Nature Millénaire
Yves Rocher (2000)

Nature Millénaire is one of those fragrances that makes me wish I'd been more aware of perfume when I had started my first serious job and could afford it. As it was, when this was launched, I was still so slavishly faithful to Burberry for Women, Bvlgari Black, and the Bvlgari tea fragrances (Au Thé Rouge in particular) that really cool perfumes like Nature Millénaire, Gloria Cacherel, and Alexander McQueen My Queen came and went without me noticing them.

Nature Millénaire starts off with one of the most natural-smelling cedar accords I have ever smelled – soft, waxen, and ‘golden', it has none of the abrasive bitterness or steel-wire radiance I've come to expect and what's more, cleverly pulls down on the expensive buttery facets of iris to make it smell even smoother. It smells lightly incensey too, in that late 1990s, early 2000 style that saw its zenith in 10 Corso Como – a kind of hazy, supermodel-bland mélange of pale woods, incense, and gentle spices whose attractiveness is hard to define but genuine, nonetheless.

Nature Millénaire is soft to the point of being boneless. Its lack of definite character is a pro, not a con. It's just an easy-going, good-smelling fug of incensey cedar and orris powder that hangs around like a good mood. I can see this working in the way that Annayake Miyako does – or used to, until that one also got discontinued – i.e., capable of bathing you in a Zen cloud of woody-amberiness while transmitting at such a low frequency that nobody at the proper social distance will pick up on it.

This is your stereotypical male fragrance that has been turned into a unisex one. It smells spicy and natural, and layers well with anything vanilla. I love that I found a version of this from the launch year.

If I had known back then, this was to be a short-lived fragrance I would've bought more.

This was a warm, woody perfume that bordered on unisex, in my opinion. It is a dreamy balsamic concoction. Sweet cedar, with musky, muted iris. It can still be found. For outrageous prices, that is. Nature Millenaire is the fragrance that led me to finding this site called Basenotes.

If you stumble upon this at a sale somewhere, snap it up. It was ahead of its time, in its creation. Oliver Cresp knew what he was doing...

I totally loved this fragrance. It took me to a place, that no other fragrance has ever taken me before. I love truly natural scents. To me, this scent is like fresh, black earth after a long rain. It reminded me of when I was a child, and helped my mother in her vegetable garden. I love that "dirt" smell. I have only smelled one other fragrance like this one, and I cannot remeber the name. It seems like perhaps it was Gap "Pink", or something similar. But, Nature Millenaire will always be one of my all-time favorites. I only wish I could still find it...

I wore this for many year and I was alway ask what perfume I was wearing. A couple of times I was follow when in the mall until the person had the courage to ask about my perfume.

Not at all what I was expecting and not particularly natural smelling either...I expected something warm and earthy, I ended up smelling like a "natural" loaf of rye bread heavy on the caraway.