Dzing! by L'Artisan Parfumeur
We may earn a commission when you buy from links on our site, including the eBay Partner Network and Amazon.
7.2 / 10 254 Ratings
A perfume by L'Artisan Parfumeur for women and men, released in 1999. The scent is leathery-animal. It was last marketed by Puig.
Pronunciation
We may earn a commission when you buy from links on our site, including the eBay Partner Network and Amazon.

Main accords

Leathery
Animal
Woody
Spicy
Sweet

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes Top Notes
LeatherLeather GingerGinger SaffronSaffron
Heart Notes Heart Notes
IrisIris JonquilJonquil CaramelCaramel
Base Notes Base Notes
CostusCostus CedarCedar Tonkin muskTonkin musk CastoreumCastoreum

Perfumer

Ratings
Scent
7.2254 Ratings
Longevity
7.1178 Ratings
Sillage
6.1161 Ratings
Bottle
7.9159 Ratings
Value for money
7.628 Ratings
Submitted by DonVanVliet, last update on 11/20/2024.

Smells similar

What the fragrance is similar to
Peau de Bête by Liquides Imaginaires
Peau de Bête
Corpus Equus by Naomi Goodsir
Corpus Equus
Safran Troublant by L'Artisan Parfumeur
Safran Troublant
Bvlgari Black by Bvlgari
Bvlgari Black
Cuir Fétiche by Maître Parfumeur et Gantier
Cuir Fétiche
Hyrax by Zoologist
Hyrax

Reviews

19 in-depth fragrance descriptions
jtd

484 Reviews
jtd
jtd
Very helpful Review 10  
circus
I've been thinking about how we consider perfumery not just an art but an art form.  Many would agree that perfumery is an art, in that it involves creativity and beauty. But fewer would consider it more broadly an art form, having recognizable trends and aesthetic criteria. We haven’t been taught to view perfumery as a form that fosters critical thinking.

A confusing point is that terms such as genre, school, trend and movement tend to be used interchangeably when discussing the categorization of perfume. It's worth making some distinctions for the sake of understanding perfumery as a specific art form.  

Trends are easy to identify and discuss. Trends are simply grouped occurrences identified after the fact. Even trends that we speak of in the present exist as patterns that have already occured before we identify them. The trend of the fruity floral, the trend of ethylmaltol use, the trend in the 1920s-1930s of referring to balsamic, resinous perfumes as "oriental".

We refer to schools loosely as either 1) using a specific style, or 2) broadly making a distinction between traditional and non-traditional approaches. As an example of the former, Jean Claude Ellena belongs to the minimalist school of perfumery. In the latter, Patricia de Nicolai, belonging to a familial and aesthetic lineage, works within the classical school of perfumery.

In perfumery, genre describes compositional forms.  Chypre, fougère, eau de cologne. These are forms that are defined by their components, and are more like chemical families than artistic genres in this respect.  

Chandler Burr, a fragrance critic and Curator of the Department of Olfactory Art at the Museum of Arts and Design is a proponent of viewing  perfumery by artistic movement, ie. romaticism, surrealism, etc.. His work goes a long way toward placing perfumery in the mind of the public as an art form, but there is an inherent incongruity in placing the nomenclature of sensory form (the visual or the written) on another (the olfactory). Still, historical movements such as modernism or post-modernism affect many forms of creative thinking and can be used to advance arguments and discussion. Perhaps there are movements in the history of perfumery inherent specifically to the olfactory that will be recognized in the future.

Schools and movements often have credos, manifestos, statements of intent or the like. It is arguable that there is little distinction between such statements in the past and current marketing and PR, but aside from a few cheeky derivations such as Etat Libre d’Orange’s “Le parfum est mort. Vive le parfum!” (Perfume is dead. Long live perfume!) perfumery doesn’t stake a conceptual claim and then illuminate it.

