DSH Perfumes Nourouz and Ruba’iyat

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Kafkaesque

Last week was Persian New Year, so I thought it was an apt time in my series on DSH Perfumes to cover the brand’s two Persian-inspired fragrances. The first one is Nourouz, which means “New Year” and which is specifically intended to celebrate the March holiday. The second is Ruba’iyat which Dawn Spencer Hurwitz says was inspired “by the Persian poetry form of the same name, and traditional oudh designs of the region.”

NOUROUZ:

1 dram mini bottle of DSH perfume. Source: DSH Perfumes website.

Nourouz is a natural eau de parfum that also sometimes goes by the name Tamarind/Paprika. The DSH website provides the following description:

A rich, round, smoky-incense nuanced perfume within a classic fruity-chypre design style.

Nourouz, the name for the New Year celebration traditional in Persia, is as exotic as it’s name. Based on luscious tamarind and sensual paprika, this is a perfume that smolders and sizzles.

The notes, as compiled from Fragrantica and the tags on DSH Perfume, are:

Top notes: Black Pomegranate (accord), Paprika, Tamarind
Middle notes: Bulgarian Rose Otto, Orris, Osmanthus, East Indian Patchouli.
Base notes: Oppopanax, Red Wine notes, Tobacco Absolute, Vanilla Absolute.

Source: banoosh.com

Nourouz opened on my skin with pomegranate and tart, tangy, tamarind molasses, all dusted with dry, somewhat dusty paprika. A lovely, dark, wine accord runs through it, smelling almost like a cherry cordial, but without the latter’s extreme sweetness. A glimmer of vanilla darts in between the various tangy notes which are really lovely in their originality.

Nourouz’s opening recreates the sense of original ingredients very well. When I was in India, I loved to eat packaged tamarind that was partially a type of solid molasses that was stuck together with lumps of the whole pods, all infused with salt. And I love pomegranate juice in general, so it is a lovely surprise to see how well that aroma is captured here. I’m less enthused by the fact that Nourouz opens as a really intimate scent that hovers just barely above the skin, regardless of how much I apply.

Source: impfl.com

Nourouz shifts quite quickly on my skin. A delicate, very pale, pink rose creeps onto the scene after 10 minutes. The perfume also turns into a complete skin scent at this point which makes it harder to detect its nuances. For the most part, Nourouz’s opening bouquet smells primarily of very tart, tangy, dark fruits with a cherry-tamarind aroma, lightly flecked by a pale rose and a drop of vanilla. Then, five minutes later, the osmanthus arrives, smelling of apricots with the faintest undercurrent of black tea and leather. At first, it is a mere flicker but the osmanthus soon grows increasingly prominent, overshadowing the tamarind, wine, and even pomegranate accords.

Osmanthus. Source: en.wikipedia.org

What was interesting to me was what happened when I applied a double dose of Nourouz. Then, the fragrance opened with the osmanthus, followed by hints of tobacco absolute and smokiness. The latter both faded away quickly, replaced by the pomegranate and tamarind notes. The wine was very muted, as was the paprika on my skin, and there was virtually no rose at all. Instead, there was the tiniest hint of something powdery, presumably from the iris/orris accord. Yet, even with the higher quantity, Nourouz still turned into a skin scent after 10 minutes. It was simply much more concentrated when smelled up close.

Regardless of quantity or test, Nourouz soon ends up in the same place on my skin: an osmanthus-dominated fragrance with tea, followed by dark fruits and the occasional whisper of smokiness. After 45 minutes, it is a wisp of osmanthus and tea with vaguely fruited nuances and a touch of abstract dryness. There is the occasional suggestion of something lightly soapy that appears deep in the base, but it is muted. Nourouz fades away shortly thereafter as a blur of abstract fruity florals. The perfume lasted 1.5 hours with the amount I usually apply in perfume testing (2 large smears or the equivalent of 1 spray of perfume), and 2 hours with double that quantity.

On Fragrantica, there are 4 reviews for Nourouz, two of which are quite positive. One person, “Sherapop,” writes:

This perfume goes through three very distinct stages on my skin and for my nose. It opens like Christmastime with lots of spices and the feeling of a fir tree or maybe potpourri? Either way, it’s very festive feeling. Then the scent suddenly smells for a brief period like a rubbery leather. I have no idea what could account for it, but that’s what I smell (and I’ve worn it a couple of different times).

By the drydown, DSH Nourouz has become a beautiful rich oriental with a touch of sweetness and something indescribable which might be the tamarind? What a ride! Very interesting.

Tamarind paste. Source: foodsubs.com

Another commentator thought that Nourouz was “most delicious with sweet, dark seduction”:

Initially tamarind is present with a little tartness to complement the dark pomegranate perfectly. Paprika isn’t too spicy but rather delivers an earthy depth.

I love osmanthus as its warm, apricot-like floral scent is perfectly paired with the soft, smoky tobacco. Rose and orris further soften the composition creating a feminine allure.

Opoponax is one of my favorite notes and combines well with vanilla and red wine accord to tantalize the senses without being overwhelming.

Nourouz has made it to one of my most favorite DSH fragrances. Well blended and elegantly delicious all the way.

The other two posters were not as excited. One commentator, “Doc Elly” (or Dr. Ellen Covey of Olympic Orchard perfumes) specifically mentioned Nourouz’s longevity which was only an hour on her skin:

This one is a little disappointing, not because of the scent itself, but because it seems weak. It’s basically a subtle rose-violet scent with a few unidentifiable notes modifying it. After testing it and finding that it faded in an hour, I looked up the description on the DSH website, where it lists the base notes as things like opoponax and red wine. These seem more like top or mid notes rather than base notes, so it’s not too surprising that there’s no longevity. The scent is nice, but a little too delicate and fleeting for my taste. I’ll pass on this one.

I’m afraid the sillage and longevity are an issue for me as well.

RUBA’IYAT:

DSH Perfume in the 5 ml antique bottle. Source: DSH website.

Ruba’iyat is a natural, 100% botanical eau de parfum that is based “on a traditional, middle eastern style Oudh oriental scent.” The DSH website adds the following:

Inspired by the Persian poetry form of the same name, and traditional oudh designs of the region. Created for indiescents.com, Ruba’iyat is a glorious all botanical middle eastern oudh, incense, saffron, and spice perfume.

The notes, as compiled from a comment on Fragrantica and the general tags on DSH Perfume, include:

Galbanum, Spicy notes, Davana, Gallic Rose Otto, Rosa centifolia, Saffron, Myrtle, Geranium, Indian Sandalwood, Oud, Frankincense CO2 absolute, Myrrh, Patchouli, Labdanum, Cumin, and Ambrette CO2.

Source: hdwallpapers.lt

Ruba’iyat opens on my skin with a potent blast of galbanum that is sharp, green-black in visual hue, and verging on the leathered. It is imbued by an equally sharp tobacco note, and a very skanky element that is almost civet-like, in addition to being a little sweaty. It clearly seems to stem from the combination of ambrette and cumin.

Davana. Source: hermitageoils.com/davana-essential-oil

Seconds later, the davana arrives on the scene, smelling intensely of apricot fruitiness. In its trail are rose, more cumin, smoky incense, and a dark note that feels like very dark, rather tobacco-like leatheriness. I suspect the latter stems from the oud mentioned in Ruba’iyat’s description, but I really don’t smell agarwood in the way that I’m used to. Instead, it comes across primarily as a sort of leathered tobacco on my skin.

The overall effect is interesting with a profile that is incredibly pungent, sharp, leathered, green-black, fruity, smoky, and animalic, all at once. There is an intense, dirty, sweaty undertone that clashes with the fierce galbanum and the intense fruitiness of the davana. Rose swirls all around, feeling sticky and jammy, while incense seeps out from every corner. Despite the latter, I keep thinking of how Ruba’iyat’s very dominant galbanum element evokes memories of Robert Piguet‘s Bandit, only in a very fruited, apricot embrace that is dusted with cumin and skank. In the background, there are flickers of fuzzy, peppered, piquant geranium leaves that feel a little bitter and that add to the green-black visuals.

Less than 10 minutes Ruba’iyat’s development, the perfume starts to shift. The saffron rises up from the base, smelling sweet, lightly fiery, and with a bite that is almost like chili pepper at first. It wraps itself around the rose and davana in a way that is really pretty, especially once the galbanum mellows out. As its pungent bite fades, only the strong veil of “leather” (oud?) remains. It is skanky, smoky, and covered with treacly, resinous labdanum. Spices lurk at the edges, particularly a clove-like note. There is also the faintest suggestion of a wine or cordial-like undertone, as if the rose and patchouli had combined with the dark leather and spices to create a deep, Italian Amarone wine impression.

Source: wallpho.com

Ruba’iyat seems to mix masculine and feminine traits in a very clever way. I have competing visuals of, on the one hand, blood-red liqueur that borders on the black with tobacco, pungency, skank and sharp smoke, but, on the other, feminine, juicy apricot florals nestled amidst geranium green leaves and sprinkled with gold-red saffron. The cumin retreats to the background after 15 minutes, but the ambrette continues its animalic skank in a way that is reminiscent of the sharp opening of Serge Lutens‘ Muscs Koublai Khan. I don’t mind it but some other parts of Ruba’iyat are a little too pungent and sharp for me.

