Tabu Dana 1932 Eau de Toilette

Truly a work of art that lingers and lingers. TABU spray cologne is ideal for men and women: a powerful, tangy, oriental opening, gently gripping spicy mid tones, carrying youmall the way to its heartfelt long-lasting base notes. My first experience with this fragrance was a revelation ~ that a fragrance could "score" so highly on just about every level, in every category, yet not at an exorbitant price. This is in my "top ten". It's wonderful !

It is a classic 20th C standby for so many! It has questionable morals and an unforgettable nature. The civet was so prominent that is almost cat like. It has lot of patchouli and vanilla, that creates this timeless bohemian feel. The is a root beer character here thats almost tactile. My sister used to douse herself with it in the 1960s. The spices always made me sneeze. Dana used to be a major house in the mid century. Then poof! It's gone...

Oddly, it has been the one scent I used to detect at funerals worn by ladies who wanted attention, along with Youth Dew.

Perhaps a bold oriental was the only thing that commanded attention, I guess. Perhaps as time goes by, it's so much more. It is a classic and somehow remains intact. With all of the modern regulations, this is amazing!

Many of us already know the legend that Jean Carles was directed by Dana to compose a perfume that would be worn by a lady of the night, which ended up adding to its cachet. However, after its mid-century zenith in popularity, it would be eclipsed by the harlot in ingénue clothing that would be Youth Dew just two decades later, and would over the decades end up languishing on the lower shelves of the local drugstore, with a cult following, while the younger and hipper dazzlers, the Opiums, Cinnabars, and Obsessions would reign supreme.

Tabu is a fragrance that has seen and smelled it all, sort of like Dorian Corey in Paris is Burning. All these spices and shady resins, florals that read for filth, and an undercarriage of smut and revolt, Tabu could very well have the mummy of a criminal in a trunk yet to be discovered. Herein lies its appeal, it makes no apologies, it's always been in the shadows of Shalimar as "that other one" and Dana birthed it with a scarlet letter watermarked on its fundament. This is what makes it a fucking rockstar in the annals of perfume history.

You wore this fragrance for as long as I knew you. You were born in 1899 - in the 1980s you always proudly said, "I am still from the last century."
Growing up in a wealthy bourgeois family in what was then Silesia, in a large house designed in Art Deco style, with servants, a cook, and a glassed-in winter garden. I imagine how it must have smelled in the house and in the salon, of spices, furniture and fabrics, fragrant powder, and certainly also citrus fruits from the colonial goods trade. In winter, someone might have stuck cloves into oranges and hung them in the light of the stained glass windows.
The family owned a goldsmith (only one ring remains and is with me today) and was the first in the city to own an automobile. You were able to get an education, which was anything but a given for girls at that time, and then you trained as a photo lab technician - the latest high-tech future technology in the early 20th century. A privileged life, occasionally indulging in dancing... Nevertheless, you got married and had two daughters by 1921/1922. During the Second World War, you became pregnant twice more after brief homecomings of your husband. The first time, a little angel was born, as you always expressed it; your last daughter was born in 1942: my mother.
Twice you left everything behind and could only take a handbag with you: In January 1945, together with your elderly mother-in-law and your three-year-old daughter, you embarked on a refugee trek that brought you to Saxony and into a small assigned room as your new home. Your husband had survived the war but found a new partner in a nurse from the hospital. Thus, you considered yourself separated from then on. A second time in 1959: On Christmas Eve, you boarded a plane to West Germany with your now 17-year-old daughter, again only with a handbag. Did you have a perfume in your handbag? I can certainly imagine it that way. Now you were both poor; you sewed buttons in a coat factory for a small wage.
But you must have particularly enjoyed your perfume in difficult moments and remembered your origins with it. With the powdery-spicy opening of orange, cardamom, and clove, reminiscent of the salon in your childhood and youth, of the dance events where the bouquets smelled of cloves, roses, and daffodils, and the ladies seductively smelled of much musk, distinct civet, and oak moss, of the amber-sweet rendezvous with admirers who took you out to dance...
You were always strong and proud, and you enjoyed your life. When your husband asked you many years later to let him come to you from the GDR to the West, you refused. You never left the house without a hat. You continued to say "Chemise" for shirt and "Chaiselongue" for sofa.

I remember your scent, powdery-sweet at the start, later floral, without any single flower standing out, but from today’s perspective, I recognize cloves, roses, and daffodils, always remaining powdery, but becoming somewhat darker and slightly patchouli-earthy and mossy-woody, but above all with a distinct civet-animalic note - which I perhaps still love today for that reason.
You, my grandmother Vally. Finally, your scent has encountered me again.

"And what good is all the suffering if one does not also enjoy oneself
The sins weigh heavily, but one can never commit enough
No matter who is on top" (Element of Crime: Alten Resten eine Chance)

My sample is of course not from 1932, but definitely from before 2010.
Thank you to @Minigolf!

Generationally, Grandma Vally and I could dance wonderfully to this song today: Parov Stelar, The Mojo Radio Gang (Club Version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZExx6-3Sng

An oriental fragrance of the oriental kind, because this one surpasses them all. Taboo is really nothing here. ;-)

I have never experienced such a wealth of floral scents and spices, not even with Obsession, perhaps even more so with Youth Dew. But I don't want to compare, as I believe each fragrance should stand on its own.

In any case, one should only acquire this scent if they enjoy lush fullness and oriental spice; otherwise, it can quickly become overwhelming.

When the package arrived and I unpacked it and released a test spray, it was love at first sniff for my partner. "THIS SMELLS GOOD," and that’s all that needs to be said, and the bottle found its place in his fragrance cabinet.

Therefore, I can only speculate on how the scent will develop further, as the beginning was already very promising; a warm wave of oriental flowers approached me. Clove, etc., I can't even unravel it all, and I believe there's also orange in there. I still have to wait for the final chord (we have the violin bottle), as the spices are still very loud.
But I think, looking at the fragrance pyramid, it will become quite an experience. Oakmoss, patchouli, musk, civet, all that is woven in there, a true perfume dream.

Of course, this is not one from 1932, but I believe we would all struggle with that; this one is already heavy, loud, cloying, opulent, lush, spicy, and oriental enough.

Thank you for your attention.