Bois de Paradise Parfums DelRae for women

What a gorgeous scent!

First, an amazing outburst of berries, and I don't mean timid stunted store-bought little things ... I mean big summer-sweet, sun-kissed blackberries and blueberries, steeped in spiced wine. Amber almost immediately makes an appearance; it's not sharp, not intrusive ... in keeping with the nature of the fragrance the amber is warm, cozy, luxurious, and so oppulent.

And as the berries start to fade (slowly, slowly, such nice longevity in this scent!) the rose, glorious rose, slips in to visit during the warm, slighty woodsy, still decidedly spicy dry down. So very very well done -- this is an absolute keeper!

For me, this one comes within just a note or two of perfection. There is something brilliant and heavenly there, but just out of reach and held at bay by something herbal/medicinal and off-putting. I fully expected to fall in love based on the reviews, the notes and the price (and that classy bottle), but, because of the price, I am thankful that I can definitely live without this one. Though, I wouldn't mind if the house smelled like this.

This is a Diva to me. Spicy,creamy, dark rose. Lovely!

I married with u.

Oh my god. It is the week after Christmas. I am in the kitchen baking apple dumplings. I have rolled out the dough, sprinkled the sugar and cinnamon, and am laying fresh-cut green apple slices on the dough. This is the scent on my hands, this mix of warm doughy goodness, cinnamon, and sweet-tart green apples.

I do not catch the blueberries...but it's probably the blueberry's sweet tartness that my nose is interpreting as green apple. By the way it is currently the middle of summer here, but I do make apple dumplings for breakfast New Year's Day, and my mom before me. ;) Wow, I am transported by this perfume.

I can´t live without this lovely and perfect scent.
It has incredible determination and hard hours on the skin with a beautiful and surprising developments.
I feel hints of spices like a hot drink to winter something alcoholic too.
Absolutely a masterpiece for lovers of oriental aromas. Fantastic!

The fragrance opens with a rich opulent fig, iris and lavender combination and then settles into a mysterious sweet powder on my skin. It reminds me of perfumes of the 1940s, glamorous, powdery, spicy, enchanting. This is an ideal perfume for the vintage lover, a woman on the more hipster side of the indie scene: intelligent, mysterious, reserved, well-traveled and capable of fascinating conversation. Perfect for a dressy evening or a flirty afternoon conversation at the used bookstore.

Excellent 5/5 silage and longevity. Such a uniquely lovely perfume, I am curious to try the rest of the line.

Starts out sweet and fruity, a little citrusy, a little bit like maple syrup, and definitely tobacco-like. After a half hour or so there is a slight spearmint note that I might not have noticed if I hadn’t seen it mentioned in other reviews, but that complements the other notes nicely. There is a floral aspect that reminds me a little of linden flowers. I didn’t get much in the way of woods, so I’m not sure what happened to the sandalwood.

Overall, it’s a lovely and original sweet but aromatic floral composition that I was able to enjoy for the better part of a day. It’s good to find another likeable perfume by a house that’s managed to come up with some real duds.

All cinnamon, sandalwood, vanilla, and amber...then, at the 5 minute mark- Surprise! A blast of spearmint. I actually had to doublecheck to see if I was wearing minty lip balm or had gotten some toothpaste on me. It actually made my skin tingle a bit where I had applied just the tiniest dab. After another 2 or 3 minutes the mint blends in with the spice accord, in a very pleasant and way. At 15 minutes the composition finally harmonizes and a vanilla-tonka-cinnamon persists.

This perfume is obviously made with top notch ingredients, especially in the fixatives (my achilles heel!) Hence, it is outrageously potent.

I could not detect blueberry in the least, maybe it is just a smidgen to brighten up the amber accord? As a matter of fact, I couldn't find any fruit or flowers at all.

This is gourmand in the weirdest way ever. I give it a thumbs up for managing to combine some bizarre accords in an agreeable manner.

b.n. After reading the other reviews above, I see mine is an analogue of many others'....is this perfume merely simple enough that we all perceive it similarly? What else could account for the nearly identical perceptions of so many different wearers?

Well, the opinions are all over the map as regards Parfums DelRae BOIS DE PARADIS, so let me just throw another outlier perception into the mix.

The opening of this composition actually smells like a campfire to me. No joke. Then, a couple of minutes later, the mysterious Dentyne note (from AMOUREUSE, BOUDOIR, and about four Bond no 9s which I've sniffed) emerges and grows stronger through the midstage until it finally dies down again, leaving behind a sort of confusing, somewhat oriental-woody drydown.

I find this perfume overall quite messy, but not in the very appealing way in which ingenious creations can stimulate amazement and joy. This seems more incoherent than exciting to me. Désolée.

This line up of reviews is the best evidence of the elusive "skin chemistry" phenomenon I've seen in a long time.

Thanks to a generous sample pack from Kterhark, I've been puzzling over this one all day.

While I get a blast of something brisk (minty? herbal?) on the first spritz, I never detect citrus. Within seconds, a jammy, fruity, spicy rose takes over, against a nice woody base, and I would swear: sandalwood. For hours, the sweet, spicy, fruity rose blend makes me think of something...it's on the tip of my scent memory...one of the fruitier Histories de Parfums? I can't place it. The pineappley 1804? No, not that sweet. The rosy 1876? Getting there.

What distinguishes Bois de Paradis on my skin is sweet, ambery, sandalwood-infused base which, along with the fruity notes (I'm thinking of the undefined mix called fruits rouges in confitures) has too much sugar for my taste. Kterhark identifies blueberries, and though I eat them nearly every morning all year round, I cannot for the life of me recognize how they smell.

