Borneo 1834 Serge Lutens for women and men

Agree with the most comment, one of my favorite Serge Lutens' fragrance too. The patchouli note is beautiful, dark, earthy, woody and sweet, and with the cocoa creates a lovely smell! Simply love it.

Warm, comforting patchouli. Different from the patchoulis I had tried before, I love to wear it on cold winter days, one of my favorite Lutens' fragrance.

Hate patchouli but adore this. Work that one out!
Really reminiscent of something i know... And everyone else who's smelt it feels the same... Is it earth? Dead leaves? I don't know, but i LOVE this so so much.

Oops!
I forgot to add that I live in a tropical country. Would Borneo 1834 be cloying in the heat?
Thank you :)

I can't find a sample here in my country and I'm wondering if it's safe to buy it without testing it on my skin first because I found a really good deal on Serge Lutens perfumes here. But it's rather unfortunate that I can't find a sample of Borneo 1834 here. The only ones that I was able to test were Douce Amere, Chergui, Ambre Sultan, and Un Bois Vanille. I bought the first two because I liked how they smell on me. I was wondering if Borneo 1834 smells a bit like Ambre Sultan. If it does then I probably won't buy it because I hated Ambre Sultan on me. I looked at the notes in Borneo 1834 and I can't decide. I don't know what patchouli smells like but I think I will like the cacao.

I also want to try Feminite Du Bois but I can't find a sample. Please enlighten me. Thank you very much.

Wow, amazing fragrance. Smells like patchouli, sweet patchouli. It reminds me of my signature scent Patchouli by Reminiscence. It's practically the same. Mine has better lasting power and is less expensive but it comes close. Mmm love it!

I spent some days trying to define clearly this scent 'cause it is somewhat complicated. From the outset I can say that I enjoyed the hell out and Serge Lutens and Sheldrake are geniuses. This frag has its main focus on patchouli and is subsidized by the roasted cocoa.

Early on, it opens with a smell of camphor dissolved in a cocoa and patchouli basis, a little bit different, like some kind of root, like a bitter licorice. After a few minutes, camphor decreases and open space to patchouli, that "tones up" and becomes more leafy, yet bitter, but this patchouli is a totally different from how it was used by White Patchouli - TF. In Borneo it is opaque, dense, smoky, as ike the cocoa note, but it seems to be formed by dry leaves, not fresh ones.

Indeed, the more time passes, the more opaque is the scent, it gives the impression that you're in the middle of a dark rainforest, but close to a cocoa farm (who has been to Ilheus, here in Brazil, should know what I'm talking ). The scent reminds a lot this environment. This is because the dry down enter the galbanum and laudanum notes, leaving the frag resined and incensed.

But though opaque, cocoa becomes more pronounced, like a 70% chocolate but with a layer of dust on top of it, or as if it was a little moldy. You can not exactly feel like eating, but getting lost in the midst of the bushes and rushes out to smell the cocoa beans that are drying up. It has a very good sillage and fix.

Straight forward patchouli-cacao. Rich yet not too sweet, masterfully crafted but not incredibly original. After the camphoraceous/spicy opening it settles haflway between A*Men and Parfumerie Generale's Cozè. A beatuiful composition that you'll surely dig if you're into bold head-shop patchouli. Me? A bit too overpowering for my likes. I stuck with the PG.

Rating: 7.5/10

In the vast field of patchouli fragrances, I love Borneo precisely because the cacao note makes the whole thing, to my nose, astoundingly raunchy. Unsweetened and inedible, this latter note really reminds me of open wounds and ripped-off bandaids. It's exciting to get something a little uncomfortable (ie the inside of some anonymous someone) slyly/unknowingly injected into such a reliably crafted and remarkably staid, for all its Orientalism, line.

Very intoxicating. Borneo 1834 is earthy, exotic, and beautiful. The initial spicy blast of patchouli grows softer as it develops allowing the other notes to weave their way into the composition. I think the cocao really balances out the patchouli making it a little easier for those who are a little intimidated by patchouli. Like many of the other reviews, I find Borneo to be a fairly masculine scent. I think I'm in love with Borneo 1834. My very first bell jar.

