Bois du Portugal Creed for men

I expected something more in this perfume. I find it quite silimar with Heritage Guerlain. The main difference is the opening. Bois is more citrusy in the beginning than Guerlain. My wife bought me the 2.5 oz and i used it only 2 days. The base notes are full of sandalwood, slightly sweet and powdery. I will never use it again as is not the type of masculine scent i like....I bought it for EUR 165 and is for sale if someone wants it. EUR 100 and the delivery on me. Just sent me a message.

Bois du Portugal reminds me a LOT of New York by Nicolaï or Heritage by Guerlain, but not as overtly powdery. Bois du Portugal, at least on me, has more neroli up top and isn't as "dandified" as either of those fragrances; it's more on the woody-spicy side. I've tried it before and I know I liked it, but I'll need to give it another few wearings before I make a final call on it.

When I sprayed this on, I got a nice spice blend from a distance. I put my nose close and sniffed. DIRTY FEET. Sharp and pungent. Whew, that's unpleasant. 10 minutes later, I get wet animal. 30 minutes in, the animalic scent begins to fade, and I start getting a hay note. 1 hour in and it has faded to a nice light musk smell, similar to Muscs Koublai Khan. The spice smell I get from a distance throughout. If you can make it past the the first 30 minutes, it's not bad. Just keep your nose away from the application point. Grade: C+

This is one very capable man. Absolutely confident and self assured. Quiet and calm. The sort of man that leads flawlessly when he dances.

Does that make him an old soul? Probably, but he is definitely sexier for it.

Bois du Portugal is arguably Creed's best masculine. Unfortunately, one could also contend it's Creed's dullest masculine. I think it's an over-priced clone of Pierre Cardin Pour Monsieur - which smells better by the way, even in cologne form. An explosion of aroma-therapeutic lavender off the top of BdP slides rapidly into a sandalwood, cedarwood, and ambergris arrangement. Cedar is dominant, and frankly I dislike cedar, enough to make avoiding this note in fragrance a priority, no matter how high-end or well conceived it is. However, the cedar in Bois du Portugal melds well with the sandalwood, which is dense and creamy. I may have more issues with the thick lavender because I dislike poorly-rendered lavender almost as much as well-rendered cedar, and in BdP, the lavender is far from great. Caron for men boasts a far better herbal lavender accord, and even Cool Water, with its blatantly synthetic "blue" lavender, manages to integrate the note with more finesse. Here it just smells detached and loud, as though the nose behind the perfume wanted lavender to introduce the woods and then make for the door. Try this one if you're looking for a traditional masculine with classical elements, and are tired of the legions of olfactory mushes that plague the genre. But be warned - beyond having excellent note separation, this Creed offers little to the imagination.

Very old fashioned scent. It is a rich fragrance that just doesn't have a place in my collection. There is nothing wrong with it; it just smells of times ago. I can picture my grandmother saying, "Oh, my, what a nice perfume."

4/10

Oh, this is good stuff! Bois du Portugal is a warm and heady concoction of woods (Mysore sandalwood and cedar), vetiver, lavender and bergamot. It's for those 'larger than life' characters. The man who wears BdP walks a fine line between gentleman and arrogant prick, but either way you adore him!

While there is something pompous or ostentatious about BdP for the bystander, the wearer himself feels cocooned and comforted. It's the fragrance equivalent of being chauffeur driven around in a Rolls-Royce all day.

I would recommend this for a mature man with deep pockets mainly because Creed prices are ridiculous and you will definitely want more!

(For Baronbvp: I read somewhere that this is Paul Newman's signature fragrance and thanks for your kind words on my Habit Rouge review!).

Similar drydown to PdN's New York (but that one has strong orange blossom). If you want a super cheap version of this, try Realm for Men, which I actually like more, because I feel it is a bit more dynamic (though it does smell a bit cheaper). The strong lavender makes it "masculine," simply by conventions that developed over the last several decades in the perfume industry. The balance here is quite good; it smells a little bit like maple syrup, but not enough to be irritating (as some feel towards the Marquis de Sade unisex fragrance). I don't get much wood here. If you want that, I suggest Lalique Pour Homme (lion). No, I don't think it's worth the price, relatively speaking, but some people have so much money that it really isn't a big difference, and so they buy what they like best.

I bought a sample of this on ebay this week waiting for it to come in stay tuned.

**Update**
12-16-2010.

After more than a month waiting, I finally received my sample.

The opening is very much a woody oriental; so much so that the beginning is very similar to Creed Himalaya IMO.

I agree with shamus 1 in that the drydown does smell like a spicy Chanel Pour Monsieur. I think it is the sandalwood mixed with the vetiver that is giving a vanilla smell; similar to Chanel P. M. Imo.

Overall, not a bad fragrance
But not for me.

**UPDATE NO 2**
12-17-2010.

after another full day of wearing this..I gotta say, I'm hooked. This is truly an intoxicating fragrance the woody cedar spice is amazing; not to mention the longevity, on my skin it lasted a good 10 hours no joke; This stuff makes its presence known. Its a throwback to the 80s power frags; and takes no prisoners.

definitely for the 35 and up gentleman. who wants to exude money and class; not for the teenage club hoppers this stuff is so potent , it will probably kill them.

