Reviews of Eau Sauvage by Christian Dior

As with so many classic scents, there are people who bemoan the current, reformulated version of Eau Sauvage. I am not one of them--I think it's fantastic. Very naturalistic citrus, basil, and jasmine opening. The jasmine tones down fairly quickly but remains an essential part of the composition. In its current form, at least, I find this to mostly be an excellent citrus-vetiver. Yes, there are some herbs and moss, but the core is citrus (mostly lemon) and vetiver, and the quality of the ingredients is apparent. A relaxing spring/summer fragrance that goes well with anything you might wear, from shorts and sandals to a suit. Sunny, optimistic, laid-back.

(222mL splash from the mid 1980s)
I've lathered myself in this - bathed myself in it; back of arms, inside of arms, back of hands, and neck… and it's either weak or I'm anosmic. Has the age of my bottle compromised its integrity? Or, is its close-to-the-skin subtlety and short lifespan part of the original intent? One day I'll do an arm-by-arm comparison with my other vintage bottle and find out; yes, I have two bottles because, regardless of this issue, I can't imagine myself not having plenty of this perfume to last me my life. I'm not the only one that has taken issue with its strength and longevity, and I'm also far from being the only one that thinks this is classic 70s/80s masculinity in a bottle. It's a square-chiseled jaw with subtle brown stubble, refined yet understated clothes, piercing eyes and a disarming smile. The lemon and bergamot top fades very quickly on skin, but lasts a good amount of time on the blotter (maybe this bottle is not as compromised as I suspect?). The first dry down, which happens quite quickly on blotters and skin, goes straight into a smooth but very dry herbal and floral heart. The top is the piercing eyes, the herbs and florals are the disarming smile because that middle is so comforting and smooth. It's rare, particularly these days, for herbs to not have a bracing and sharp vegetal green quality. Eau Sauvage's heart manages to smell like an herbal suspension. Then comes the square-chiseled and stubble coated jaw line in the form of ample oakmoss - real oakmoss! - musks, and touches of vetiver and woods. That real, glorious oakmoss and musk base is what triggers modern noses into immediately saying Eau Sauvage smells too old school or retro. However, we must note that the reason why it smells old school/retro is because we can't use real oakmoss anymore and haven't been able to for quite some time; had it still been permitted today, more masculine perfumes would smell like this - and how much better our life would be. Because this feels a bit dated to modern noses, and because the base is very much the star player when the overall life of the fragrance is considered, not many would want to pull this off nor could they pull it off. It will take a confident gentleman of a particular style to be able to handle Eau Sauvage in today's world. If we were to flash back to the 70s and 80s, when tons of men everywhere wore this, I cannot help but notice the correlation between how much masculinity has culturally changed to how much masculine perfumes have changed with it. This perfume had its heyday, and deserving of that and many more it is. But, perhaps today, we should not mourn that its heyday has passed and it is relegated to the shelves of connoisseurs and collectors since, after all, that's where the most beautiful things inevitably go.

A sparkling juicy lemon, with green herbs, spices, and a vintage oakmossy base. Its pure elegance in a bottle, perfect masculine scent that feels more mature, but its not so strict and formal that a younger man could not wear it, he definitely can wear Eau Sauvage, he just needs the right look and mindset for it. This has a playful, yet restrained side to it. This is a man that smiles, but never makes a clown of himself.

I’m feeling under the weather today and didn’t plan to wear any fragrance at all — but then this “savage water” reared its head. It’s just so smooth and natural, so subtle and comforting, so inviting and sensual… that it’s impossible to resist.

[There’s a reason why it’s still on Dior’s shelves after nearly 60 years, and continues to sell for a little over $1/ml. A testament to the timeless allure of this venerable juice.]

In its current form it’s a fine fragrance, but I find that the vintage has more character in the heart and base. Mine is from the 1980s (a beautiful art deco bottle with vertical grooves and a flared metal cap) and retains all of its integrity and wonder, from top to bottom. It was just the mood lifter that I needed this morning.

