Scentzilla!

As a forewarning, this is not a formal review: to describe the notes in this perfume would be a dishonest reflection of my impressions. Moreover, I feel it would be useless for me to try at this point. Perhaps there will be one forthcoming later, much later. “Spicy leather, dying embers, approaching storms” is as far as I’m willing to go at this moment. If you wish to see specific note breakdowns, please see Legerdenez or Perfume Critic for formal reviews.

Like the previous two fragrances by Tauer Perfumes, Lonestar Memories compels the senses with emotions first, rather than notes. I am undone by it. It is a masterpiece. I don’t throw that word around too much, and in fact a quick search reveals that the only other perfume I’ve labeled a masterpiece on this blog is Jean Desprez’s Bal a Versailles. (Though I must point out, Iris Gris and Shalimar amongst others also reign as masterpieces.) This is the best leather-themed fragrance I have smelled in a long while, and at the very least, it is the perfume of the year, which I say with confidence though we’re only halfway through 2006.

It is not merely a “cowboy perfume,” nor a “prairie perfume.” Despite the namesake state embraced by title, it is not the smell of some place you can geographically locate: it can not be travelled over by road or by plane. Lonestar Memories smells of the examined life. Inside there is joy, and there is tiny heartbreak, existing only in reverie. The scent unravels into the consideration of past experiences, and pinings for future joys and heartbreaks.

The only prairie I know well, that of South Dakota, is struck by sudden daytime storms that I am only ever able to explain by comparing them to bed clothes ripping free from a clothesline. Out of the sunshine, comes dark wind and rain, like a sheet passing overhead. You can acutally feel and see the storms rise up to meet you across the horizon. Moody weather sails over the land, only to finish as suddenly as it began. The sheet’s shadow quickly flies overhead. It passes by and lets the sun shine in through blue skies again. All occurs within an hour, as if nothing had happened at all. Here are some photos that show how it happens: click here to see ’storm’ by Flickr member JKonig, or you can click here to see ‘air by Flickr member gradschool4life.

Why do I bring this up? I don’t know, precisely. I never thought about this type of day storm when growing up there. I only realized and admired it upon revisiting South Dakota when I got older. What an amazing phenomenon. It’s an experience unto itself, but is also a metaphor for something I cannot name.

Perhaps my connection here is this: Lonestar Memories smells of a bittersweet materialization of things taken for granted, things only thought of in passing at the time but appreciated later. I am reminded by its fragrance of my homesickness for a place I do not call home.

Lonestar Memories is scheduled for wide release on the 15th of this month. I urge you to give it a try. There is nothing else quite like it. You can find more information by going to Andy Tauer’s blog or by seeking out his website at Tauer Perfumes. The order information can be found directly through Tauer Perfumes at this page.

*I feel I must run a disclaimer here that I am working with Laurent Le Guernec at Made by Blog to create my own leather scent. It may be a silly thing to worry about, but I felt like it would be unethical not to mention it.

Image in this post is a photo by Flickr member patryczek i ewelinka, and is covered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license.

L’air du Desert Marocain is a scent I am disinclined to pick apart and sort note by note. It’s a perfume that is best appreciated as a unified line, and I feel that if I break the whole into pieces I might break its spell. So instead, I would prefer to share some places and times it stirs loose from my memory.

This fragrance calls forth a coastal forest smell. Wind-shaped cedars and manzanitas jut out, but L’air is mathematically divided from the grey humidity and loam, leaving a remainder of the rarified clean air blowing in.

Moving south from the coastal rain forests, my mind flits to the Oregon Dunes, where the air is dry, the land is a sea of constantly swirling sand, and yet the trees and other plantlife surreally find their way inside.

And then I travel to a place in childhood. When I was around nine or ten, my brother’s godparents were running a summer camp resort in Spearfish Canyon in the Black Hills. That year the Hills suffered a terrible drought, and even the blue spruce looked autumnal in the dryness. We kids would play our games up along the steeply sloped sides of the hills, clambering over forest floors strewn with wild flowers, dry needles, and branches. With every footfall, the aromas of the forest detritus would release as it crushed underneath our little sneakered feet.

I am then reminded of when I was eleven. My friend Laura, who is half Lakota, taught me to pick the juniper berries off a certain species of spruce that grew in Yankton ditches*. We’d suck and then spit them out - one mustn’t eat them. The scent of this endeavor would always cling to my fingers for hours afterwards. For the curious, juniper berries do not taste of gin, though gin tastes of them. They are sour, bitter, fruity, and herbaceously floral.

