Chergui

this has this furniture varnish, anti fly spray thing going that I cant get past. not for me.

The first time i experienced chergui, i received a 5ml miniature with my bas de soie order. This was back when i believed i only liked realistic florals, so you can imagine how this didn’t really work for me. Over the two years of owning the sample, i kept returning to it. As time passed, my taste as a whole changed. I started accepting that perfumery just cannot capture the true beauty of flowers in real life. So i basically gave up on ‘photorealistic’ florals and went into more vintage amber territory with my tastes, starting with l’heure bleue and eventually shalimar. Chergui kept getting more beautiful as i sampled it on my skin, and after 2 whole years, i caved and got a full bottle. What withheld me the most was how autumnal/late summer this smells. I never buy perfume based on the season, I will wear a resinous amber in 36 degrees i never gaf. But chergui was special. The way it diffuses, the way it feels warm and cozy but not heavy or sweet, the way it smells like so many things at the same time but still manages to be completely unique. it is just so beautiful. I think it is my favorite serge lutens out of all the things I own. Tubereuse criminelle has a beautiful opening, but once the menthol aspect of the tuberose disappears it becomes rather boring. Fleurs d’oranger is rather generic, bas de soie is too metallic, fils de joie is more like a dry red fruit jam with a slight hint of jasmine, iris silver mist is too clovey, de profundis isn’t necessarily fun to wear and more of an experience, la religieuse is too citrusy in a cleaning product way, fumerie turque is nice once u get past the ashtray aspects and five o clock au gingembre is too dry and thin. Chergui is genuinely in its own lane. It is completely wearable yet never too simple. It is layered and all the notes feel ‘full’. It is evocative and emotional, there is nothing photorealistic about this. It is diffusive like previously mentioned without being too much. It balances greenness, spiciness, powderiness and warmth perfectly. It is almost like a baby of vol de nuit and l’heure bleue, yet nothing like the two. It feels like i wasted tons of money on serge lutens perfume that i ended up not liking that much only for the best one to be right in front of me. Now to the notes themselves… actually i dont think fragrantica note pyramids truly mean anything, especially in a scent as abstract as this. I do think that the iris and the hay are very noticeable, the iris especially staying for a full day in the drydown. The hay is warm and almost misty, like a cold yet sunny morning in late august. I find tobacco scents hard to describe because i am a smoker and i am constantly Exposed to tobacco when making my own cigarettes, and the tobacco in perfume never smells like the real deal. Which is a good thing in this case, as i dont want to smell like a bucket of winston blue. There is also a hint of honey, which doesnt smell like caramel or like maple syrup as the note does in many other scents. It also doesnt go dusty animalic as it does in fils de joie. It just adds a golden warmth to the rest of the fragrance. The perfume as a whole wears incensey, but not really a specific type of incense. Maybe opoponax? Chergui does smell a bit medicinal, but I think it might be related to the link between coumarin and cherry cough syrup. I love it however! The ingredient list now shows a few more ACTUAL things in the perfume, like pelargonium (geranium), bergamot, vanillin, bay leaf, spearmint, lavender, camphor and cederwood. And yes, when you really sniff it, there is a hint of something camphor esque. I also think these herbs add to the medicinal experience. But in the end, a note breakdown doesnt work for something like chergui. It is blended so well that all you get is Chergui and maybe iris after 12 hours. I am obsessed. I cant wait to wear this in october. Definitely worth the hype and cult following. May smell masculine leaning on first sniff, but it is definitely one of the most unisex things i have smelled.

This is what I imagine Ray Bradbury wearing during the autumn.

An aromatic blend of dark tobacco and warm hay make for a perfect Autumnal fragrance. Ancillary notes are not obvious, although I think I can discern a teaspoon or two of honey to help the medicine go down. One of Christopher Sheldrake’s finest creations for Serge Lutens. A true classic. I love it!

