Tauer Perfumes L'Air du Desert Marocain: fragrance review

So many of the fragrances inspired by lands steeped in spices and resins are redolent of the souk, of man made territories that ultimately take on a carte postale quality, so prone to the disillusionments of reality when one has been relying on armchair travelling leafing through Traveller and encyclopaedias. L'Air du Desert Marocain is different, because, rather than a man-infested territory, it evokes an expanse of land where the borders of orange-red skies and dry land mingle in the horizon making you feel as if you've glimpsed eternity for a split second.

via

It's hard to describe this Andy-Tauer-made marvel in a few words; it's both woody and animalic, floral and ambery oriental, all at once. The trademark ambreine that Tauer uses is very discernible, given the intensity of what feels like natural jasmine, or maybe a euphoric mingling of white flowers that recalls the orange trees which give welcome solace to the Moroccan traveler.

There are fragrances which you spray and go on about your day. This isn't one of them. The torrid complexity of dry heat, arid spice, sweet rosiness and deep, plush resinous notes which recall ancient pharmacopoeia, is capable of clearing a room if you're overzealous with the sprayer. But use it with tempered self-discipline and you can enjoy its luminous depths for days on end, on your skin as well as your clothes.

A single bottle will last you beyond your last will and testament. Very few fragrances can claim to deliver such tremendous value for money.

Histoires de Parfums Petroleum (Edition Rare): fragrance review

All the colors of a bruise: black and blue, teal green edging out in purple, fading to rosy, ending in ochre yellow like ancient parchment.

The electrical buzz of arc-welding, fiery orange sparks filling out the skies, the rusty mine of the shipwreck. The air filled with a mineral, scorched feel. The plank-plank of cork wedges hitting the iron ore at the loading decks.

A leather cloth, all smeared with wax. The musty smell of the hold of an old ship. He had his hair loose and oily with sweat and ambery brilliantine. My hand aching from trying to hold tight onto the lower mast. I said "I'm hurt". He should have said, "honey, let me heal it", like Bruce. Only he never said it; not in so many words.

John Klingel

Petroleum by Histoires de Parfums is Gerald Ghislain's story on oudh, the prophylactic defensive rot on Aquillaria trees and its resinous, nutty, woody, complex scent. Infused with fizzy orange, musty patchouli and a prolonged furry, white musk aftertaste, lasting hours, purring after the roar, Petroleum is the gift of the earth in an unassuming bottle. This oudh étude surpasses many others, in a masterful cadenza of chromatic tonalities: from black and blue, teal green edging out in purple, fading to rosy, ending in ochre yellow like ancient parchment. The chromatics in a drop of "liquid gold", in an old bruise that still aches when pressed.

Arte di Profumi Harem Soiree: fragrance review

The ember glow of a dying fire shining through the window of the yalı, the iodine assault of intensely animalic ingredients brought in by the breeze, medicinal unguents resting atop a mahogany shelf at the darüşşifa, eroticism beyond coy or playful, an arrow heading straight to the heart, drama unfolded in one astounding act. The prelude of an unforgettable moment. Far too wild to be tamed and loaded with panache, its presence is unmistakeable. Its name? Harem Soirée.

Mala Fatra, Slovakia, 1963, Vilem Heckel. Czech (1918 - 1970)
via

Harem means the forbidden and beyond the feverished Western Europeans'* dreams of physical love conducted in exotic locales of Eastern promise, it signified the living quarters of the Sultan and his family during the Ottoman rule, a place where no access was granted to outsiders.
[*such as J.A.D.Ingres, Pierre Loti or Lord Byron]

Harem Soirée is tied to ambergris (all Arte di Profumi Roma fragrances have a "star" ingredient featured on the label) but that's clearly not the whole story. Besides being profoundly animalic, the daring scent is full of the concentrated essence of labdanum, with only a very distant hint of that other "amber" ingredient, vanilla. The treatment of this iconic oriental chord is pitch black, resinous smelling, dark as the cloth of the night, dangerous and medicinal as if stemming from prophylactic pharmacopeia, vaguely reminiscent in mood of Ambre Sultan, but even darker and denser with bittersweet myrrh; cuffs of lead rather than iron. Its very austere and dramatic character, with no concessions to the fruity bowl or the dessert trolley, make Harem Soirée a perfect backdrop for discerning gentlemen or women with the rush of adventure fanning their wings.

The name is referencing the shows put by women dancers as well as the 1999 Turkish film by the same name (Harem Suare).

The perfume along the rest of the Arte di Profumi Roma line is available from Jovoy Paris and Ausliebezumduft online.

