An Exercise in Restraint: Serge Lutens Daim Blond and Miel de Bois

Thanks to all of who wrote on here or on FacePlace sending me thoughts about the rainstorms. We have had a few more since last week but it seems to be the last of them for a bit. I’ve been of two minds of it- I love the rain and love to snuggle up in bed to the sound of it. So much so that I was thinking that a move to Portland was not a bad idea. But by yesterday (MLK Day) I was ready for it to damned well be damned over. Which it is for the moment, leaving today with a blazing blue sky and the crisp air that LA gets after a soaking rain. I am sure I could see the snow capped mountains in San Bernardino from Beverly Gardens Park. That is, if I wasn’t at work expecting the plumber, cleaner, dryer repair guy, butcher, baker and candlestick maker, all of whom I will have to let in because the rain fried the intercom and AT&T won’t be near to fixing it until the 25^th. So I sit and type. And whine.

One thing I did do is open some bags and boxes in the closet/dungeon where I keep my bottles and dug up a bag of stuff that I had taken to some meet and sniff and never re-filed (he types as if his collection was magnificently curated, with everlything in order and a card catalog for reference.) In it I found a couple of Uncle Serge’s that I loved but obviously don’t wear that often: Daim Blond and Miel de Bois.

Daim Blond is a whispery white suede of a scent, that’s achieved by the combination of iris and apricot kernel. It was one that I tried at Barneys back in the dim, dead days when they still did the export/exclusive thing (and Barneys was still a thing) and I initially disliked it: all I got was sweet. But as I walked around the rest of the day I kept getting caresses of that soft suede. Grey, not white. Buttery soft like one of those shirts you would find at Bergdorf’s in the 90’s that was impossibly thin and impossibly soft and impossible to wear in the real world where you would eat and sweat and generally exist. But the thing with Daim Blond was that you had to go steadily in the application; one spritz too many and, like that exquisite shirt, the illusion of suede falls into expensive ruins, this one of screaming iris dipped in apricot jam. Luckily with this one you will just have to wait for the jam overload to die down to get back to the suede.

Then there’s Miel de Bois. For some of us who have been around for a while and were there for the whole discovery and elevation of Lutens/Sheldrake from “who?” to “where’ve you been all my life?” Miel de Bois will be remembered as “the cat pee one.” Because when applied sparingly, you get the richest, loveliest honey with just a touch of the tinfoil bite that the stuff straight from the hive can sometimes have. This will seduce you into spraying more. Don’t. One spray too much and it goes into full on Irwin Allen Killer Bees on Crack Disaster Movie territory and one spray after that it’s litter box central. Which would be a deal breaker if it weren’t, when applied with a study hand, such a stunner.

Daim Blond is still available at the Lutens website at $305 for a bell jar. Miel de Bois used to be, but has disappeared, so perhaps the murder hornets got to it. Or Michael Caine as Dr. Crane. My bottles wre purchased from Barneys, You can purchase samples from Surrender to Chance.

Photos are mine, from Pexels, and from Wikipedia