Scentzilla!

Alberto Morillas’ “Lust” drops me into a daydream. But is it my own?

Once again I am struck by how very much some of these S-Perfumes are like listening to disembodied voices from another room. Wearing them feels almost like eavesdropping; I’m listening, ear pressed to the air, to a conversation already in congress.

To smell it on a paper strip reveals saffron, cedar trees, deckle edged musk, and an element that I might best liken to the taste of a Ricola lozenge.

Yet on my skin, the saffron comes alive. You know the feeling you get when a suppertable is set, and the food has just been placed on the table, still beautiful in its presentation? There’s this fleeting moment when you forget the growling hunger, and happily enjoy the anticipation of eating your supper. Lust wears as almost gourmand on me, but without smelling explicitly like a foody fragrance.

Were this fragrance limited to a saffron element, it would be easy to dismiss. However, it unfolds into a lovely waking dream.

To wear it is to float alongside a cream-cloud of saffron.

Then I am hovering over the Olympic forests, the woody aroma rising up to meet me through the sun-shifting mists.

I sense fire without heat, as if only knowing it exists somewhere in the distance.

The tangling begins: musky and ambery warmth loosely weave weft and warp, spice and wood.

I am lightly dressed by its sensual naughtiness. This naughtiness is refined to the point of subtlety on my skin. The animalic layer refrains from grossing me out, while skewing to fit the other, more prevalent, notes.

Whether Lust’s daydream is a product of my own imagination or Morillas’ engineering seems irrelevant. It’s a wonderful one to have either way.

(Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, Lust reminds me in some ways of Andy Tauer’s L’Air du Desert Marocain. I perceive them to exist on different sides of the same family.)

Lust can be obtained as a sample currently, but can be ordered in a full size bottle (approximately in late January or early February) ONLY if one has tried it as a sample from S-Perfume first. You can access the sample menu by clicking here.

Images starting from top: saffron stamens from itrademarket.com; redwood burl from sveneers.com; solar surface from spacedaily.com.

To find a link about S-Perfume’s Seven Deadly Sins, including Lust, please see my post about Sloth