Apricot slices. Photo: Steve Albert at harvesttotable.com

At the end of the first hour, Ruba’iyat is a pretty, fruity floriental centered around juicy apricot, leather and tobacco, followed by sharp incense, warm amber, patchouli, rose and animalic musk. The pulpy apricot is potent, concentrated, and deep, but it also starts to take on a peach undertone as well. The whole thing wafts a mere inch, at best, above the skin.

Gallic Rose Otto via trade.indiamart.com

Ruba’iyat remains largely unchanged for the next few hours, with the main difference being the order and prominence of some of its notes. The rose becomes more significant after 90 minutes and starts to resemble the rose-water syrup used in a number of Middle Eastern pastries. It even retains the same sort of light saffron dusting. At the end of the 3rd hour, Ruba’iyat is a jammy apricot rose with “tobacco,” sharp incense, musk, a dash of saffron, and a very leathery, dark undertone. Eventually, the perfume turns into a simple fruited floral with darkness and a musky, earthy tobacco note. Sometimes, the rose is more individually distinguishable, but usually it is the apricot-peach impression. In its final moments, Ruba’iyat is a blur of fruitiness with dark earthiness.

I gave Ruba’iyat two full tests, using different quantities. When I used 2 large smears or the equivalent of 1 spray from a bottle, Ruba’iyat lasted just under 6 hours. With a double dose, however, Ruba’iyat lasted 8.5 hours. In all cases, the perfume was very concentrated and strong in feel, but the sillage hovered just above the skin at first. Ruba’iyat only turned into a skin scent with the higher dose at the end of 2 hours, but it was very easy to detect up close for hours on end.

Saffron. Source: Photos.com

There are two reviews for Ruba’iyat on Fragrantica. The first one is from a chap who adores the scent, despite being less than enthused about cumin (or oud):

Oh my. Cupid has finally found a DSH arrow with my name on it and I am overcome with love. This has one of my least favorite notes (cumin) and my observation has been that there’s an oudh meme with most niche perfumers right now whether it makes sense or not(oudh and spaghetti! Yes!) so I had few expectations. Instead I find a lush rich bazaar of notes that are warm, spicy and beautifully layered. This may be the best saffron scent I’ve experienced to date. Spices and resins predominate and even after wearing this several times for hours it’s difficult to pick out individual notes but this stuff is wonderful. This perfume has enough personality that I’d strongly recommend a sample before a bottle–your feelings about this will not be lukewarm.

Sillage: reasonable, 1-2 ft
Longevity: several hours
Fabulosity: the 1,001 nights
Value to price ratio: very good
9/10

Ground cumin. Source: savoryspiceshop.com

The second review comes from “Sherapop” and is not as positive, primarily because of the cumin:

DSH Ruba’iyat is a very complex oriental perfume, with a lot of potent players vying for attention. […][¶] What to say about this concoction? I find it rather kaleidoscopic, with wafts of this and that popping up and then fading out as they are bumped off by other equally strong scents. I detect the saffron, cumin, and davana the most. Since cumin and davana are not my favorite notes (to put it mildly), this is not my favorite perfume from DSH.

I imagine that guys who enjoy cumin-centric fragrances might like this composition a lot. Definitely a try-before-you-buy is in order.

I agree with her. This is a scent that you should test, especially if you are undecided on the issue of cumin. For me, personally, my difficulty stemmed not from the cumin, but from the mix of somewhat strange, brown, tobacco-y earthiness infused with sharp pungency and muskiness. The apricot, however, was very nice.

At the end of the day, neither fragrance suits my personal tastes or style, but they are both interesting and feel very original. If you’re a fan of osmanthus or tamarind, you may want to consider Nourouz. By the same token, if apricot is your thing, and you would like to see it paired with animalic skankiness, dark notes, oud, and incense, then you may want to consider Ruba’iyat.

Disclosure: Perfume samples were courtesy of DSH Perfumes. That did not impact this review, I do not do paid reviews, and my opinions are my own.

DETAILS:

Cost & Availability: Nourouz and Ruba’iyat are both Eau de Parfums that are offered in a variety of different sizes, as well as in a pure parfum concentration. All versions are sold exclusively on DSH Perfumes’ website. Nourouz is offered in: a 1 dram miniature size flask of EDP for $18; a 5 ml EDP in an antique bottle for $115; a 1 oz/30 ml EDP size for $140; and an Extrait Pure Parfum version in an antique bottle in a 0.25 oz size for $155. Samples are available at $5 for a 1/2 ml vial of EDP. There is also an accompanying body lotion, and special Holiday Collection Coffret, where 12 different holiday fragrances in the line (including Nourouz) are offered in sample size vials for $48. I don’t know if the size is 1/2 a 1 ml or a full 1 ml. For Ruba’iyat, the pricing is as follows: 1 dram mini of EDP for $28; a 10 ml decant of EDP for $55; a 5 ml antique bottle of Pure Parfum Extrait for $115; and matching body lotions and creams. Samples are $5 for a 1/2 ml vial of EDP. In general, all orders over $10 will receive free samples of fragrances, with the number depending on the price of your order. If you are outside the U.S., international shipping is available if you contact DSH Fragrances.

DSH Perfumes Le Smoking (YSL Retrospective Collection)

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Kafkaesque

Yves St. Laurent. Photo via Pinterest.

One of my greatest icons and heroes in the artistic world was Yves St. Laurent. As a child, long before I knew the extent of all his accomplishments, he was an indirect part of my world through my fashionista mother, and I worshipped him. Thank to her, I spent hours at his Avenue Montaigne boutique, admiring the sleek clothes and the even sleeker women who bought them. I would marvel at the beauty of the African and Ethiopian models he used on the runways (he was the first fashion designer to really break the colour ceiling), and at how they loped with exquisite grace in highly structured clothes that often plunged down to their navels or that were slit up to their hips. There were the famous Helmut Newton photo shoots, the aesthetic focus on Morocco and Africa, the stunning power of Opium perfume, the creation of the safari jacket, and Le Smoking.

Photo: Helmut Newton, 1975. YSL Smoking.

Above all else, and far before Opium became my personal holy grail, it was all about Le Smoking, Yves St. Laurent’s reinvention of the tuxedo jacket for women that oozed sexuality, sleek minimalism, and power. From Catherine Deneuve (Saint Laurent’s longtime muse) to Bianca Jagger, Jerry Hall, and many others, all the most iconic, famous women of the day clamoured for Le Smoking, often wearing it with nothing underneath. Today, when you see fashion mavens like Gwyneth Paltrow, Rihanna and others wearing a sleek tuxedo jacket and little else, it’s a direct nod to Yves Saint Laurent.

Source: DailyMail.com

One reason why Le Smoking became as significant as it did is because the jacket exuded a powerful androgynous attitude, mixed with women asserting their sexuality in more traditionally masculine ways. What Caron‘s Tabac Blond sought to do for perfumery in the early 1920s, the Saint Laurent smoking jacket sought to do for fashion, amped up times a thousand with more overt sexualization. It was a fashion re-engineering of gender in a way that was completely revolutionary after the lingering impact of Dior’s New Look with its focus on hyper-femininity, and the hyper obviousness of the Courreges miniskirt. (As a side note, YSL was actually the head designer at Dior for a few years. He reached that lofty level at the mere age of 21; a mere two years later, he designed the wedding dress for Farah Diba, future Empress, for her marriage to the Shah of Iran. You can read more about his fascinating, complicated life on Wikipedia, if you are interested.)

Source: Denver Art Museum.

Given my feelings about Saint Laurent, I was keenly interested when I heard that there was a perfume that paid tribute to Le Smoking. Nay, a whole collection of fragrances that were created in homage to Yves St. Laurent, from Le Smoking to my beloved Opium itself. It was the YSL Retrospective Collection from DSH Perfumes, an indie, artisanal American line out of Colorado.

Dawn Spencer Hurwitz. Source: The Perfume Magazine.

DSH Perfumes was founded by Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, and all its fragrances are her personal creation. In 2012, she collaborated with the Denver Art Museum which was holding an exhibit on Yves Saint Laurent’s long, storied career “as one of the greatest influencers in the world of fashion, culture and perfume.” Those are not my words, or hyperbole. Those are CaFleureBon‘s words, and they’re accurate because Saint Laurent really was that important. (To learn more about YSL and his “Gender Revolution,” you can watch a PBS video on the Denver Exhibit, or click on a photo gallery from the Denver Museum that is available at the bottom of the linked page.)

To that end, Ms. Hurwitz created 6 fragrances, each of which was an olfactory interpretation of some aspect of Yves Saint Laurent’s life. By a wonderful twist of fate, Ms. Hurwitz contacted me mere days after I was looking (for the umpteenth time) at her website. At the time, I had been too overwhelmed by all the tempting choices to make a selection, so I was grateful when Ms. Hurwitz offered to send me a number of her fragrances to test. I suspect that some of you might feel similarly at a loss to know what to choose, so I’m going to cover a number of her fragrances in a row.

