Thursday, January 14, 2010

SOTD: Shiseido Feminite du Bois

Photo of the front of a UPS truck.
Did I mention that I broke down and bought a bottle of the Shiseido version of Feminite du Bois? I did.

The nice UPS man was down the block yesterday when I was walking out for lunch, and online tracking had assured me that the bottle should be on the truck. So I stopped him to beg for my package, for fear that it would be signature required, I wouldn't be home when he got to our block, and I'd have to wait for it. (Nooooo!) Luckily, he knows who I am and where I live, and he kindly handed it over. One advantage of getting far, far too many packages. (Though sadly, most of them aren't perfume.)

So fifty milliliters of Feminite du Bois is mine, mine, all mine. Bwahaha!

Ahem. I'm somewhat unintentionally testing it as a pajama scent, because today was a busy workday and I got around to the shower and perfume ritual around, well, now. (Yes, I do work at home, don't worry.) I'm wearing my favorite too-worn-to-wear-outside white linen shirt, my butterfly pajamas, and a whole lot of Feminite du Bois. Somehow, I don't think that this fits the marketers' visions, but I'm happy.

My bottle smells as lovely as the sample that I fell in love with - always something that I worry about. Today it smells like a cedar pencil again. A lovely pencil. I'm very pleased.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

6 comments:

  1. Congratulations on your new bottle! I love FdB as well, but I haven't sniffed the supposed (??) reformulation. I have a decant of the Shiseido stuff that is quickly dwindling. Have you smelled both versions? Are they the same?

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  2. I've only smelled the Shiseido version, and every review that I've read seems to agree that the two versions are different. Some still like the Lutens, and think it's a respectful reformulation, etc., but I don't think I've seen anyone who _prefers_ the Lutens.

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  3. Hmmmm, thanks for the feedback. I guess I'll be happy with my Shiseido decant and call it George (not the decant, but more like end of story)

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  4. The Lutens still _might_ be good. If and when I get chance to sniff it, I will no doubt be posting about it. :)

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  5. You definitely have a great ability to make a perfume sound wonderful in a blog post. That hard to do since we can't smell it from here! How do you find all these perfumes? And here, I've just been wearing Clinique Happy or Estee Lauder Beautiful.

    Is this Feminite du Bois made by the same Sheseido that makes make up and skin care? They're in Nordstrom stores usually? Are you not able to find the perfume there?

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  6. Howdy, Melody! Thanks!

    Sadly, unless you live near some perfume mecca - Scent Bar, or Aedes, or a Barney's, or a major Neiman Marcus, or one of the few really good perfume shops around the country - a lot of stuff is only sniffable by ordering samples mail order. To start you in researching the location of those perfume sources, the forums at Basenotes have a section for city shopping guides:

    http://www.basenotes.net/forums/19-City-Shopping-Guides

    For the sampling avenue, Now Smell This has a great article on how to get samples, at

    http://www.nstperfume.com/2007/04/09/perfumista-tip-how-to-get-fragrance-samples-free-or-otherwise/

    I tend to get most of my samples from LuckyScent and The Perfumed Court.

    Yep, it's the same Shiseido, though it's slightly more complicated than that for Feminite du Bois. It was originally released by Shiseido, and that's the bottle that I love and just bought. That version is discontinued, though you can still get it right now online at BeautyEncounter.

    It was recently reformulated and added to the Serge Lutens line under the same name, but the consensus seems to be that that version is indeed different. It's also more expensive. I plan to try it one of these days.

    I haven't seen either version at Nordstroms, but my Nordstroms is pretty small and the perfume department is pretty halfhearted. I think that I've seen a few Serge Lutens perfumes at the larger of the two Neiman Marcus stores that I sometimes get to, but my main in-person Serge Lutens point is Barney's, on the relatively rare occasions that i get to San Francisco. Otherwise, it's all mailorder samples.

    I did successfully beg some Serge Lutens samples by email once, though that may be a matter of luck and who's reading the begging emails that day. :)

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