Thread: Sandalwood at work?

I've found myself daydreaming about sandalwood at work lately. I think about how nice it will be to smell it when I go home and how I wish I could smell it right then. Would it be weird if I took a tub of AOS or Proraso with me to smell periodically? Yes I imagine it would.

I've been on such a sandalwood kick that it has been difficult to work through all my samples. I bought the AOS bath soap. It is rather expensive so I've try to limit it to weekend only use. You can probably imagine how that is going. Yes, weekends are 4-5 days long now in my house. I've started looking for less costly alteratives and have a bar of Mysore Sandal Soap coming in the mail. My understanding is that the scent of this soap is as authentic as it gets and for good reason. I'm also interested in Bee and Flower sandalwood soap. It gets good reviews and had nice packaging. Mistral/Mistril is another one that looks like a possibility. Any comments from those who have tried these soaps are welcome. I even bought incense sticks and a burner today. Haven't used in sense since college.

I really like what I understand is the authentic, Santalum Album scent. Of the sandalwood creams I've tried AOS and Proraso are head and shoulders above the rest. TOBs sandal wood has been described as "flowery" and I can't disagree. It performs well but isn't sandalwood to me. GFT is a nice smelling cream, but again no sandalwood. The skin food seems a bit more "sandalwoody" though. EJ smells more like cedar than anything else to me. Can anyone make comments about the "sandalwoodyness" of other products? Castleforbes perhaps? I've heard that QED made great sandalwood soap but no longer produces it.

I would love to find a sandalwood shampoo, deordorant, etc., that smells the way I would like it to. Nothing that I have seems to last more than a few minutes. I'm thinking about buying the AOS EDT or a bottle of Floris sandalwood off of eBay. Both are quite expensive.

Any one else daydream about their favorite scents while at work? What are they?

No,,,,,,,,,,,,,, but that's O.K. if you do,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Lol. Thanks a lot Hirlau.

The only time that ever happened was last year at my son's high school. I walked into the office wearing Bleu, by Chanel. Four young high school girls complemented me & for a moment,,, very brief moment ,,, I felt like I was 22 years old.

Then reality set in & I drove to Duncan Donuts depressed,,,,,

What about wearing sandalwood fragrance? I usually smell whatever I'm wearing throughout the whole day, and if I'm wearing clothes that don't change daily (i.e. wool sweater instead of cotton shirt) even the subsequent days.
At least on my skin, but Sandalwood tends to stay close to it (I think it may be characteristic of the oil), so I get periodic 'whifs' of it since smell works based on gradients.

Some years ago I wanted most authentic sandalwood, and that was the QED shaving soap, but I've changed since and I prefer (the authentic) sandalwood in blends. The good stuff is expensive though.

If you must stay with just bath products Shikai makes sandalwood shower gel which you may want to check out - it's fragrance sandalwood not essential oil, but you may like it.

If your having this problem with sandalwood stay away from patchouli .

incense . . . just a thought

@ 10Pups
I actually did buy some incense and a stick burner yesterday. I'm burning it right now. It's nice but not really the sandalwood scent I'm looking for. It may just be the brand. I bought it in Walgreen's. If i like the Mysore soap i may buy there incense. I'm not a straight patchouli fan. At least not as a fragrance on people. I have enjoyed blends with patchouli recently however. Some of the TOBS fragrances and a candle I smelled yesterday. The scent was called "patchouli woods" I think.

@ Gugi
No I'm not limiting it to bath products. I would wear a sandalwood fragrance, though perhaps not at work. It is sort of frowned on where I work, though not everyone "gets it". If it stays close to me and doesn't project much that might be OK. I mentioned the AOS sandalwood EDT and Floris Sandalwood(no longer produced but available on eBay unless I'm mistaken). I know Floris makes a sandalwood blend called Santal. The AOS sandalwood after shave gel seems to last for mere seconds but i assume the EDT would last longer. I believe the AOS sandalwood products use fragrance oil so I am not necessarily opposed to products with FO. Maybe that is one reason the scent doesn't last. Interesting that proraso can use the real thing and charge so much less. Any comments on these or suggestions for other sandalwood fragrances?

I would love to try the QED sandalwood shave soap, but I don't think he makes it anymore. Does anyone know different or can anyone suggest other "authentic" sandalwood smelling products?

Castle Forbes is great. I think you might be a little disappointed since it weighs heavy on the cedar side. I have a theory that this cream does no hold up well with heat, meaning while shipping or en route to be delivered. I ordered some and the cream was really loose instead of dense. Castle Forbes is a dense cream. I mixed it up and put it in the fridge for awhile. An added benefit was to mellow out the cedar smell which reminded me of pine tar for some reason.

Although I do have some sandalwood creams they are not my favorite. I get tired of the scent pretty fast. That being said I do enjoy smelling my fav scents all day. Not to difficult for me cause I work in the heat so the scent keeps coming back. I try to match scents in cream an aftershave. Only in my fav scents though, as this gets pricey. As for now my go to that I match scents are DRH Windsor an Arlington. TOBS Eton, St james , Jermyn st...... The rest of the rotation gets the Nivea AS treatment.

Originally Posted by tedh75

I mentioned the AOS sandalwood EDT and Floris Sandalwood(no longer produced but available on eBay unless I'm mistaken). I know Floris makes a sandalwood blend called Santal. The AOS sandalwood after shave gel seems to last for mere seconds but i assume the EDT would last longer. I believe the AOS sandalwood products use fragrance oil so I am not necessarily opposed to products with FO. Maybe that is one reason the scent doesn't last. Interesting that proraso can use the real thing and charge so much less. Any comments on these or suggestions for other sandalwood fragrances?

I would love to try the QED sandalwood shave soap, but I don't think he makes it anymore. Does anyone know different or can anyone suggest other "authentic" sandalwood smelling products?

I'm pretty sure you can't find the QED soap. May be SRD would reissue the tobacco&sandalwood SRP special they did some years ago - the sandalwood in there is the real thing and it works quite well with the tobacco.

Floris Sandalwood is indeed discontinued and if you get lucky you could find old stock on places like ebay. It is a blend though - heavy on the sandalwood but still a blend. Tam Dao is probably closer to the pure sandalwood scent but it's also a well made blend. Unlike Floris, it is however currently available.
You can look up past sandalwood threads - there are many good suggestions in those.

The essential oil is expensive, though, so the resulting products tend to not be cheap either.

Personally I've settled on 4 or 5 sandalwood fragrances (I mean predominantly sandalwood as it is a pretty common ingredient and you could detect the note in the drydown in tons of others), each of them is fairly different from the rest, so together they cover the spectrum that I like and I pick whatever seems more suitable at the time. The most refined of those is hands down Floris, but Tam Dao isn't too bad either. For a sharper one I use I Profumi Di Firenze (not sure if they import it in US, it's called Sandalo Indiano and I haven't seen it in Bigelow's who stock that house, I got mine in Florence), and for herbal Santa Maria Novella. I guess I am missing the woodsy/smoky expression because in those I like Sandalwood to be secondary to other woods.