My preserved vintage of Eau Sauvage is an impeccable Roudnitska artifact. It's modern through the lens of the cultural decade, a sleek lemon eau fraiche that was given a flesh and pith, seasoned with the sweat squeezed out of swarthy spices. It marked the debut of Hedione, and for me to smell it here is to appreciate it in a whole new way, it has me imagine what its forerunners would be like had the pheromone-like molecule existed years before. Here, it seals all the aromatics with its wet jasmine tea cellophane. Then, it winds down to a smooth finish of moss, sandalwood and musk.

Overall, this a testament of the genius in unadorned simplicity. It is an institution in which so much has already been said. Sadly, it has over the decades become just a bit too watery in the middle and the bottom has fallen out. Much like all of the Dior classics, it is no longer respected by those who now possess its trademark. Its own flankers have outshined it in recent years, and young whipper snappers scoff at it as a grandpa scent, wondering why it even shares shelf space with the likes of "junior" Sauvage and all the vague and sweet-orris-loaf Hommes and their own flankers. In spite of the cruelty of time, it will forever be an icon.

Really nice fresh pick me up scent. I add a few drops to a well known lightly scented brand of Italian barber shop aftershave balm (milky white) at around £7 for 100ml (comes in a glass bottle) rather than spend £50+ on Dior’s Eau Sauvage infused version. A trick my father taught me that works well with any fragrance free/mild balms and decent EDT/EDP’s.

ES… the aftershave version of this EDT isn’t listed here (splash-on) it has decent longevity (at least 3 hours) and gives off a classy mild clean aroma with a hint of white florals.

Despite being an old geezer, I never experienced the original. Maybe Eau Sauvage was really good back in the day. My sample of the recent blend wasn't, though.

The opening is unapologetically fresh and bold, but immediately gives way to a note that is not only discordant, but downright disturbing. One of the other negative reviews here names the culprit: Indole. Ingredients containing indole are supposed to add an interesting animalic contrast to the fresher aspects of the concept. I suppose that's where the second part of the name comes from.

However, as my Google research confirms, the smell of indole may also produce perceptions of mothballs, bad breath, even feces. I smell a funk similar to that which slowly fills the kitchen when cauliflower is being boiled. Not something I want on my skin. Live and learn, I suppose.

A comfortable and sophisticated classic.

Being that I have never worn a vintage version of Eau Sauvage, I can’t comment on what is missing, but only on what is present.

Eau Sauvage opens with a blast of citrus ranging from lemon to bitter orange, interspersed with cumin and rosemary. The spices stop the citrus becoming generic, and the balance between the components suggests at the sophistication to come.

After about fifteen minutes I get an elegant combination of basil, carnation, and iris, which joins with the citrus and spice and lasts for at least eight hours on my skin.

The base is a combination of soft sandalwood, soapy vetiver, and a little bit of amber and moss.

Wearing Eau Sauvage makes me want to play George Benson tunes on my Nashville telecaster.

Eau Sauvage is probably a bit too elegant for sitting on the couch playing a guitar in jeans and a T-shirt, but somehow it works.

Don’t wait as long as I did to get yourself a bottle.

An excellent all time classic. Roudnitska raised the bar for masculine scents with this superb fresh and manly creation. Very fresh and very complex in the vintage formula and still a lovely citrus scent in today's slightly attentuated version. You must try if you haven't.

Scents are to be weared. This is a statement of the obvious, not so if you take in mind scents can wear the wearer: this happens when the scent is invasive (i.e. mounstrous sillage). This is not the case of Eau Sauvage: it shares many points in common with classic EdCs, a citric base, some herbs, Hedione, a synthetic molecule that provides jasmine - like accords and oakmoss to the extent allowed by regulatory offices.

Expect from it all the beauty of traditional Eau De Colognes plus some more - not notes, I mean, discretion, as demanded by good taste. You might as well contrast it with today's Sauvage to check how things changed in fifty years. Yes, the sense of elegance either changed or dissapeared.

Always liked this one so I picked up another bottle aftee I couldn't locate a replacement for my Dior Homme Cologne. Still great, but there was something extra or new I'd never noticed before. Upon initial spray there was a note that immediately reminded me of another Dior favorite of mine, Fahrenheit. It faded fast so either I'd never noticed it before or it's part of a more recent formulation. Wish it had lingered longer and I'm certain it would be no mystery to better noses, but the renewed enjoyment of this classic is more than enough.

