Sira des Indes

The "banana" note here reminds me of the peach in Dior Dolce Vita. Sira des Indes can be very nice when I'm in the mood for something sweet-sweet-sweet and spicy. I like Dolce Vita when I only want sweet and spicy. ;)

💲27 for the 1.7oz set with lotion & shower gel off of FragranceNet 👃Oh no, No no, NononononoNo! I purchased it because I have been on the hunt for a fragrance with a banana note at the top. Unfortunately, this perfume has that poop smell effect with the nice notes underneath. I have tried a couple of combinations to try & pull the background notes forward; I am liking it with a generous coating of a Victoria’s Secret Velvet Petals La Creme (because it smells like banana pudding to me) + some dabs of Kuumba Made Vanilla Bean oil. It has potential yet..

Cardamon opens strongly offering a taste of indulgence to come. Banana and pear notes are subtle and incredibly beautiful, offsetting the spicy notes with enveloping and almost downy fresh fruity accords. Perfume's heart begins to bloom with warm gold sweetness of champaca, continuing lusciously smooth banana and pear accord and floating on the ripples of milk. "Sira des Indes" holds a unique a blend of the grainy lactones of wheat and sugared cold milk (so unlike the modern trends of warm and condensed note), with whipped butter undertones. Vanilla and plum create a taste of raisins, but in a very delicate and almost hesitant manner. Plum is neither alcoholic nor juicy in this composition, the focus is more on the scent of its skin, tart and taut. Sandalwood adds dryness to it, and the raisin note becomes near perfect. This fragrance is a most delectable interpretation of famous dessert, but for me it is most certainly NOT a gourmand. Jean-Michel Duriez performed a miracle of balance and combination of edibles/fruits and florals in such a manner that his work reads as an oriental fruity-floral wood rather than a modern-day gourmand with its cloying hold and sugar overdose in almost every composition. "Sira des Indes" is in a league of its own, remarkably original and pleasing, versatile, with very good projection and sillage, simultaneously rich and refreshing in its spiced wood and musk, it is sweet but not sharply sugary, with fatty, dense but yielding texture and nutty graininess.

got this when i was airport shopping years ago. recently took it out for a trial. its fabulous. i can smell all the notes even the banana which i never thought a perfume would contain. It has lasted for 12+ hours now! It is sophisticated, exotic and comforting all at once. I highly recommend it. even if you aren't thoroughly impressed I guarantee you'll find a time to wear it.

Smells like sweet unlit floral incense cardamom and sandalwood. Very pretty but wears lightly, like a roll-on oil perfume from a head shop instead of an edp from a legendary brand. Sira des Indes is the only perfume I own with a champaca note. It is unique enough to my little collection that I will keep it and wear it, but I wish it had better performance.

It's very warm, sweet and spicy. It's like a liqueur. Ideal for winter and autumn. Mmm I really appreciate its warmth, it's a vintage that can be worn from mature business women full of self confidence! it could be worn from young girls too but i think it's more appropriate for more mature women. The only disadvantage is that the banana note is not so intense.

How are people getting diapers / vintage Cabbage Patch Kids / fecal matter from this?!? It’s GORGEOUS!!! Blind buy for me as I had never heard of it but immediately had to add to my collection after checking out the notes. Plus, Patou …. It’s gently tropical without the usual coconut sunscreen vibe. Lush without being overpowering. A nod to Samsara here and Tam Dao there. So glad I took the chance with this one, despite some of the off-putting reviews. My new favourite!

Old-fashioned indolic flowers with bright fruits/citruses, powdery accords and some poopy undertones. If you don’t think about dirty (aka animalic) part of smells quite pleasant and chic. I feel like some lady-boss from 80s would smell like it. Follow me on ig: scent.guide

Blind buy! So gross in the dry down. Opening is nice but in minutes the dry down smells like poop. Returning immediately.

So, I ordered a 1 oz. bottle. Really all I need but if I would have loved it, I would have wanted a HUGE bottle. The reviews are all over the place, so I used caution. Good thing too. After everything I read & using mine for a few days, I've come to the conclusion it was reformulated, which most perfumes are, or have been. Seems like there's a 48 hour beast out there, & there's a whisper that is gone in 5 minutes, leaving a faint, FAINT slight sandalwood. That's what I got. I will use this for something, I do get the NON gourmand banana smell which is cool,..for no more than 5 mins, it's GONE. What lingers, you cannot really even smell when you push your nose into your skin. I am a light sprayer, which I did with my first use, but then went in with about 6 sprays, same spot. A disappearing act. If your like non gourmand UPDATED banana, try the Marc Jacobs Daisy Wild Eau So Intense EDP. For Gourmand Banana, I'll stick with CSP Vanille Banane, a repurchase for YEARS. I WANT Jousset's Banana Split. But really it dries down to Al Rehab Choco lovers, which is cool, but I have so many of those roll ones, & a few sprays. So, this didn't impress me. Worse longevity than a body spray. Our 'Fumes are being destroyed!

