Kilian Straight to Heaven, white cristal Perfume Review
Kilian Straight to Heaven, white cristal Eau de Parfum is all about the cedar–dry, robust, and like you’ve opened a freshly-made cedar chest. While the opening was earthy, like soil, and had rum elements, they were minor players for such a short time. There was pronounced fruitiness that lasted for the first three hours or so but after that, it was so heavy on the cedar that there was little room to smell much else, only the barest whispers of other notes dodging in and out of detection.
- top notes: dark rum
- heart notes: vanilla, dried fruit
- base notes: nutmeg, patchouli, cedarwood
The opening began with intense, dry cedar surrounded freshly dug soil, though the incredibly earthy element was quickly subsumed by rum. It had a slightly fruity sweetness that made it seem like the cedar had been soaked in dried fruits and liquor, but the effect was subtle–the cedar was extremely dominant. It had a markedly low-level of projection, let alone anything resembling sillage, and almost immediately became a skin-scent after 45 minutes of wear.
After two hours in, Straight to Heaven was still dominated by dry cedar with slight fruity sweetness underneath, and it felt like the cedar pulled through even more so than in the opening. The scent hugged my skin even more, but the scent had made no progression even after five hours of wear, so the drydown was still very cedar-heavy with little augmenting it. At best, I detected a touch of the nutmeg and subtly spiced sweetness, but it was hard to delineate much beyond the cedar.
For testing, I had a 2ml spray vial sample, which was applied to the underside and topside of my wrist area on my left arm using half of the vial. I use an unscented moisturizer prior to applying the scent as this is also my swatching arm (aka, incredibly parched at any given moment) as I found scent did not hold well here otherwise. It was shorter-lasting and quickly became a barely-there skin-scent within a couple of hours with almost no projection and no sillage.
Subjectively, I love the smell of cedar, so I enjoyed wearing it, but I can’t imagine purchasing a full bottle of it to wear. I could see it working well to layer with something else to add a more pronounced woody layer.
Available Sizes
- 50 ml for $250
- 50 ml (refill) for $200
- 0.25 oz. (travel bottle, 4x refills) for $200
While I definitely love the smell of cedar, I’m less inclined to want to smell like it myself! This fragrance seems to lack any complexity, a bit too “plain” for me.
Christine, you are choosing the most interesting perfumes to sample and review and this one sounds promising too. But it is very expensive.
I do like the smell of cedar but not exclusively, I like it in conjunction with other notes so I would think this would be too much of a good thing.
Sounded heavenly until I saw patchouli.
This is one of my favorites! I hardly detect the cedar; on me it’s straight rum and patchouli.
I love Straight To Heaven, I was given two 7,5 mis as extras when I bought another By Kilian.
I will def be buying a full bottle.
Thank you for the review, Christine.
Interesting review! I tried a sample of by Kilian Angel’s Share, based partially on your reviews here, and found it too sweet for me (which is highly unusual, as I can tolerate warm/sweet scents very well). I’m trying other by Kilian perfumes as well and might have to add this one to the list.
Apple Brandy on the Rocks has a similar vibe but less sweet — between the two, I ended up preferring Angel’s Share for its sweetness, lol!
I know this sounds crazy but while I love the smell of cedar, I would not want to walk around smelling of it all day. I would worry that people would think I took my clothes straight out of the cedar chest and put them on without cleaning them! Crazy I know but that would bother me.