№ 02 - L'Air du Désert Marocain Tauer Perfumes 2005 Eau de Toilette Intense

№ 02 - L'Air du Désert Marocain (Eau de Toilette Intense) by Tauer Perfumes

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Ranked 46 in Unisex Perfume

8.5 / 10 1786 Ratings

A popular perfume by Tauer Perfumes for women and men, released in 2005. The scent is spicy-oriental. Projection and longevity are above-average. It is still in production.
Pronunciation

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Main accords

Spicy

Oriental

Woody

Resinous

Smoky

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes

Cumin

Coriander

Petitgrain

Heart Notes

Cistus

Jasmine

Base Notes

Ambergris

Cedarwood

Vetiver

Perfumer

Andy Tauer

Ratings

Scent

8.51786 Ratings

Longevity

8.71544 Ratings

Sillage

8.11509 Ratings

Bottle

7.71397 Ratings

Value for money

7.6708 Ratings

Submitted by Kankuro, last update on 05/19/2025.

Smells similar

What the fragrance is similar to

Au Coeur du Désert

L'Air du Désert Marocain Solid Perfume

New York

Electri

Encens Suprême

African Leather Eau de Parfum

Reviews

74 in-depth fragrance descriptions

11/07/2012

jtd
484 Reviews

jtd

Top Review 16

temporarily speechless

I read Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief years ago. Some time after, I saw the film Adaptation, about which I knew nothing except that it had something to do with the book. To make a film about the inability of the screenwriter to adapt the book was an interesting premise and I found I loved the film. It was smart and exceedingly entertaining, a balance Hollywood manages to find only rarely.

I’d hoped to be clever enough to dream up some ingenious way of talking about l’Air du Desert Marocain. I thought if I waited long enough, it would become clear. Two years down the road, I’m throwing in the towel on wit and inspiration.

I wear perfume every day, but this is the perfume I wear when I want to make wearing perfume a special occasion. I think of it as remarkable, but since I’ve never managed to be able to say anything sensical about it, remarkable is precisely the wrong word. A well-considered piece of abstract art shouldn’t be judged more successful as it grows closer to the descriptive or narrative. Those criteria are irrelevant. Despite its dreamy name, l’Air is an outstanding abstract perfume in that it is rich with ideas and imbued with possibility. If anything, it is more evocative than suggestive. I don’t think, desert. I don’t think, smoke = incense = sacred. I smell it and my head rises, my shoulders release, my eyes open and the world becomes saturated. This is how perfume is art.

03/20/2017

10
Scent

Exciter76
78 Reviews

Exciter76

Top Review 9

Otherworldly genius and spice

When I was much younger (say about five to seven years old) I went to a predominantly Armenian/Eastern European-American elementary school. Los Angeles would eventually bestow the district where my elementary school was located with the name ‘Little Armenia’. One of the strongest, most redolent memories I have of those years was the smell of the beautiful mothers who came to pick up my school chums. Their clothes, their hair, their jewelry, their makeup and, mostly, their fragrances were bold and over-the-top beautiful. I thought then, as I still believe now, these women were the ultimate epitome of womanhood and beauty. My parents eventually decided the big city was no place to raise a child; children needed routine, a backyard, and a dwelling that allowed dogs and cats. I loved growing up in the suburbs but the sense of glamor was lost in the move. None of the suburban moms showed up dressed to the nines, smelling of sweet spices and exotic flowers; that got traded in for drugstore classics as Charlie and White Shoulders. These safe fragrance choices were a microcosm of the overall lack of daring, bombastic personality in suburban living.

By no means am I criticizing life in the suburbs; I still live in the outskirts of Los Angeles. However, sometimes the city girl in me wants to break out like the protagonist in (the original Kevin Bacon version of) Footloose. Sometimes I want to shake things up without making a single move. Andy Tauer’s L’Air du Desert Marocain completely enables me to do this. It’s a stand out fragrance that is guaranteed to turn heads. The sillage might as well be a flying carpet, taking others out of their droll routine and on an olfactory adventure with the wearer. This is the beauty that was only definable by the Armenian/Eastern European mothers of my past. There is an indefinable spiciness that cannot be singled out or easily detected but it is certainly there. This is probably a first where I cannot break down the note I detect or the phases of the scent—I am a love-struck woman.

It is infinitely sexier than any expensive lingerie and I can imagine a refined man of the world pulling this off with the same sex appeal as any woman. I know any words I try to use or any hyperbole I try to include won’t even begin to define the exotic sexiness of this fragrance. This is a fragrance that can only be understood by wearing it.

03/10/2013

7.5
Bottle 5
Sillage 7.5
Longevity 8
Scent

Apicius
224 Reviews

Apicius

Top Review 11

A Strange Ghost

Andy Tauer's L'Air du Désert Maroccaine is like the signature fragrance of this perfumer. It contains the essence of something that can be found in a lot of Tauer perfumes, and if you want to start your exploration of Tauer perfumes with something typical, then this fragrance should be your first choice.

