5 O'Clock Au Gingembre

I know what scent I’m wearing tomorrow for Christmas; in fact, I’m wearing it now, and as I sat down to write this post, my husband, sitting at the opposite end of the couch said, “You smell sooo good!” Yet I wouldn’t have tried this fragrance were it not for the good people at Beauty Habit (aren’t they the best!!?), who sent it to me as a sample with my latest purchase. Seriously, I had no plans to seek out Serge Lutens Five O’Clock Au Gingembre after the reviews I read last spring, when the fragrance launched. They were mostly echoed complaints of “meh,” and who wants to spend their time and money seeking out a sample of that?

But today I’m sitting pretty with this scent on my wrists and, let me tell you, it’s true that Five O’Clock Au Gingembre won’t stand the world on its head, but it’s anything but “meh.” If you can imagine partaking of a delicate nibble of crystallized ginger while relaxing in a sauna, well, that’s the feeling I get when wearing this scent. And we’re not talking about a terribly hot sauna, but one that has been dialed down a bit in temperature so that it delivers the very thing I tend to crave this time of year: steady, even warmth. The kind of warmth that settles deep into your bones, soothing and comforting, and which smells luxuriously of wood (which is a comforting smell in and of itself). This wood aspect isn’t mentioned much in the reviews I’ve read of this scent, is it? But in addition to Five O’Clock Au Gingembre’s clear, almost sparkling, candied ginger note, its masculine hit of bergamot in the opening that gives the sent a very unisex sensibility and tempers the sweeter notes of honey and vanilla that follow, I get a rich and refined cedar note from this scent. It’s like the finely planked cedarwood of a sauna---fragrant, yet incredibly smooth.

The notes in this fragrance have a way of keeping it nicely balanced between the feminine and the masculine; I could see a couple easily sharing a bottle of this. And though the name Five O’Clock Au Gingembre might lead one to believe this is food-y, and thus scare off those who don’t care for gourmand scents, I find it neither too sweet nor even too gingery. True, ginger is the star note here, and it is ever so lightly candied and accompanied by a tea note and a dusting of dark cacao. However, there is such delicacy in the treatment of these notes that, if there is any resemblance to food here, then it is to the most dainty of dainties: a pale, dry ginger ale, maybe; or crystallized ginger that resembles the fresh root more than it does candy; or, at the very most, ginger thins of the type my great-grandmother once made, which she achieved by rolling the dough to a translucency such that you could read the newspaper through it.

Mostly, Five O’Clock Au Gingembre is a dry scent: dry and sparkling at the start, which is where it could best be compared to ginger ale—and dry and warm after that, once the gorgeous cedarwood note kicks in.

In the same way that ginger is taken to calm the upset stomach and relax the body, Five O’Clock Au Gingembre is the kind of scent that can calm a frazzled mind and spirit. But to characterize it merely as a comfort scent wouldn’t do it justice. There is, as its name suggests, something old-worldly charming about it, arising precisely from the employ and treatment of its star note. Ginger is old country—it’s not something we smell in modern-day America, except in stir-frys. Who, in America, makes time for tea and gingerbread? Who even drinks ginger ale, for that matter? (Besides you, me, and the cocktail crowd—thank you—that no doubt keeps the Canada Dry and Schweppes folks in business.) If you are having tea and ginger—or having a ginger drink of any kind, in a glass, and not a grande latte sipped from a paper cup in rush-hour traffic—then you are probably either properly British or someone of a sensual nature who values leisure. (You are probably also someone who loves perfumes and owns too many of them, but let’s save that for another time.)

Now, if such notions sound more quaint than charming, you probably won’t like Serge Lutens Five O’Clock Au Gingembre. For me, however, it’s the perfect scent to ward off the gloomy chill of winter, with enough of a wink towards delight that when I wear it I feel like I’m on holiday. Which, of course, I am, and hopefully, so are you. Let’s raise a cup of cheer, shall we? Merry Christmas, everyone!

Serge Lutens Five O'Clock Au Gingembre can be purchased at BeautyHabit.com, LuckyScent.com, Aedes.com and other places where Serge Lutens scents are sold. $120 for 50 ml.

Bottle image is from LuckyScent.com.

Posted by Suzanne Keller, 12/24/2008.

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