Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Fragrant Poetry: The Cinnamon Peeler



The Cinnamon Peeler 

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. 

The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under the rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.

You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you 
before marriage
never touch you
- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.

I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.

You climbed the bank and said
this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.

And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume
and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife.  Smell me.

~Michael Ondaatje
 

A few lovely fragrances with detectable cinnamon...
 
 1 Million (Paco Rabanne)
Bronze (Nanadebary)
Cinnabar (Estee Lauder)
Classique (Jean Paul Gaultier)
Dioressence (Dior)
Dolce Vita (Dior)
L'Eau (Diptyque) 
Egoiste (Chanel)
Euphoria Liquid Gold (Calvin Klein) 
Just Cavalli Her (Cavalli)
L de Lolita Lempicka (Lolita Lempicka)
London for Men (Burberry) 
Obsession for men (Calvin Klein)
Organza Indecence (Givenchy)
Rousse (Serge Lutens)
Spicebomb (Viktor & Rolf)

Monday, May 3, 2021

Baruti Nooud: fragrance review

 Nooud started with the spermatic idea by Spyros Drosopoulos, creative force behind the Dutch-based Baruti niche brand, of getting inside the construction of oud bases, used widely in the perfume industry these days, and searching for his own formula, his own truth. In this journey he stumbled upon the notion of nude, of skin, of bareness; and so from oud and nude evolved...Nooud!

 via

If it also suggests there is no actual oud in it, it's because there isn't. Hence the magic of the illusion.

The Nooud fragrance remains the brand's best-seller, which is understandable, due to the wide demand for sensuous oriental scents for niche audiences all over the world nowadays. It feels like it's full of ambrette, or the musky odorants in its core at least, and it's truly compelling, poised between attractively bitterish botanical and skin-warm indulgent like the finest suede. 

Although aimed at those who would be welcoming the idea of an oudh, burning Bakhour, I can definitely recommend it to people who love unsweetened musks. I can very well see how it's the best-seller!

Sunday, April 25, 2021

Kenzo Parfum d'Ete: fragrance review & reminiscences

The first encounter I had with this unique ethereal green floral fragrance was with its predecessor in the misty glass and plastic bottle with the huge dew drop on the leaf that served as cap. The 1992 Parfum d'été

 

https://gr.pinterest.com/pin/240168592603525750/

It was an eventful summer for me, with lots of glorious escapades that marked my youth, and the company of this delicate green jasmine that sang on the verdant throes of lily of the valley was the perfect embodiment of that carefree summery disposition which remains a wonderful memory. Back then, all I knew about Kenzo was that he was a Far Eastern designer who resided in Paris. And the fragrance in my mind seemed to embody both ends of the spectrum, being light and cerebral, like I imagined the Japanese to be, judging by their elaborate tea ceremony, and at the same time insidiously sensuous and subtly sexy in a carefree way, in the way models on the French Elle magazine spreads used to sprawl under the sun in the French countryside; I used to devour those magazines. Alongside Kenzo Homme, a revolutionary aquatic for men with an algae-woody backdrop, for a long time these two represented the new fresh breath of air that the Far East blew into the perfume scene, for me.  

Enter 10 years later and the 2002 edition of Parfum d'été substituted my lovely bottle with a more architectural, sparser design. At first, I was afraid that the repackaging was worse, and therefore the experience would be tarnished as well (though reformulations were not as big, nor as well known as nowadays, but the aesthetic was part of why the first edition had caught my eye in the first place). Thankfully I was soon proven wrong. The spicy green top note remains, as if a drop of galbanum had been dropped into a giant vat of lily of the valley materials with a side helping of my beloved hyacinth; cool, dewy, and sharp at first, delicate and whispering later on with musk remaining on the skin for a long time, though subtly perceptible. 

As fresh as tomorrow! If only we could graft this mood onto ourselves as well, sometimes...

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