As is my habit, I used my sister as a guinea pig with L’air. Sisters really are the best. Who else but a sister would think an evening of perfume sampling, tea drinking, and watching Donald Trump’s cotillion of crazies on TV sounds like fine way to spend a Thursday night? What startled me was how overwhelmingly lavender-fielded this fragrance was on her. A touch of something seeming like an explicit bitter orange even appreared on her. The end drydown was quite similar to the way it wore on me, but it differed vastly overall. Funny thing - we both preferred the way it unfolded on our own skin, as opposed to each others’.

L’air du Desert Marocain is not gender specific. This seems to be achieved not by manipulation of “unisex” notes, but rather through what seems like an effort to evoke sensations of a real place that does not precisely exist. Sort of like an Avalon, I suppose, but L’air is not some mist-curtained island. It’s a forest tucked away gently behind the clarified sunlight of a mountain’s summit in summer, and the strange night chill that falls over a desert in winter.

My apologies to those who were looking for a play-by-play of the individual notes. (It seemed a dishonorable way to fully describe what this scent conjured up emotionally for me.)

*I dimly remember Laura telling me that her auntie used these berries when people had tummy aches. I think she also mentioned something about a juniper berry tea, but my memory goes foggy after that. I can’t vouch for the validity of this treatment, nor do I know if it is even a widely common thing to do amongst the Lakota. I definitely remember that my parents freaked out completely when they realized we were doing this and forbade me from ever doing it again, out of fear I might damage my liver or something.

First photo taken of a lumber truck in the Coastal Range in Oregon. Second photo of the Oregon Sand Dunes, near Florence, Oregon, is from www.ohwy.com. Third photo is of Spearfish Canyon from BlackHills.com. Fourth image is from Artavatar. It is by Ashok K. Dey, entitled “Camp 2,” and is an original piece that can be purchased directly through Artavatar. For more info on all the excellent reasons to support Artavatar, please go directly to the site by clicking here

Tauer Perfumes are creations from Andy Tauer, and thus far he has rolled out two scents for the public. The one I shall write about today is his Le Maroc Pour Elle.

I was a little nervous when he kindly offered to send me samples, out of fear that I might not like them for whatever reason. Ah, but I needn’t have worried at all.

As that first wide break of sunshine opens up the day, so Le Maroc Pour Elle begins on my skin. Gently roused from a slightly medicinal-herbal start, jasmine and rose awaken and stretch as the notes orient themselves upon my skin.

The scent begins to warm on me, and I notice an allusion of roses on a midsummer morning, coalescing with the smell of a particularly juicy orange’s peel left abandoned on a breakfast plate. Smoothly, a warm woodiness and dry amber rise up as well. The wood and amber never overpower the lighter notes, but rather, they inform the florals. This gives the perfume a sexy knowing feel. I seem to pick up on a trace of something that is sand-like, too, but I am scared that it may have been suggested to me by the name-place of the perfume rather than the perfume itself. Still, it seems noticable.

The roses here are deep, rich, and I found myself nodding in agreement when I read Luca Turin’s mention of Bal a Versailles in his recent post about Le Maroc. While they do not smell alike, both share a quality of circularity. A note suggests it will fade off into the distance only to reappear as it makes another lap around the track. In Le Maroc’s case, this is how I perceive rose occuring. And this particular eau de toilette has staying power to show this trait off well.

The fullness of rose, paired with amber that alludes to incense, inspires me to think not of Morocco, but of La Virgen de Guadalupe and her legend of roses. (I suppose I might be more a child of the Americas than I had realized.) To an irreligious person like myself, the myth surrounding her is just that. A myth. Yet in the culture of Mexico and portions of the U.S., this myth possesses immeasurable importance. One cannot escape seeing her icons, nor the candles and incense offered up to honor her. It is certainly not unusual to see her power invoked in makeshift shrines during the holidays, or by the sides of roads after tragic accidents. My mental association with the Virgin of Guadalupe lends this perfume a slightly mysterious surreal air for me.

Le Maroc is classified “pour elle,” and while it is indeed feminine, it’s certainly not weak. Sensual, vibrant, and composed of strength, it is not the smell of a little girl, or some flirty teenager. It is womanly. And I like that. It’s nice to find a rose scent that matches up to the level of a full grown woman.

Tauer Perfumes can be found at www.lemaroc.ch

Top image is of Salvadore Dali’s “Meditative Rose.” Second image is of Rene Magritte’s “Le Tombeau des Luteurs.” Third is a fleur-de-me. Bottom photograph is entitled “Day of the Dead Altar,” used with permission of Patrice Wynne, San Miguel Designs. Visit the website at: www.sanmigueldesigns.com.