Mine smells old and dated like it's gone bad so I truly have no idea what I'm smelling.

This feels like a really old-fashioned white/yellow floral. Smells a bit like diapers. Unfortunately I don’t get any whiffs of banana, cardamom, or even vanilla

This is definitely a yellow floral first, balmy for sure... and it has an underlying creamy banana cardamom underneath. I love a banana note. I love gourmands. So that makes this a more tolerable balmy champaca floral fragrance to me because of that. I love sandalwood and vanilla as base notes, that also helps. I do wish it had just a little less balmy floral present if I'm being honest with myself. But I also still enjoy this.

I'm so pleased to have this. My Mother wore Jean Patou when I was young. It was a sentimental purchase because I wanted to have a Jean Patou for myself before they are gone :( The prices are unbeatable at the moment. Sira des Indes let's everyone know you've entered the room if you happen to overspray. The Champaca opening is quite heavy & heady. A note that I am challenged by. The mid & dry down are the best parts.

This isn't going to be the best way to start a review, but here goes... I can't figure out way I like this, but I do. I bought it off a whim, not even looking up the notes (it was a killer price, I think I paid $25). While waiting for it to arrive, I did look them up and thought to myself, "oh no". I have a strong dislike for banana (taste and texture mostly, but if it's too synthetic-smelling, that's nauseating as well) and absolute disgust for milk (smell, taste, texture, everything) so I just thought to myself at least I will have a pretty bottle to go with my others. Upon receiving the fragrance, I immediately opened it and sprayed it on a tissue. I have to honestly say, the opening is not great. For whatever reason it reminds me of a musty diaper. Again, feeling doomed and disappointed, I searched for a spot on my shelves for it to sit indefinitely. A few minutes later, I went back to the tissue and sniffed it again.. to my shock and awe, the scent had completely changed! It still had a very unique scent, but nothing like the opening. I could definitely smell the banana note, but to my surprise it was not unpleasant at all. In fact, I rather liked it! It smelled like a very realistic banana. Imagine peeling open a just ripe enough banana and taking that first bite, that's exactly how it smells. You can smell the peel and you can smell the fruit, but it's not overly sweet or synthetic. All the other notes blend together very well and none of them stick out or overwhelm the other.. the banana is the most prominent that I pick up but it never gets unpleasant throughout the duration of the wear, which is surprisingly long. Also, I don't really get much of a milk note.. there is a slight creaminess, but I think that blends very well with the banana. This is actually a fairly light scent, but I do think with the creaminess it might start to get a bit cloying in the high heat of summer. It's very enjoyable in mild to cooler temperatures. I don't think this fragrance is for everyone, and after the "interesting" opening settles down, I enjoy it. It is definitely different from anything else that I have in my large collection.

I think when I first acquired this bottle, several years ago, I perceived it differently. I thought I could smell a buttery jasmine, but I think that must be champaca. I definitely get the orange blossom and the banana-like accord up top--so much so that I'm surprised Fragrantica categorizes this as "amber woody" when to my nose it smells like a fruity floral, base notes notwithstanding. It doesn't really remind me of any other perfume that I own; when I bought it, I just wanted to add it to my small Patou collection while I still could. I like this a lot in hot weather, even though I guess it could be cloying to anyone craving a crisp chypre. I'm not fond of indolic fragrances, and thank goodness I don't discern any fecal notes anywhere near that cardamom/banana accord, or I would need to discard this immediately. But to my nose this is a tropical take on a French floral, and it reminds me of a fancy drink at a luxury hotel. Also, I think it has deepened in the years since I first bought it--it lives in my upstairs refrigerator, so it's still in great condition--and I'm noticing the sandalwood in the base a lot more, along with the milk note, which doesn't smell like milk per se but does confer a certain creaminess, especially combined with the sandalwood. I haven't yet smelled Borabora (Bora Bora?) or its Dua dupe, Hug of Flowers, which sells out instantly every time it's up for sale, it seems. But based on the notes, I'm wondering if Sira des Indes might be a budget(ish) substitution. It probably doesn't smell exactly the same, but the more Sira des Indes dries down, the more I get that "Bianco Latte" vibe but with banana instead of honey and champaca instead of ylang-ylang or whatever tropical flowers Borabora uses. Again, caveat smeller: as stated, I haven't smelled Bora Bora or Hug of Flowers. I will also add that although I love this fragrance in certain situations, I could see being sickened by it in certain situations. It's probably more suited to evening wear, but I work from home and it's Sunday, so to hell with the temporal plane. I just read alphairone's characteristically stellar review below, and I sign on to everything he says. The Samsara resemblance wouldn't have occurred to me, even though I probably wear Samsara more than any other frag in my collection, but he's right. It's the base notes, that creamy chiming sandalwood. I also agree with the reviewer who compared it to Champs-Elysées on the drydown. Must be all about that base, after all.