So, Dzing. I tend to dislike narrative in art, and even more in the explanation of daily life. It seems so pat, so tedious. Narrative is often touted as a way of making sense out of confusion, but I find it more often seeks to create an expectation that the participant will fulfill, incorrectly or not, in order to have the safety of a conclusion rather than an ambiguity or a question. Dzing appeals to me for the fact that it presents the circus by systematically breaking down an image to its constituent parts, then rearranging a few of them as clues that suggest a scenario. There is an association between the olfactory elements of Dzing and the circus. Dzing smacks of a sweet treat to eat. There’s the hint of straw and sawdust covering the ground, the implication of being confined within a tented space with other people and even animals. Dzing doesn’t beat you over the head with its message like a Spielberg film. It leads you to a suggestion. I doubt that without being told about the circus imagery many would sniff Dzing and say, “Circus!” But as a well designed piece of art, whether you take the circus image and run with it or simply appreciate the perfume more abstractly, it conveys aesthetic intention. To suggest with a perfume an experience that is ridiculous if not surreal in the first place is a brilliant concept and I applaud the perfumer Olivia Giacobetti for pulling it off so effectively.

Niche perfumery seems to me to have moved away from the creative and the conceptual toward the merely luxurious. Dzing reminds that I first came to niche as a way to find quality and innovation that was lacking in the larger commercial market. I don’t look to niche to comfort me with beauty that may or may not be provided any longer by Caron, Chanel or Guerlain. Almost 15 years after its release, Dzing is still the unbeaten the high-water mark of niche as a statement of defiance to the restraints of commercial perfumery. Who needs a countertop full of plush pieces of oud perfume finery that cost north of $300? I don’t.

La niche est morte. Vive la niche!

from scent hurdle.com
1 Comment
3
Scent
Awesomeness

247 Reviews
Awesomeness
Awesomeness
Helpful Review 3  
Dzing!?!?!?
Dzing! just didn't do it for me. I found it to be a very light, unisex scent of nothingness. A circus? No way. It smells like my office.

Books & papers. A residue of carpet glue. Warm plastic from computers & office appliances. Fresh paint down the hall. Someone's wretched casserole warmed in the microwave in the lunchroom. The paper shredder, always running and always too full, with its metal teeth not quite aligned.

I don't get the dzing concept ... or the price point.

Dzing!?!?!?!? No, more like, WT*?
0 Comments
5
Sillage
7.5
Longevity
8
Scent
Efemmeral

19 Reviews
Efemmeral
Efemmeral
Helpful Review 6  
Shhhhhhh!
Wearing this scent I am a 1950s librarian in a specialist collection of rare natural history books. I walk amongst waxed wooden shelves where clouds of vanillic lignin exhale from the pages of leather bound volumes. There’s a hint of ancient adhesives, and glosses from the glorious illustrated plates. This stuff reeks of knowledge. With such marvelous scent commingling I feel comfortable, sexy, in control. Best worn with a vintage suit and catseye glasses, and with a readiness to “shhhhh”, but somehow no one has yet had the temerity to speak above a whisper.

Whip crackingly good.
0 Comments
ColinM

516 Reviews
ColinM
ColinM
Helpful Review 4  
Weightless leather
Dzing is a peculiar sort of weightless and really discreet animalic-leathery scent, with a sweet and thin texture which manages to smell minimalistic yet dense and dark. More than minimalistic, it’s actually “cozy”, like a Medieval miniature book: it’s all there, just small and thin. There is this leather micro-accord encrusted into a clean, dry and sharp floral-sweet frame, tamed down but warm enough, with fine woods on the base and a floral powder all over. Sort of an antique smell in a futuristic lyophilized capsule. Plus, it has something vaguely moldy-earthy which makes it even more fascinating, but also honestly a bit boring after a while, providing a feel of static and linear heaviness which won’t really go away for hours – close to skin, but heavy the same. Anyway, surely a fascinating work for sure, really well crafted and well balanced, evocative and permeated by a sort of nostalgic and melancholic gloominess well blended with its hyper modern texture – quite ahead of its time for sure. As other reviewers stated online, after some hours the very drydown is fairly (actually, much) similar to Dior’s Fahrenheit, just a bit drier. A couple of other defects for me: the linearity and the extreme closeness of projection, which makes it basically more than a skin scent – something you have to “look for” on your skin, otherwise you’ll forget you’re wearing it. I get the “discretion” and the composition cleanness, but... (however the persistence is everlasting).