Everything from this house seems to be fantastic. No duds yet, even on my skin which seems to bring out the worst of some notes. Cherugi is a very nice tobacco honey scent with supporting sandalwood, amber, and florals. The iris smells similar to the iris in Mariella Burani (self titled). I think this is the culprit for the powder vintage aspect people are mentioning. I agree it has that vibe. The hay adds a soft and delicate green note that stays in its lane. The incense is present, but not smoky or acrid. Very smooth. The entire composition is well blended and what I wanted Tom Ford tobacco honey to be. It's unisex, smells expensive, and would be a sexy smell for date night. 8 out of 10

This is so not for the modern taste. Opens airy, powdery, like rose-infused water. Then it turns to a dry, dusty, natural tobacco leaf smell plus hay. I do get some slight supporting sweetness which I believe is the honey, but it is not my idea of the honey note because that one would be more attention-grabbing and even edible. Very evocative of a cool autumn afternoon in Quebec, a distinguished gentleman on a rustic library and he's ready to smoke that pipe tobacco before he reaches on his first book. This is an amazing fragrance that requires some time to appreciate.

i usually hate honey aromatic fragrances after khamrah traumatised me, nor do i like the jazz clubby tabacco, so imagine my shock when i say i LOVE this one. its linear instead of the trad pyramid build, it smells the same from the ooening to the dry down, but boy it is soo multi layered and complex while still being quite easy to enjoy. it is medicinal and weirdly boozy, but also green and dry like hay, but also chewy and dense like sweet honey and also spicy??? like its a liquid medicine, sweet tabacco crushed on a wooden table, and also like pumpkin spice cookies? but its also neither a gourmand nor an industrial prrfume? okay wow, gaggiana dupree while being complex and interesting this still is very crowded pleasing and non polarizing

It smells good, but finding Yellow 5 and Red 4 on the ingredients list was a bit jarring.

Need a week of full wearing cause this smells to me like Tom ford’s tobacco vanille right off the bat.

I personally take advice on when a fragrance can be worn with a grain of salt. To me, it’s about knowing how to apply a fragrance, which takes getting to know a bit about how the different types evolve and behave in different conditions. Sometimes a tiny drop is all I need and sometimes it is more. Many of the comments here sound like reviews are applying too much, not waiting long enough for notes to evolve, and smelling their skin rather than the evaporating fragrance. Higher end perfume houses often use higher concentrations of perfume essences (oils) that evolve more slowly and last longer. Serge Lutens is known for using higher concentrations (15-20%) and may take as long as 30 minutes to blend with personal skin chemistry. This also can mean heart and base notes may be more pronounced than top notes. Give a fragrance time, try multiple applications in various conditions, and always apply to clean, moisturized skin without other fragrances applied until you become familiar with a product. You might be surprised at the difference.

I love Chergui in the summer. I layer Juliette Has a Gun Not A Perfume under this which I think gives it a hint of whimsy, and I get compliments all the time. Mature but never taking anything too seriously! Goes well with sunscreen, sweat, a fresh mani-pedi, vintage suede, denim, cigarettes, beer, and post-shower right before bed in clean sheets!

First off, I really don't think this is an exclusively cold weather scent, from all the reviews I was left with the impression this is so much heavier and sweeter than it actually is. Clean, powdery, sweet, vintage, like the boudoir of a starlet from decades past. I think it's gorgeous, but I can see why someone would find the baby wipes smell. Sample don't blind buy.

I'm usually into these scents but this just feels like mixing every winter niche scent I've owned into one bottle. Confused and sickly sweet.

Coming back to leave a new review a year later― I think I'm probably saying the same stuff, but hopefully I have further developed my knowledge/understanding of fragrance in that year. As soon as it hits my skin, I'm overwhelmed by powdery-ness. Things tend to pull powdery on me, so it was too much. It feels like... something a teenager would wear? Like there's an innocence to it? Like no tear shampoo and baby powder. Or like body oil after taking a bath. So it's either too youthful or too mature, I guess I can't decide. About 30 minutes into wear, something zingy pops up― a subtle citrus scent. Reminds me of a bubble bath. Not for me.

I like. It's quite good.

