Bois Impérial
Essential Parfums (2020)

I recently tried Bois Impérial by Essential Parfums and want to share my impressions. The fragrance starts with notes of basil and pepper – fresh and spicy. Then you can smell the earthy vetiver. The base has woody and patchouli notes, which make the scent long-lasting and rich.

This fragrance is great for everyday wear, especially in the office. It’s not too sweet or strong, which makes it pleasant for daily use. The price is reasonable for this quality.

Overall, Bois Impérial is an excellent choice for those who love woody and fresh scents with a hint of spice.

Rating: 4/5

Bois Impérial by Essential Parfums (2020) gets pitched as a cheaper alternative to Ganymede by Marc-Antoine Barrois (2019) because it does the same parlor trick of using huge aromachemical slugs to create diffusive woody freshness that lasts and yeah, that works, if that's what you want out of a fragrance. Both perfumes have the same creator, one Quentin Bisch, who admittedly isn't my favorite guy in the scene even though he seems to get his name on a lot of fly-by-night perfumes lately. If you're looking for a somewhat reasonable fresh fragrance that isn't an aquatic or stuffed to the gizzard with sweet bubblegum or vanilla, this is a good choice, although that's the pinnacle of my assessment here.

Essential Parfums sells itself as a budget-friendly niche alternative that packs all the creativity in fewer calories (dollars), being sort of the midway between a Byredo or Le Labo, and Dossier or Hawthorne; other non-descript bargain-basement brands that take "pressed white shirt" as a personality. The saving grace that keeps this somewhat interesting is that minty basil leaf, which is a staple of Thai cuisine (especially kaprow gai kai dao), tagged with vetiver and timut pepper. Beyond that, huge doses of ambrofix and akigalawood (a patchouli isolate that feels woody without the oiliness or camphor of whole patchouli). The laundry musk "whoosh" is just a bit much for me, as it stands so naked against the rest, becoming the focus. This stuff smells really freaking good in the air, so it's probably the compliment bomb the usual crowd is hoping for.

As such, this formula feels a bit "cheap" to the nose, and you can get a little noseblind to it if you smell a whole bunch of it at once. People either scream this is a massive performer, or they can't smell it, and the sheer deafening hype all across the online fragrance enthusiast spaces (mostly brainless douchers looking to hook up or flex) puts a bit of a damper on the scent itself, although that's not brand's fault at all. I've never smelled this in the wild, so all that hype really just amounts to a hill of beans in the end, as people still fill the air with MFK Baccarat Rouge 540 (2015), Creed Aventus (2010), Dior Sauvage (2015), or the latest bubblegum showergel garbage. Nice concept, but not enough meat on them bones for me. Neutral

Fresh woodsy vetiver with a citrussy tang, presumably from the timur berries (not that I’ve ever come close to one). Everything shades into everything else here – the light spiciness into a kind of herbal freshness, the ozonic wood note into the equally ozonic floral aspects, the fluffy patchouli (now there’s a contradiction in terms) into the thoroughly washed vetiver. This kind of strip-lit perfume is something of Quentin Bisch’s signature. Sometimes the results can have an intriguing, disorienting quality (as in his creations for Marc-Antoine Barrois). This is much safer – clean, crisp, office-friendly; or something I’d wear on an airplane trip so as not to offend my fellow passengers. Indeed, the drydown has a passing resemblance to my usual flight perfume – Timbutku – but with a sexy gruff smoke and pepper accord lingering at the back.

Bois Impérial lives up to its billing. Here is a woody aromatic that brings the fresh tinny citrus flavour of Timur pepper to a punchy Thai basil crop that strongly vibrates like an ‘anisic’ metallic strum in its entire wearing, one that is vibed in Haitian vetiver strains, lumbered in spicy tones of cedar and akigalawood (a Givauden 'franken-note' that supposedly whiffs like a dry funk-less agarwood wrapped in leafy patchouli) and glazed in the ambroxan style of our futurismo. Truly, an alluring, breezy drone of woody reglisse and phantom allspice, and “Quentin’-sentially Bisch.

Chiming in to offer some perspective, since I know this has become a popular blind buy based on the strong enthusiasm found online. I can see why people like this. It's modern, attention grabbing in its own way, extremely potent (more on that later), and different--it doesn't smell like your typical mall scent. If all that sounds good to you, by all means sample. If you like it, grab a bottle - the price is good if you enjoy what you're smelling. You'll probably get compliments*, since everyone will smell this radiating off you, and you'll leave a glowing trail of aromachems in your wake.