Maybe too overpriced but a fantastic scent!

I tested it with a friend who is a perfume freak like me , and we had the same reaction at the same moment : a "baaaaaaaah" it smelled to me like nail polish remover O_o
Maybe it's the test bottle that had gone wrong ?

I was a little wary of trying this one as in my mind I had imagined Borneo 1834 to be big, heavy and demanding. What unfolded for me was a thick (but not oppresive) oriental not dissimilar to Chanel Coromandel, but without some of Coromandel's sweetness.

Maybe I'm getting too used to strong unisex fragrances that nudge the masculine line, but this sits very well on me (female) and I would certainly consider this full bottle worthy.

Thanks again to my dear friend Scorpiosheep for the sample :)

I agree with bhean_sidhe's review wholeheartedly; I am also a Scorpio and also prefer Borneo 1834 as a winter scent.

I can imagine an early explorer in a tropical jungle, with the steamy camphor smell all around, but then a trickling sluggish almost stagnant smelling creek right there, adding a pungent note. He settles down for a mug of hot chocolate (!) and there it is... the complete perfume.

You also have to be pretty confident to wear this, not a girly girl.

This will always be in my perfume collection.

Today was the first test run for this sample and I have to say that it was a pleasant surprise. The first thing that I noticed was a strong aura of patchouli floating all around, not where I had applied the perfume, but in the remote part of the sillage. I really hadn't read anything about the perfume, so was surprised by the patchouli, which was actually nice and light, not the head-shop kind that I try to avoid. Closer to the skin there were other things not at all related to patchouli, probably some flowers and coriander. The first couple of minutes were a little rough, but the scent quickly settled down into a pleasant spicy-flowery scent with the patchouli somewhere off in another dimension. As the patchouli and flowers subsided, they were gradually replaced by a powerful, sweet vanilla note intensified by the cacao that I now see is supposed to be in the mix. About 8 hours later the drydown has pretty much come back to a nice, muted slightly floral patchouli. I like this scent a lot, even if it doesn't transport me to the wilds of Borneo. It has a lot of complexity and surprising whiffs of different things appearing in the sillage, almost as if they're drifting in from some remote location. Maybe the best image would be standing on the deck of a ship out at sea, with breezes from the land bringing hints of all the different fragrant things that are on an island somewhere just over the horizon. Borneo will get another wearing before too long.

An interesting journey. It goes on my skin as a blast of alcohol and patchouli, that immediately fades to patchouli and cocoa. The patchouli, which I generally abhore, is soft and sweet and woody, not oily and sour, and the cocoa is dry instead of sweet. It never smells like chocolate on me, only dry cocoa. As the scent warms, cardamom creeps in in the faintest of whiffs, softening the woody cocoa still further into what is almost but not quite a gourmand scent. Galbanum makes a brief appearance as wet wood or green forest floor, but it fades fairly quickly, which is good for me as galbanum can be abrasive and sharp on my skin. At about 45 minutes, a faint but distinct plastic note shows up,generally the sign of a synthetic smoke scent on me. Still, it isn't so intrusive to ruin the fragrance completely. Overall, this is warm woods, sweet patchouli in it's best Sunday clothes and dry, ground cocoa bean. Lovely.

I was given this with a comment "please wear only in winter, better never". But now I wear it every day (it's winter though) and I can't get enough of it. I feel that is suits me perfectly and that no other perfume reflects my personality as well as this one. Btw, I think it's the best fragrance for a Scorpio you could ever think of.

At fist it's really sharp, almost like a fist in your face, straightforward so and so. Then it settles down, gets close to to the skin and you start feeling the cocoa. It reminds me of our house in the countriside in August - the smell of the earth, wood. You're wearing a warm jumper and eating a chocolate bar. Somehow many Lutens fragrances bring back childhood memories.

