Eau de Cartier Essence de Bois Cartier 2012

Eau de Cartier Essence de Bois by Cartier

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7.1 / 10 95 Ratings

Eau de Cartier Essence de Bois is a perfume by Cartier for women and men and was released in 2012. The scent is woody-fresh. The production was apparently discontinued.
Pronunciation

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Main accords

Woody

Fresh

Spicy

Citrus

Floral

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes

Yuzu

Bergamot

Heart Notes

Oud

Violet leaf

Lavender

Violet

Base Notes

Musk

Ambergris

Patchouli

Perfumer

Mathilde Laurent

Ratings

Scent

7.195 Ratings

Longevity

5.471 Ratings

Sillage

4.673 Ratings

Bottle

7.376 Ratings

Submitted by Kankuro, last update on 12.06.2021.

Reviews

4 in-depth fragrance descriptions

03/03/2013

10
Bottle 5
Sillage 2.5
Longevity 4
Scent

Miaw2
339 Reviews

Miaw2

1

Light

Opens with violet leaf slaping your face, then joins the woody notes (oud? really?) that turns it into a fresh woody scent.

Lasting power is weak, around 3~4 hours. The solution?

About 10 sprays and you're set with great projection, big sillage and nice lasting power.

That's nothing actually unique scent but deserves at least one try.

Updated January 2014

11/29/2012

7
Scent

Coutureguru
223 Reviews

Coutureguru

3

Diet Oud

Out on one of my regular Sunday afternoon fragrance trawls (what else is there to do on a Sunday afternoon pray tell? … teehee) I had every intention of sampling Cartier's Déclaration d'un Soir … which has unhappily not made it to shops in my neck of the woods yet! Instead, Essence de Bois was on offer and as I hadn't tried it before either, I whacked a few hefty sprays to my left forearm.

"NICE!!!" … was my immediate exclamation, and it really only got better from there. Erring on the side of caution, I swept myself off to a late lunch of patè and champagne (Sunday afternoons are 'me' time and utterly sacrosanct LOL) all the while snuffling at the crook of my elbow and emitting little grunts of pleasure!
Essence de Bois contains a beautifully pared down Oud, evident from the first sniff. It's almost as if this note was put on a carb-free-high-protein diet and 60 000 steps a day, rendering it sleek, sophisticated and waif-like … not overpowering in the least!! Now … Musk and Violet are probably the two notes I detest the most in perfumery … so thankfully they don't make their presence felt here in any major way. What I do get is the lovely greenness of violet leaf ( similar to Grey Flannel but with the volume turned WAY down) bolstered by the hesperidic freshness of Yuzu. I also get quite a bit of Lavender … just delicious!!
The star of the show here is undoubtedly the soft Oud … backed up by a little Patchouli. If there is any Ambergris in this fragrance it doesn't register to my nose.

Essence de Bois is not going to win any sillage or longevity awards … it's an Eau de Toilette after all. As such, however, it is one of the best in this genre I have tried. I bought a 200ml bottle at a severely discounted price, making the day a winner all around!

09/27/2012

10
Bottle 7.5
Sillage 7.5
Longevity 7
Scent

Sherapop
1239 Reviews

Sherapop

Helpful Review 4

Cartier gets into the "oud" game...

So Cartier has now gotten into the oud game with its latest EAU DE CARTIER flanker, ESSENCE DE BOIS. Having sniffed their approach for the other flankers, involving lots of violet leaf buttressed by...more violet leaf (in the CONCENTREE) or orange (in the ESSENCE D'ORANGE), I was expecting a dusting of wood on top of a vast field of violet leaf.

To my surprise, ESSENCE DE BOIS features more oud than violet leaf, and there are several other contributing notes which together conspire to make this much more than just another EAU DE CARTIER flanker. They really toned down the violet leaf, actually, making the bois elements more dominant, so that I'd call this an independent fragrance from its namesake.

The other reason for regarding ESSENCE DE BOIS as a fragrance in its own right is that it strikes me as heavier than its predecessors: more of a perfume than a cologne. So I agree with those who find this iteration less refreshing, but I myself do not have a problem with the musk in this composition. To me, ESSENCE DE BOIS smells like a pretty decent woody oriental perfume, completely and utterly unisex. Yes, I do believe that the oud is the tame, Westernized version, intended for neophytes, which I am, so to me it smells good! (-;

07/21/2012

7.5
Bottle 5
Sillage 5
Longevity 8
Scent

Apicius
222 Reviews

Apicius

Helpful Review 4

Another oud?

No one can ignore oud nowadays, but only slowly this trend translates into the mass market. The Eau de Cartier variant Essence de Bois is one of the very few 60 € fragrances (~75 USD) with that note.

Nevertheless, Cartier refuses to follow the already beaten track. They withstood the general trend to release just another bottle of overblown mustiness to the market. Quite remarkably they chose the Eau series for their oud release – those perfumes all have a special air of easiness and lightness, and some are weak up to the limits of perceptabiliy!

Essence de Bois hardly departs from this route. Here, we have an Eau de Cartier enhanced by a very tender and sublime oud note. It is still a light perfume, and the oud rather supports the woodyness, not the mustiness. The rest is business as usual: you can sense the nearness to the original Eau de Cartier, and so it is mass market fragrance ingredients, but well done.

The oud note presumably comes from the factories of one of the big fragrance companies, and not from the forests of Borneo. So what! Also with other fragrant ingredients, we do not expect them to originate directly from the plants or ressources they are named after.

Revealingly also inexpensive perfumes from Arabian brands show us a sparingly use of oud: i.e., in Al Haramain's Excellent Men oud is just the faint background of an otherwise very western-style fragrance.

I like Essence de Bois – it is a nice alternative for oud critics and beginners. Is was a convenient wear. Oud is treated like any other note, and so, Essence de Bois might still be there after the hype is gone.