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Étienne De Boray Oak

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Lilith among the roots of the Tree of Life. Dappled shadows flickering through Spanish moss, oakmoss, oak twigs, squished mushrooms, pine needles, and lavender buds with beams of Manuka honey sunlight.

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This is stunning. It smells like a happy memory of a live oak tree—gently honey-veiled and golden around the edges. I grew up and live in live oak country and this gives me a lot of happy feelings. The Spanish moss is very present and is soft, dusty, and gentle, just like the real thing. The oakmoss provides a nice little sharp pop of scent that evokes tree bark. With time the oakmoss becomes most prominent on my skin, with a sweet natural golden sheen of honey.

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Gorgeous country oak blend. Ellocentipede's description is spot on: This is a happy memory of oak trees, and the sun-limned fields and scattered woods around them, tinted a deeper gold in the remembering, like some honeyed sepia. 

 

Oak trees, Spanish moss, and golden honey on a natural ground of oakmoss and little mushrooms, and scattered other earth-stuff: faint impressions of leaves, grass, and needles, and even a little whiff of lavender.

 

Alongside Forest of the Empress and the Forest in Winter at Sunset, this could become one of my favorite woodsy blends.

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This smells just like an ancient oak tree heavy with hanging moss: the rough bark, green leaves, and gnarled roots intertwined with little pale mushrooms. It's a very green, mossy, and oak-y scent. The honey has a bit of a funk to it in the state between wet and dry, but it dries to a lightly sweet sheen overlying the mossiness. If you want to smell like an oak dryad, this is the scent for that. I don't know if I will reach for it enough to use up my entire bottle, but I've been enjoying it for those times when I want to feel like I'm relaxing in a primordial forest.

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Etienne De Boray Oak smells precisely like it's described. Woods and oak bark, mushrooms—which I hadn't realized had a particular smell until now—and a subtle ghost of honey that slips in and out, reemerging every so often. The moss and green, earthy smells are most prevalent and the lavender sits on the sidelines, seen but definitely not one of the star players. I like this just as much as I hoped I would and am glad I have a full bottle.Etienne De Boray Oak smells precisely like it's described. Woods and oak bark, mushrooms—which I hadn't realized had a particular smell until now—and a subtle ghost of honey that slips in and out, reemerging every so often. The moss and green, earthy smells are most prevalent and the lavender sits on the sidelines, seen but definitely not one of the star players. I like this just as much as I hoped I would and am glad I have a full bottle.

 

7 weeks later, edit:

Etienne de boray Oak finally relaxed while on the shelf and it's so much more wonderful, though I still smell no lavender. This is legitimately the smell of earthy mushrooms in the cool and dark space beneath the boughs of an oversized oak, and maybe the trunk is inhabited by a hive whose bees who have produced so much honey it's spilling through cracks in the bark. 

 

Edited by gamermouse

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I forgot about the honey, so I was surprised when Etienne de Boray had a foodie element to it.  Manuka must be a honey that works particularly well on me, one of the warm golden ones.  This is a radiant scent.  I get just a whisper of lavender at the beginning, and no one note is prominent here, it all blends together to create the impression of sitting under a tree in the sunlight, bark, soil, leaves, moss, dust motes bright in the air.  I can't make out pine needles so don't avoid this if you dislike evergreen notes because they're very faint here.  I wore this for a hard workout and it did go through a wonky stage, exactly what feyofthefellwood describes as the honey getting funky between wet and dry -- I'll have to try it again without sweat to see if it still happens on me. Nevertheless, just lovely. 

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Oak twigs like whoa.

 

This one smells like green leaves and oak branches sweetened by the manuka honey. The oak twigs with their strong green leaves dominate on me throughout wear. The honey is stronger on me than it was in the vial, but calms down over time. I get some lavender with the oak twigs and honey at first, but it is fleeting. After a while, the moss notes gain some strength on me, but they aren't able to overtake the oak twigs. I couldn't detect the pine needles or mushrooms.

