Cravache

Sous le Vent is my favorite scent. One of the greatest, most emotional fragrances. A perfume in which every facet is an olfactory revelation.

And then there's Berlin.

A city that has been fought off, somewhere between Büsingen on the High Rhine and Divitz-Spoldershagen. And the flacon of the Lehmann fragrance also looks so Berlin-like. Loveless glass atomizer, intimate deodorant spray head, three particularly lovelessly clapped labels on the atomizer, each of which was applied more slanted than the next.

Lehmann's fragrances stand out for two main characteristics: they are fabulously inexpensive and often just as fabulously olfactory grossly hammered together. But there are also radiant pearls from Lehmann. One of them is Surabaya. Surabaya is a sensitive Lehmann-Berlin implementation of the fragrance images of Sous le Vent.

Both scents, Surabaya and Sous le Vent, are green-spicy chypres. Surabaya is slightly more floral-floral than Sous le Vent (jasmine) and has a warm brown, oriental twist with a warm clove and a small pinch of cinnamon. Lavender gives Surabaya a southern French early summer spice.

Some aldehydes can be found in the heart in Surabaya, but much less than in Sous le Vent. The subtle floral-herbal sweetness and subliminal pungency are reminiscent of the smell of slightly moist, unscented pipe tobacco. At this stage Sous le Vent is drier and more shrubby. The base of Surabaya is bedded on contemporary narrow-breasted oakmoss and slightly earthy patchouli. Surabaya shows little fragrance progression, only the colour changes gradually from tweed green to tweed brown.

Surabaya smells old. According to craftsmanship tradition, like a Harris tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. And like Guerlain's Derby after 1980s olfactory historicism: you smell the post-colonial façade of the 1930s or 1940s.

The main differences to Sous le Vent are two. After spraying Sous le Vent shines like a bright star in all directions. Surabaya always remains in the subdued green-brown of Harris-Tweed. And Sous le Vent is a fragrance that unfolds three-dimensionally, while Surabaya remains fresco-like two-dimensional.

Sous le Vent is more complex, intricate and multi-layered than Surabaya. Less easily accessible. As dry-wood, floral to herbal chypres, Surabaya and Sous le Vent stand for seriousness and warm tropical winds, for joie de vivre and melancholy in equal measure.

The scent images of Sous le Vent that emerge are contradictory. One sees Paul Gauguin's South Sea pictures. Always beautiful weather, vivid strong colours, erotic women with flawless bodies. And yet the melancholy lies like a veil over their faces.

Surabaya is almost equally melancholic, true to life, but not of the latently bitter or black poetry of Sous le Vent. The sky in Surabaya is not immaculately cloudless, the light is more diffuse, the colours dimmed, the sky cloudy. Surabaya is not located in the South Seas, but in an old backyard in the faceless Indonesian city of Surabaya. Or Berlin.

Surabaya is not a Dupe of Sous le Vent. Surabaya fires up the melancholy that Sous le Vent has long since ceased to exist. And by this fact alone, an underrated fragrance.

Dehn Al Oud Seufi is not a perfume in the western sense. For floral scents one would say soliflor. Indecent in humans.

For an Arabic Geza Schön has filled oud - and only oud - into a flacon. Or rather locked up. Because if you open the flacon with the oud oil, the pressure wave of oud hits you. Animalistic, potent, powerful, unrestrained, wonderfully malicious. An unleashed force of nature

Dehn Al Oud Seufi is the most consistent purism of Arabic perfumery through minimalist use of the highest quality ingredients. Dehn Al Oud Seufi does not celebrate oud, Dehn Al Oud Seufi does not play. Dehn Al Oud Seufi bites and transforms everyone in the environment into an oud column.

Dehn Al Oud Seufi is a source of light that does not embellish anything with lumpy musk, does not transfigure anything in pastel shades and tears down every lovely olfactory ornament in the near and far surroundings.

Dehn Al Oud Seufi has no scent gradient, no facets. There is nothing relative about Dehn Al Oud Seufi. Dehn Al Oud Seufi only knows the maximum volume, the deepest depth. In all its oudanimal, desert sun warm, hairy splendor. Pure and unadulterated like an Arabic Klaus Kinski.

The oud is loin-warm, smells like a cow herd ready to mate. The fecal shock waves, which are especially noticeable at the beginning, give the scent a shimmering oriental and malicious vibe. Dehn Al Oud Seufi feels as if a wing made of eagle wood from the top floor is slamming on your back. But the eaglewood wing weighs down your loins in a way that you don't want to complain - the serve feels fetishally incredibly good. At least when you're standing on it.

The oud note is dark brown to greyish weathered, solid wood, very heavy, very dense, noble-mold with a brown-grey musty note, a little bit earthy and dirty like an oil change in the garden of the neighbor.

Wearing stretch Al Oud Seufi in the office feels at least as wrong as whale meat sushi. Dehn Al Oud Seufi would simply cause a mass panic in the office. For European noses, scents like Dehn Al Oud Seufi are unusual, strange, repulsive, insulting and disturbing when first encountered. And at the same time fascinating and exciting. As if the Venetian fried fish had sneaked into Casanova's chambers for the first time. Dehn Al Oud Seufi hunts the meat, kills the meat, eats the meat (note to all vegans and vegetarians: this is of course meant figuratively).

And yet the fragrance lets the brute and bestial appear simultaneously in all their contradictions and perfectly balanced as dark, animalistically attractive beauty. Hardly any other fragrance is more enlivened by the animal potency and vibrancy of oud and the room-filling warmth of Arabian perfumery oil-black.

Dehn Al Oud Seufi is a viscous, heavy oil, non-alcoholic oud oil, which is applied by means of a glass rod. Dehn Al Oud Seufi undoubtedly has a bad character - evil must win. Dehn Al Oud Seufi is the lawyer among perfumes. He is suitable for people who are professionally devoted to the Mephistophelian by profession.

Dehn Al Oud Seufi is more persistent than the corona virus. A shower and repeated hand washing does not intimidate the scent. And Dehn Al Oud Seufi is also able to enforce social distancing without any problems.

Malicious is also the price. Dehn Al Oud Seufi were available in different qualities and quantities, whereby a thimble Dehn Al Oud Seufi was as expensive as a bottle from Roja Dove.