a pale Oriental, or a green chypre (without the dark patchouli).

It makes me think (vaguely) of Ma Griffe, that jolly green chypre for girls - the first youth fragrance.
But VO isn’t jolly or youthful, there’s something amorphous about it - a hedging at this, a hinting at that... something unresolved.

Even though it doesn’t make the Power Play of his more lurid works, like Santal Majuscule or Ambre Sultan, this is still a typical Lutens - in the sense that it’s working away at his fetish, the Oriental.

Being a mixture of chypre, and then Oriental, it’s a bit nebulous - neither one thing nor the other; a bit unfocussed.

A warm, sophisticated vetiver — I get a nice mix of earthy and balsamic notes at first. Over time it warms up and turns surprisingly sweet, almost nutty… and that’s where the magic fades a bit for me. I was hoping it would keep a dirtier, darker nuance, but instead it reminded me of Vetiver & Golden Vanilla and Chipmunk . Someone suggests also Fat Electrician , yes, I agree 100%. Lovely scents, of course — I just imagined this one as the rougher sibling of Patchouli Sauvage . That’s what I wanted it to be!
Still, definitely worth trying if you enjoy vetiver with a soft, sweet edge that doesn’t get cloying.

The website says that Serge Lutens has an intense dislike for men's colognes and toiletries because they are so harsh, so he wanted to make his own (smoother) version. This is a spicy woody vetiver with a hint of creaminess from the iris and sweetness from the chocolate. Serge definitely accomplished his goal of making a masculine fragrance that doesn't smell like everything else that is currently in the market. I will say, I was looking for the "weirdness factor" I've come to expect from Serge's fragrances but I did not find that here. I am not saying this is a bad fragrance. Its very creative and high quality, just more on the mass appealing side.

The projection is not too strong, it creates a scent bubble just off the skin and it lasted at least 5 hours. Definitely safe to wear to the office. Currently it looks like there is only one size available and its 75ml for $305. Which, wow, that is a lot.

I was intrigued by Vetiver Oriental from the moment I first sprayed it on a test strip, but it wasn’t until I tested it on skin that I realised its full potential. This has got to be one of the best things I’ve ever smelled.
Vetiver Oriental gets off to a challenging start with a sharp smell that I can only describe as “bright green”, a kind of poisonous, resinous and oily vetiver note. (It is also quite oily on my skin, leaving a noticeable sheen). Once the vetiver subsides, woody and amber notes make themselves known, and the entire scent profile shifts to something very smooth and gentle. From this point on the scent is fairly linear on me. Labdanum is certainly prominent, various dry woods, a hint of oakmoss, a chocolatey sweetness, and of course the oily vetiver (now tamed and in the background). It is a little sweet, but not at all gourmand to me. Instead, this fragrance takes me back to the church I used to attend growing up, with its old wooden pews and vaulted ceiling and the smell of those ancient varnished woods with a lingering odor of hundreds of years of candle smoke and incense. The incense note is a very specific resinous scent which I have come to associate with cistus leaves.
There is an emotional connection for me with this fragrance due to the nostalgia, for sure, but even if I didn’t have that scent memory associated, I would be in love with this fragrance, because that particular incensey-wood smell is just objectively gorgeous. I’ve also seen other reviewers comment on a nostalgic quality, so maybe it’s not just my scent memory contributing that impression.
If I had one criticism of this fragrance it's that it includes - faintly - a dusty note that I dislike because it always makes the back of my throat feel funny, maybe some kind of aldehyde (I mainly notice it in chypres). It's not a problem as long as I don't overspray, but I wish it wasn't there.