Le Smoking in the 5 ml antique bottle. Source: DSH perfumes

Today’s focus is the very unisex, green chypre-tobacco eau de parfum called Le Smoking. Other planned reviews include her patchouli scent, Bodhi Sativa. And there is obviously no way this Opium fanatic would miss Ms. Hurwitz’s nod to, and reinvention of Opium, with her Euphorisme d’Opium. For the rest, I’m trying to decide between fragrances from her Egyptian collection and her Persian one, as well as her botanical Vanilla and some of the spice scents.

As a side note, I have to say that Ms. Hurwitz is one of the sweetest people I’ve encountered in a while. The overwhelming impression is of gentleness, mixed with a lovely warmth. She is down-to-earth, open, understanding, gracious, and a lady to her very fingertips. None of that will impact my objectivity in reviewing the actual fragrances, but I did want to thank her. She never once blinked at my numerous requests for the specific notes in each fragrance (the full list is not provided on the website), and she seemed to actually appreciate my obsession with details. (That last one alone is rather remarkable.)

Le Smoking. 10 ml mini bottle of EDP. Source: DSH Perfumes website.

Speaking of notes, Ms. Hurwitz says some of the many ingredients in Le Smoking include:

Top: galbanum, bergamot, clary sage, hyacinth, blackberry;
Heart: grandiflorum jasmine, damascena rose absolute, orris co2 extract, carnation, geranium, marijuana accord, honey;
Base: blond tobacco absolute, incense notes, styrax, leather, peru balsam, green oakmoss absolute, ambergris, castoreum.

Source: 10wallpaper.com

Le Smoking opens on my skin with a small blast of bitter greenness from galbanum and oakmoss. Both notes are infused with a lovely, dark, smoky incense, that is followed by a touch of marijuana. Now, I’ve never smoked marijuana, but I have occasionally been around people who do, so I’m somewhat familiar with the general aroma. To my untutored nose, the note in Le Smoking doesn’t smell exactly like smoked pot, because it lacks a certain pungency that I’ve detected (skunks!), but it’s not exactly like the unsmoked grassy version either. It’s a little bit sweet, earthy, green but also brown, and, later on, quite a bit like patchouli mixed with marijuana.

Source: rgbstock.com

Mere seconds later, one of my favorite parts of Le Smoking arrives on scene. It’s tobacco drizzled with honey, intertwined with leather, all nestled in the plush, rich oakmoss. The greenness of Le Smoking softens quite quickly on my skin, leaving a fragrance that is increasingly dark and smoky. It’s flecked with sweetness, and has almost a chewy feel to it at times. On other occasions, the river of dark leather seems more dominant, especially once the styrax arrives. It also adds in a different form of smokiness that works beautifully with the deep oakmoss and that sometimes pungent galbanum that flitters about.

As a whole, Le Smoking doesn’t feel particularly green on my skin. Rather, it feels like a darkly balsamic fragrance centered around honeyed tobacco and incense that merely happens to have some galbanum and to be centered on an oakmoss base. Its darkness sometimes feels like a balsam resin that has been set on fire. On other occasions, however, the sweetness of the honey swirled into the tobacco dominates much more. Lurking in the background is that ganja accord which is sweet, woody, chewy, and green, all at once. It is subtle now, after its initial pop in the opening minutes, but it is increasingly taken on a patchouli like aroma.

Source: colourbox.com

It’s all terribly sexy, but it’s also quite masculine in feel. In fact, Le Smoking evokes so many “masculine” fragrances with their dark elements that I blinked the first time I tried it. I had had the vague impression that the perfume was a chypre for women. But, then, I remembered YSL’s gender-bending goal, and the actual Le Smoking of the past. Feminine as masculine, masculine as feminine, but always boldness and sexiness throughout. Well, mission accomplished, Ms. Hurwitz. And to think that I had initially dreaded this fragrance as some sort of potential galbanum green bomb! Not one bit.

Other elements start to stir. Initially, the bergamot and clary sage were nonexistent on my skin, but they slowly start to raise their heads after ten minutes to add a quiet whisper. The clary safe is more noticeable out of the two, adding a herbal touch that is just faintly like lavender with a touch of soap. It’s all very muted, however, unlike the carnation and geranium which are the next to arrive on scene. They add a peppered, spicy, and piquant edge, but the carnation has a clove-like undertone that works particularly well with the honeyed tobacco, leather, incense, and marijuana accords. Apart from the carnation, the other florals are very hard to detect on my skin, and the blackberry is nonexistent.

After 15 minutes, Le Smoking turns into a lovely bouquet of chewy, dark notes. The sweetness is perfectly balanced, and cuts through the smoky incense to ensure that the scent is never austere, stark, or brooding. The ganja’s earthiness melts beautifully into the clove-y note from the carnation, while the leather is now met by a slight muskiness that betrays the castoreum in the base. Galbanum and oakmoss provide a little green sharpness, while the minuscule flickers of clary sage add a tinge of herbal freshness in the background. Throughout it all, honeyed tobacco continues to radiate a dark sweetness that is intoxicating. Call me suggestive, but one of Yves St. Laurent’s plunging jackets really would be the perfect accompaniment to this scent.

Photo: Terry Richardson. Source: stylesaint.com

I keep thinking about Tabac Blond, Caron’s gender-bending foray into leather and tobacco. It is such an enormously different perfume than Le Smoking, particularly in Tabac Blond’s current version. For one thing, the leather note smells fundamentally different in the Caron scent, as it stems from birch tar. Le Smoking’s leather does not. If anything, it is more of a subtle suggestion that is amplified by the castoreum in the base. Tabac Blond’s tobacco also smells extremely different than the version here, and is just a minor touch. In fact, Tabac Blond’s dominant focus on my skin seems to be the feminine traits of lipstick powder and florals, traits that only tangentially happen to have a masculine undertone on occasion. (The reformulated, modern Extrait is really a disappointment.)

With Le Smoking, the focus is almost entirely masculine, and all florals are subsumed so deep that they’re impossible to pull out. The carnation is the only one, and even then, it smells primarily of cloves instead of anything floral on my skin. The hyacinth, jasmine, and rose… they barely exist. At most, they are swirled into a very nebulous sense of something vaguely “floral” that lingers in the background in the most muted and muffled form. (And even that only lasts 15 minutes or so.) On me, Le Smoking is a thick layer of darkness dominated by tobacco, incense, sweetness, spice, earthiness and slightly animalic musk. The perfume feels more like something that would come out from Nasomatto (albeit, a non-aromachemical Nasomatto) than Caron, if that makes any sense. Tabac Blond, this is not.

Source: wallpoper.com

The differences become even more stark after 30 minutes, as Le Smoking turns into a very different fragrance than what originally debuted. The patchouli-ganja element becomes more and more dominant, as does the castoreum. The latter is fantastic, feeling simultaneously musky, leathered, velvety, oily, dense, and a bit skanky. The two notes join the honeyed tobacco and the incense as the main players on Le Smoking’s catwalk.

In contrast, the suggestion of leather softens, the galbanum retreats completely to the sidelines, and the brief blip of clary sage dies away entirely. The oakmoss feels as though it has melted into the base where it adds an indirect touch to the top elements. For the next two hours, I thought on a number of occasions that it had actually died away, but the oakmoss waxes and wanes, sometimes popping up to add a wonderful green touch to the increasingly brown-and-black landscape.

The overall effect after 35 minutes is a scent that feels wonderfully dense, earthy, musky, spicy, smoky, and sweet, with light touches of oily skank, upon a plush, mossy base. Le Smoking lies right above the skin at this point with a graceful airiness that belies the concentrated richness of its notes. More and more, the ganja note pirouettes like patchouli in a mix of sweet, smoky earthiness, with spiciness from the “cloves” and a pinch of cinnamon (presumably from the styrax). There is even a vague sense of something chocolate-like lurking deep underneath its chewy facade. I have to say, I love all of it.

Source: wallpaperswa.com

Other changes are afoot around the same time. At the end of the first hour, the tobacco turns darker and more concentrated in feel, while the honey starts to fade away. The leather and oakmoss feel even more like mere undercurrents, but the castoreum blooms. Unfortunately, the fragrance becomes harder to dissect at this point. One of the reasons why is that every element melts seamlessly into the next.

The other reason is the sillage. Ms. Hurwitz told me that her aesthetic preference is for soft, intimate fragrances, as she hates to “taste” perfume. As a result, she avoids creating anything with big projection. The problem is, on my skin, the lack of big sillage has resulted in several fragrances that have virtually NO sillage. I have problems with longevity, not projection, so it was quite a shock when a good number of the DSH line turned into skin scents on me after a mere 20 minutes. A few took even less time. Le Smoking was the best and strongest out of the ones that I’ve tried thus far, but it required me using over 1/3 of a 1 ml vial to experience even decent projection. Tests with a smaller quantity were rather hopeless, I’m afraid.

With the larger amount, Le Smoking initially wafted 1-2 inches in a very concentrated cloud. However, it took less than 12 minutes for the perfume to lie a mere inch above my skin. It dropped at the end of an hour to lie right on the skin, though it was always dense and rich in feel when smelled up close. Le Smoking turned into a skin scent after just 2 hours with the increased dose, but using anything less than 3-4 enormous smears gave me anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. Le Smoking has decent longevity on my skin if I apply a lot, but the perpetual intimacy of its scent is not my personal cup of tea. In fact, I find it to be a huge problem.