The name made me imagine the spicy fragrant banana desert with all the notes seemed to suggest. The opening was a strong smell of champaca flower and stayed that way about 20 minutes. All I can perceive is indolic champaca note, bordering on fecal matter or dirt. Unless I inhale deeply, gluing my nose to my wrist, the waft of the scent was pleasurable and pretty. Wait, the true facet of Sira Des Indes reveals after 20 minutes! Now I can smell not only flowers but spicy cardamom, citrus, and sandalwood. The milk and banana only contribute creaminess to the whole composition. Strange that all the top notes appeared after some time had passed. It projects rather subtle - I expected big projection- but lasts reasonably long. You can get this quality fruity floral delight for $20. Another charming champaca forward scent would be Ormond Jayne Champaca.

After a while, it reminds me of guerlain’s vintage champs elizees.

Fruity candy. This is a melange of banana and plum and flowers and cream with a mega dose of iso e super. Has a lighthearted vibe. I adore vintage Joy, 1000, and Patou pour Homme which are brilliant but not always wearable. The current Sira des Indes which I am sampling is the opposite. It is simple, synthetic, and yet quite wearable in a casual summer outing. The quality matches the price tag.

Ugh all ones complaining it’s too ‘vintage’ and you look at their page and it’s a bunch of candy fragrances 🤦🏻♂️

As I apply Sire des Indes and Esquivel! immediately plays in my head. Tropicalia in olfactory form, its foremost champaca-infused, as Jean-Michel Duriez includes this accord as if to pay homage to Patou's Joy. In the magnolia family, champaca is more a narcotic perfume than its cousins, with a beguiling and sultry floralcy with undertones of tea and ripened fruits. Here, it is enhanced with creamy lactones, spiced pear and most notably, banana, to render it all fleshy. It may at first seem all "Daiquiris in a tiki bar" surrounded by tropical florals, but there is some depth that belies its seeming languor. The balminess is underlined with a woodiness from a musky, buttery sandalwood that feels more meditative, as the champaca accord lingers through the dry down as well. Champaca has significance in Theravada Buddhism, as the tree is seen as the vehicle for Bodhi, or enlightenment. It's as if this turn of events redirects the attention from hedonism to that of illumination.

This is one of my favorites and I'm very surprised banana comes in 2nd, and milk 4th out so many notes. Very surprising how others interpret some of my favorites

I was surprised to learn that I hadn't reviewed Sira des Indes yet. It's not my favorite Patou fragrance--that would have to be Joy, which is imprinted on my DNA by now as The Classic Floral--but I do like it a lot. Thanks to the disgusting takeover by the Louis Vuitton mercenaries, all these classic Patou fragrances will be no more. I probably have enough in my refrigerator to last until I die, with ounces to spare for the feckless heirs, but I still treat this Duriez creation--like all my other beloved Patou perfumes--as a rare treasure. We won't see the likes of these monumental beasts again. People today seem to prefer simple categories like fruity-floral, but Sira des Indes is more like an indolent stroll through a tropical garden. The notes are all too well-blended for me to distinguish the banana from the champaca, but the overall effect is lovely. There's enough citrus to cut through the sweet-powdery notes of the cardamom; the combination of the ambers and spices is bewitching during the drydown. This doesn't smell much like Coco by Chanel, a scent I wore a lot in the 1980s, but it does impart a similar vibe, and I think there are some common notes in SdI that would appeal to Coco lovers (80s formulation). As with Coco, I would advise wearing sparingly; the EDP is strong. Update, several hours later, with a refresh: I can smell the banana! It reminds me more of a banana Laffy Taffy than actual banana, but that might be the champaca variable. Anyway, I love this, and I'm tempted to pick up a backup bottle, even though I have almost a full ounce of the EDP. The discontinuation of the Patou house is infuriating.

