L'Artisan Parfumeur - Il Était Un Bois Review
Thoughts on L'Artisan's new 2024 release
Il Était Un Bois (which translates as ‘A Tale of Wood’) is the latest release from venerable niche brand, L’Artisan Parfumeur.
It’s fair to say that, since their acquisition by Puig in 2015, L’Artisan’s catalogue has undergone significant revision. A lot of its most well-regarded (if not best selling) perfumes have been discontinued and the newer releases, while often well composed, perhaps don’t generate as much of an emotional response as their forbearers. Compare the likes of Voleur de Roses, Dzongkha and Passage D’Enfer (all, thankfully, still available) to the more recent Memoire de Roses, Un air de Bretagne and Couleur Vanille and you’ll see what I mean.
Still, L’Artisan remain capable of producing some interesting pieces of work and last year’s nostalgic peach scent, A Fleur de Peche, in particular, stirred something within.
What then of Il Était Un Bois? The marketing brief states that:
The perfume explores all the different facets of the woods in an unexpected harmony. Discover its warm notes of vetiver, sweet buckwheat and cedar
As a description, this did ring some alarm bells with me - how could a perfume that contained just three accords, only one of which was actually a wood, cover all the different facets of the material? Well, the answer, which was swiftly discovered upon smelling, was that it couldn’t. Obviously.
This perfume isn’t a tale of wood - it’s a tale of vetiver and, yes, buckwheat. Given that, the fact that L’Artisan also sought to try and connect the perfume thematically to previous release Merchant Loup (which played with the concept of an enchanted forest) is curious at best.
At this point, however, I will park my criticism because, if you ignore the spiel and focus on the scent, what you actually have is a very pleasant unisex vetiver. Actually, the description for this one should have read ‘what if someone combined Lalique’s Encre Noire with a cereal bar?’ (I expect a call from L’Artisan’s marketing team after this is published).
Damned by faint praise, you might think, but the thing is, Encre Noire, whilst being an excellent take on vetiver, was almost so heavy on me that it practically put a black cloud above my head. I was just one of those people who, as much as I would have liked, couldn’t get it to work on me, and I often wondered how the composition could be reinterpreted for individuals who wanted a bit more radiance from their fragrance. It’s possible perfumer Caroline Dumur might have been working on the same conundrum…and I suppose the fact that she cracked it goes to show why she has a job in the industry, and I’m just someone writing about fragrance!
The buckwheat incorporated along with the vetiver accord brings to mind a sweet powdered flour, and this has the effect of pulling the base notes up by their bootstraps and making the whole composition sing. In short, ‘Black Ink’ is transformed in to ‘White Chalk’ (perhaps the fragrance should have been named ‘Craie Blanche’?). The only downside is that, like Encre Noire, Il Était Un Bois is a relatively linear scent, but its performance is, I am pleased to say, exceptional.
The elephant in the room in comparing these two fragrances is that you can pick up a bottle of Encre Noire for around £20, whereas the L’Artisan release has an RRP of £170 for 100ml, which is, frankly, obscene if not unusual nowadays. I have no mitigating comments in this regard, except to say that Chanel’s Sycomore, which is another more refined take on the Lalique retails at £210 for just 75ml, and it doesn’t perform as well as this release. To some, that will be cold comfort, but if you want a top notch vetiver and don’t mind paying the money, this might be the choice for you.