It was even more of a problem for my Yves St. Laurent-adoring, Smoking-wearing, chypre-loving mother who was a natural target for my testing. After a mere 5 minutes with 2 big smears of Le Smoking, she said bluntly, “I can barely smell it.” So, I applied 2 more. It didn’t change things much, and my mother kept frowning at me as she sniffed. In fact, she later said that Le Smoking didn’t last more than 2 hours on her, which is unfortunately similar to some other reports of the perfume’s longevity. One reason for such a brief period of time is that Le Smoking is almost all natural (or possibly, entirely natural, I forget which now). However, having a skin scent sillage doesn’t help in letting people know the perfume might still be clinging on tenaciously.

The bottom line is that Le Smoking’s projection will be a massive problem for anyone who wants to smell their fragrance without having to actually put their nose on their skin and inhale forcefully. The longevity may be another big issue as well. On the other hand, the entire DSH line would be perfect for even the most conservative office environment.

Source: sharefaith.com

Le Smoking is a largely linear fragrance on my skin, and loses a lot of its multi-faceted complexity after a while. As regular readers know, I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with linearity if you enjoy the notes in question. In this case, I love the early bouquet of tobacco, incense, earthy ganja-patchouli, and musky castoreum, with its chewy, honeyed, cloved, leathered, mossy and occasionally skanky inflections. Alas, at the end of the 2nd hour, Le Smoking turns primarily into a tobacco and marijuana fragrance with more abstract, indistinct elements ranging from earthiness, to spices, sweetness, and muskiness. It’s still lovely, but I have to admit, it isn’t as interesting or as enchanting as it was at the start.

An hour later, Le Smoking becomes an increasingly simple scent of earthy, sweet, musky tobacco. It remains that way until the end when Le Smoking dies away as a blur of sweet earthiness. All in all, Le Smoking lasted just under 8 hours on my skin with the massive dose. With more regular amounts, I had about 3-4 hours of duration. Yes, the difference was that dramatic, and my only explanation is that perhaps I simply couldn’t smell any lingering traces of the perfume.

Bianca Jagger in Yves St. Laurent. Source: lifestylemirror.com

I loved Le Smoking’s opening hour, absolutely loved it. It’s sexy as hell, beautifully done, very elegant, and incredibly sophisticated. The remainder was lovely, until the end of the third hour basically, at which point my frustration with the sillage started to impact my feelings about the scent as a whole. That’s not fair, and I know it, but it’s hard when you really like something and can barely detect it. I’m clearly the wrong target demographic for DSH Perfumes, but it doesn’t change how smoldering or sexy Le Smoking can be at first, or how brilliantly it conveys Yves St. Laurent’s whole message behind his jackets.

The reviews for Le Smoking are very positive, though rarely detailed. (As a side note, there are no comments posted on Fragrantica about the scent.) At Bois de Jasmin, guest-writer Suzanna had a tiny paragraph which was mostly about Le Smoking’s notes. The one sentence about the smell of the actual perfume itself was: “The brilliant touch is that this fragrance, which might sound like a heavyweight, dries down to a light, erotic skin scent.” Mark Behnke wrote more for CaFleureBon:

For Le Smoking Ms. Hurwitz embraces the masculine origins of the tuxedo with the herbal quality of clary sage and green galbanum making a provocative start. Geranium carries the green theme into the heart and then a sweet jasmine leads to a honey and cannabis accord that truly smokes. Tobacco signals the transition to the base and this is a sweeter tobacco for arising from the cannabis. It is complemented by incense, balsam, and leather.

Over at Now Smell This, Angela loved Le Smoking, calling it one of her two favorites from the YSL Retrospective Collection

On my skin, Le Smoking is a trip to a spring pasture while wearing a classy formulation of Dana Tabu. Le Smoking is a sweet-dirty medley of tobacco, benzoin, incense and dry leather with a chiffon-like veil of tart green overlaying it for the five minutes the green takes to burn off. All those flowers listed in its making? I’m sure they do something important, but they collapse to a sultry, unisex potion fit for double agents who lounge in private clubs.

Neither of these fragrances lasts much longer than three hours before retreating to skin level, but it’s an enjoyable ride while it lasts.

Dried tobacco leaves. Source: colourbox.com

Le Smoking lasted a similarly brief period of time on Marlen over at The Perfume Critic, but he also loved the scent and thought it a throwback to the men’s classics of the ’70s. His detailed review reads, in part, as follows:

Le Smoking is a stunning, unisex chypre built on leather, tobacco/marijuana and Moroccan incense. […]

You’ll like this if you like: Tobacco, chypres, leather fragrances, Fresh Cannabis Santal.

Pros: So incredibly different from most chypres thanks to Dawn’s light hand with the oakmoss – no grassy, soapy drydown here; absolutely no “natural perfume” vibe.

Cons: I wish the longevity was a bit better. [¶][…]

Reminds me of: Le Smoking is a throwback to men’s fragrances of the mid-80′s – think Tuscany Uomo and Santos de Cartier…or even further back to the classic chypres of the late 60′s and early 70′s such as Rabanne Nuit, Ivoire de Balmain, etc. It’s tone, however, is a bit lighter than all of these. [¶][…]

Le Smoking is seamlessly blended and though it moves from a bright neroli & citrus opening to warm, ambery basenotes, the core of the composition never really shifts – tobacco, marijuana and leather are always at the heart. […][¶] Lasted about 2-3 hrs on my skin; I wish it packed a bit more punch for a longer period of time. […]

Le Smoking was my hands down favorite of Dawn’s collection created for the Denver Art […] [A]s chypres and I never really get along, likely due to the dry and bitter soapiness of the oakmoss (and I also have problems with tobacco scents for the same reason), I was a bit surprised to fall so deeply in love with Dawn’s creation. Despite the complexity of the composition, Le Smoking has a singular character, not unlike the aroma that greets the nose at the opening of a filled humidor. But what really gets me going is the vanillic sweetness at the drydown that lingers and lingers, so unlike many of the scents it reminds me of who become far too dry for my tastes.

Truly, Le Smoking as a natural perfume feels as if it could have come from an equivalent niche house like L’Artisan or Caron.

I agree, Le Smoking doesn’t smell like the typical natural perfume, and would work well on someone who loves tobacco, leather, or cannabis scents. I would add patchouli and smoky fragrances to that list as well, but not necessarily chypres. I think anyone who expects a typical or truly green chypre perfume may be in for a little bit of a surprise.

All in all, I think the Maestro would have thoroughly enjoyed Le Smoking and its dark, sultry character. I know he would have smiled approvingly at how elegantly the perfume crosses gender lines. Le Smoking is absolutely lovely, and I would wear it in a heartbeat if … well, you know.

Disclosure: Perfume sample courtesy of DSH Perfumes. That did not impact this review, I do not do paid reviews, and my opinions are my own.

DETAILS:

Cost & Availability: Le Smoking is an Eau de Parfum that is offered in a variety of different sizes, as well as in a pure parfum concentration. All versions are sold exclusively on DSH Perfumes’ website. Le Smoking is offered in: a 10 ml decant size of EDP for $55; a 5 ml EDP in an antique bottle for $98; a 1 oz/30 ml EDP size for $125; and an Extrait Pure Parfum version in an antique bottle in a 0.5 oz size for $198. Samples are available at $5 for a 1/2 ml vial of EDP. There is also a special YSL Retrospective Collection Coffret, where all 6 fragrances in the line are offered in 5 ml bottles for $98. All orders over $10 will receive free samples of fragrances, with the number depending on the price of your order. If you are outside the U.S., international shipping is available if you contact DSH Fragrances. Samples: a number of DSH fragrances are available on Surrender to Chance under the name of “Dawn Spencer Hurwitz,” but the YSL Retrospective collection is not offered. The Perfumed Court does not have any fragrances from DSH Perfumes. Your best bet is to order directly from the company itself.

Majda Bekkali Fusion Sacrée (Lui): Drunken Gourmand

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Kafkaesque

“Rum is for drinking, not burning,” is the opinion of one hardcore rock group with a song by that same name. Apparently, Bertrand Duchaufour and Majda Bekkali think otherwise, judging by their fragrance Fusion Sacrée Pour Lui. It is a firmly unisex celebration of hot buttered rum that sets sail like a battleship in a sea of a thick, gooey caramel flecked by flotsam of sweet oranges, bitter neroli, lavender, coffee, vanilla, and seemingly every other element under the sun. The whole thing is then set on fire, burnt with smoke, though it does little to alter the vessel’s gourmand heart. Hours later, it washes up on vanilla sands where it rests in a haze of sweetness.

Wallpaper by Njanj. Source: scenicreflections.com

Majda Bekkali launched her eponymous perfume house — Majda Bekkali Parfums or Majda Bekkali Sculptures Olfactives — in 2010. According to her website, she did so after years of developing fragrances for luxury brands because she wished to move away from commercial imperatives and marketing approaches. Initially, Ms. Bekkali began with two fragrances for her new house but, in 2012 or 2013, she released Fusion Sacrée.

Fusion Sacrée via Luckyscent.