La Via del Profumo Tawaf: fragrance review & bottle giveaway

"It was the month of March last year when I stopped by in Arabia on my way back from Oman and went to Mecca. Silk produces strange optical effects according to the way it is woven. One afternoon I discovered the Ka’aba in a colour I had never seen it before. Instead of a dark black on which the oven calligraphies were nearly invisible, the particular sunlight of that afternoon made it light grey, enhancing the calligraphies."

 Thus begins the inspiration behind Tawaf.... The Ka'abah is the geographic center of the Arabian soul, of its spirituality, culture and civilization and Tawaf (طواف) is the name of the muslim ritual consisting of circumambulations [7 times counter-clockwise] around the Ka’abah, the cube shaped building in Mecca, adorned with black silk.

El Topo (1970) film via killthesnark.blogspot.com

Abdes Salaam, the all naturals perfumer pilgrim which travels under the passport of Dominique Dubrana, now has encapsulated this spiritual journey into a new fragrance that is as oriental as it is mystical. It's a common westernized preconception to think of the scents of the East as seductive by default, a tradition inaugurated by Shalimar (Guerlain) in the 1920s when anything eastern seemed filled with promise of forbidden delights, but the apocryphal spirituality of the Middle East hides in the sockets of this jasmine-strewn all natural oriental that aims at the soul as much as it does at the body. Forget all about the Middle Eastern tourist-y "oudh" fragrances churned out by western niche brands too.

The Tawaf fragrance is the aromatic "melody" of the scents that surround those performing the Tawaf. It brings together the trails of Jasmine Sambac that pilgrims wear, the rose water poured from buckets to wash the white marble floor and the Oppoponax attar spread by the handful over the corners of the Ka’abah. These are the essences that comprise the new fragrance. Other ingredients meaningful in the Arabic tradition are Narcissus and Myrrh. Tawaf is a binary perfume constructed on the combination of two accords that intertwine without melting one into each other, the Jasmine Sambac accord and the Oppoponax resin accord interweaving like two colored Chinese silk fabrics which display two different colors depending on how the light shines on them."

I am already a fan of most of Abdes Salaam perfumes (if you have read this blog long enough, you know it by now) so it wasn't such a leap falling in love with a perfume which combines two of my favorite notes: jasmine and opoponax. You got to love a perfumer who is as assured of himself as to publicly state that "it's not difficult to make a good fragrance". Even more so when he's not profiting of the short-cuts that using a handful of passe-partout synthetics present in today's industry ("let's put a lab-produced citral and peony top note with some rose & patchoulol in the heart and boost the base with tons of Iso-E Super and Ambroxan for tenacity & diffusion and call it a day"). But the blending in Tawaf, although recognizably a melange of jasmine and opoponax resin (the latter giving that hazy, soft focus effect that seems like you're seeing everything through a vaseline-smeared lens), is so much more than the sum of its parts. The golden ambience of the jasmine is warm, plush, generous, late summery in feeling, yet with an austere and unusual broom hint. The flower takes on facets of honeysuckle and still green narcissus; fatty, happy, yellow, elevated on an elemental plane where plant emerges from the soil triumphant, alive, touching the sky. The myrrh inclusion is ascetic, bittersweet, offsetting the sweeter floral essences and the delicate rose veil.
Tawaf surrounds the self with the mystery and awe reserved not for tales of maudlin romance, but for the encompassing need for a higher being that knows no religious boundaries and no country borders. And for that it is essential. It's hard to believe anyone wouldn't -at least-like it; it would indicate they're soulless...

Tawaf is available at the La Via del profumo site in 15.5 ml, 33 ml and 50 ml bottles (beautifully decorated with Arab calligraphy). There is also an innovative Tawaf blending kit the aim of which is to allow you to compose the fragrance according to your personal taste. With the kit you’ll be able to change the perfume every day in a different way, to match your mood and state of mind.[more details on the link]

 A 15ml bottle of Tawaf will be given by the perfumer to a Perfume Shrine reader. Please share in the comments how you envision a spiritual experience related to smell (or if you have any such scented spiritual experience!) to be eligible. The giveaway is open to US and Canada readers only, this time, due to USPS regulations (sorry about that...). Draw remains open till Friday 26th midnight and the prize will be posted by the perfumer directly to the winner.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Abdes Salaam & La Via del Profumo fragrances, 
Mapping Scents of Spitiruality.

In the interests of disclosure, I was sent a sample for reviewing purposes by the perfumer directly.

Definition: Resinous & Balsamic Fragrances

One of the most elusive terms in fragrance terminology appears to be -according to readers' comments- "resinous" and "balsamic", as relating to perfumes. The raw materials falling under the umbrella of resins and balsams are among the most ancient components of perfumes, often the basis of the Oriental family of scents and lending their soothing opulence and depth to other families, such as the Chypres. They make their appearence known in any category though: florals, fougères, hesperidics also benefit from a touch here and there.

