Until today I haven’t tried anything from Floris but I suppose that if someone put me in front of the shelf filled with their offerings, based just on the perfume name, Honey Oud wouldn’t be my first choice. However after learning that my scent sibling Undina likes it a lot & after receiving a sample from her I had no other choice but try it. Honey Oud indeed opens with a honey note but instead of smelling something animalic I am greeted with a luminous golden liquid which is quite sweet and reminds me more of an amber accord. This oozing, sticky honey is quite powerful but fades away relatively quickly. After a while Honey Oud reveals a lovely richness of rose, in the entourage of oud and patchouli. Both introduce density & the element of oriental darkness. It gets quite sultry and seductive. To some extend it reminds me of Tauer Phi Une Rose de Kandahar but less saturated. Drydown has quite a resinous vibe – balsamic labdanum in the front effuses its balmy and slightly incensy aroma. There is also amber and vanilla to introduce some brightness and the sweetness it gives forms a link to that impression from the opening. A bit of musk hints something carnal, wild but in the end it’s more plush. All in all Floris Honey Oud is quite a nice fragrance. It has a slightly misleading name and smells similar to other oriental oud & rose scents.
In 2015 Yves Saint Laurent joined the bandwagon of creating exclusive boutique collections by releasing Le Vestiaire line. Among them Undina said I might like a few so I decided to start with Trench. This composition starts with a mild citrus accord composed with bergamot and tangerine. It’s not overly juicy and has sort of a powdery effect in the background. After some time a fuzzy, plush-like iris note arrives to the scene. It feels very soft, fluffy and just tiny bit like suede. In this part it’s reminiscent to Iris Prima by Penhaligon’s. Both of these fragrances share similar tenderness. Afterwards Trench develops a new fruity facet focusing on a milky-green yet delicate fig. This note is not very strong and gets easily overtaken by neroli. The smell of white flowers – rich & citrusy plays very nicely with the iris accord and makes you focus more attention on this particular part of the scent. Drydown offers a mellow, silky blend of ambrette seeds and musk. The latter one feels clean and soft like a cotton flower. It’s probably a white musk but at least in this case it doesn’t reek of nasty synthetic. A little bit of pale cedar wood only whispers in the back and never gets to play a significant rose. Same goes for fir absolute – I couldn’t even feel a hint of something coniferous, green. YSL Trench is an ok perfume. It doesn’t wow you but wears nicely on skin. Shame it’s so short-lived on my skin and has almost no sillage.
In 2018 perfumer Andy Tauer celebrated 25 (!!!) years of Tauer Perfumes. To commemorate this amazing achievement (how many one-man brands with such experience do you know?) he created a limited edition fragrance named Les Annees 25 (vingt-cinque) which also refers to a Golden Age of humanity as well as to Art Deco exhibition of the same name in Paris. The composition is opened with a mouth-watering and spacious citrus accord. The mix of sour bergamot and sweet orange has an additional green-tinge of aromatic petitgrain and a brisk lemony spiciness of ginger. It immediately starts to give off a vintage vibe that reminds me of Guerlain L’Heure Bleue. In the heart of this scent we have an abundance of resinous, balsamic and slightly salty benzoin goodness which is then joined a lot of powdery-talc iris and some rose. Once you reach to the base Les Annes 25 becomes warmer and embracing with aromatic and slightly spicy tonka beans. Going further I could smell oakmoss with some earthy patchouli. Plus a hefty dose of sandalwood sweetened with vanilla. There’s also ambergris and musk that give it an old-fashioned smell. Les Annees 25 is like an homage to the past and its perfume classics.
Chemist in the Bottle 
I really like your description of Andy’s 25!
Honey worries me as it always smells like wee on me … but at least in the Floris this wouldn’t be long-lived; it seems different from a lot of their scents I have tried in the past which I would say are quite austere and not really my thing, although I did like Stephanotis (which has been gone a long time) and spicy Malmaison (ditto RIP).
Sad about Trench … YStL used to produce rather good perfumes, but now seem to turn out quite ordinary fragrances … but perhaps they sell well? I shall continue to relish my old bottle of Champage/Yvresse with its peachy mellowness and amazing lengevity until it’s gone.
Tauer one doesn’t disappoint.
In case of Honey Oud it depends. If you say that honey smells like pee to you then hard to say if it’ll be the same again. To me honey is more like amber here.
Well honey, once brands change owners they may lose their identity. YSL is in L’Oreal hands now.
So true.
x
😦
MQS! All of these sound good! I encountered Floris at Sniffapalooza a few years back and passed along some samples to Undina. I have yet to try the YSL and think that I probably should not try very hard to look for it. As to Les Annees 25, I have to go find my bottle (I know where it is, unlike some of my bottles as I need to come up with an organization scheme).
Thank you sweetie! I never tried any Floris so Honey Oud was a nice first try (thanks Undina!). YSL is acceptable but probably not worth the money. So you own one of those limited Tauer bottles, don’t you?
I’m glad those samples made it to your MQS posts! 🙂
Andy’s special editions are too… fleeting for me. Not in terms of how long they stay on skin but their availability (or rather lack of it): by the time I get to try it and decide that I like it enough to buy, it’s gone 🙂
My pleasure and thanks for the samples!
I know what you mean, he cannot really make so much by himself. Les Annees 25 were available only in 500 pieces. I am glad that Phi is still there, I think I’ll buy it again when I finish my current bottle which is almost empty