Costello

The Monopteros in Munich is a beautiful round temple, designed by Leo von Klenze in classicist style and commissioned by King Ludwig I. It was completed in 1836 and is enthroned on an artificially created, quite steep hill in the southern English Garden. There is hardly a Munich resident who does not climb the few handful of steps at least now and then to enjoy the heart-rending view, especially when the Föhn wind blows. The view from here stretches far to the south, across the city and the Alps, to Italy, Goethe's "Land where the lemons bloom" and Greece with its relics of ancient culture, whose aesthetic harmony was particularly dear to the art-loving king throughout his life. Up here, you can breathe freely, your thoughts wander freely, everything that restricts you quickly loses its power. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the Monopteros became a meeting place for alternatives and free thinkers of the most varied hues from the 1960s onwards. Hippies drummed away, flower children danced to it, swaths of "ganja" blew around the hill. The "bums" and their favourite place were a real citizen's fright in the then conservative Bavarian capital. Even if the counterculture around the hill is now more well-behaved and a threatening stream of tourists threatens to overflow the colourful biotope and its special charm, that aura of freedom is still tangible at all times.

And perhaps it was that feeling of freedom that inspired Munich-based perfumer Anselm Skogstad to create his fragrance of the same name. Because the fragrance is above all one thing: free from conventions. A classic scent, familiar chords, clear genre classification: clearly no match. Instead, a wildly seeming juxtaposition of notes, which on paper at least, reads as impossible to combine in a meaningful way. Imagining a raspberry note in a tête-à-tête with a cucumber note, a coffee facet with a coconut facet makes you a bit dizzy, especially if you are, like me, more inclined towards classical scent compositions.

And so I was a little bit reserved during the first test: first a scent strip had to be used, later the skin tests followed. So I was all the more surprised that I immediately found what I was smelling was absolutely coherent and consistent. The above mentioned notes play around each other, dance with each other, sometimes with distance, sometimes tightly entwined, and formulate an innovative chord that is very interesting for me, moving in the area of tension between spicy and peppery and slightly sweet and fruity, which is difficult to put into words. Notes, which I usually avoid on a large scale, present themselves here in a completely new light through the unusual combination. An experience that never ceases to fascinate me, as recently in the testing of Carlos Benaïms/Frédéric Malle's wonderful "Music for a While", in which a pineapple note reveals completely new facets through the combination with lavender and patchouli. So if you have to think of cheap sunscreen or an unforgettable piña colada hangover when you think of coconut, for example, you can take a deep breath. And also the unflattering associations that I personally associate with the scent of cucumbers quickly dissolve into pleasure with Monopteros. Perhaps it's the aldehydes that, as once in Chanel's No. 5, translate the traditional flowery heart, the concrete notes into the abstract, unexpected and exciting. I also particularly liked the fragrance's texture, which oscillates between richly creamy and delicately ethereal, almost qualifying it as - admittedly - an exotic "flatterer".

In my eyes Monopteros is definitely the most unusual creation of the very fine Der Duft line. It is clear that it polarizes and will continue to polarize here, but it simply moves too far away from the usual. Here a perfumer has dared to do something, has shown courage and created a fragrance that never bores, always surprises and for me the balancing act between wearable and in a positive sense demanding with bravura. A fragrance that fits the myth of Monopteros wonderfully.