Oriental Velours
Les Indémodables (2016)

Once in while I've come across a scent that stirs my Soul. Often Myrrh is the culprit.
Oriental Velours struck me in this way almost immediately.
The presentation of this ingredient, in this scent, is stunning.
Myrrh Resin, for me, carries a character that is of the Earth in contrast to Frankincense which carries a character of the Heavens.
The mating of Myrrh to the Camphor of Spruce is quite brilliant and has me wishing to have a chewing gum scented in this way.
Not a scent Animalic, it's Spiritual.

I fell in love with my sample and Oriental Velours is actually my favorite of the Les Indemodables Perfumes. There is a missing component in the notes: Essence of Spruce from the Alps.

Gorgeous myrrh, beautiful spruce fir needles, Haitian Vetiver, and beneath a soft jasmine with just a hint of vanilla. Once on skin, these blend together to just smell good, although I do get an evolution that implies a pyramid. Beginning myrrh and fir are more dominant, then the jasmine and vanilla become more noticeable, but this is not a gourmand or even sweet vanilla. The vetiver then takes the lead and lingers longest on my skin.

When I went back to price check a bottle, I found Lucky Scent to be out of stock! Les Indemodables was also out of stock and I couldn't find it listed…Found it in stock at F Vault and made it mine.

Thankfully, I have learned that it isn't discontinued, just not as big a seller so they will make batches on a limited basis - around 100 per year.

Adding a second review 2/3/26

Part of my college sorority’s pledge was “to be loveable rather than popular”. And sometimes that results in losing friends, likes (who cares!), (elections.) Or even diminished sales when you are a perfume.

Les Indèsmodables Oriental Velours is very velvety and comforting to some of us. It is to me.

And so, it is now, only produced once a year. But hey! At least they still make it and offer it. I bought mine from Jana at Fragrance Vault. It smells like an alpine forest. I love the Spruce Fir forest found only in the highest elevations of the mountains I roamed from 3rd-12th grade. That smell imprinted upon me.

Doc and I, when he is feeling well enough, make pilgrimages to Indian Gap and just open the windows to drink it in. Does this smell exactly like that? No. But there is a cool misty tingle I get in the opening. Then I perceive crushed spruce and fir needles underfoot. If I really pay attention, the earthy forest floor comes forth. Perhaps it is the myrrh resin that is contributing to the coniferous forest sensation.

All I know is this…after we sit in the car enjoying a picnic, I cannot resist walking out on the Appalachian Trail into the dark green…sometimes finding a boulder to nap upon, while Doc takes care to set up his camera. His specialty…macro plant shots. Then lovely landscapes. And sometimes, if my hair isn’t too wild and I 😔 and 🤷‍♀️ I give in to letting him use me for scale.

Oriental Velours can make me feel warm and comforted, yet a little chilled and teary eyed at the loss of time due to the memories. I highly recommend you order a sample. It isn’t to everyone’s taste…like the high country. It can be a little harsh…like a southern highlander who sometimes allows the “Scotch-Irish (loads of English too) with a hint-of-Spanish temper” say what’s on her mind.

But there is a kernel of reality there in Oriental Velours. Reality isn’t airbrushed or perfect. It ain’t auto-tuned to perfection. It still has a touch of roughness. And it is

beautiful.

Oriental Velvet is a case study in textures, but it's a study of 3D, not a 2D texture you palpate. Whether or not this smells the way velvet feels is going to be a purely subjective abstraction determined by the wearer and the abilities of their nose, but I have to say that I'm convinced. When I see and feel velvet, there is a density to it that barely lets any light come through. The density also brings a shine to it, as the light that cannot penetrate bounces off of the rich color of the tightly woven fabric more than something like cotton or linen; it's silken in that way. Speaking of silk, there is a very plush feel to velvet that makes you want to caress it and find the gaps, but you never do because it always feels seamless and without any palpable edges or fibers. Despite its density, it is lighter in weight but without feeling fleeting. Unlike silk that can drape over you in a near weightless way to an extent you might not even notice it, there is body and weight to velvet that imparts the texture of the silk but with a swaddling comfort.

Over the top of the perfume - and I do mean over the top, a couple feet away from the skin you applied it to - there is a sheen in the air of an absolutely gorgeous jasmine note. The typical whiteness of jasmine is here more radiantly golden in color, a gentle orange sun reflecting off of it, and in lacking that crisp floral-citrus whiteness we are used to it is, instead, beautifully indolic and musky. Below this golden and radiant sheen swirls a thicker and denser layer of cool myrrh smoke and vetiver aromatics, perfectly balanced between green and resinous, rooty/woody notes, and incense smoke. As if the myrrh and vetiver were gently smoldering in a draft-less room, their smoke hovers in the air occupying the entirety of the space. The jasmine with its beautiful light-filled sheen, and the myrrh and the vetiver with their space-filling silken smoke tendrils, work beautifully to give the perfume a smooth, full, and supple texture. Perfectly stitched to the underside of this layer is yet a denser and more seamless layer of balsams and vanilla, giving the whole of the perfume the comforting weight of a luxurious and dense fabric.

In the end what we have is a floral amber, and you'll find plenty of examples out there of florals working with green aromatics working with balsams and vanillics. Where Les Indemodables does something different for the genre is by giving us a perfume focused on two aspects often overlooked: texture and detail. In most perfumes these aspects are sacrificed for complexity, longevity, or to squeeze a particular accord into a perfume for the sake of ticking a market-trend box. Les Indemodables and Dubois sacrificed no aspects in creating Velours as far as my nose can tell. The materials are heavenly and decadent, rich yet diffusive, and they are blended to an exceptional level of texture with no detail or space between the notes overlooked. I'm having that involuntary reaction I sometimes get of failing to stop my arms and the backs of my hands from going to my nose at any moment to get one more intoxicating hit. I would be hard pressed to argue against this being the best perfume Les Indemodables has released to date, and that bar was already very high.

One of the best jasmine notes I ever smelled. This oriental is one of my favorites. A future buy for sure.

A delightful balsam quality that is cool yet warm, where gummy myrrh is literally spruced by woody terpenes, rolled in earth and the flirty floral; coniferous, sweetish vetiver, jasmine indole and dry vanilla... Collectively, a dusty green ambery kind that hovers like gorgeous resinous soot of alpine spirits and saplings. Intriguing!