Bon Parfumeur Paris

This time, we wanted to discuss about this particular brand, the house of “Bon Parfumeur Paris” How did we find it?, pretty much randomly.
What we mean is that we have walked passed in front of the Bon Parfumeur stand so many times at our “go to” perfume place and we never paid much attention to it. We believed that the reason is very simple, as simple as their presentation is, because the word “minimalistic” is an understatement when it comes to described their bottles and packages, specially if you are blinded by the designs and bling bling from other brands that may be around.

For example, if you go into a fragrance department and the first thing you see are the crowns from the Clive Christians and their high price tags. The Rojas with their gorgeous bottles and embedded  gems in their caps, etc, so there is a high chance that you wont pay much attention to a little squared bottle that has written only 3 notes in each label and carry a very affordable price if they are not displayed properly. At least that is how it happened to us. But let us tell you that we were very very wrong, because goodness almighty these things are special. So much that we are writing about them with confidence and satisfaction as they have earned a place in our list to one of our favourite discoveries of 2020.

We truly think that no matter the simplicity of their looks and presentation, plus the healthy price, this brand is great. It so great that every shop should have a dedicated island/area with their offerings in the same way as if you would display Byredos or Dyptiques for that matter…bright, minimalistic, clean displays to show off their stuff. But that’s it about our opinion regarding the looks because what we truly care about, it’s the smell.

So far, we have acquired only few of their offerings, the first one being their 903 fragrance (yes, as you see in the photos, they use number combinations to describe their perfumes and blends, and you know what?, we gonna try to contact the brand and see what is the story behind the numbers. We will let you know if we get a response ok?)

So 903 is their very spicy and likeable Oud fragrance.Why and how we run into that one? No fancy explanations to be honest. We saw the bottle that had Oud written on, took a whiff and there you go, instant love, so we got it right away. What you need to know about this particular fragrance is that smells fantastic, but remember that this is our personal experience and taste.

So the opening of 903 is just amazing, if you test it on a paper strip, it starts a bit fruity and rapidly transforms into what is advertised to be, a spicy Oud.

On skin, it immediately starts very spicy. We don’t get the fruity touches but we definitely feel the saffron and other spices notes and then you are left with the woody tones plus that westernised Oud.
It is important to know that this is certainly an Oud accord. We have tried Natural Oud oil and this is not it (our humble opinion tho). But it doesn’t matter because this blend is beautiful, warm and comforting.

Their 302 perfume is also very beautiful and here is where the thing gets interesting. We are not sure if their inspiration was taken from another huge monster in the perfume world or if by mistake they ended up with the result that it is, but if you know Ivory Route from the House of Xerjoff, the first stage of 302 smells incredibly similar on skin, at least to us.

Sometimes we goof around and do blind smelling tests where we apply fragrances that are similar and see if we can guess which one is which, and these two are the hardest to guess.

Scent profile of 302 is an oriental spicy according to their site and what we get upon initial spray is a beautiful and short lasting flowery opening (here is where it starts to smell like Ivory Route, but for short time), followed by some spicy amber accord that transforms into a creamy vanilla and sandalwood blend that lasts till the end of this journey, that’s it…nothing complex.

Finally and the one that packs spring power is their offering 203. What a lovely vibrant fruity and flowery blend this is.
With this one, we feel exactly what the brand advertises as for the opening of this juice, the fresh berries and a very noticeable pear accord. There are also some white florals but if there is jasmine, it is so well blended that we can’t pinpoint it, same goes for the roses listed.

There is also a little bit of muskiness present. Vanilla is detected at the very last stage of the drydown.

This one is also tricky, at times it feels very lively and youthful but sometimes it feels very mature and classy, what a treat. But it is important to know that we are writing about this fragrance and smelling it as we speak and in the middle of winter, so maybe Spring season would be better for re visiting this juice.

From all the perfumes that this company has to offer, these three made it to our collection so far, but it doesn’t  mean it ends here, on the contrary, we just started exploring in depth this house with nothing but satisfaction.

Performance on these beauties are the following:

903  unfortunately being  the shortest performer on this list…we get 3 hours max until it becomes a very light skin scent…but we dont care, when its 903 day, we carry it around and spray it as needed.

302 and 203 both share similar durations, reaching the 5 hour mark before the skin scent mode is on.

About their package, their squared bottles are listed to be made of a 100% recyclable glass according to their website. A glass squared minimal looking bottle with a recycled paper label that displays the number of each fragrance and three main olfactory notes written in each one of them.
The colours of their labels are very nice, like Wes Anderson would have designed them. The boxes are also made of recycled cardboard and they look like books. They could easily decorates a home book display, which is nice.
The sprayers are fine…nothing extraordinary but fine
you can find their fragrances in 30ml or 100ml and the price is 38 EUR and 82 EUR accordingly (as listed in their website as well)
We got ours at Ikona Art perfumery store in Ljubljana , all of them in the 30ml form and also at 38 EUR each.

So in a final note, if you want to explore a more “niche” type of scent while not being too challenging…then Bon Parfumeur is a great alternative that will keep you and your wallet smiling and will decorate your bookshelf as well.

That s all for now….We hope you liked this post and stay tuned for the next one about our few best discoveries from 2020.

PS: So, we wrote a mail to the people at Bon Parfumeur to ask details and reasons of the numbers in their labels and they were so kind to send us an answer, which is very simple, the number combination allows them to classify each fragrances by their olfactive family.

Another PS: We were also surprised by their generosity as they offered us to pick any of their offerings in a 100ml format once we asked them about the story behind the numbers and about our article being written …which is nice because with or without it, we still consider this house as one of our great discoveries from last year…so Thank you again Bon Parfumeur for the generosity

That would be all for now…Be safe and see you soon!

-D&M-