After coming close to blind buying, I am extremely grateful to a kind basenoter who sent me a sample first. This is easily the worst thing I've smelled since joining this site. A scrubber like no other made worse by the fact that it's impossible to scrub off. It smells like pesticide. Spicy, peppery chemicals that enflame the nostrils and crawl down your throat. It's not the vetiver, which is there, but stripped clean and fairly subdued. It's not the sharp basil either, which is probably the best part of the composition. Best I can tell, it's the megadose of akigalawood, which I now understand is a signature of perfumer Quentin Bisch, apparently dosed higher here than anywhere else. (Maybe Ganymede compares, as folks occasionally raise similar complaints, but I haven't tried it.) The overall effect is aggressively sharp and spicy but somehow hollow, like an incomplete fragrance made of peppery synthetic woods. More of an industrial smell than a perfume, it's like an AI-generated painting of a tree, if the AI were restricted to two colors and had no understanding that trees are living things.

If that was it, just a sharp chemical smell I don't particularly care for, I could just shrug this off and move along. Not every scent is for everyone, who cares. I like plenty of minimalistic scents that others hate (Encre Noire, Tam Dao, many from Comme des Garcons), and it's fine if this one doesn't work for me. The issue is that when akigalawood is dosed this high and mated with ambroxan, the projection and longevity become positively nuclear. I'm convinced that most people wearing this are probably anosmic to some facet of the akigalawood, because most people aren't picking up the fact that this literally lasts weeks on fabric.

This was my experience wearing it. Two sprays to the chest, and I enjoyed it at first, until the screechy bug spray note took over, and I realized it wasn't for me. Sat in it for about 6-8 hours, and finally scrubbed it off in the shower, toweled off, went to bed. The next morning I wake to the exact same smell, just as strong as when first applied. The scent had survived the shower and was now impregnated in the sheets. Yesterday's shirt was radiating from the laundry pile, and last night's towel positively reeked. Everything goes in the laundry, I took another shower... but no, there's no escape at this point. Days later, after multiple showers, this was still noticeable on my skin. My original t-shirt stank of bug spray for over a month, even though I washed it three times. It rubs off on anything you touch, and it will not die. The olfactory equivalent of an infectious, incurable disease.

I've learned akigalawood can smell fine in reasonable doses, though it has a nose-tingling edge and is weirdly tenacious. I'm pretty sure I smell it in the base of Parfum d'Empire's Le Cri, one of my favorite light florals--even though the "patchouli" in the base will last days on clothing. I've seen others complain about the base of Beau du Jour (also akigalawood) surviving trips through laundry, leading to a a gradual accretion of olfactory funk over time. Clearly not everyone picks up on this, and that's probably a good thing. I would just warn you that even if you can't smell the peppery death that lies at the heart of Bois Imperial, at least some folks you encounter will.

Parting story: a few months after my initial encounter, I'm heading towards my office elevator when the door opens, and I'm smacked in the face with a wave of Bois Imperial. Older executive-type gent gets off the elevator, oblivious to the strength of his perfume; and he had clearly sprayed heavily. Even after he left, it was hard to breathe in the elevator, and the scent lingered in my nose for 15 minutes and gave me headache. You have been warned!

*Full disclosure: I did get compliments wearing this. It can smell pretty striking in the air, and people notice it. My daughter, who always tells me whether she loves or loathes whatever I'm wearing, smelled it on me and said it was one of the best perfumes she had ever smelled. C'est la vie.

A pleasant, strong mix of vetiver and Thai basil (the essential oil of which usually smells to me like mint) with an effervescent sparkle that recalls 7up. There's also a background sludge of chemicals, including something ozonic that reminds me of a hot computer, or maybe of plastic dishes on the verge of melting in a hot dishwasher. There's also a very modern musk element that reminds me of the rice milk musk of JHAG's Not A Perfume.

Hours in, the basil and the sparkle fade, while that coconutty Australian sandalwood made famous by Santal 33 comes in, paired up with the plasticky chemicals and fading vetiver.

I know this sounds unpleasant, but it works. The mix of ”real” and ”artificial” smells is handled well. That being said, it’s quite strong and, by day two, the chemical onslaught starts weighing thin. But I’m still voting thumbs up for a clever new take on vetiver.