Un Bois Vanille

I finally got a sample and I am OBSESSED. This is not your usual vanilla, no. This is something that instantly teleported me to an old, elegantly decorated french maison from 17th century. It's dusty and quiet, maybe too quiet for my liking and it's already dark outside, so the room I'm in is illuminated by a few candles. I'm sitting in a velvet chair, reading a really old looking book. There are portraits of aristocrats staring at me from the walls, but I feel oddly at peace. Maybe it's the candles, the warmth that radiates from them... or it's the room itself, frozen in time, allowing me to feel that stillness in my bones. The room whispers to me its many secrets, things that happened behind those walls, things no one else will ever know. It should be unsettling, but it isn't. I immerse myself in this fragment in time and it finally clicks: I've been here before. In a past life, perhaps.

Really a stunning confection of woody notes, Un Bois Vanille manages to leverage its (rather detectably) synthetic components to nevertheless smooth and balance out the profile such that nothing stands out too much. The liquorice, vanilla, woods and beeswax all harmonise as if effortlessly to create a sense of lazing on a temperate day in a wooden house in some mountainous landscape somewhere. Easygoing, recumbent, sweet but smooth and polished. Smelling it makes me want to go to sleep without setting an alarm. Its enduring popularity (and broad unisex appeal) speaks to the artistry and skill with which it was originally composed - while my tastes are less for the vanillic-sweet these days, when I return to this I remember just why I so loved vanilla early in my perfume journey.

I'm wearing Un Bois Vanille today, and I'm thinking about the most common criticism of this beauty, that it smells like a candle, but if it is a candle, it is a magical poetic candle in a sunken cathedral in the depths of an enchanted sea. At any rate, it's funny to me that people would rather smell like a photorealistic jelly donut than a candle, and I don't concede that this gives pure candle anyway. Yes, there is beeswax, which is going to remind many people of a candle, but there are many other notes, including the most gloriously creamy sandalwood, that remind me of other things. But if am going to smell like something inanimate, I would much rather smell like polished antique furniture or a fine old candle than a jelly donut.

This is an honestly melancholic vanilla, one that feels a little bittersweet. Reminds me of those memories we all have, those you can’t quite shake but wouldn’t want to. It’s elegantly creamy and honeyed, but there’s a deep bitterness running through it, grounding the sweetness in a way that feels genuinely human. I get this nut liqueur-like quality to it too—warm, rich, and spiced, but in a soul-touching, reflective way. There's a comforting aspect, yes, but not the fluffy kind. Comforting in the sense of laying on the floor in contemplation, half your body on the velvet carpet, the other half on smooth, polished wood. With just a hint of something wistful lingering in the air, oh the power of vanilla booze on a cold rainy night.

A pleasant, mild mannered, soft vanilla - not too sweet nor powerful, quite a mature vanilla if such a thing exists. No coconut to my nose at all. Pleasant but not groundbreaking - it’s like a feel good cup of hot cocoa on a winters day - not so much in the scent itself but as in how it makes you feel. Intimate projection. There is an emergence of white musk later on which is what I think reads coconut to some - on me its more a bright musk. Bois de Vanille is nice but I’m not sure it quite merits the price tag. Wonderful long dry down though to a soft edible skin scent - the kind that is lovely to sleep in. Very private for a vanilla but very lovely.