This has a kind of medicinal, grassy, herbal opening… It also has a vintage and aristocratic vibe, like something that an old rich person would wear. But I like the dry down way more than the opening! It gets softer and more comfortable with time. If the opening is masculine leaning, the dry down is feminine leaning, but overall is a pretty unisex scent. So if you manage to get past the first 30 mins, you will feel a cozy, clean, mature and extremely elegant scent :) On the SL tabac note, I prefer Ecrin de Fumee, which is one of the new releases. Ecrin is the tormented poet, the dark sheep of the family, while Chergui is their privileged parents, complaining about how everything is wrong with the young kids nowadays haha

This smells almost identical to citronella mosquito repellent spray to me. I waited for a rainy day to revisit it and I do like it a lot more after giving myself some time to appreciate it. The tobacco is very smooth and the spicy notes are really addictive but I still can't really say that I like it

I wanted to love this perfume. I really did a lot of research, to find an earthy, incense, sweet, witchy perfume. I put in my preferences online, and on chat gbt, to help me find the perfume I was looking for. This perfume kept coming up, repeatedly, with my note preferences. So I took the plunge. Unfortunately this is a no for me. When people say this smells like a diaper, or baby wipes, believe them! That's exactly what this perfume smells like. It smells like medicinal, powdery baby wipes. I don't know how the combination of Tobacco Leaf, Honey, Amber, Hay, Incense, Sandalwood, Iris, Musk and Rose, turns out to be baby wipes, but it does. I think it's the honey, amber, and hay combination that causes the baby wipe scent. I don't know HOW people are claiming this is sweet, or spicy, or even smell the rose in it. I don't smell any of that. It doesn't smell sweet to me at all. It smells like hay, and baby wipes. That's all. Don't believe the people claiming this is sweet or spicy, or REALLY good. It's not But anyway, I'm pretty bummed. This perfume isn't cheap. If you're a woman looking for a different, earthy, incense, dark, witchy perfume, like I was, this isn't it. Keep looking

This is SUCH a beautiful scent. Love at first sniff. The kind of fragrance that will make people remember you. The Iris is really the showpiece here and the powdery drydown is ambery and warm. It reminds me a lot of Hellenist's Les Bras de Morphee but a lot more smooth. One of the best from Serge Lutens!

Best scent everrrrr

Nice sweet and powdery scent, quite simple, feminine. Powder is probably surrounded by amber and possibly the source of the powder here is the musk. I don't smell anything else so it is a simple one.

green and aristocratic. very nice blend, because its lutens. I’m a little bit too rock n roll to wear this lol darker alternative for cleans girls I would say. delicious drydown, yes, reminds baby wipes. edit: spent 1 week with this. still, very grassy and light, my nose says. Looks like It will be my first experience as making an amber + honey fragrance as a summer fragrance, and I'm living in a city hits to 40 degrees at summer.

Confusing at first. I thought it smelled of burnt rubber the first time I got my nose on it. Now I think of it as dusty rose with grasses. It’s beautiful.

I’ve sampled this fragrance several times in the past and again recently. It’s a very classy high quality fragrance in my opinion, preferably for a mature person (mature person of any age). The same image still comes to mind when I first sampled it, a classy equestrian. The smell of hay after the rain that creates a comforting aura for me, incense that smells like exotic tobacco, and lots of golden honey. The florals don’t really project at all on me except for a bit of Iris that makes the fragrance feel clean instead of rustic, so pretty. Unisex, long lasting and timeless.

After sampling this : There is no Tobacco in it, or barely there. All I get is sweet ambery with some herbal / spicy notes. Reminds me of a minthy mouth wash

tobacco buried under a wave of synthetic fruitiness and sticky honey. It leans sweet, slightly masculine, but there’s this odd spicy-fruity, almost cola-like note sitting on top that completely drowns out the tobacco. Ends up feeling a bit unbalanced and honestly kind of annoying. 5/10

The blend is fantastic and the ingredients seem to be of high quality. It sits pretty close to the skin. Each note can be picked out if you smell your arm. Its not really my style of fragrance, but I am happy that I tried it. 8

A masterpiece that I can't stop going back to. I wish I could smell the first batch of this beautiful piece of art or at least some older batches. What an amazing fragrance. I am glad to have it.

Please anyone let me know if there is a fragrance similar to Chergui dry down. The opening is too harsh and smells like chemical fabuloso cleaning product. So harsh I have stopped wearing this even tho the dry down is the sweet comfort of cosmetic Iris powder and honey. I would be forever greatful.

Opening smells like aerogard and I can’t get past that. Blind buy for me and initial impressions is, I regret my purchase lol.