The notes in this fragrance are not so easy to separate from each other. The result is homogeneous and unique, and it is difficult to compare with other perfumes.

Dry desert air – cold at night and burning hot during daytime: the only way to cope with this perfume seems to be to compare it with the images that this name might evoke. I haven't been to the Sahara yet, so my experience is somewhat limited.

I'd rather plead for looking at this perfume as an abstract fragrance experience. Let us classify this as an abstract perfume - just the way we speak of abstract music which does not want to express a special mood or even a natural phenomenon. If I don't get any images, then maybe sounds at least. Looking at this Toauer perfume, Johann Sebastian Bach comes to my mind. His works were of great exactness and constructed around the counterpoint. Listening to the Art of Fugue, the Well-Tempered Clavier or the Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin may reflect the bitterness, earthiness and depth, but also the perfect balance of the ingredients of this Andy Tauer perfume.

And just like the more esoteric works of Bach, L'Air du Desert Maroccaine will not reveal its secrets immediately. This is not a fragrance of big, theatrical effects, nothing that evokes a must-have-reflex. In a way, you sense that this is high level perfumery, but you may find it difficult to explain.

Personally, L'Air du Désert Maroccaine was a difficult experience for me; I found it particularly hard to wear. I wore it once at a night out at the theatre, and I did not feel at home with it. It annoyed me as it was demanding more than appropriate of my attention. I do not think I accidentally over-applied. It simply did not belong to me, it stayed something strange and alien. All the time I felt the notion to look behind my back to find out who is wearing this strange perfume – it haunted me like a ghost.

L'Air du Désert Maroccaine contains a certain strange resinous bitterness which I also find in other Andy Tauer perfumes. This is obviously the personal stamp of this perfumer, and it is not for me. Nevertheless, I have to admit that L'Air du Désert Maroccaine is a great fragrance.

01/11/2013

7.5
Bottle 5
Sillage 7.5
Longevity 9
Scent

Pipette
63 Reviews

Pipette

Very helpful Review 7

Hot Desert Air

I will add my review to the long line of glorious accolades in the internet perfume review world. They were the basis upon which I bought it - unsniffed - and was not disappointed. To the contrary, it is one of the best unisex colognes around.

Usually men's colognes are too bold, clean or whatever ... this one is a cologne that can be worn from morning to night. In the morning, it gives you that extra lift after stepping out of the shower, in the evening - now spray on a lot - it projects the aura of what the name promises. Literally: dry desert air ... That may be true if I wanted to dream in that direction but - if it were called "intense lemon verbena with a lot of depth" it would be unromantic, yet true.

Anyway, I love it, just love it. It is both a close-to-skin scent and a short sillage scent. To really feel it, one has to spray on a lot and let it dry down. The stages are rather much of the same from opening to end, or is it my nose? Whatever, the dry down is rather long lasting and will compound when you spray on more. This is not a sillage monster, rather a harmonious and inoffensive scent. It is comfortable and wearable on all occasions. If it were not so expensive, this would be my go-to scent but here niche quality comes in an expensive 50 ml size, so it has to be appreciated.

01/23/2012

10
Sillage 10
Longevity 10
Scent

Sherapop
1239 Reviews

Sherapop

Very helpful Review 7

Yes, There IS a Perfumer in the House!

I've been ranting of late about some devolutions in the perfume world, including rampant dilution—not only by mass market producers, but also some niche brands as well—so it's certainly a relief to be able to turn to one of Andy Tauer's creations as a reminder that there is still hope. Yes, even in a world filled with meaningless and irrelevant flankers which evaporate from collective memory nearly as fast as they evaporate from the skin, in a quaint corner of Switzerland, genuine perfumes are still being made.

L'AIR DU DESERT MAROCAIN bears the unmistakeable "wild" signature of this house. Lots of complexity and depth and layers and some very heavy notes, which are however thoughtfully measured and blended. This truly unique composition is an oriental chypre with an ambergris base. Yes, that's a mouthful, and L'AIR DU DESERT MAROCAIN is indeed a noseful--but in a good way! Evernia prunastri and evernia furfuracea account for this perfume's chypre demeanor, but the spiciness imparted by coriander and cumin keep it oriental without leading the wearer inadvertently back to the kitchen. The animalic quality imparted by the ambergris is not at all unlike some leather notes I've sniffed.

A beautiful, contemplative composition, suitable for guys and gals alike who appreciate a good dark chypre, although there is definitely more here than that. Let's just say that chypre appreciation is a prerequisite to a successful encounter with this perfume. Very potent, as I find all of the Tauer creations to be. This one is marked as "eau de toilette intense," but it may as well be pure perfume, since it behaves just as well, with big sillage and excellent longevity. L'AIR DU DESERT MAROCAIN is a perfume best worn when one wishes to experience the beauty of perfume, as an event in and of itself.

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