Serge Lutens Vetiver Oriental Review: Velvet Vetiver

Searching for Serge Lutens Vetiver is a bit like looking for a book by its working title. The house's vetiver-centric fragrance is Vetiver Oriental, released in 2004 and composed by Christopher Sheldrake. It is unisex, sold as an EDP, and built around a dark, resinous oriental idea of vetiver rather than the crisp, citrus-flecked cologne most shoppers expect from the word vetiver. Vetiver Oriental is not a soli-vetiver. It is a composition in which vetiver shares the stage with iris, dark chocolate, guaiac wood, amber, sandalwood, labdanum and oakmoss. The result is thick, powdery, earthy and almost edible in places. It belongs to the same broad luxury conversation as dark gourmand woods, smoky teas and velvet-textured amber fragrances, but it keeps one foot in the soil. This review uses the search-friendly name Serge Lutens Vetiver, but the fragrance evaluated here is Vetiver Oriental. The verified data gives us the notes, the perfumer, the 2004 release year and a Fragrantica rating of 4.11 from 1,506 votes. Performance and occasion notes are inferred from review language describing the scent as thick, on the heavy side and warming on a cold winter night.