The eau de parfum comes in dual Men’s and Women’s versions, both of which were created by Bertrand Duchaufour. In my opinion, Fusion Sacrée Pour Lui is, despite its name, a very unisex fragrance, thanks to its richly gourmand heart. Speaking of names, Luckyscent calls the scent Fusion Sacrée Obscur (Lui), but that seems unusual. “Obscur” is also not part of the perfume’s title on Ms. Bekkali’s website, where it is listed as “Fusion Sacrée Pour Lui.” (For convenience and speed, from this point forth, I’ll simply call the fragrance, “Fusion Sacrée.”)

On her website, The Sculptures Olfactives, Majda Bekkali describes Fusion Sacrée as follows:

A battle of contrasting forces is at the heart of everything. A divinely balanced equilibrium.

A contrasting note which in the first place proposes its delicious, mouth-watering facet with a drop of rum and celery and an outpouring of opulent spices. Fusion Sacrée Obscur then reveals a voluptuous and velvety heart where creamy notes of white coffee and tuberose unite. The base notes are earthy, woody and resinous conferring this miraculous moment of sacred fusion with a vibrant and unforgettable aura.

According to Luckyscent, the many notes in Fusion Sacrée include:

Rum, citron, celery, sweet orange, neroli, cardamom, lavender, davana, bergamot, white coffee, tuberose absolute, cloves, geranium, sweet william pear, liquorice, benzoin resinoid, opoponax [sweet myrrh] resinoid, ambergris, cedar, sandalwood, vanilla, caramel and musk.

There are 23 notes on that list, and I’m only slightly exaggerating when I say that they all hit me at once when I put Fusion Sacrée on my skin. At once. Simultaneously. All of them! Well, all right, there is a wee bit of hyperbole, simply because the tuberose, cloves, sandalwood, and davana flower took a little longer to show up, but, honestly, I felt as though I’d been hit by a force-field of incredibly strong, multifaceted olfactory notes.

Source: iwallpapersfive.com

Fusion Sacrée really is that intense of an opening salvo, especially if you commit the error that I did the first time around and apply a lot. In the case of Fusion Sacrée, though, “a lot” is quite a relative thing; 3 sprays from my tiny atomizer (or the equivalent of 2 good sprays from an actual bottle) sent me reeling. You really need to get used to this scent and its concentrated richness. The second time around was better, because I expected the early blast and had steeled myself. In fact, I generally prefer really potent, strong fragrances but good God, that first time….! And even on subsequent wearings, working my way up with cautiously larger amounts and a slow sense of adjustment, even then, Fusion Sacrée is quite something.

Source: Chef Keem at chefkeem.squidoo.com

Part of the issue is the nuclear velocity of the perfume in the opening half-hour, but I found myself equally overwhelmed by the sheer deluge of notes. I could smell a good 15 of those 23 ingredients in the mere opening seconds alone, but they don’t hit you one after another. No, they hit your nose simultaneously. The most obvious, dominant elements are burnt sugar, rum, fierce artemisia, bitter neroli, syrupy orange, green celery, amorphous spices, buttered caramel, nutty sweet myrrh, dusty cardamom and lavender. These are just the most obvious ones….

Source: Simplyrecipes.com (website link to recipe for caramel sauce embedded within. Click on photo.)

Fusion Sacrée is overpoweringly cloying, syrupy sweet, pungent, bitter, green, herbal, boozy, woody, spicy, and gourmand, all at once. My initial notes are headlined by “drunken gourmand,” in capital letters with lots of exclamation marks, and a few mutterings about “Sybil” (or multi-personality disorder). Yet, for all that Fusion Sacrée is meant to be a boozy fragrance, its core essence doesn’t translate to actual “rum” to my nose. Don’t get me wrong, there is certainly a lot of sweet liqueur in Fusion Sacrée, especially in its opening hour, but the dominant impression I always have is of generalized syrupy, sweet goo.

The caramel, hot buttered rum, and sticky orange sherbet congeal into a giant, dense ball. From its curves jut out other elements like little shards of coloured glass: bitter green neroli, pungent purple lavender, cream-laced coffee, and burnt black smoke, to name just a few. In fact, the hard, dense mass of diabetic sugariness throws out random notes like a disco ball. They vary in their prominence and role, making it even harder to dissect the perfume as I usually do.

Artemisia Absinthium

There are a few notes that stand out amidst that buttered, orange-caramel syrup. On my skin, the artemisia (or wormwood) is particularly powerful with its very sharp, woody, green bitterness. Artemisia is a note that was used in absinthe liquor and, according to one Basenotes thread, is also central to Krizia Uomo, Aramis, and One Man Show fragrances where it was used for its long-lasting, intense pungency.

Geranium pratense leaf, close-up. Source: Wikicommons

Here, its green forcefulness in Fusion Sacrée is matched by equal amounts of neroli. They infuse the hot buttered, diabetes-inducing goo with intense bitterness, and, yet, none of it balances out. In fact, in a strange feat, the end result feels even more cloying and sickly to me. Honestly, this odd match of green, extremely sharp bitterness with extreme sweetness may be the most difficult part of the entire scent for me. Have you ever bitten deep into the rind of an orange? If so, you know how you get that bitter oil lying thickly like a mealy layer in your mouth? Well, imagine that taste multiplied tenfold, then covered by heavy caramel, sharp bitter herbs, pungent lavender, Bourbon vanilla, and hot buttered rum. That is what Fusion Sacrée reminds me of, and I find it much worse than the perfume’s sweetness.

Coffee with cream. Source: sixpackabs.com

Other elements are tossed into the mix as well, though they are hardly as dominant on my skin. There are brief, subtle pops of geranium, usually manifesting themselves as the slightly peppered, fuzzy leaves. During one test of Fusion Sacrée, using a slightly higher dosage, there was even a moment of tart tanginess from the orange, but it was soon blanketed by the hot buttered rum. After 20 minutes, even more notes arrive. There is a lovely dose of coffee, followed by hints of black licorice, and a burst of smoke. The coffee note is smooth, creamy, but also a tad spicy, thanks to a light dusting of cardamom. I wish the it were stronger, but the coffee is an extremely subtle, small wave in the tsunami of hot, buttered, boozy, caramel, orange, artemisia and neroli.

It is probably at this point that I should repeat what regular readers know full well. I’m not particularly enamoured with the gourmand genre. I don’t have a sweet tooth when it comes to perfumery, which makes Fusion Sacrée even harder for me to deal with. In addition, my skin amplifies both base notes and sweetness as a whole, though Fusion Sacrée is clearly intended to be an over-the-top boozy gourmand on everyone. It is loved for precisely that reason, and the perfume certainly accomplishes its task well.

I may not be in Fusion Sacrée’s target audience, but I struggle with the perfume for other reasons. To be honest, this is one perfume that has too much going on even for me! It feels as though someone told Bertrand Duchaufour, “More. No, more, more, more. No, I mean it, seriously, I want MORE!” And he so responded by throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the wall, to mix one’s metaphors, to see if that would finally be enough. I would like Fusion Sacrée if the balance didn’t feel so grossly out-of-whack, with certain elements being as overpowering as a Five Alarm Fire.

Source: wallpaperup.com

The degree of ridiculous excess is clearly intentional, for there is no other way to explain it, especially from a master of finesse like Bertrand Duchaufour. Majda Bekkali must have specifically sought everything from the diabetic sweetness that hurts my teeth, to the overpowering barrage of notes that shoot out at you in the opening minutes like bullets fired from a .50 caliber rifle. All this makes Fusion Sacrée a scent that is heaven for many people. I, unfortunately, am not one of them.

Nonetheless, I fully recognize the skill behind Fusion Sacrée. For one thing, it is a very prismatic scent, something which is never easy to accomplish. As a result, the exact progression of notes has never been precisely identical on the different occasions that I have worn it. Sometimes, the nutty sweetness of the opoponax is more apparent in the opening hour, at other times the licorice, clove, and geranium. Cedar flits in and out like a darting bee, and there is always a subtle suggestion of celery that lingers as a very disorienting, odd touch.

Sulphur smoke at an Indonesia mine. Photo by Andy VC. Source: www.andyvc.com/sulfur-miners/

Yet, the mass at the heart of Fusion Sacrée doesn’t change enormously until the end of the first hour. At that point, the smoke suddenly intensifies, if one can even call it smoke. The note is extremely hard to explain, but it is simultaneously a bit sulphurous, a bit like burnt plastic, and a bit like badly singed woods — all at once. The first time that I tested Fusion Sacrée, something about the scent reminded me of how really concentrated honey can feel sharp and burnt to the point of actual sulphur smoke. The second time I tested Fusion Sacrée I was reminded instead of the smell of burnt plastic. Neither description actually fits the smell perfectly, but they’re as close as I can come to convey the oddness of that “smoky” accord.

I don’t like either version. I particularly don’t like how it adds to Fusion Sacrée’s strange discordance. Diabetic sweetness, artemisia bitterness, unctuous buttered hot rum, pungent herbs, sticky orange sherbet syrup, caramel, coffee, celery, and now some sulphurous smoke. (Celery? Seriously? With everything else?! Why, for the love of God, why?!)

