Sycomore
Eau de Parfum, Chanel (2016)

Time for my favorite game, a format comparison. On my left arm is a new Sycomore EdP and on my right is the original Les Exclusifs EdT release. I can keep this very simple: these are very nearly two different perfumes. The EdT is one of the driest and woodiest vetivers I’ve ever smelled. The similarities to Encre Noir are significant. In true Les Exclusifs EdT style, it’s full of air and space. The very woody vetiver stretches from the top to the base of the perfume, and in the final skin scent it pairs beautifully with sandalwood and purple violets. The EdP uses the same woody vetiver but seems to use less of it. It’s decidedly floral, heavily leaning on the aldehydes and violet flower note in the top and heart. The final skin scent is very similar to the EdT but softer, more floral, a bit sweeter and wetter. The EdT is a very strident, stately, and stiff character to the EdP’s very pleasant, relaxed and easy beauty. These two formats aren’t the same perfume; think of them as siblings with very different personalities. But, just like a parent, I love them both.

Revisiting Sycamore after many years and then considering it one of the three best vetivers (over 60 experienced) I had ever encountered, I am still entranced by it in its new edp concentration.

The vetiver and the cypress (smells to me like cedar shavings) wind around each other like a helix and make constant love. It is so subtle, as I would expect from a Chanel, and it is divine. I wish it were affordable. I must make do with dabs from my 4 ml. mini.

For the time left me on earth, I will stay with the discontinued Givenchy and the Guerlain, but if I win the lottery, Chanel had best set aside a shopping venture.

I adore this fragrance. It is beautiful in autumn. I love the forest and this reminds me of hiking through a boreal forest with its fermented scent of decaying leaves, evergreen, and sleeping spring perennials. A dreamy autumn dream. I’m instantly transported to my favorite trail wearing my Danner Mountain Light boots surrounded by red, gold, and mossy greens. I deeply inhale and enjoy. Pure love for this fragrance and I thankfully have a full big bottle in my collection. This was my first Chanel I ever bought. Purchased it directly from their online store.

I had sprayed several of Chanel Les Exclusifs on testers in the Chanel perfume store on the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, with the initial thought that I was looking for "Bois des Îles." No, not quite that. But not quite anything else, either. I ultimately sprayed "Sycomore" on my wrists, but was underwhelmed. We left the store. Then out in the city, as the evening passed, I would be surprised on raising my fork or taking off my glove or other hand gestures to catch a lovely little puff of a sublime scent. It was sweet not in a sugary way, but in the simple, airy sweetness of trees and earth. This vanilla pink pepper juniper accord could recall the scent of fir cones on the Maine coast, or a hemlock bough swaying over a tent. Chanel recounts that Gabrielle, in 1933, named it for the giant sycomore tree to represent the heat radiating from the earth in early autumn, somehow in analogy with the volanoes among which she had grown up in Auvergne. This Eau de parfum by Jacques Polge in 1916 (after the EDT in 1909) is as unisex as the noble sycomore towering overhead. The cypress, cedar, balsam and smoky Haitian vetiver wave in the vanilla air with a pink pepper accord, almost evoking the salinity of the coast. The needles and cones and wood of the trees communicate the sublime sweetness that excites the senses beyond their ordinary limits. I will be hungering in my days for the sublime puffs, accompanying my movements for hours, of these sandalwood memories of nature. I am glad I got the 200 ml bottle.

I bought a bottle online from Chanel and you get a free tester sample with it to try if you have never smelt it before. Anyway I'm glad I did because I will be sending it right back!! I read the reviews before buying and thought 'that's something I will probably like' but either they sent the wrong sample out disguised as Sycomore, or there's something wrong with my nose! To me it just smells very light, leftover bath water! Everything is just blended - I can't really pick out anything, apart from its just a very light slightly floral scent, and it definitely isn't worth the £200! I picked it because I wanted something a bit different from the Antaeus that I usually wear, and I don't really like the other mens fragrances. Anyway, this is not what I was expecting. Its nice enough, but not for that price.

The EDP lacks the dark, smoky mystique of the excellent EDT, but it's nice enough on its own terms.

As many have noted, this is similar to, but more full-bodied and rounded, than Encre Noire, but I'd still opt for Encre Noire at the end of the day, because it's more striking in its severity and commitment to the concept.