The Desert Landscapes

If you are anything like me, when you smell a perfume for the first time—it doesn’t matter if on the blotter or the skin—what you smell takes shape in your head and within a few seconds, you decide if you like it or not, and whether to proceed with the purchase. In the choice, a lot depends on the mood you are in, which drives your emotions, and the temperature of the environment, which at that moment makes some notes stand out by obscuring others. Then you get home, and maybe on the same day, or after a few days, you open the box and spray a little juice on your skin to retrace those sensations you felt the first time, and you realise that the scent releases different accords from those you thought you identified the first time around. But the fragrance is the same; you’re not wrong. It just grows following a different path; the notes follow one another randomly, never the same. Well, this is happening to me with the new ZARA perfumes, both from the N° 01 SERIES with a black box dedicated to colours with noble adjectives and from the N° 02 SERIES with a white box dedicated to desert landscapes. Both series have famous master perfumers who collaborated with ZARA for creating these gems, with the name impressed on the box and the bottle. I want to share my emotions with you, and with this post, I will try to get ideas on the sensations and major chords that I get with SERIES N° 02.

Shoe Polish

Jordi Fernández has his hands on Full Moon over the Desert. Passionate about nature and oriental fragrances, he includes notes of oud and intense perfumes in his creations. He thus created this leather bombshell for a reason. I associate this perfume with shoe polish, and if you smell it, you will understand why. The perfume revolves around a leathery, phenolic, semi-tarry, and mossy accord. A dark, brutal, pitch-black leather with a brilliant performance. Feirie, powdery, and deep, with many points in common with niche leathery products. It opens with a salty, warm sand, aromatic leather nuance that looks very much like the smell of a saffron flower, spicy, not mentioned but detectable. The velvety and powdery notes of the iris take up space in the heart, while something smoky, ashy, mossy and inky comes to me in the end.

Continue reading A Great Boot Starts With Great Leather

Boozy Tobacco

Nose Benoit Lapouza is rumoured to have been inspired by his Angels’ Share creation to create a reinterpretation through "Sand Desert At Sunset | Zara". I’m not familiar with Angels’ Share, but this is a delicious blend of boozy, spicy, woody, and gourmand accords. I get an unmentionable liqueur note mixed with the wood smoke and roasted tonka from the bottom. With aged spirit, spiced cinnamon, and roasted tonka, this is a genuinely exceptional scent, a superbly ripe gourmand that balances liqueur and spice notes with a subtle woodiness. What remains on the blotter, even after a few days, is a hint of woody, boozy tobacco, similar to a moment of relaxation with a pipe and a good glass of barrel-aged spirit.

Continue reading Camel Ride Over The Desert

Lumberjack Sawdust

Right from the start, the essence makes me think that Mylene Alran drew inspiration from Santal 33 to create this fragrance. The papery cedar and the milky sandalwood underground are very similar in the two fragrances. Folk associate it with Tam Dao, but my first impression is Santal 33. Evening Safari Drive captures the essence of the lumberjack lifestyle and the scent of freshly cut wood and shavings. It doesn’t smell exactly like a lumber mill, but pretty close. I even feel resinous, rubbery-like olibanum. It grows and grows, and its smokiness blends with the woodiness. After many hours, and even days after, what I get from the blotter is a pungent pencil shaving of redolence, sawdust with smoky and dusty tinges.

Continue reading LumberJack Sawdust Scent

Barber & Pastry Shop

Among the four items of the Series N° 02 collection, this is the most citrus, fresh, and slightly floral. "Sunrise on the Red Sand Dunes | Zara" starts with a citrus blast, solid and harsh, which slowly turns into something creamy, sweet, and velvety. Another Mylene Alran’s creation, this time she took inspiration from the barber & pastry shop, aromatic the former and gourmand the latter. Smooth and clean, like a gust of fresh morning air, it reminds me so much of a beautiful bar of Atkinson soap, the yellow Golden Cologne, with a fragrance that offers an exclusive sparkling citrus note. Underneath, I catch notes of grass, straw, and something slightly smoky, with sweet, soapy, and gentle musk, nothing animalic or dirty.

Continue reading No Two Sunrises Are The Same

If you missed the N° 01 series, you can find it here The Noble Collection

-Elysium