Kayliz

A long time ago, I was young and unmarked and open to everything, when someone invited me to Cambridge, where he was studying.

With the dreamy gaze of my youth, this city was a magical place. Among other things, there was a small alternative café in a winding alley that served real bean coffee and homemade cakes with names like Chocolate Fudge Cake and Treacle Tart.

Partly it was the exotic coffee that fascinated and impressed me, partly the crowds of excitingly intellectual students with their incredibly long wool scarves, but mainly my fascination lay in the fact that apparently a world exists where people spend entire afternoons sitting in a café and talking about books.

Camino de Azahar Oro Woman transports me back to that wonderful place. The coffee is slightly bitter, sweetened with raw cane sugar. The air is warm, inviting, somewhere in a corner a damp duffle coat is steaming on the hook, it is raining... or is it foggy outside? Not important, in here is all that matters: the warmth, the coffee, the conversations, the spirit.

Somewhere in this scent is a bitter and even slightly musty spice note that saves it from banal agreeability. The fragrance remains warm, cozy, inviting, but this musty-bitter note also stimulates. It’s as if one could sit in a café on an autumn afternoon, think about books for hours, and thereby set the world right.

The opening of Anji Bamboo Mist is so strongly urinous that I almost washed it off. That would have been a mistake.
Over time, the sour-salty mist gives way, revealing a scent that I have always wished for.

You know those inquiries in the forum from young new perfumers looking for a fragrance that radiates "sovereignty," "clarity," and "intelligence"? What nonsense, one thinks, and when in a good mood, one suggests simply following one's nose.

Well. I'll keep it brief:
Grass after rain, wet earth, beeswax, mushrooms, and a faint hint of the old Chanel No.19 come together to form a cloak of crystal-clear alertness, intelligence, and calm joy of life.

My great-uncle had been living in a psychiatric hospital for over fifty years when I visited him in childhood with my mother. He always wished for bananas and condensed milk as a treat.

Sometimes, to my great delight, this gentle, thin old man with Einstein-like hair would spoon the condensed milk directly from the can in our presence, sitting at the table until the can was empty. Otherwise, he was often distracted, slightly absent, sometimes nervous like a wary garden bird that knows the cat is never far away. But with the condensed milk, he was present, completely in himself and with us; he was simply back. It was like magic.

Condensed milk, I just remembered, should not be confused with German condensed milk. In English, that’s called evaporated milk. Condensed milk is much thicker and almost unimaginably sweet. As a child, I found Uncle Bob's condensed milk moments fascinating partly because it was something forbidden that he was doing. Condensed milk straight from the can! It was outrageously naughty. And yet, these moments had something sacred about them. A holy transgression.

I digress... Demeter does too, because this is not condensed milk. It is sweet, it has a slight caramel note, but unfortunately, it also has a significant plastic undertone. That does not belong to condensed milk. I would have rather accepted a slight metallic taste -- condensed milk is almost always found in cans -- or even the fleeting damp smell of a dish that has been kept in the fridge a tad too long. Because there are very few people who can eat an entire can of condensed milk at once.

Tau was the surprising hit among the Onyrico samples that Franfan provided us. I tried it twice - fortunately, because during the first time I mainly focused on the heart, and this heart is not what makes Tau special for me. With Tau, the top and the base are standout elements in completely different ways.

Upon spraying, I immediately found myself in a damp coniferous forest. Deep green, refreshing, and a little earthy: very natural and not at all what the name suggested; I had feared a synthetic-looking bluish-green aquatic.

Much too quickly, after 1-2 minutes, the pine forest floor indeed gives way to a distinctly synthetic fragrance blend. At least it’s nothing aquatic, but rather a clear, clean, almost sunscreen-like leather.

Well, and that could have been it, but Tau fortunately turns out to be a wonderfully old-fashioned constructed fragrance. After about six hours, nothing of all that preceded is perceptible anymore: no forest, no creamed leather, and above all, no clean freshness. Tau has transformed into a fine labdanum monster: deep, warm, dark, and quite animalistic. At this stage, I still find it somewhat presentable.

For now, Tau still feels like three different, not clearly connected fragrances. This might be due to the short acquaintance period, or maybe not, but I definitely want to deepen this acquaintance when the opportunity arises.

I had a similar experience to Florblanca. First, a wonderfully dry-spicy rose unfolded, but it only lasted a short while. It became increasingly bitter, until very soon only cumin dominated.

Maybe the name Mata Hari refers to this disappearance of the rose? It's certainly not for me; I find this scent to be more masculine than feminine. Less Mata Hari, more James Bond, to be more specific: a slightly sweaty Daniel Craig.