Well, I'm too damn beaten down by life right now for the usual clowning around and weekly biography (lost another job for NO GOOD DAMN REASON)so I'll stick with the juice. Borneo 1834 is an acceptable substitute for my forbidden alcohol abuse, as it smells like something really really expensive that I'd like to drink instead of something really really expensive that I love to wear. Sort of reminds me of Annick Goutal's SABLES -is there immortelle in there?- opens up with a head clearing blast of patchouli, cigar tobacco, utterly bitter chocolate, and goes on fron there. Seems almost like a lateral scent to me - I don't notice a lot of change or evolution- but my head is so fucked up lateley my sensory perceptions may be a bit out of whack. Whatever. This is GREAT. I can't really see a woman wearing this....but the woman with the personality and style to pull it off would be pretty damn attractive to me - like a woman who looks goo in a Tuxedo...I guess it's the whole Helmut Newton thing, after all, I did sexually come of age in the 1970's ya know. Anyway, it's one of those Lutens that doesn't clobber you over the head with his trademark cedarwood accord - not that I'm knocking that, but in some of his stuff (Cedre and Chypre Rouge, and a few others), it's just, well, almost nauseating. In the case of Cedre, it IS just plain nauseating...the staff at Barney's agree with me. I can't say enough nice things about the perfume staff at Barney's in Boston - when Lutens released Muscs Koublai Khan in the USA, I stopped in at the store (didn't know it was out yet) and the manager had one with my name on it and was distressed because she didn't have my phone number. (Jeanette, if you ever read this, YOU can have my number - or anything else you want - ANY TIME) I also find that this smells great if you spray on the timiest bit of Muscs koublai Khan afterwards - although I usually refrain from mixing my perfumes because the result is usually an unmitigated, hard to wash off disaster.
By the way...I'm willing to be friends with any of you out there that do the FACEBOOK thing...just look for the guy with the monocle. (I'm not really a big FACEBOOK kind of guy, but most of my friends who do it are old rock and roll buddies, so a few perfume foolks would be a welcome change...)

I premise that it will be a negative review or at any rate not a positive one.
My first impression about Borneo was: "Oh, my, this is the clone of Le Baiser du Dragon by Cartier!" (at least on my skin) There is the same dirty, wet, earthy type of pathouli in both of them in common, which does not seem the most refined and wearable at all. The patchouli is very dominant (and so is the cocoa in the Borneo - which, by the way, made me discover that I do not like cocoa bean as a perfume note) and I find it difficult to harmonize with my own personal style or mood.
I have to admit that I admire both fragrances but mostly as something valuables for their contribution to the olfactory discourse rather than to my personal scentrobe.

I'm really impressed,it's funny to wear it but, for me this is more a scent for men.It smells so hot/smoky and like inscense but not the chemical stuff in some standard fragrances this smells real!
It smells like you're in the church(the inscense smells are different because every priest use other Balm for it,and this is a other one i think it's the galbanum)and it smells dry(patchoulie) and woody/spicy(cardamom).
This is definitive a unique and special scent with love made.And the scent is deep and mysterious.
The Bottle and the colour of the liquid fits really really good to the scent, and also the name it's like Borneo,itself.
This fragrance is good for the nighttime,and for colder day's and it last very long,it's a elixir.

Wow. My introduction to Serge Lutens and I find myself in Borneo. Straight out of the bottle the top notes welcome with the most delicious melange of warm spices and a chord of rum and raisin running through, this is an astonishing perfume; 1834? Well yes, I can feel it. We are 19th Century explorers; I'm the girl dressed as a boy, pith helmet at the ready; we traded spices from Zanzibar via Madagascar to Mandalay, and now we have come to a land of heavy scented woods, of jungles and mysteries and strange flowers, of beasts and beings unknown, a land time forgot. I half expected to see a pterodactyl circling above Harrods.

Borneo 1834 has impressive longevity, I put it on at 5 in the afternoon and could still smell it on me at 2 in the morning, albeit witout the delectable top notes. What remains is a fascinating and rather dry condensation of spices. My criticism? I think it is too masculine for my skin. It lacks a certain kind of sexiness, and I like my perfumes to beguile. But a very interesting perfume indeed.