Warning: If you are not into vintage fragrances, do NOT buy this. I was hoping for a spicy banana fragrance, but it was drowning in the vintage smell. Does anyone know a similar fragrance to Ambrosia Imperial by Navitus???

I've always characterized this as a Tiki perfume. I adore that it's by the late great Patou. The whole affair reminds me of 50s and 60s glamorous movies shot in tropical watering holes, in technicolor, with velvety deep browns and greens as a backdrop to spots of brighter colors. Though it's my Tiki perfume, Sira is not exotically or sickeningly tropical, rather a balmy floriental for a chic character to wear in the evening on a plush terrace against dark palms, some fire accents, the sea glinting in the distance. Or it could just as well have been dinner at Trader Vics.

Balmy Floriental with Banana & Vintage Vibe... Opens with a fruity burst of banana & pear supported by multi-faceted bergamot with spicy nuances from cardamom & pink pepper. That all transitions to a champaca heart with milky/creamy, plum-y, powdery, citrus & sweet tones, all resting on a musky vanilla & amber-woody base. In the background there's a vintage white-floral vibe that's pulling all the elements together. The overall vibe here is of Bananas Foster crossed with a balmy vintage floriental. The longer this ages, the richer the Bananas Foster component gets. This requires a few weeks/months of dark storage to sweeten & develop the true scent and performance - then seriously it just keeps getting better and better. Seekers and collectors of vintage florientals won't be disappointed. This is the perfect scent to wear while watching Rachel Zoe Project re-runs. It's a love for me. Enjoy! Update 09/17/25: Initially I was most influenced by the banana, but the scent is more holistic & spiritual than any individual note. Some passing references to Samsara Guerlain & Tam Dao Diptyque although it's different from both. It's balmy, luminous & meditative champaca & sandalwood. I'm transported to a mountain-top Buddhist monastery, where meditating monks seem to glow from within their satin cheeks. This scent combines two of my loves: creamy florals & creamy woods. The creaminess here is thick & balmy rather than fluffy, and cooled to luminous with cardamom & banana. The ultimate calming scent. Love it still.

I have often wondered why there are not more champaca based perfumes out there. The smell of champaca essential oil is - d i v i n e -. And here, finally, there is one where it takes the centre stage. There is a certain masculine quality to the flower itself, like with neroli. But here it has been dressed with amber, musk and exotic fruits, giving it a delightful, happy, Indian paradise like quality. Its a sweet fragrance but there is nothing sickly or artificial about the sweetness, its more nectar like. I am waiting for the warmer weather to see how it comes to life in the sunshine. There is a certain subtleness about it, a meandering quality, making it very soft, round and a little exotic in a very natural way - its almost like its own category, not entirely floral, not fruity enough to be fruity, not spicy or ambery enough to be classed as an oriental - a mix of all these aspects in a beautiful harmony, taking its own place, not caring it doesn’t fit any category. I enjoy being surrounded by this scent, in my own private paradise.

This is powdery lush and juicy smelling I have no idea how people say they smell poo This just is not true, maybe their own smell is overpowering the fragrance Their a banana smell for sure but no strong at all I am not into sweet smells more oriental but this is like a spicy banana dessert and a pleasant day fragrance

***** Underrated! A freshly blended banana smoothie at the opening with all your favourite healthy essentials. Sugar-free, obviously. Very organic. A pinch of something Ayurvedic perhaps. Lovely. But then magic happens. The fragrance warms up on the skin and turns into a classy, slightly retro musky scent that’s hard to describe. Very fine. It lasts hours this way. Silk lingerie in the colour of champagne, no lace, a 5 star hotel - are the visuals I’m getting here. To my nose, Sira is only gourmand in the beginning. Very unusual and the creator’s bio and philosophy are worth looking up. If you don’t like lactonic scents or musk, you might not enjoy this. 100% feminine, in my opinion.

It's hard to better what others have written here. So lovely! Not a gourmand or even as sweet as the notes would lead you to believe. Also not a tropical scent in the modern scent, but the vintage style. I like this banana/tropical leaning floriental - though it is quite a different take on banana - even better than Sicily. That is saying something, because Sicily is chic perfection. Sira isn't trying to be chic, but she succeeds at being oh-so pretty, thicker, and almost elegant as well. I recommend if you enjoy grown up Champa scents such as Bijan.