Tauer Perfumes Attar AT

Tauer Perfumes enters the Middle Eastern world of attars with a new release, Attar AT. It’s a deep, dark, powerful fragrance centered on smoky woods, vetiver, leather, and smoke in a way that, initially, mimics the facets of genuine oud. It’s the sort of scent that presents such a rugged, self-assured, soft-spoken but powerful masculinity in such a no-nonsense, unpretentious fashion that I think it would appeal to quite a large number of men.

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Amouage Figment Man & Figment Woman

This year, Amouage‘s annual masculine and feminine duo is called Figment. I’ll take a look at them both today.

Figment Man and Woman. Source: Now Smell This.

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UNUM Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto

Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto probably wins the award for the longest perfume name of 2017. The words translate to “there are no hands to caress my face” and come from the first lines of a poem written by Father David Maria Turoldo in 1948.  The length of the name makes it impractical for me to refer to all nine words repeatedly throughout this review, so I’m going to make my life simpler and just call the fragrance “Io Non Ho Mani.” (In my head, I mentally call it “Yo, No Mani” in a Rocky Balboa voice. “Yo, Adriennnnnnnne, Io No Mani.” It’s terrible; I know I’m a philistine and an uncouth barbarian, but I can’t seem to help it.) Name aside, “Yo, No Mani” turned out to be quite a happy, unexpected surprise. I thought it was a great spicy, woody, tobacco, incense-y, amber oriental.

Source: Shutterstock stock photos.

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Masque Milano Mandala

Mandala, the second recent release from Masque Milano, has a very different geographic focus than its New York sister. This one is centered on a monastery in Tibet or Nepal where the sound of Buddhist monks’ overtone singing rings out in the rarefied air, “two notes chant[ed] in perfect, peaceful harmony.” The fragrance is meant to have the same duality, as well as the same meditative serenity, according to Masque’s official scent description: “A myrrh and incense fragrance – light and delicate. A contemplative atmosphere. Vibrating at two levels at the same time.”

Photo: Adam Monk. Source: his website, Monk Art Photography. (Direct website link embedded within.)

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