Love the opening, love the deep dry down, but I'd prefer to skip the second act, where the sandalwood (if that's indeed what it is) lends a slightly head-shoppy tone that doesn't quite work with the rest of the blend.

All in all, a lovely scent but not quite me. For fruity amber I prefer Alahine, and for spicy rose, I reach for the smokier 1876.

If I received Bois de Paradis as a gift I'd appreciate it and I'd even wear it; and I imagine I'd be pleased to sit next to someone else who was wearing it.

I"m going to go in the opposite direction on this one: I give thumbs down to the opening, but thumbs up to the drydown.

This opens VERY gourmand on me, which I just can't do. let me try and explain how this wears on me:

When I was in college, my room mate's boyfriend came over one night with some friends and alcohol. I was sitting in the living room having a beer, and they were in the kitchen making something to eat. An orange glow lit up the wall. To my horror I saw that Mr. Idiot was making himself some pan fried everclear.

Burnt, stinky sugar from a dirty frying pan. That is how I wear gourmands. But moving on...

Bois dries out to a lovely, raspy woody scent (If you've tried Sublime Balkiss you'll recognize the blueberry note). I need an hour and a half to sing this scent's praise, so do give it that long before making up your mind. This starts as a stinker, but ends up as an exquisite, fragrant woody. This is the only Delrae scent that I could see myself buying, although I would still like the opening toned down a notch.

This does go minty on my skin in the opening but thankfully does not stay that way. Like others in this line the drydown is very warm with the addition of woodsy undertones- it's not my favorite delrae by far but it is certainly pleasant.

While shopping for other perfumes, I would always spray some of Bois but never buy it. Every single time, I loved the opening, but always found something else. Then I got a sample of it and played at home: the opening love again, and then nothing. So I put on some more next time, thinking it was not enough the first time. This time, after the initial pleasure, the scent remaining was a bit lacking and unimaginative. It was even commercial. Well, finally I got a tested bottle from a very nice lady, and sprayed a good amount on myself at night. When I woke up in the morning, it was still smelling wonderful!

Roses, spice, unsweetened cream, woodsmoke and pine needles. Champagne and dried cinnamon and rose potpurri. Evokes the outdoors very well, with a "fresh breeze" feel to it over dried leaves and woods. Reminds me of very early morning in summer or fall, when the sun is rising and drying night-dew from sticks, dead leaves, grass and roses.

You are in a cedar forest, five minutes before the sun rises under a glowing amber, rose, and fig sky. Dry, dusty needles under your feet. Standing right up under a tree, just as you snap off a branch to release the scent slap of the green wood, you bite into a fresh orange peel.

I did not know that I needed to know what this smelled like, but now that I do, I would travel to the ends of the earth to smell it again.

In my top-five all-time favorite perfumes.

Bois de Paradis had been in my wishlist for a couple years, after a test snift at an expensive women's boutique.

I purchased the Parfums Delrae sample set and received generous-sized samples of all the scents in the line. I do still like Bois de Paradis, but after testing the others, I was surprised to find it's not really my favorite in the line. I think my perfume preferences have changed a bit in the last two years.

I would describe Bois de Paradis as a floral woody musk, with just a smidgen of gourmand. It has a bit of sweet fruitiness to it, thanks to blueberry and what I presume is lemon, though I don't see that listed as a note. Bois starts out as a sugar-and-spice green aroma, and fades to a slightly sweet woody musk over time. About four hours in, it has that lovely vanilla/cake frosting aroma that I find in Boucheron's Trouble and Rochas Absolu, though Bois is less sweet than those two.

It's a pleasant fragrance, slightly sexy, with good sillage and good persistence. I appreciate the craftsmanship of this scent, even if it's no longer quite my taste.

I was very disappointed in Bois de Paradise - so many people seem to love its rich spiced-fruit-and-woods, including the friend that kindly sent me a sample. I put it on my skin without checking to see what notes I should expect, and promply blew a brain gasket trying to figure out what I was smelling: "What IS that? mint? No, turpentine? Good grief, I have no idea... sniff again... mint! Yes, mint! No, it couldn't be mint. Turpentine! That makes no sense. Could be some very weird citrus, I guess... sniff again... mint? turpentine? AAAAAUUGH!"

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the top notes on this thing are supposed to include, yes, citrus. It's highly aromatic to start with, in a way that I found completely distracting and out of character with the rest of the fragrance, which is rich and plummy, with spice, woods, and a very sweet amber. The spice is not sharp and exhilarating like clove, but mellow and soft, and the fruit - not identifiable as blueberry to me - also mellow and soft. I get very little rose out of this, but the whole heart reminds me of the wild blueberry pancakes with cinnamon and maple syrup that my husband and I ate on our Maine (US) honeymoon. I found the woody notes to be generic woods - not specifically cedar or sandalwood, just "woody notes." The amber was far too sweet, in my opinion, and contributed to the pancakes-with-syrup effect.

I love scents with a wood-and-amber focus, so I did try it four times to make sure it wasn't one fluke experience. It does smell wonderful on a friend of mine, so it must be my skin. BdP is clearly made with quality materials and quite unusual.

When i was a little girl, my sister and i would spend hours with my mother visiting antique shops searching for lost treasures. sorting through tangles of chains, finding old buttons made of wood and bone, getting lost in books left behind my children long grown and gone. Bois de Paradise reminds me of those afternoons from the very first notes...i imagine opening an old trunk, filled with cherished love letters, maps folded along faded lines, sepia toned photographs of people whose adventurous lives took them from one continent to the next. this perfume is a hidden treasure, a scent to cuddle into and imagine the adventures of people you have never known.