The distinction between resin and balsam is one of form, on a fundamental level: Simply put and generalising, resinous materials come in the form of solidified, gum-like "tears" seeping from the elixir vitae circulating into the bark of big trees, such as the Boswellia Carteri (which produces frankincense). Balsams on the other hand are trickly materials, not necessarily tree secretions, often coming as they do from flower pods or bushy twigs (such as vanilla orchids or the Mediterranean rockrose). But there are exceptions to every rule: Opopanax, though resinous smelling itself, actually comes from a herb, opopanax chironium.
So the real focus when referencing balsamic and resinous terminology is how the materials actually smell and how they're different or common in scent, rather than what their origin is. 
Therefore, for ease, resinous & balsamic materials are classified into 3 distinct olfactory profiles according to their aromatic properties first and foremost.

Soft balsamic smelling ingredients include:

• vanilla (from the vanilla orchid, the rich pod having a more complex rum-like note than the popular synthetic ethyl vanillin)

• benzoin gum (from Styrax Tonkiniensis with a sweetish, caramel and vanillic facet; benzoin Siam or benzoin Sumatra are used in perfumery)

• Peru balsam (coming from the Myroxylon, ~literally "fragrant wood" in Greek~ or Quina/Balsamo, a different species of which also produces Tolu balsam)

• Tolu balsam (close to Peru balsam, but a little sweeter and fresher)

• cistus labdanum (leathery, ambery, deep, coming from the rockrose bush and traditionally harvested from the hairs of goats who had grazed on the rockrose).

These materials have a gentle tone, while at the same time they're softly enveloping and have a pronounced character. They fix flowers into lasting longer and thanks to their properties when used in large quantities produce the semi-Orientals or the florientals (in conjunction with rich floral essences). 
A great example of a fragrance featuring copious amounts of Tolu balsam is Tolu perfume by Ormonde Jayne. The opulence of the balsamic note mollifies the rest of the composition, giving the golden sheen of a multi-faceted citrine. Tolu also makes floral notes more candied: in Fracas by Piguet it acts on the tuberose, on Gold by Donna Karan it enhances the ambery lily.
Compare and contrast with the balsamic base of Guerlain's Vol de Nuit which features a generous helping of Peru balsam; the oriental accord gives it its opulence under the green top note. In Ambre Sultan by Lutens, Peru balsam pairs with its traditional counterpart, an oriental amber accord. Elixir des Merveilles is another one which features balsam of Peru for its sweetly grounding qualities.

For labdanum, grab Donna Karan Labdanum, L'Air du desert Marocain by Andy Tauer, La Labo Labdanum 18 or Madame X by Ava Luxe: they're full of it.
The purest incarnation of benzoin in non gum form is Papier d'Armenie, the traditional scented little papers in a cute notebook, which burnt produce a clearing, anti-microbial atmosphere to one's home. Short of that, if you don't travel to Europe often, you can get a sample of Bois d'Armenie by Guerlain, or Prada Candy. Benzoin is very versatile spanning the fragrance families from citrus to woods and florals and its heft is therefore used frequently as it complements the other notes beautifully. Chanel's Coromandel fuses the vanilla-cinnamon notes of benzoin with a white chocolate note to render a delicious and sophisticated gourmand fragrance. Both benzoin and Tolu balsam make up the surprisingly monastic backdrop of Bal a Versailles by Jean Desprez, allied to the austerity of cedar.

If you are seeking a lush balsamic composition with multi-nuanced orientalia, seek no further than Mecca Balsam by La via del Profumo; it features labdanum, real oud and franckincense as well, so it's a composite that allows one to see how categories can be combined.

Vanillic fragrances are of course widely understood by everyone, so another article of a different scope, focusing on their merits and faults, is in order.

Resinous balsamic smelling ingredients include:

• opoponax/opopanax (also called "sweet myrrh" ~though no relation~ from the Opopanax chironium herb, scented between lavender & amber)

• frankincense/olibanum (the lemony-top, smoky smelling "tears" of the Boswellia carteri tree, called lubbān in Arabic)

• myrrh gum (a waxy oleoresin with a bitterish profile from the Commiphora myrrha)

• birch tar (from "cooked" birch wood, tar-smelling)

• elemi (a peppery, lemony, pine-like yellow oil coming from the steam-distilled or treated with volatile solvents resin of the Canarium Lizonicum)

• styrax (resin from the Liquidambar Orientalis tree, with a scent reminiscent of glue and cinnamon)

Valued since antiquity, resins have been widely used in incense and perfumery. Highly fragrant and antiseptic resins and resin-containing perfumes have been used by many cultures as medicines for a large variety of ailments. It's no coincidence that the three Magi gave baby Jesus the gifts of Frankincense, Myrrh and Gold. Traditionally used to make incense (King Solomon regarded opoponax as the noblest incense gum), even nowadays in the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin frankincense and myrrh "tears" are the incense par excellence still. These materials are deeper, with a lingering trail which adds originality and projection to a composition. Since they themselves typically come from the bark of trees in the form of crystalised resin "tears", they pair very well with woody scents.