For those not content with Eau Sauvage's perceived longevity, try a spray on the neck and one on each wrist followed up by the same a few minutes after the first have thoroughly dried. Mine is very dry skin, even in humid central Florida, but this method has allowed me to enjoy many a fragrance I otherwise felt had questionable “performance”. Undeniably good juice and worth the attention.

My favourite fragrance of all time.

The addition of a ‘dirty' jasmine and herbs to a sparkling lemon top creates a real ‘thirst quenching' effect that the citrus itself could never achieve. I liken it to the effect of a good cup of English Breakfast Tea - it's not a cold, sparkling beverage but it has such a balance of invigoration and depth that when done properly will quench your thirst like nothing else.

Eau Sauvage is a timeless, intimate, ‘gentlemanly' and versatile fragrance. A real joy to wear.

The opening is not-too-sweet lemons with something kinda musty or animalic. It also has a slight herbal greeness. The animalic jasmine and patch combo kick in next, giving it that mature, almost feminine quality that many older scents have to my nose. It's not heavy it all. Feels versatile and could be quite effective in a warmer climate.

I'll comment on performance but my sample didn't come with any indication of what year it was produced, so I assume it's fairly recent and probably what's available in stock at retail. Projection was just okay throughout but longevity was pretty good, lasting 8 hours.

Now unrecognisable as the classic I remember from the 1970s. Weak with poor sillage and longevity and on me it smells like an old-fashioned tin of lemon scented wax polish. Not an unpleasant scent if you want to smell (faintly) like the furniture.
This review is of the EDT.

What can you say about a classic like Eau Sauvage that hasn't already been said?

So I'll keep it brief: it's an impeccably made, perfectly balanced, anywhere-anytime creation with a gorgeous lemon-citrus opening and an herbal heart. It gets as close to "timelessness" as fragrances can get.

I had a revelation last summer (in June-July 2019), when I stayed for one month in an airb&b rental apartment located in a hilly residential area near Porta Romana of Firenze, Italy. To my utter astonishment and great delight, every morning, when I climbed upstairs from the bedrooms to the living room / kitchen area, I was invariably greeted by a natural fragrance wafting through the wide-open windows from the villa's private garden, that was identical to Eau Sauvage. Voila, now we know it: Monsieur Roudniska must have spent some time during summer in the Tuscan hills near Firenze and the fragrance that envelops them in June-July provided the inspiration for his iconic creation without equal!

I've had bottles of Eau Sauvage - both the current version and the vintage, and they are both wonderful. I do notice the lack of oakmoss in the current version, but it's not that different. This perfume was never an oakmoss bomb that had to suffer an unfortunate reformulation. In all its versions, I find it an incredibly refined fresh/green fragrance, with hints of lemon, lime, basil, hints of florals and faint whispers of woody-mossy notes all culminating into an accord of breathtaking beauty and immaculate sophistication. It is notoriously weak, especially faint rather than short-lived (it does last a few hours as a skin scent with a liberal application), but this is a perfume where it's all about quality over quantity.


4/5

It smells like classical cologne but it's got a very nice twist of musk that makes it deeper. Very good, and it could be considered as unisex.

My all time favorite. My grandfather, who was born in Italy and came here later on, wore this every day. He said it reminded him of his basil in the garden he kept. To this day, I can still smell it on his old clothes we keep, and still have one of his old bottles he never finished.

Yes, silage is low and it does not last that long, but I find it lasts longer when sprayed on clothes in warmer weather. There is a slight differnce in the vintage vs. the new re-formulation. I find the vintage to be just a little more "heavy", and the newer lighter.

I'll start with a confession: For me, there's currently no fragrance that tops Eau Sauvage. So why write yet another raving review if I'm just another fanboy? Because don't think I am. And if I am, then I hope that you can at least learn something from what I've experienced. So here's my story - it's rather a long one, but bear with me - or just skip to the part that says "Kid, there's...".

First of all, Dior Eau Sauvage isn't the same as Dior Sauvage, so those of you looking for the Johnny Depp Sauvage, kindly go find the right page.

