Oxygène Homme Lanvin 2001 Eau de Toilette

Posca! No, we're not talking about the character of the same name from Puccini's opera "Tosca", but Posca: this is what the Romans used to call a drink made from tipped wine or vinegar and water. They used it to disinfect the often not so clean water that was often available to them. They often spiced it up with honey and spices. You can definitely smell the tarragon from the fragrance pyramid and possibly also some dill in Oxygène Homme. The Romans will have used the two spices for their Posca but probably for reasons of taste rather not.

The ancient Romans stretched their water for disinfection so vinegar. The idea to sell that as a fragrance, they had not - unlike Lanvin, which dye the blue and market as "Oxygène Homme". Besides that, you can still smell some aquatic notes and the non-stated ambroxan. Cool Water meets Hengstenberg quasi.

I do not have to say more about the fragrance. I'm glad that I could trade it this week and wish the subsequent owner more fun with it than I had him!

This would be now but no review of me if I would not still drop a few loosely fitting historical facts; almost in time for the just past Easter: Who was raised Christian, probably still remembers the story of when Jesus on the cross of a Roman soldier (he is called Stephaton) was handed a sponge soaked with vinegar. At least three of the four evangelists report this; how John came up with a sprig of hyssop instead of the sponge remains to be seen. What sounds like a cruelty - I think on the cross you have enough problems, you don't need vinegar on your face - was probably an act of mercy: Jesus' penultimate words are said to have been - according to John again - "I thirst!" So the soldier rather handed him some Posca from his canteen, the vinegar being a mistranslation.

Or was it a fragrance strip with Oxygène Homme after all?