 

This is a tree scent, all right. The green leaves and sharp oak are a little too much for me, though.

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This one's messing with my head. I am always on the lookout for mossy, forest, rainy scents, and they almost never work for me. This one really works! Every time I test it, I end up huffing my wrist obsessively. But this is a High Street scent, very Parisian and stylish, and I live in a hoodie and sweatpants. I feel most at home with a cozy lavender or an incensy patchouli. So while I probably don't need a bottle, I will probably kick myself a year or two from now when I realize I should have upgraded. Humph.

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How did they perfectly capture that feeling of sitting beneath an oak tree? Because this brings to mind childhood days of running around in the forest playing swords with my friends. It's a wearable, autumnal scent if you want to smell like a woodland explorer.
I may need a bottle.

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The honeyed oak is a lot like the salty-sweet, beeswax/wood note in Two Westerners, but this one has a big ol' punch of pine in it and a noticeable earthy mushroom (having never smelled this before, I knew immediately what it was). For the first several minutes the menthol of the pine fights with the honey-oak in a way that's not working terribly well on me, but eventually the pine recedes into just a background coolness. Not getting much lavender; it's probably hidden somewhere within the cold astringency of the pine. 

 

Eventually the honey elbows its way to the front and this becomes a honey-forward, mossy oak blend. The honey is clear though, not chewy. I do like this - with these notes it's hard to go wrong. It's similar enough to Two Westerners that I'm not sure I need both. But maybe I do.

 

Another beautiful expression in the Lilith line. ❤️

 

Edited by supreme_c0rt

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After reading the reviews above, I was really keen to smell Etienne.

Right off I get strong oak and something a little soapy. Then it turns real earthy and a funk comes in, like a touch of stinky oudh. The soapy aspect is still faintly in the background. There is a golden sheen to the scent, just taunting me from the edges of possibility. 
I’m missing the good impressions of outside sunny time, and somehow getting an odd stinky and clean mix... just weird skin time. 
 


 

 

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Moss, mushrooms, and oak. The moss gives it a slight aquatic vibe, and the mushrooms are earthy. There's a golden shimmer on this, and its like the effect of light through dappled leaves. Medium throw and wear length.

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I was hoping that the honey would be quiet. This would have been amazing for me if the honey had been omitted. I need to just give up and remember that, no matter how amazing all of the other notes are, the stinky honey will ruin it every single time. 😭 

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In the bottle: Dry, spicy bark and moss, with just a trace of dusty lavender.

Upon application: Almost immediately, the mushrooms start coming out. There's a short period where it is very evocative of the concept -- it's a venerable sort of scent, for someone sitting in the shade of a big old tree while early evening sunlight slants through the leaves and branches. Then the mushrooms predominate. It's a creamy, waxy smear of a smell, and...it's the note I enjoy the least in this blend. It just smells kind of funky, and maybe that's the honey working with it to make that scent, though I don't smell -honey- itself. Just mushrooms. If only this had stayed in that drier stage, I would have enjoyed it so much, I think. Alas!

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This is mostly a woodsy honey blend on me when first applied, but turns into a cleanish scent when it's dry. The lavender is faint and resembles soap, but there is also a dirt like note here. I'm thinking that is the mushrooms since I have not tried an oil with this note before. I won't be upgrading, but I will say this is one of the nicer woodsy blends I've tried. I wish the lavender didn't smell so soapy because I don't think it works well with a blend like this.

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Woods, mushrooms, moss and honey combine to make this swampy, off, slightly sour scent.  Makes me think of mud, algae and rotting plant matter.

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Oh gosh, no thank you. There is something quite peppery present here. There are quite a few notes here that I typically shy away from. As it dries, it gets surprisingly quite perfumey, maybe because of the pine cutting through the mosses mosses and moldy lavender. The honey, which I couldn't detect at first, also comes out to play in a golden, non-syrupy way.

I got this tester/decant for free and while I appreciate trying something I would never purchase for myself, I can't help but feel like it's been wasted on me!

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