Now… A few years ago (it may sound ridiculous for some, but it was as far back as 2014), I started looking for a gentlemanly scent, something with style, something to impress, a scent that my favourite characters from books, film or TV would wear. I was, in short, looking for something to attract the ladies. Eau Sauvage was the fragrance that came up the most in my online searches. It was mentioned as _the_ classic, something that Steve McQueen swore by, and the product of one of the stars of perfumery, Edmond Roudnitska.

So I tried that Eau Sauvage, bought a 50ml bottle - and was less than impressed. In fact, I went back to the store I bought it in and complained about it lasting only an hour or so on my skin, nothing at all like what I'd expected from my internet "research". I was told that it was a very light citrus summer scent and was fobbed off with a whole bunch of samples (most of which I don't really care about and still keep in a box, including what the shop owner professed to be her favourite, Dior Homme).

I wore that 50ml bottle, wearing at least two sprays at a time, for quite a while - trying a lot of others in between. I was spending a lot of time travelling internationally by plane and I really did try a lot of other scents. Still, I regularly came back to that weak citrus cologne.

One day, about a year ago, I got my hands on a vintage bottle of Eau Sauvage, sealed and from the 90 judging by the box. I tore into it like a kid at Christmas, unscrewed the lid, put some on my arm and... was underwhelmed, again.

By that time my fling with perfumery had turned serious. I wasn't spraying on nearly as much as before. And I'd bought essential oils, resins and other partially very expensive ingredients, started smelling, comparing and mixing, the results amounting to the same thing as my reading - that perfumery was much more about exact measures and how the individual substances reacted with each other than how I imagined them to smell in my head, all the time still looking for something like the ultimate attractant.

I'm going to skip a few steps and just tell you what I'd tell myself back in 2014:
I'm still using Eau Sauvage, the modern version mostly, because it's easy to wear, unobtrusive, agreeable. It's become my signature scent without me noticing it, really.
I like to wear the vintage version on occasion (I just have to add that there's hardly any resemblance to the new one, the old one has much more character, it's much more capturing - but it has made me feel like I were trapped in a bubble of flatulence twice now in certain surroundings. There must be some strange chemical reaction I can't place yet...) but the new version remains the juice I've used most of over the years. I've even started mixing it with some of my raw materials. Now, I always have a 5ml bottle of it mixed with some myrrh tincture, sandalwood and oud ready - I jokingly like to call it my personal Ruthvah, but hey -

Kid, there's no such thing as a love potion number whatever. I've tried a lot of things that claimed to be. So-called pheromones, Calone, Hedione, Iso E Super, ambergris, civet, castoreum. None turned out to be more than the thing that really counts: belief in yourself.
So what all this ranting boils down to is this: wear what makes you feel the way you want to. For me, this is it.

Oh dear jeebus. I adore the modern stuff, but vintage is just properly blow your mind amazing.

Whichever way you choose to buy it it, Eau Sauvage is a men's classic that every gent ought to have on his shelf at least once.

The opening is glorious - lemon that dips between presenting perfectly naturally to having a candied edge, cumin and rosemary giving a ruggedly spicy, almost leathery touch and then to me developing into a wickedly smooth finish.

If you haven't given it a try yet, I'd consider starting with the modern formulation to see if you like the DNA, then consider hunting vintage because this isn't exhorbitantly expensive (yet).

I love this, it is a fairly dry citrus. Herbal and manly. Smells well groomed. It is polite, and not overtly brash like many of its contemporaries. It doesn't fade instantly, but sooner than I would consider good. Say below average longevity, but not poor.

Eau Sauvage Parfum is probably my favorite scent period. So naturally I was going to gravitate towards the original version of it. Every time my wife drags me into Sephora I smell it on paper. The opening is beautiful, so fresh, so clean. So finally yesterday I sprayed some juice on my hand and left. About 20 minutes later it turned into a skin scent on me. Not only that but I didn't like what it turned into. It completely strayed from the beautiful opening that attracted me to it in the first place but rather a dirty vetiver vibe. Almost got a Polo Green vibe from it, and unfortunately that does not blend well with my skin. Such a shame because it truly has a great opening but whatever, at least I didn't waste my money on something I don't like.

This as we know it comes from the past as a traditional clean, citrusy based fragrance with a dry down of a woody. This fragrance is in my meh list as it not intended to wow or intrigue anyone. A work scent is more to its niche. Sillage is standard and longevity is in the middle due to its citrus nature.