Serge Lutens, Sa Majesté La Rose & Miel de Bois

Miel de Bois and Sa Majesté La Rose are like gourmet comfort foods. Both start out as good examples of highly recognizable, traditional scents (cathedral incense, rose), with a twist (honey, nutmeg). The nutmeg-rose combo is especially lovely - the hint of spice suffuses the rose rather than peeking forward from its petals. It's a soft, absorbent spice, not a sharp, bright one. Spice cake, maybe. I don't love the honey - it remains too separate from the incense and seems like an afterthought.

Eventually, both perfumes fade back into their traditional forms, until they might as well be essential oils. The drydowns are like that hot guy at your college who played guitar in an indie-rock band and studied abroad in South Africa for a semester. Years later, you learned that he had settled down with a consulting job and a family and a loft and was pulling a solid 6 figures. The rose drydown especially has that complacent knowledge of how comfortable and bright its future will be.

Rose is the one fragrance that can handle powder (usually powder resides in that geriatric Chanel No. 5 territory). I love the powder-musk drydown of a good rose. I love it. The drydown of the Miel de Bois is less pleasant - as the honey fades completely, the incense has a little while sit on its own before it turns from the vast, smoky, wood and stone combo of my catechised youth, into something brighter, coniferous. There's a hint of cheap sport in the later drydown, of that juniper, locker-room aroma of Irish Spring Soap and men's shaving lotion, as if our hero had to downgrade from a chic urban loft to a bungalow in Jersey.