Spicy, dry, woody, and old-fashioned. Smells somewhere between Lagerfeld and Santos. BdP smells very nice and is masculine to the core, but let's face it: Creed is overpriced.

Creed BOIS DU PORTUGAL has a marked incense note, which dominates the composition from start to finish. I do not even detect the lavender, to be honest, so strong is the incense. The highly oriental quality surprised me from the listed notes: cedar, sandalwood, lavender, and vetiver, so I went on a fact-finding mission and learned that both cedar and sandalwood are often used to make incense.

Although the Creed people say that BOIS DU PORTUGAL is appropriate also for women, it seems more feminine than masculine to me, and I would not be surprised if some men felt uncomfortable wearing a fragrance with such a typical feminine oriental-woody quality. Not that it is overly sweet, but it is somewhat sweet.

BOIS DU PORTUGAL has superlative staying power and medium sillage, but it's not anything that you won't find many versions of in the women's oriental woody group.

This is for an older man in his mid-age or later. Not a youthful or interesting scent. Very peppery with a little bit of lavender and woods mixed together. Not for me. Overall a 5/10 scent

this is the perfect oriental, valilla type of scent, so sofisticade, well made and it smells natural... i dont know why Turin rating this one with only 2 stars.. and others craps of perfumery like Beyond Paradise, that is awful, he rated with 5 stars.. he is crazy... Perfume is a personal type of thing...

another, fantastic cologne from creed for men,i just started to ware creeds fragrances,one of the reasons,is on how they stick to tradition, from one genaration to the next.also the soup never chages the notes i started with one ,now i,have10, and they use real ambergriss,now thats class,im looking to buy next creeds tabarome millesime,if you look close you can see the smeel of real ambergriss,im glad i made my first purchased at nieman marcus,and im stll going that says it all keep sniffing

Another awsome stuff from one of my favorite niche house! They are making great great blends with some of the best ingredients over the globe.

Maybe this one is for older people but I am not a teen...



9/10

This is a unique and ravishing scent that can only be worn by gentlemen of an evening who have romance on the mind. It is intoxicating to females and a wonderful demure fragrance.

very nice - for my grandfather that is.
powdery, boring, unoriginal, generic...
Creed has the most boring scents. no imagination whatsoever.
all I smell is: citrus (similar to the one in New York by PdN), powder and.... well- that's it.
yuck

This is a man's scent. I guess there are only woods and grasses in the pyramid, and I certainly smell that . . . but I also get the impression of deep, animalic, slightly untamed beast hiding just beneath the surface. It has that musky dry edge to it. For occasions when one wants to make an impact.

When I first started into the world of fragrances, one of the first things I learned was the dichotomous opinions of the Creed house. Over and over again, many reviewers stated that a certain other fragrance was just as good as a Creed but at a fraction of the price. Well, I went through a few of those something or others and will say that you get what you pay for.

Many Creed lovers will also say that BdP doesn't deliver the way other Creed fragrances do: low sillage, low longevity, and so on. But I disagree. I think of Bois de Portugal as the "soir" to their other more vociferous fragrances and it's all the more better for it. This is the quiet little so-and-so in the back of the room that's been holding out. When you finally introduce yourself, you end up going on a date!

What I like best about BdP is that it is like a choir: It combines a variety of notes that you can easily single out but work together to create a mellifluous song. And on top of that they are some of my favourite notes.

The is perhaps the most unique and well-formulated woody oriental that I have tried. The lavender is more like a movie preview before the feature presentaion. It provides a slightly floral opening that sticks around for a while to balance some of the woody notes but the vetiver note is by far the most interesting. Without it BdP would just be a fairly typical woody oriental but the slightly sour vetiver gets in there and makes things a little earthier, more grounded. It smells "real" and not like some delusion of grandeur.

Oh, and longevity? Sillage? I like my fragrances to stay close but last a long time. Bingo, Bois de Portugal is a beautiful, long lasting body-wrapping fragrance that captures many pleasing elements - floral, grassy, earthy and woody.

Bois du Portugal is growing on me, and I'm wearing it as I write this. I'm surprised it's known as a "woody oriental". It smells like a leather chypre. Maybe it's wood oil I'm smelling, but it smells like leather to me. I like it. Reminds me of Aramis or a much more spicy Chanel Pour Monsieur.

I just tried BDP for the first time today, and have to say that it's definitely a quality product, but not my cup of tea. It is extremely spicy and woody, but in a rather stodgy, dandified way. It reminds me of a lot of classic British men's fragrances from the turn of the century; BDP could just as easily been released by Floris. If you're like me and are prefer Annick Goutal's or Acqua di Parma's style of men's fragrances (i.e., "bitter" and "Mediterranean", respectively), BDP might not be for you. But if you're looking for a powerful, virile, spicy and leathery smelling high quality fragrance, BDP might be right up your alley. Just keep in mind that it definitely brings to mind the image of an uptight dandy.