Classic 1920
Bois 1920 (2005)

Garden-like, crisp, bright. A fresh, spicy aromatic. Green and woody. I smell bergamot, lemon, juniper, basil, and paprika for the top notes. In the middle, I get cedar and lavender. When it settles down, I detect vetiver, tobacco, and caraway.

A great eye-opener.

Classic 1920 by Bois 1920 is a very nice fruity fragrance. At first spray you get apricot and citrus. In the dry down you can still smell the apricot with some spices and vetiver. It is a very nice and comforting fragrance. It lasts a very long time on me. IMO it is perfect for any season of the year

Genre: Woody Oriental

The top note here is an extremely sweet candied orange, at once bright yet so viscous I feel as if I'm inhaling a jar of marmalade. The citrus syrup persists into the heart of the scent, where it is seasoned with cinnamon and supported by very sweet amber. There are some floral notes floating about as well, predominantly a bright, clean jasmine, but they are very much subsidiary to the sweet stuff.

Christopher Sheldrake made candied orange interesting in his Mandarine-Mandarin for Serge Lutens by marrying it to an animalic ambergris reconstruction, charred spices, and a profoundly strange smoked salt accord, but nothing like that happens here. This is fruit+syrupy amber: bland, two-dimensional, and seriously lacking in balance. In fact, the more I wear it, the more it feels like a cynical über-sweet celebrity fragrance for twelve year old girls. (Mine has better taste than that and wears Tocade.) The drydown, which doesn't occur soon enough to suit me, is nothing to speak of – just more of that sweet amber and some very crude, artificial smelling woods. (For the record, I've used the word “sweet” five times in these two brief paragraphs. Oops – now that's six!)

Well I think this smells good, but it fades away to nothing pretty quickly. At first it's really nice and subtle. There's something papery about it, sometimes amber does that on me so maybe it's the amber. But I dumped an entire 1ml sample on myself and halfway through the day it was barely there. I just wouldn't spend money on something that disappears so quickly, so the lasting power (or lack thereof) makes this a neutral for me.

As a fan of Bois 1920 and Odori this review is not going to be easy for me as my disappointment for 1920 Classic is quite consistent. The name 1920 Classic made me think about a sort of signature scent with a classic oriental structure and a solid execution and all I got is a quite conventional and unremarkable fruity oriental.

B1920 opens with a terrifying, sweet and sticky apricot / citrus / osmanthus accord that immediately made me worry about becoming diabetic. After a couple of hours or so the overripe fruit note settles down and sweet amber makes its appearance with no surprise joined by some pale floral patterns, hints of vetiver and woods (?). In this phase Bois 1920 it's almost pleasant but yet too conventional. Overall this is a barely fine fragrance if you're into super sweet fruity compositions but the challenging price tag should be a serious deterrent, anyway. Not for me, sorry!

Fortunately I didn't get much sillage. Very good lasting power, though.

I'm a little confused by the reviews on this one. Fruity amber? Not on me. The dominant accord on me is spicy. Pepper, ginger, and maybe nutmeg mixes with the light citrus in the opening for a very bracing scent.

Amber is in there, don't get me wrong, but I don't find it cloying at all. It just smooths out the spice and forms a nice relationship with the woody vetiver note that shares the space. Really a lovely scent, and totally appropriate for both sexes.