If you want to get a taste of how some of the more "esoteric" of these smell, , say opoponax grab yourself the Diptyque Opopanax scent in either room spray or candle, as well as their Myrrh candle. They provide the scent in isolation. The iconic Shalimar as well as the masculine counterpart Habit Rouge owe their "flou" hazy effect in opoponax allied to orange blossom. For myrrh, Myrrhe Ardente in Les Orientalistes line by Annick Goutal and La Myrrhe by Serge Lutens provide two nuanced and quite different "readings" of the myrrh gum in complex compositions.
Athonite frankincense in the black variety is pure frankincense/olibanum gum (it's pliable when you rub it, like chewing gum), rising in clean, citrusy-smoky ringlets on the air; I burn it on small coal tablets regularly. There are many frankincense fragrances in the niche market, the truer perhaps being Avignon by Comme des Garcons, but the whole Incense Series is to be explored for the truly interested perfume lover.
Tauer's Incense Extrême is a good starting place for frankincense variants, based as it is on the Boswellia serrata (Indian incense) at a 25% concentration.

Birch tar is easily detected in compositions of the Cuir de Russie type (from Chanel Cuir de Russie to Piver's and Guerlain Cuir de Russie). This is also a material that can be classified in the sub-group of phenolic smells. It is pungent and dark.
Elemi is often used in masculine blends to give at the same time cooling piquancy and warmth thanks to its peppery top note: try Gucci by Gucci, notice the top note of L'Instant pour Homme (Guerlain) and the unique Eau de Naphe by Comptoir Sud Pacifique. For styrax, remember that the resin has a leathery facet with incense tonalities (and has been an important supporting player in "Cuir de Russie" compositions, such as Chanel's). Notice it in the drydown of Carven's Ma Griffe, in Poivre 23 by Le Labo and in No.11 Cuir Styrax by Prada. Lutens uses it beautifully in several of his scents, notably in the base note of Tubereuse Criminelle and Cuir Mauresque.

Nota bene that even though fir, pine and copal essences come from coniferous trees themselves,  I am not including them in the resinous and balsamic classification as they're really terpenic-smelling (a perfume definition to be elaborated on in a subsequent article).

There is also a sub-set of powdery balsamic smelling ingredients which do not come in resin or balsam form, therefore they are not classified into this category via origin at all, but rather via their scent profile alone. This includes: orris root (the Iris Pallida rhizome and also the synthetic irones-rich reproductions), several musks of synthetic origin, and carrot seed oil (which can give an orris scent in itself).
Amber mixes (refer to what amber is and its difference from ambergris on this link) can also be powdery balsamic smelling: the inclusion of benzoin (which gives a sweetish, baby talc note) and vanilla in the mix of ingredients in amber is the culprit. In French terminology/classification of orientalised perfumes they're refered to as "parfums ambrés" (even when not entirely focused on amber). For instance Obsession, the original Magie Noire (not the reformulated which is greener, more chypre) or Moschino by Moschino (again the original from 1987) are examples of perfumes "ambrés". It is important NOT to confuse between a balsamic/ambery powdery ambience (which is typically sweeter) and one which is powdery/dry (such as in Aromatics Elixir, Ma Griffe, Flower by Kenzo, DK Cashmere Mist): the two terms though very close are not interchangeable.

In concluding, the necessity of establishing a common language for scent among people who talk about the same perfumes increasingly arises. Even though we commonly use subjective terms to denote our feelings, the proper terminology, in accordance to how perfumers talk among themselves, aids a thorough understanding  and enhances our communicating our impressions on an immediately graspable context. It is this need which we try to address with our articles on Perfume Vocabulary and Definition on PerfumeShrine. If you haven't caught up with our relevant articles, here's what you might have missed:

• Definition: Indolic vs. Non Indolic
• Definition: Lactonic, Creamy, Milky, Butyric
• Definition: Powdery & Dry in Fragrances
• Definition: Soapy in Fragrances
• Definition: Phenolic, Terpenic, Camphoraceous scents
• Definition: Which Material Produces Which Note/Effect?

Photo of resin drops, some rights reserved by flod/flickr, censer pic via St.Dunstan's Priory