Then, making matters more difficult is the sudden, ghostly burst of a green tuberose that pops up. Yes, tuberose, on top of everything else. It darts about with the other tertiary notes, like the cedar and the occasional whisper of sweet myrrh. None of them are prominent or key aspects of the perfume on my skin, least of all the tuberose, but they add to the dizzying quality of the scent. God, I wanted to like Fusion Sacrée so much, and yet I frequently found myself feeling utterly queasy instead. Like, “get it off me, I feel sick” queasy. It is probably the fault of my skin, amplifying the sweetness, but Fusion Sacrée on my skin is both cloying and completely nauseating.

The perfume’s potency doesn’t help matters. This is one powerful scent, even for me with my admittedly skewed love for fragrance bombs. In the opening minutes, Fusion Sacrée wafted a good 6 inches around me with a few tiny squirts from the atomizer. To put this into context, 3 atomizer spritzes of Fusion Sacrée felt to me like the equivalent of 5 sprays of Coromandel from an actual bottle, all applied to the same area. Another equivalent example, 4 large sprays of either Hard Leather or Alahine. All of these fragrances are very potent at the start, but even a small amount of Fusion Sacrée can easily match them.

Yet, Fusion Sacrée is also imbued with a surprising airiness. A reader of the blog, Tim, who kindly gifted me with my sample of the Fusion Sacrée is a huge Bertrand Duchaufour fan. Tim coined the perfect phrase to describe the perfumer’s signature style: “heavy weightlessness.” That is precisely the situation with Fusion Sacrée. The cloud that billows out around you may feel like a ten-ton frigate, but the forcefulness of the notes belies their actual lightness. At the end of the first hour, the powerful sillage drops, and Fusion Sacrée hovers a mere 1-2 inches above the skin. (Yes, I was grateful. No, it did not help my nausea.)

Photo: Anita Chu via Bunrab.com

Fusion Sacrée may be quite prismatic when it comes to its notes, but the perfume itself is rather linear as a whole. I frequently say that there is nothing wrong with linearity if one likes the notes in question, and I hold to that view here. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this marvel of gourmand engineering if that is your personal cup of tea. Fusion Sacrée glorifies hot buttered rum and caramel syrup to an impressive degree.

At the start of the third hour, the fragrance hovers just above the skin, but the gourmand cocktail is imbued with a growing amount of dryness. There is also a very nebulous tinge of woodiness that lurks in the shadows, though it never reads as “sandalwood” to me. At most, there is a touch of cedar. By the start of the 4th hour, Fusion Sacrée is a skin scent centered around buttered caramel, sticky orange, bitter artemisia, neroli, vanilla, and burnt notes (that are occasionally sulphurous), all on a warm, golden base.

Image “delicious caramel cream” by Scaloperion on Deviantart.com

A few hours later, all the notes lose their shape and individual distinction. They blend seamlessly into each other, as Fusion Sacrée turns into an abstract haze of golden, sticky, resinous sweetness with vanilla, smoky dryness, and a lingering but subtle vein of green bitterness. In its final moments, the fragrance is a mere coating of sweetness. All in all, Fusion Sacrée lasted a little over 11.5 hours with 3 atomizer sprays, with that number rising or dropping depending on how much more or less of the fragrance I applied. Generally, Fusion Sacrée turns into a skin scent on me around the 4th hour, though it’s easy to detect until a good number of hours later.

I seem to be in a distinct, tiny minority when it comes to Fusion Sacrée, for this is one very beloved scent. Some bloggers didn’t find the sweetness to be intolerably cloying at all, though I don’t know what their definitional standards or tastes are like when it comes to gourmand scents as a general rule. Take, for example, Ron from Notable Scents who found Fusion Sacrée to be “sweet but not overly sweet.” He added that “[t]his is a gorgeous scent which is sold as a masculine but could easily be worn by women.” One reason is that Fusion Sacrée’s “base is a snuggly mix of caramel, vanilla, and woods.”

Source: hdwalls.info

Mark Behnke who wrote about Fusion Sacrée on CaFleureBon also enjoyed the sweetness, writing:

Fusion Sacree for Men is connected to its feminine partner by tuberose in the heart and benzoin in the base. Despite that Fusion Sacree for Men strongly displays its genetics with a deep resinous woody chest bump. Cardamom, orange, and lavender whisper across the early moments before M. Duchaufour uncorks a bottle of rum. M. Duchaufour is much too versatile a perfumer to be pigeonholed by one note but speaking solely for myself when he adds rum to the early going of a perfume he makes it always seems to work for me. It is probably why I often envision M. Duchaufour as a bit of a pirate. The boozy rum accord finally starts to be pushed aside by tuberose but the tuberose is accompanied by clove to accentuate the mentholated quality of the tuberose over the sweeter aspects. Geranium also keeps it slightly greener than you might expect from tuberose. The base begins with an unusual candied diptych as M. Duchaufour combines licorice and caramel. The bite of really good black licorice is tempered with the thick nature of caramel. This combination is so surprisingly good I look forward to its appearance every time I wear Fusion Sacree for Men. Benzoin, opoponax, ambergris, musk and sandalwood apply the finishing depth. I wore Fusion Sacree for Men on the first bitterly cold day of 2013 and it was a perfect companion under my cashmere sweater.

Source: tomsguide.com

On Fragrantica, the vast majority of people absolutely adore the fragrance. Five reviews use the word “masterpiece,” while others opt instead for gushing raves. To give just one example of the latter:

Before Fusion Sacree, there were none; after Fusion Sacree there will be no more. I hope I have everyone’s undivided attention…This stuff is so good it made me edit my other reviews. This aroma is competitive to all the gourmand greats such as Gourmand Coquin, Ambre Naugille, etc. So many notes to choose from where do I start.. A rummy opening aggregated with extreme caramel capsized by tons of harvest. There’s also a slight smokey ingredient that I have yet to figure out. To sum up everything, Rum and Caramel headlines the scent throughout making pit stops to each note. The Rum and Caramel then races back onto the track in search of the next set of notes to tangle with. IMMEDIATE WORDS: Comforting, Smooth, Sweet, Dandy, Delicate, Delicious, Week at the knees, Will You Marry Me. It would be disrespectful to call this sublime. The word to describe this haven’t been concocted.

A woman wrote that she didn’t care if Fusion Sacrée is for men, she had to have it. Really, the fragrance is so unisex, she shouldn’t have to worry about ridiculous gender marketing. It would be like calling Guerlain’s Spiritueuse Double Vanille a scent that is meant only for one gender. Nonsense! Speaking of vanilla, I should add that one chap found that note to dominate on his skin, instead of the boozy rum: “A masterpiece indeed for gourmand lovers. Very vanilla on me. I was hoping for more rum and licorice.”

I was more interested in two other comments. First, one Fusion Sacrée admirer warned that you need to go easy on the trigger when applying the perfume, which is excellent advice. Second, I was glad to see a second person notice the odd, smoky element underlying Fusion Sacrée:

Ok, this one is getting on me. A true gem I have to say. At first I wasn’t blown away by this, but after a few testing and wearings this one gets better and better. It’s so good that this will be one of my favorite fall/winter scents. And I’m not talking about the amazing gourmand vibe from the caramel and the rum, the vanilla and amber sweetness, no, what I really love is the smokiness that kicks this scent into another level. I don’t know where this bonfire smoke comes from, but I guess it’s the amber in combination with the musk that is of superb quality. This smoke melts every note into a notes trip through the whole process from beginning to end. This one makes you hunger for chilly fall days and cold winter evenings.

Source: appszoom.com

In the midst of Fragrantica’s love fest for Fusion Sacrée, a rare handful were distinctly unenthused:

why is this shit right here so overhyped ? it smells like celery mixed with rum. who whants to smell like that?? if you want a nice caramel scent go for a men. it beats the shit out of this one.

The other review entailed too many strings of “zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz”s denoting extreme boredom to be worth quoting, but the basic bottom line is that the reviewer found Fusion Sacrée to be largely generic in nature.

As you can see, my perspective on Fusion Sacrée is distinctly that of the odd man out. Perhaps it’s because my skin amplifies sweetness, or perhaps it’s because I don’t share the current obsession with syrupy gourmands. It’s probably both those things, combined with the nature of the scent itself: a discordant, chaotic barrage of notes. For me, Fusion Sacrée is not a case of “everything but the kitchen sink” because the sink actually has been tossed in as well — along with every other contradictory note in sight.

That would still be fine in many cases. I love complicated, complex fragrances, not to mention powerhouses, but there needs to be harmony and balance when you have a profusion of contradictory notes. I found neither here in the juxtaposition of cloying goo with pungent bitterness, sharp herbal elements, syrupy fruits, dessert caramels, coffee, tuberose, hot buttered rum, and a burnt plastic note that verged on sulphurous smoke. In fact, I would give anything to know how the creative process went with Bertrand Duchaufour, because I suspect his personal tastes skew towards a much more finessed approach than this explosion of excess. But over-the-top excess seems to be what the client wanted, and it’s what he delivered. In spades.

If gourmand fragrances are your passion, do not listen to a thing I say. Go order a sample of Fusion Sacrée immediately, as there is every likelihood that you will fall in love with it. If you’re a woman, then pay no heed to the “Lui” or Men’s label, as this is a fragrance that you could easily wear so long as you enjoy booziness to go with your sweetness. Plus, it is very affordable (in the skewed world of niche prices) at a “low” $125 for a 50 ml bottle.

