Dame Perfumery New Musk Oil: fragrance review

There are as many types of musk as there are flowers in the field. Musk has diverged from a single ingredient to a pleiad of genres within a scent group. Although most divide musks roughly into either the "clean" or "dirty" camp, depending on whether they replicate respectively laundry detergent ingredients or the nether region gland secretions of a small animal, it is possible to profit of both worlds.

via

New Musk Oil belongs to the first camp, yet, without embracing any characteristic of the second, it manages to eschew the clinical sterility that some of its compatriots share. It's clean to the degree that a freshly washed apricot fruit is clean enough to eat. But that does not detract from the fact that it's a succulent, living thing in the palm of your hand, and that you can feel the palpitations of your own heart settle down as you consume it in abandoned pleasure. New Musk Oil is like that; it possesses an unusual fruity quality about it, under the primness of the more standard lily of the valley that's par for the course within this genre of clean musky scents, which recalls an apricot flavor. In fact I'd venture that it shares DNA with another lightly apricot-tinged fragrance in the line, namely Soliflore Osmanthus (osmanthus is a tree with small apricot-smelling blossoms). Makes sense.

Considering that the sensuous application of an oil to one's skin uses touch as the cornerstone of predisposing for the "my skin but better" effect, and that New Musc Oil shares the exact same formula with the alcohol-based New Musk Man cologne, I'd say that with this pretty and lasting oil from Dame Perfumery Scottsdale has won the hearts of women. Not only in the capacity of being attracted to the man who wears the scent, but in the capacity of claiming the oil as their very own.

Like the best out there it looks wholesome but holds a treasure of nuance inside. 

Lady Gaga Fame: fragrance review

With the Fame fragrance we witness a grossly missed chance and a Shannon entropy in one: whereas we could have had a Maleficent or at the very least a Pippi Longstocking, we get Cinderella ("please make the good prince notice me"), all bets off in a mathematical variability into the consumer's collective unconscious. Fame by Lady Gaga operates on a false signal, emitting something else than expected, breaking the communication circuit in half (visual cues, olfactory profile) and redirecting half of the message into the void. No wonder the Gaga perfume is the no.1 best-seller at the local Sephora as of this moment; perfume briefs these days are directed with a slew of semiotics experts and communication analysts behind them.

Lady Gaga Lady gaga FAME

via fanpop.com

The official blurb mentions the structure being built on three main accords, instead of the classic fragrance pyramid: dark accord, sensual accord and light accord. The fragrance, though not at all unpleasant (I bet if it was issued by another less "controversial" celebrity, we wouldn't expect so much to begin with and might be pleasantly surprised), ultimately runs the gamut of predictability: Fame by Gaga begins fresh grape-berry-apricot with more sweetness than anticipated from such a menacing presentation (the bottle looks like it is caught in fangs or in the pliers of a lifting machine at some enchanted factory making human replicas, someplace, an idea reinforced by the commercial), segueing into a "clean" layer of "white flowers" we've smelled in our fabric softener and plug-in home fragrance.

There's even the parting hint of smokiness for the allusion to mystery, as if something pretty needs an injection of something else too to register as coming from the meat-dress wearing celebrity or it wouldn't fit at all.

The nifty detail of the black juice inside which doesn't stain clothes or skin, as it instantly vaporizes transparent, isn't totally new either: Boudicca Wode (and not Boedicea the Victorious as I had erroneously mentioned before!) had explored the path first with her blue-tinged eau de parfum.

On the whole: Color me unimpressed.

Cool artwork though by Steven Klein. Can't knock that.

Serge Lutens Datura Noir: fragrance review

Datura Noir is rather schizophrenic, even for a Serge Lutens fragrance, aiming at pushing several buttons at once, much like the hallucinogenic datura plant is famous for; this Lutens fragrance is a kaleidoscope which changes perceptibly every time you give it a slight shake, but one can't help but get a slight case of the shivers while attempting it.

via http://www.modelmayhem.com/portfolio/pic/23309899

It has the almond nuance of cyanide we read about in novels, yet dressed in edible apricot and tropical fruit and floral notes (candied tuberose clearly present) as if trying to belie its purpose, while at the same time it gives the impression of coconut-laced suntan lotion smelled from afar; as if set at a posh resort in a 1950s film noir where women are promiscuous and men armed to the teeth beneath their grey suits and there's a swamp nearby for dumbing bodies in the night...
The noir moniker is perfect for a night-blooming blossom, but also for something dangerous and off- kilter just like a classic cinemascope of the era. Datura after all is a blossom (in the family Solanacae that consists of 9 species) which opens and blooms in the evening. What better foil for dark natures? The deadly poisonous plant, known both as Angel’s Trumpet and the Devil’s Weed, can be beneficial only in homeopathic dosages.

Medieval as the source of inspiration sounds like, Datura Noir is a modern fragrance, very much with its feet in the here and now. The apricot nuance in Datura Noir is due to both apricot pits used in making amaretto liqueur (which smells and tastes of bitter almonds oddly enough) and to osmanthus flowers, a blossom that smells like an hybrid between apricot and peach. The effect is sweet, narcotic, perhaps a tad too buttery sweet thanks to the profuse and clearly discernible coconut note which smothers the more carnal aspects of the tuberose in the heart.

Datura Noir is among the fragrances I can't really wear in the Lutens. It comes on as subtly as a ton of bricks and as sweet as a generous piece of baklava a la mode...Gaia at the Non Blonde shares the puzzlement. But you might disagree.

Notes for Serge Lutens Datura Noir: bitter almond , heliotrope, myrrh, tuberose and vanilla.



film clip collage from François Ozon's film 5X2 which is all the same neither loud, nor sweet