6,5-7/10
0 Comments
10
Scent
Rickbr

190 Reviews
Rickbr
Rickbr
Helpful Review 4  
Impressionist Circus
I was here reflecting while wearing Dzing that there are, generally, two types of perfumery masterpieces. The first of them creates a shape that becomes very popular and ends generating many imitations and variations around its theme. The other type, in which Dzing fits, enters exotic lands where few are brave to go.The most interesting int Dzing is that it ally its exoticism to an extremely confortable and wearable aroma.This is one of Olivia Giacobetti masterpieces, a creative fragrance inspired on circus.However, this is not a literal circus aroma, but an impressionist circus exercise from the artist.There is some techinical features from the impressionist movent that you can fit in this creation: the capture of the aroma contours, the portrait of an environment, at least partly, of the nature (mainly due the suggestion, by using muysks, of the animals smell), the dissolution of the aromas. This is a circus harmony, the capture of environment mixture of the abstract olfactive space, of vanillic and caramel nuances from the candys, the leather smell of the canvas, the smell of the animals, the woody aroma of the structures, the sweet and buttery aroma of the popcorn bags.That all of this is present on a cozy scent and not at all scary is amazing. Yet after many years that i have smelled Dzing for the first time, its smell still amazes me, and how much i missed it lead me to repurchase it after having sold it in the past due its performance closer to skin (that today i fiz applying more of it). I feel that the current perfumery need more works like Dzing, able to leave you to places you haven't been and make you see certain environments from another perspective.
0 Comments
More reviews

Statements

3 short views on the fragrance
KimJongKimJong 5 years ago
8
Bottle
5
Sillage
6
Longevity
6.5
Scent
I thought my dog ​​pooped under the table again. But after a while, the poop smelled delicious. To eat or not to eat, that is the question.
0 Comments
LillibetLillibet 7 years ago
8
Bottle
6
Sillage
6
Longevity
9
Scent
Grassy-animalic hay notes mixed with popcorny/candy aromas & spices, particularly ginger. Love it! There is nothing else like it.
0 Comments
HajuvanaHajuvana 9 years ago
Vanilla fudge at the taxidermist
0 Comments

Charts

This is how the community classifies the fragrance.
Pie Chart Radar Chart

Images

3 fragrance photos of the community

Popular by L'Artisan Parfumeur

Timbuktu by L'Artisan Parfumeur Fou d'Absinthe by L'Artisan Parfumeur Tea for Two by L'Artisan Parfumeur La Chasse aux Papillons (Eau de Toilette) by L'Artisan Parfumeur Bois Farine by L'Artisan Parfumeur L'Eau d'Ambre Extrême by L'Artisan Parfumeur Dzongkha by L'Artisan Parfumeur Noir Exquis by L'Artisan Parfumeur Traversée du Bosphore by L'Artisan Parfumeur Premier Figuier (Eau de Toilette) by L'Artisan Parfumeur Vanille Absolument / Havana Vanille by L'Artisan Parfumeur Mon Numéro 10 by L'Artisan Parfumeur Séville à l'Aube by L'Artisan Parfumeur Nuit de Tubéreuse by L'Artisan Parfumeur Passage d'Enfer by L'Artisan Parfumeur Safran Troublant by L'Artisan Parfumeur Méchant Loup by L'Artisan Parfumeur Jour de Fête by L'Artisan Parfumeur L'Été en Douce / Extrait de Songe by L'Artisan Parfumeur Bucoliques de Provence by L'Artisan Parfumeur