However, if you’re one of the rare few nowadays who dislikes ultra sweet fragrances and whose skin amplifies such notes, then it should be obvious by now that Fusion Sacrée is one to avoid. You might end up huddled in a foetal position, rocking back and forth with queasiness, and whimpering Lady Macbeth’s refrain at your tainted arms, “out, damned spot! Out, I say!”

That may or may not have happened to me….

DETAILS:

Cost & Availability: Fusion Sacrée (Lui) is an eau de parfum that comes in two sizes. There is a 50 ml bottle which costs $125 or €90; and a 120 ml/4 oz bottle which costs $230 or €185. In the U.S.: you can find Fusion Sacrée in both sizes at Luckyscent and MinNY. Outside the U.S.: Majda Bekkali has a website with an e-store, but Fusion Sacrée is, oddly enough, not one of the handful of choices available. In France, you can find Fusion Sacree at Paris’ Jovoy for €189 for the large 4 oz bottle. Germany’s First in Fragrance has both sizes for €90 and €189, respectively, as does Italy’s Alla Violetta. In the U.K., Majda Bekkali’s fragrance’s are sold at Roja Dove’s Haute Parfumerie on the 5th floor of Harrods. In Russia, you can find Fusion Sacrée at ry7. For all other European vendors from Armenia to many others in Russia, you can turn to Majda Bekkali’s Store Locator page. Alas, I don’t think Majda Bekkali is carried in Australia, Oceana, the Middle East, or Asia. Samples: I obtained my sample from a friend, but you can order from Luckyscent or MinNY. You can also try The Perfumed Court where prices start at $4.99 for a 1 ml vial.

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Nasomatto Duro

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Kafkaesque

“Fire Storm” by Marina Petro. Source: marinapetro.blogspot.com

Honeyed leather, spices and patchouli, dusted with cocoa, then infused with dark woods, tobacco, and a touch of smoke on a resinous amber base flecked by vanilla. That is one side to Nasomatto‘s Duro. The other might be the aroma-chemical bomb that is woven through every fiber of this perfume. Duro is one of those scents where I really wish I couldn’t detect a drop of aromachemicals a mile away, because I think I might like it otherwise. Unfortunately, Duro has such an enormous quantity of occasionally sharp, abrasive synthetics that it would probably drown a hound dog. And I’m not the only one who struggled with this issue.

Duro via Luckyscent

Duro is an extrait de parfum created by the Dutch niche house, Nasomatto, a brand which is best known for their cult masculine favorite, Black Afgano. It’s not easy to find details on Duro, when it was launched, or what precisely is in it. On its website, the company provides no notes, and simply says that Duro is intended to “enhance all the manifestations of male power.” I find that to be an asinine, obnoxious, and immature comment on a variety of levels. Plus, someone better not tell the legion of women who wear patchouli or spiced wood fragrances that they are somehow swinging a male organ, because that is the olfactory essence of Duro and that is also one of the implications of the company’s chest-thumping statement.

Source: imgfave.com. Artist or creator unknown.

Since there are no official notes for Duro, most sites simply list “leather, woods and spice,” as Luckyscent does. However, First in Fragrance always seems to have a company’s press release copy for a fragrance, and it provides the following description and olfactory notes for Duro:

Duro – The essence of male attraction
This composition concentrates the erotic essence of mythical masculinity and sexual attraction in itself.
Duro – A fragrance that directly and unequivocally shows the way with its overwhelming fragrance of sensuality.

Top Note: Agarwood (Oud)
Heart Note: Woods, Spices
Base Note: Leather, Resins

Leather tannery in Bangladesh. Source: ecouterre.com

Duro opens on my skin with a blast of animalic, slightly urinous leather slathered in honey. It is followed by spices and several, different, sharp aromachemicals. There is a chemical oud that smells a touch antiseptic, then something vaguely ambered (Ambermax? Ambroxan?) which has a rubbing alcohol twang. Putting aside the large quantities of those two extremely sharp notes, the rest of Duro’s opening bouquet is lovely. The animalic note isn’t fecal nor reminiscent of a barnyard. It’s musky and a wee bit urinous, though in an extremely subtle way. As a whole, the honeyed leather feels a little raw, uncured, and butch, but in the pretty way of LM Parfums‘ Hard Leather.

The spices are interesting. I tested Duro twice and, the second time, there was merely a generalized “spice” accord. However, during my first test, the bouquet felt quite multi-faceted, even if the spices were so fused together that they weren’t always easy to pull apart. As best as I could tell, there seemed to be the lightest touch of saffron, cloves, and black pepper, followed by a much more significant tonality of red chili pepper. The latter felt like another aromachemical in the sharpness of its fiery bite, but it was an nice counterbalance to the honeyed leather. I think I detected ginger as well — candied, dusty, and freshly pungent — but it was very muted.

During that first test, Duro began manifesting a dusty sweetness and an increasing touch of creamy woods less than 15 minutes into the perfume’s development. The woods felt almost as if some Mysore substitute had been used, supplemented by the spices. The note had a distinct gingerbread undertone that some sandalwood fragrances can have, even through artificial means. One example would be Chanel‘s Bois des Iles which is Chanel’s successful homage to Mysore, despite never actually containing any of the rare wood. Here, Duro briefly reflected the same sweet, spicy, gingerbread characteristics, but it was very short-lived and generally overpowered by that very synthetic oud aromachemical.

Source: 123rf.com

The second time I tested Duro, I didn’t experience either the wide range of individual, clearly distinct spices nor the quasi-sandalwood impression. Instead, the main note apart from the honeyed leather and the fake oud was patchouli. Lovely, true, original patchouli with all its spicy, red-gold-brown, slightly smoky, sweet facets. It was a touch earthy, but never dusty. It also occasionally showed a glimmer of the note’s green, camphorous side, though that sharpness may again have been the various aromachemicals wafting all around.

I’ll be honest, at times, it was extremely hard for me to detect the subtle nuances of Duro because they felt hidden behind an advancing phalanx of aromachemicals that acted as a wall or barricade at the very top of Duro’s pyramids. The first time was really difficult indeed, and I almost scrubbed Duro, especially as it gave me a profound headache whenever I smelled the perfume up close. I was relieved that Duro was better the second time around when worn on a different arm, but it’s only a question of degree. That said, I fully concede that my nose is much more sensitive to aromachemicals than the average person, and some of you may have no problems at all. (Then again, judging by the comments on Fragrantica, perhaps you might….)

Duro continues to shift as time passes. First, there is the arrival of a tobacco note. It’s dry, sweet, a little bit smoky, and, once in a while, has a tinge of an ashtray-like note on my skin. After 20 minutes, there is also the first whiff of labdanum. It feels a little synthetic and reminds me of the note in Black Afgano because it has the same cherry cola or root beer nuance. It is accompanied by a slightly plummy undertone as well, almost as if the patchouli were manifesting its purple, jammy, dark molasses facet.

Mark Rothko, #20 or “Black,brown on maroon.” Source: artsearch.nga.gov.au

The more significant change always occurs about 40 minutes into Duro’s development, when the leather loses its honeyed touch and sinks fully into the base. There, it remains as a constant undercurrent to the scent, waxing and waning in terms of its prominence. In one of my tests, Duro at this stage had shifted to a very oud-y, aromachemical woody fragrance with dark, fruited patchouli, a touch of chili pepper pimento, hints of gingerbread spices, and a rootbeer-like sweetness over a thin leather base. In the other, Duro was a brown (not fruited) patchouli scent with earthiness, sweetened tobacco, spices, abstract woodiness, aromachemical oud, amber, and spices on a leathered foundation.

Duro is a very concentrated fragrance in its overall bouquet, much as you’d expect from a pure parfum extrait. It is, however, much airier and softer than the notes would have you realise. There is a lightness to the scent, and the sillage is only moderate at first, before dropping to hover just an inch, at best, above my skin at the end of the 1st hour. It remains there for another hour, before turning into a skin scent. Yet, Duro’s overall bouquet remains largely unchanged as a whole.

In fact, Duro is an extremely linear scent, though I always say that there is nothing wrong with linearity if you love the notes in question. The individual elements fluctuate in terms of their prominence or order, but Duro itself doesn’t change for a few hours. For the most part, it merely turns more resinous, ambered, and golden in feel.

“Novemthree” by Olaf Marshall. Source: vitaignescorpuslignum.blogspot.com

The biggest change occurs at the start of the 4th hour when new notes arrive on scene. There is, without any doubt in my mind, vetiver in Duro and I noticed it on both occasions when I wore the scent. There is also cedar. None of this is particularly surprising, as both elements are common companions to patchouli in European fragrances. Here, the vetiver is somewhat smoky and dark. In one test, Duro turned primarily into a vetiver-patchouli fragrance at the start of the 6th hour, lying atop a very arid aromachemical, ambered base that was resinous and a little plummy. The perfume felt simultaneously woody, sharp, smoky, and slightly leathered.

Source: Colourbox.com

It was a very different story the second time around when I tried Duro on my other arm. In that case, the patchouli remained as the dominant note from the end of the 2nd hour onwards, not the smoky vetiver. Duro was a blend of earthy patchouli with abstract spices and a hint of tobacco, lightly flecked by vetiver and cedar atop a warmly resinous amber base with a leather undercurrent. The scent was sweet, spicy, warm, a touch smoky, and very golden in feel. It became even better around the middle of the 3rd hour when the patchouli started wafting a cocoa powder heart. Vanilla started to stir in the base, adding to the prettiness. By the start of the 5th hour, Duro was patchouli, cocoa, amber, vanilla and aromachemicals, lightly flecked by vetiver and with a hint of cedar, atop a resinous, slightly leathered base.

Source: wallpapers.free-review.net

In both versions, the long, final drydown phase of Duro was largely the same: woody sweetness dominated by patchouli and abstract ambered warmth. There were differences in terms of how distinct or clear the individual notes might be, but as a whole Duro simply turned into some variation of a patchouli woody scent with different forms of sweetness (amber resins, vanilla, or both). The woods became increasingly amorphous, the leather largely faded away on my skin, and the spices melted into the patchouli which, in turn, became more fuzzy, warm, sweet, and vanillic. It was pretty, and lasted for ages. As a whole, Duro lasted just short of 8.75 hours in one test, and just over 9.75 in the other. The sillage was always soft after 90 minutes, and it generally turned into a skin scent after about 2.5 hours with 3 very large smears (or the equivalent of 2 small sprays from a bottle).

Source: androidcentral.com

On Fragrantica, reviews for Duro are mixed, with some people calling it a woody, resinous “masterpiece,” while others find it nice but far from unique, and a handful note Duro’s very chemical nature. A good number of people seem to have encountered the same sillage and softness issues that I did, as they had difficulty detecting Duro after a few hours. Here are a selection of the negative or conflicted reviews for the scent, many of which echo a common theme:

megachemical blast of wood…lasts nothing… the hole in your wallet will last longer!

Very synthetic smell. Didn’t project at all. Longevity was maybe 6 hours. I really can’t stand that sharp, medicinal, chemical oud scent you get from fake agarwood. I wore it a few times but it was no better than Montale [….]

Smells like vix rub … woody musky like a incense burning on wood in a hindu temple not something i would wear … drydown is a little better but all i can smell is that wood note

Duro, like the name suggests, is extremely hard on the nose. At least for the first hour or two it smells like a medicinal syrup with heavy woods. However, the dry down is fairly pleasant.

Oo no, I really don’t like this one, very strong and heavy woods of the bitter type. Also detect strange medicinal notes [….] Definitely prefer B Afgano.

I bought this bottle Dec 2012, at first i felt it was too medicinal, the oud and spice really strong, almost felt like i was in the operating room, but after several months i began to love the scent,,you have to get used to it, its a strong masculine spicey, leathery, oudy bomb!!

This is unique, bold, very strong, but sadly utterly unenjoyable to my nose. I smell some of the same dark (opaque!) resin notes in Duro as I do in Slumberhouse’s Norne… But with an additional cherry cough syrup accord layered on top.

A solid woody spicy and completely masculine fragrance which is very simple but well-made at the same time. [¶] The opening is a heavy and dark combination of smoky woods, some spices and a little bit of sweetness completely in the background. [¶] The smoky woody/leathery smell remind me of the smell of oud and there are noticeable amount of spices and some sweetness beside it. [¶] In the mid you have exactly the same smell which only gets smokier and woodier. [¶] Smell very masculine and bitter smoky woody, but smell very familiar too! nothing new or unique about it.

Source: alexlesterspersonalblog.blogspot.com

Others, however, adore what they think is the super-sized masculinity and testosterone of the scent:

A fantastic masculine perfume. Women scare of it I think! […][¶] Shortly a perfume not for human maybe, gorillas deserve it. You either hate it or love it and there’s nothing in between. This is one of the manliest fragrances I’ve ever smelt. Seems is made out of pure testosterone. [¶] For men who drink beer at morning and work with axe.

This is the most explosively masculine perfume I’ve ever smelled!! You couldn’t stop this from projecting if you held it at gunpoint and threatened it’s bottle. [¶][…] This perfume says: “WOOD, SPICE, LEATHER…B@TCH!!!! I’M A MAN!!!”

DURO!!!! [¶] The HARD ON of male perfumery! […][¶] If you like wood up the wazzoo this is the fragrance for you! [¶] Loud woodiness of dank strong Oud and a harder denser wood combined with it. [¶] Then there’s the spice it’s hard but not in a cooking spice type of way or even a hot chili kind of way, it’s dry woody spice…almost like the natural spicey scent that would come from a piece of exotic wood. [¶] This fragrance for me is absolutely everything I look for in a masculine powerhouse. The spice perfectly tones down the unpleasant quality oud can have. You know? that bit when it takes a nosedive after the initial almost sweet strange amber quality. [¶] Anyway…the price of this juice is high, extortionately high some might say but I still felt Duro was a worthy purchase because of how bold and strong this juice is. [¶] Longevity and projection are massive as you’d expect from extrait de parfum. [¶] It’s not especially unique smelling this one but what can I say? It has a certain appeal & I was charmed by it.

As you can tell from that last comment, Nasomatto fan boys love the brand’s macho reputation, though even they have to admit that Duro is not particularly unique.

Montale Aoud Musk via mychicstore.com

What is more interesting to me is the fact that a lot of commentators find Duro to be comparable to Montale‘s Aoud Musk. Nay, actually “identical to” the latter, in several people’s opinions. I haven’t tried Montale’s Aoud Musk, but if it’s true, then that would certainly be a much cheaper purchase. Duro costs $185 for a mere 30 ml, while Luckyscent sells Montale’s Aoud Musk for $120 for a 50 ml bottle and for $170 in the 100 ml size. In addition, you can find Aoud Musk on numerous discount retailers for much less, making the price differential all the greater.

The other thing that I found noteworthy is a comment about Nasomatto’s dilution of its scents. I’m pretty sure the version of Black Afgano that I tried was altered to be much sweeter and less smokier than the fragrance of legend, but it seems that it isn’t the only one in the line to be so changed. A Fragrantica commentator called “Aphexacid” wrote in August 2013:

First, let me say that the rumor of Nasomatto watering down their perfumes is unfortunately TRUE. [¶] I purchased Duro and Pardon together, and they were both completely a shadow of their former selves. [¶] I got maybe 1 hour of moderate projection out of each, then it became skin scents. 6-8 hours later, gone.

What does Duro smell like? Its basically a weaker, less interesting version of Montales EPIC masterpiece “AOUD MUSK”.

Duro is lacking backbone.

If Duro has been diluted, that may explain why the scent I tested did not seem wildly masculine but, rather, felt like something that women could appreciate as well, if they had a taste for resinous, woody, patchouli, oud fragrances. I truly don’t think Duro is that much of a chest-thumping fragrance, though a number of men on Fragrantica would clearly disagree.

What a number of people would not disagree with is my view that Duro is as aromachemical as hell. Judging by all those references to synthetic, medicinal, antiseptic, “vix,” cough syrup, or “operating room” aromas, quite a few people picked up on it. In short, it’s not merely a question of me being abnormally sensitive. There’s nothing wrong with the judicious, light use of aromachemicals in a fragrance, but to have such a vast quantity in a tiny bottle that costs $185 when the fragrance supposedly is “identical to” a Montale? That’s a problem.

I really wanted to like Duro, especially as its notes should be right up my “patch head” alley, but it’s a complete pass for me. However, if you enjoy very resinous, woody fragrances centered on oud, patchouli, spices and amber, with a light streak of leather, then you may want to give Duro a sniff for yourself.

DETAILS:

Cost & Availability: Duro is a concentrated parfum extrait (or pure parfum), and is generally sold only in a 30 ml/1 oz bottle. However, a mini 4 ml version is available directly from Nasomatto, who sells the 30 ml bottle for €118 and the 4 ml mini for €42. Nasomatto ships world-wide. In the U.S.: Duro retails for $185 for 30 ml. It is available at Barney’s, Bergdorf Goodman, Luckyscent, Neiman Marcus, and BeautyBar. Outside the U.S.: In Canada, you can find Duro at The Perfume Shoppe which sells the 30 ml bottle for $165. I think that is in US pricing. In the UK, Duro costs £108, and is available at Liberty London, Roullier White, Bloom Parfumery, and The Conran Shop. In France, you can find Duro at Premiere Avenue or Jovoy for €118. In Spain, you can find Duro at Parfumerias Regia, in Italy at Sacra Cuore, in Russia at what seems to be Nasomatto’s own Russian site, along with Orental.ru. In Germany, Duro is sold at First in Fragrance. In the Netherlands, you can obviously find it at Nasomatto’s own shop in Amsterdam. In Australia, you can find Duro at Libertine which sells the 30 ml bottle for AUD$220. In Hong Kong, Konzepp carries the fragrance. In South Africa, the Nasomatto line is available at Rio Perfumes. In the UAE, the line is sold on Souq.com. Samples: I obtained my sample from Luckyscent, but you can also find Duro on Surrender to Chance where prices start at $4.99 for a 1/4 ml vial. Samples are also available for purchase at many of the sites linked up above.